#11 Put your money where your faith is. Where is your treasure? Discover that and you will find your heart. This is an important one. Money and possessions were a big agenda item for Jesus but not so much for the church. In my experience the church typically has a once-a-year money preach which is on how and why you should tithe [ten percent] your money to the church and then usually apologises for [...]
#6: Interrogate the words you sing. When i mention the word 'worship' the majority of us in our minds go straight to 'the songs we sing in church' which is true but no the whole truth. Worship is so much bigger than just songs but for the purpose of this tip i am going to be referring to worship as the singing part of the service. My definition of a worship song is that [...]
40 Tips for christian types: #1 Major in Love. When Jesus is asked what the greatest command is [Matthew 22] He gives a sneaky two-parter answer which is basically: Love God with everything and love your neighbour as yourself. If this was the most important thing to Jesus, it should be to us. What i love about the Matthew passage is the little p.s. after Jesus gives the command which says, 'All the Law [...]
For me, Christmas is a reminder that Love came down. Love got its hands dirty. Love got involved. Love interrupted the normal flow of things. Love reached out specifically to all of those that society, culture, religion and government pushed to the sides. Love allowed itself to be interrupted while on mission. Love called out injustice. Love refused to accept the status quo. Love turned over tables in the face of greed and extortion. Love [...]
Dear Church [and in my brain i'm thinking church of Cape Town, but this really is good stuff for the church at large to hear], i have a deep love for you and a desire for you to be everything you were made to be. But it is a lot of love-hate relationship cos man, you confound me so much sometimes. Especially on the man bit. But i had a dream about you last night [...]
What kind of church will you be part of? i have written a little bit before about my diving into studies this year with a course called Leadership in Urban Transformation, a one year certificate through the University of Pretoria looking at Theology and the City. This week finds us in week four of our physical class weeks and so i had an assignment due and read a book called 'The Prophetic Imagination' by Walter [...]
Is Forgiveness more than just a nice idea? My friend Julie asked me to post a piece on the topic of forgiveness after i recorded a Facebook Live conversation about it, so here goes. i have a friend who recently got caught doing some pretty reprehensible stuff. We weren't good friends but i have known him for ten years and his actions totally took a lot of people by surprise and a lot of people [...]
What does it mean to worship as a South African? As an African? Is there any difference to worshipping in any other place in the world? We do tend to import our worship songs from Americaland [Bethel, Jesus Culture], the United Kingdom [Redman, Tomlin, Hughes] and Australia [Hillsongs, Planetshakers] and if worship is just worship then that should be fine, right? i posed this question and questions like it in this Facebook Live video that [...]
It has been exactly three months since i posted about the Angus Buchan prayer time in Bloemfontein which i wrote about here. Which got a lot of people mad. How dare i challenge such an obviously God thing and good people with good intentions gathering together to pray for the country? How can that possibly be a bad thing? If i remember correctly, my writing on the prayer event was more questioning than condemning and [...]
What does the will of God mean? Every time i hear the phrase what comes to mind is the question, 'If God dies who gets all His stuff?' But it's probably not that. After all, where would we keep it? i had an interesting interaction around the topic of God's will on Facebook the other day and for clarity's sake thought it wouldn't hurt to write some words on it as to how i see [...]
