The appearance of diversity means close to nothing if the voices at the mic, those making the decisions and the hands at the money bag continue to be white. i have just seen another Conference line-up for a national denominational conference in South Africa in 2020 where out of five speakers, one of them is black and i believe he is the only one from South Africa. In a country where white people make [...]
One thing that irritates me in life is people arriving late for things. Like sufficiently overwhelmingly late. We had an arrangement that you would arrive at seven and it's now twenty-past seven and i haven't even heard from you. Now it's helpful to realise that this comes from a place. A lot of people see punctuality as a virtue and some cultures might hold it as a greater value than other cultures and for specific [...]
This week has been a little fighty fighty on the Facebook and i'm not sure why. i strongly suspect it is linked to the Rugby World Cup that has been happening as touching on that 'holy grail' in a country so passionate about the sport definitely touches a nerve. As does most conversation about race. So in the midst of three days of more 'taking people on' than i am typically used to, i had someone [...]
Ephesians 4.15 says, 'Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.' Ah, i get it now! When i read 'Share without pretending' i had no idea what this was going to be about, but the verse link cleared it up. We are talking about speaking the truth in Love. And i would add in Proverbs 27.6 for [...]
so i meant to post this short one this morning on the back of 'unaccounted for' which a lot of people have read and some of you have commented on. and it was this thort that i had the other day as i was walking down the street post rugby world cup 'tragedy' - that when we talk about the biblical concept of iron sharpening iron, it is not a pleasant, comfortable process although it [...]
so yesterday we lost a rugby match. like a game. i hear there'll be another one in a few weeks time. in four years time there will even be this kind of one. we won it before. a different team will win it this time. the world will continue to turn. within twenty minutes of us losing the game i was completely bummed. not because we lost the game, but because naturally facebook statusville became [...]
continuing with the HOW FAR IS TOO FAR question... finished the first part by saying this: So THE QUESTION you frame will sound a lot more like this – HOW CAN I LOVE AND RESPECT THIS PERSON i am in a relationship with to the extent that if the dating relationship ever ends, he/she does not walk away with A WHOLE LOT OF BAGGAGE [physically, emotionally...] and HOW MUCH CAN I SAVE OF MYSELF AND [...]
why is this stuff important? i don't think this is about arisefest and my blog - not anymore, that was just a catalyst to a lot of in depth thinking about a crucial topic which i feel is hugely lacking in the church... [was i right in wot i wrote about arisefest? i'm not sure, perhaps not - the one principle that was intentional though was mentioning names of some of the bands i was [...]
and that seems to perhaps be the principle [your thorts are greatly appreciated] - that if you sin in public, you need to be cautioned/rebuked/challenged/held accountable in public - and my reasoning is this... the people observing the non-Christ-following behaviour need to be made aware that that is not Christ-following behaviour otherwise they might think it is okay and go and do the same... so when peter is chilling with the gentiles and then the [...]
what came to mind and this is really just to get people thinking more than making any point cos i think i naturally would have gone with the 'gently pull aside' approach is a bunch of incidents when that didn't seem to happen: in matthew 16.23 Peter starts to rebuke Jesus for speaking about His death and Jesus responds by saying, "Get behind me, satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; you do not [...]
