In Mark 4 verse 1 to 20 Jesus tells the parable of the sower and the seed that confuses His disciples so much that He has to sit with them later and explain it a little more clearly to them - and even today it seems we have different ideas of what He was saying or what He could be meaning so i guess it makes sense to wrestle with it and see what makes [...]
this last weekend i got to go away with my three best men - Regan Didloff, Rob Lloyd and Duncan Houston - to this great secluded cottage in Betty's Bay and i picked up this book called 'The Gospel according to Peanuts' by Robert L Short [where old people may know that 'Peanuts' refers to the life and adventures of Charlie Brown and Snoopy and friends] in it, he quoted this verse from psalm 137 [...]
i really like this picture of me and the reason i chose it for this particular challenge is the idea of casting a wider shadow. the past 18 months i spent as part of a non-profit organisation called the Simple Way which in some cases meant a broadening of shadow as i was given the potential to influence [to some extent] an organisation that is world-known and has an extended sphere of influence and audience... [...]
In Mark 3 verse 31 to 35 we see a very interesting dialogue take place as Jesus is informed that His family is waiting outside for Him... what does this mean for us? check it out here. to move to the next story of the sower and the seed, click here.
Wow! 19 months flew by, just like... well 570 days, really. June last year, after about four months of weekly Skype calls with our present and to be future bossman Darin Petersen, the beautiful Val [tbV] and i arrived in Kensington, Philadelphia, Americaland to live and work at the Simple Way non-profit as part of the first batch of an internship program [which was later upgraded to a residency program when they saw our skills, [...]
so probably close to 15 years ago i wrote a challenging email to a couple of friends of mine about some aspect of following Jesus... a week later i did the same... at some point i told someone about it and they asked to be added and so i added them... pretty soon i started spam-inviting people from the typical cheesy group Christian emails that used to hit my inbox and some of them decided [...]
As we look at Mark chapter 3 verse 20-27 i take a bit of a reverse glimpse of it by looking at denominations vs denominationalism [or as i sometimes refer to them in talks as demonisations which is what we make of denominations when we start worshipping them or who they are] and encourage each of us, whether we belong to a denomination or not [don't get me started on "non-denominational"], to be keeping the [...]
next up, we see Jesus select the 12 who He designates as apostles and makes some very interesting choices... so take a look at Mark 3 verse 13 to 19 to see the next post on unity, not denominationalism go here.
i am not a big fan of tradition whose only purpose in life is "we did it this way last time" last nite, the beautiful Val and i celebrated Christmas eve with a few of our neighbors from Potter street where we have lived the last 19 months and are 5 days away from leaving... it was a fitting end to have a house full of good food, laughter and excited wife squeals and dances [...]
So yesterday i wrote a post sharing a deeper glimpse into the future life, work and ministry of the andersons over here - we will be joining a non-profit called Relational Tithe with a working platform called Common Change which, in a very big nutshell, gathers resources from a group of people and then uses them to meet advocated needs from people within the group. It is a very exciting project and both Valerie and [...]