K Is For Kingdom

Here's a question for all church leaders...

Are you kingdom building or empire building?

Jesus spoke of the Kingdom of God 116 times across the four gospels, so it was obviously an important part of his message. Much of what we do in church is about building and extending the kingdom for His glory. Sadly this sometimes goes awry.

J Is For Jesus

I make no apologies in stating that as far as I'm concerned it's all about Jesus.

Whilst there seems to be a growing fashion to remove Jesus from church as certain leaders gain celebrity status I have to say that for me and Tree of Life Church, Jesus is and will remain central to all that we do.

Lecture over!

I Is For Indecision

I is for Indecision though arguably it should be for Déjà vu.

I couldn't come up with anything for I so I'll go away and hope that J might come along to rescue me.

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This post is part of a series in the Blogging From A To Z Challenge, April 2013.

This is a stolen /plagarised post from last year's challenge.

H Is For History

I'm taking a break from my theme to look at a hot news topic.

Margret Thatcher Dies

I'm not going to rejoice or gloat in her death (I've probably already said too much on Facebook and will no doubt get into trouble for this post) but neither will I mourn her passing. She was a deeply divisive politician and depending on your political persuasion she's either the saviour of the UK or the devil incarnate.

G Is For Grace, God & Go

"There but for the grace of God go I" 

This is a quote attributed to John Bradford (1510-1555), an evangelical preacher and prebendery of St. Paul's cathedral. Though there is no actual evidence to support this attribution I'm sticking with it because it's so fitting given that he is said to spoken these words whilst he was in prison.

The story goes that one day as he was looking out of a window in the Tower of London he saw another poor soul being lead to his execution and uttered this now immortal phrase which has subsequently been used and abused to the point that it has entered the common vernacular of many cultures and languages around the world.

F Is For Fellowship

I've always found fellowship to be a bit of an odd word, preferring instead to talk about friendship. However in church circles it doesn't always work.

Fellowship is about sharing similar interests, ideals, or experiences which is pretty much what we do when we're with fellow Christians.

E Is For Ecumenical

Ooh, that's a big word!

One of the joys we've had in our many years in mission and leadership is that we've never really behaved as we should have. I'm not saying we were naughty or doing things we shouldn't have but rather I'm referring to the fact that we've never really gone to the churches we were expected to.

D Is For Discipleship

One of my biggest passions is discipleship in the local church. In a secular sense we're talking about mentoring which basically means getting alongside folk and helping them to make positive choices in their lives and walking the walk with them through those choices. In the local church context it means doing just this but also helping them to know Jesus better by helping them grow in their faith and getting to know and understand the bible. 

C Is For Conference

Good Friday saw Tree of Life getting together with our family of Church of Love & Grace and Simon's Bay Christian Church for our first ever conference.

The theme was The Master's Plan which was highly appropriate for the Easter weekend.

I've never spoken at a conference before so was very excited by this opportunity but also a little nervous, especially about speaking in front of around 100 people.

B Is For Bible

I have to be honest and say I love this book!

The bible underpins our faith and is the building block for church life at Tree of Life.

This is our personal collection of bibles (there are a few missing scattered around the house and car) in the office just above my desk. We have goodness knows how many versions in at least 6 languages. Some are used a lot more than others, though increasingly I use e-Sword which is a brilliant bit of bible study software!

A To Z Challenge

I'm cheating today and using the A for 'A To Z'

Hopefully this will be the end of my cheating but I'll let you know if it isn't.

It Is Finished

Tetelestai, a simple ten letter word in Greek meaning: It is finished.

Book Week - Character Day

As part of International Book week my boys get to dress up as a favourite book character today.

Eli might not look too thrilled but he chose to go as Little Brown Mouse from The Gruffalo whilst Joel is truly thrilled to be going as Gollum from The hobbit.

So proud of their choices!

Truth

Truth is an interesting concept. In itself it's very simple but we like to complicate it, just look at how many theories of truth are out there and how many thousands of years they have been discussed. All this does is reduce truth to the point that society will tell us that there is no such thing as truth, saying 'one man's truth is another man's lie'. But in reality truth remains very simple.

Truth is defined as an accord with fact or reality, or fidelity to an original or to a standard or ideal.

Truth is the opposite of falsehood and lies.

I recently sat with Joel and talked about one of my sporting heroes, Lance Armstrong and how his entire world of success, fame and celebrity was built on lies. Joel knows that as a keen cyclist I'm upset about the Armstrong story and he also knows there are two groups of people I hate in life: thieves and liars. I hope that using the story of Armstrong my boys will grow to respect truth and favour it.

Tree Of Life Turns One

On Sunday we celebrated Tree Of Life's first birthday with a celebration with our family from Church of Love & Grace and it was a blessing to have Shaddie & Lisa with us from Simon's Bay Christian Church.

It was a great time of worshiping together but it was also a humbling time for us as Dean was appointed as lead elder of the church.  We really feel humbled and privileged to be tasked with this role and we're very excited about where God is leading us and what he is doing.

Back To School

It's back to school for the boys as the school year began this morning.

We can't quite believe it but Joel is going into Year 5 and Eli into Year 3. Our babies are definitely no longer babies.

We're really excited for them for the coming year as they've both got good teachers with both of them being committed Christians.

After Joel's awful year this year he's got a teacher who's already seen him at his best and likes him. Eli is going into a class with a teacher we've known for some years now and Joel had a great time with.

Let the adventures begin.

A Quiet Morning With Man Tools

When mum and Joel decided that they were going to go and see The Hobbit at the cinema we asked Eli what he would really like to spend the morning doing.  With no hesitation he answered that he would like to make something!

So dad and Eli spent the morning going to the salvage yard, buying some wood for R5, coming home and getting out the hammers, nails and power tools - heaven for Eli!  He quickly decided that he was going to make a table and chairs for his two Build a Bears formerly known as Ron and Jackie after some lovely friends of ours in the UK and now (apparently) known as Ron and Harry seeing as one of them is ginger - therefore Ron Weasley - and the other must therefore be HP himself!!

Ernest - RIP

I just heard the sad news that my friend Ernest died this morning. Ernest had been battling after a number of strokes and had his sixth major stroke just a couple of weeks ago. Sadly in the last day or so he took a turn for the worst and passed away this morning.

Thankfully Ernest was saved so we can rejoice in that. Also, he has the biggest family I have ever known and they've been amazing in supporting him, caring for him and loving him.

What a Year!

I can remember many years ago wishing for a really quiet year and to be honest I'm still kind of waiting on that wish.

Despite that, 2012 goes down as one of the best years ever for me!

2011 was a true "annus horribilis" that started badly with just about everything that could go wrong going wrong.

Happy Christmas!

Happy Birthday Eli!

Happy 7th birthday to our amazing boy!

Eli is such a joy and a total blessing to our family and we love him dearly.

Having had his party a couple of weeks ago, Eli's had a quiet day at home playing with his new toys and completing his 500 piece jigsaw. He's also very proud today of his brand new unicycle which has seen a bit of action today.

Now we're looking forward to our birthday tea at Eli's choice of restaurant tonight. So that'll be a massive bowl of spaghetti bolognese then!

We're Doomed

In the words of Private Frazer from Dad's Army, "We're all doomed!".

Or maybe not.

Thankfully Dad's Army was a comedy and Private Frazer's catchphrase never amounted to anything. I guess it's the same with all these predictions by the likes of Camping and misinterpretations of the Mayan calendar, they provide for some great comedy.

Sadly after the Mayan farce we have to wait until 2018 for the next comedian's prediction to be proven wrong. Someone called F. Kenton Beshore reckons the world will end between 2018 & 2028.

Christmas Hampers

We love this time of year because we get to distribute hampers etc on behalf of the church and others.

This year we'll be distributing these sixteen hampers amongst our church families so we're just tidying them up and putting on a Christmas card from church so there's no doubt as to where they are from.

God is good!

Christmas Tree

Finally after a week or two of nagging we let the boys put up the Christmas tree and they did a great job with only minimal moving of decorations required.

They had so much fun doing it and on being unable to decide who should top the tree off with the angel they chose to do it together.

Nice one boys!

Super Sunday!

There are many examples of women in leadership in the bible and just as in life, some of them were great and some not so, but that's one of the strengths of the bible, it reflects so much of the reality of life.

So while some churches turn their noses up at women in leadership or get distracted by voting on the issue we choose to get on with it and allow the women amongst us to blossom and flourish as God intended.

7th Birthday Party

On Tuesday we celebrated Eli's 7th birthday with his party. His actual birthday isn't until the 21st but with the summer holidays beginning a lot of his friends will be away so a party would be a bit thin on the ground if we waited 'til then.

Much fun was had by his friends and Eli loved having his class mates over to play for the afternoon.

Mummy was also very clever with the party food, ordering 10 burger meals from a local takeaway which saved a lot of hassle.

Bell's Palsy Update

The week the Bell's Palsy struck was a very unpleasant week as I thought I might be having a mild stroke. Thankfully that turned out not to be the case but rather it was the palsy.

Having done as much research as I could really be bothered to I was amazed that none of the articles talked about the pain and discomfort involved, most just seemed to take a fairly lighthearted "get over it" attitude.

I was left exhausted and in a lot of discomfort in the first week and the pain hasn't fully gone yet.

The Cape Doctor

The Cape Doctor or Southeaster as it's also known is our summer wind which can blow quite strongly. However the last 24 - 48 hours have been the strongest Southeaster we can remember.

Take a look at this pic of our trampoline which was picked up by a single gust and thrown about six metres through the air onto our gazebo frame and garden table. The gazebo frame had already been damaged by the wind so just in case there was any doubt about it the good doctor totalled it with the trampoline.

School Awards

Today we had the privilege of attending the boys' school awards ceremony, held at the Somerset West library.

It was a great time and we were very proud of our boys!

Eli's class teacher commended Eli for "Never backing down or saying no to a challenge". She has certainly got the measure of our boy!

Joel got an extra certificate for his "Diligence and hard work in guitar". In fact Joel's guitar teacher has been so impressed with his progress this year that he has been invited to play to the old folks on Friday when the school choir go to entertain them.

Oh Dear!

Our afternoon of donation sorting turned into an afternoon of mixed blessings.

We ended up with three boxes and a bin bag full of crap which will be going to the landfill. Happily though we've ended up with a couple of boxes and a few bags of decent toys and clothing which will be a real blessing when we take them into Macassar and Chris Nissen in the next few days.

'Tis The Season To Be Giving..

We love this time of year!

Why? Because the number of donations we get locally increase exponentially and we're able to bless folk in Macassar, Chris Nissen, Broadlands and sometimes beyond that.

We've spent quite a bit of time sorting through donations over the last couple of weeks and it looks like we'll have a bit more sorting to do yet.

Bell's Palsy

I thought I might be having a mild stroke this morning but on googling "am i having a stroke?" and reading around the symptoms it became clear that I wasn't so off I went with my plans for the morning. As time went by I realised that something was definitely wrong as my mouth felt like I was recovering from an injection at the dentist and my right eye was blinking slowly as it felt like it was compensating for my left eye being lazy. Throw in a bit of a numb tongue and it all adds up to a rather unpleasant feeling.

Sowing & Reaping

This week one of our members exhorted us in Home Group to not despise the little things in life and to sow graciously and with a grateful heart no matter how small we think our seed is because God blesses and rewards our small acts of faith.

21÷7=?

Further to my rant below about the census taken last year here in South Africa I came across this today.

Initially I thought it had to be the work of some mischief maker getting busy with Photoshop but on visiting the official website I downloaded the original and it is indeed free of any Photoshop jiggery pokery.

Look more closely at sum number 3 and see if you can work out the right answer.

Leopards In The Cape

This is great news!

The Cape Leopard Trust have been doing some sterling work in the Boland area logging details of known leopards, as well as using camera traps and physical traps to monitor the health and distribution of these splendid creatures in the Cape.

What a privilege too to know that some of the routes we mountainbike on we also share with some leopards.

Census Results - Govt Needs To Do Better!

On the news today there's an article about the results of last year's census here in South Africa. Here's the BBC's take on it: South Africa's census: Racial divide continuing.

Given how the media likes to sensationalise stuff and focus on the negatives the article leads with the grim statistic that the black majority are paid six times less than their white counterparts.

Showers Of Blessing

What a great weekend!

On Friday we joined with Every Nation here in Somerset West for their conference. They were hosting a guy called Marc Dupont who despite looking like a skinny Robin Williams was very good. We were particularly taken with his exposition of the name El Shaddai meaning God who is able to do that which you can't do for yourself. That is definitely our experience!

Superkids!

Our boys' school is having its bi-annual production at the Playhouse Theatre in Somerset West this week and for the first time Joel has one of the speaking roles as the Policeman. Part of his role is to lead the other policemen including Eli.

I managed to sneak a photograph (yes I turned the flash off) which isn't very good but it does at least show Joel with his truncheon and Eli (3rd from left) disappearing under his bobbies helmet.

It was a great evening and we're very proud of our boys!

Baptisms

We just had to share this post from Tree Of Life's web page:

"This Sunday we had the privilege of joining with our family at Church of Love & Grace in Mitchell's Plain to baptise three of our members together with eight of theirs.

We had an amazing time in God's presence with one of our member's granddaughter being saved. Hallelujah!

In the midst of our gathering we also honoured Martin & Mercia who celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary. Martin was then involved in baptising his youngest daughter who had given her life to Jesus just last Sunday.

We thank God for an awesome time in his presence and look forward to doing this again very soon!"

It really was great to watch people stepping out in obedience to Jesus and to honour family in the same gathering.

TV Or Light?

So we were on our way out last night and decided to pop into Macassar to see a couple from church to deliver something they had been waiting for for a few weeks. When we arrived in the monsoon like rain the house appeared to be in total darkness so Dean went to the door to knock and could see the light of the TV flickering through the window. It's always a joy to spend time with our family members and this visit was particularly special because of the delivery.

The house was in total darkness apart from the telly and the couple wouldn't put a light on because the stark choice was TV for the evening or a light on for a few minutes. After we'd been chatting for a minute we were aware of the floor moving, it was alive with children under duvets and blankets trying to keep warm whilst watching the telly and half the kids belonged to the neighbours.

Heritage Day

Today is Heritage Day, also known as National Braai (BBQ) Day with seemingly millions of South Africans across the country braaiing. Many of our friends in Macassar and Chris Nissen were getting in on the action.

To celebrate we spent the day with some Zimbabwean and Ugandan friends with Eli being the lone South African amongst us!

We had a great afternoon chatting and chilling and occasionally chasing one of the eight boys we had between us. They certainly mad it a very lively afternoon!

Kalk Bay

To celebrate our twenty first wedding anniversary we had a very pleasant couple of nights away in the stunning seaside town of Kalk Bay on the Cape Peninsula, somewhere we've been wanting to explore for sometime.

To finally get the chance to mooch around the place sans enfants was a real blessing and we'll definitely be back sometime soon.

21

Twentyone years ago our dear friend Richard pulled out all the stops on the organ and gave it some welly as he struck up Tocatta in C by Zipoli as the love of my life began walking down the aisle.

I have been incredibly blessed by the fact that shortly after 1.30pm Paula said "I do" and I'll be forever grateful to her and to God for the amazing time we've had together ever since.

To marry someone special is great. To marry your soul-mate is fantastic. To spend a lifetime with the love of your life is simply awesome!

Here Comes The Bride..

Last Saturday we celebrated the wedding of Philip and Maria with our friends from Simon's Town.

Once again it was a bit of 'weddings R us' as Paula was chauffeur for the bride and Dean was the official photographer.

We had a lovely day and a lot of fun and were totally spoilt by our dear friends from Simon's Bay Christian Church who laid on an amazing day.

Joys Of Leadership

One of the great things about leading a church is getting to decide what is and isn't important in the life of the church.

One thing I've always believed strongly in but rarely seen modeled is leaders praying together. I've seen leaders all consumed with the business of leading but rarely seen leaders praying for the sake of praying.

I realise business is important but prayer is way more important than the mundane!

School Of Unicycling

This morning I had the privilege of going into school with Eli's unicycle so that he could demonstrate how to ride it to his classmates for show & tell.

I get a real thrill out of seeing Eli riding his uni' but to see him ride it with a crowd really made my heart glow. It was great to hear Eli's classmates heaping praise and compliments on him, I think my favourite was hearing one of the lads telling the teacher "He makes it look so easy!".

Is Platinum Really Worth That Much?

The situation at the Lonmin Marikana platinum mine in South Africa has just hit the international news wires because of the slaughter of at least 30 people by the police.

Sadly it takes such an act for the story to become newsworthy.

In The Spirit Of Benny Hill

Late this afternoon we were playing about in the garage and used Paula's camera to record some unicycling. We put it on 'Miniature Effect' mode and this was the result. all that was needed was some classic music!

So here you have it, in the spirit of Benny Hill, less the sauce!

Conspicuous In Our Absence

If we were writing this post a year ago, our conspicuous absence from the blog would have been because we felt unable to speak of the things that were going on.

Thankfully we've moved on from then and the simple reason for our conspicuous absence has been the sheer amount of stuff going on and not being able to keep up with it all.

Our last proper post was about our outreach back in June and here we are in August about to do another outreach this coming Saturday.

Eisteddfod

Some great news for Joel..

He's just participated in the local Eisteddfod again and improved on last year's showing by getting Cum Laude for his prepared reading.

Joel chose to read two pages from The boy In The Dress by David Walliams and really went to town on his characterisation. Even the judges commented on this and the humour he managed to convey.

We are so proud of him!

Eli Unicycling

Despite our absence from the blog we're well and really enjoying life but we're also really busy which probably explains the absence.

So here's a bit of fun to keep you going until we manage to post something over the weekend.

Enjoy Eli's latest exploits below...

A Tree Has Been Planted

If you managed to catch up with Paula at one of her recent Facing The Mountain Roadshows in Weald or Cheadle you will have seen our latest DVD offering.

If you didn't manage to catch up with Paula, shame on you you can watch the film right here from the comfort of your own computer screen.

We hope you find it helpful as you uphold our ministry here in Macassar in prayer.

So get some popcorn, put your feet up and enjoy the next 16½ minutes.

Outreach Weekend - Pt 2

We had such an amazing time at our celebration meeting two weeks ago!

It was a real family time as Tree Of Life were joined by Love & Grace from Mitchell's Plain and Simon's Bay Christian Church from Simon's Town.

Graham's team from Mitchell's Plain lead the worship, Shaddie brought a great word and Tree Of Life organised the celebration and lead it. It's such a blessing to be involved in churches working together for the extension of the Kingdom!

Outreach Weekend - Pt 1

Firstly, thank you to all of you that were praying for the weather on our outreach a couple of weeks ago, the weather turned out great despite the forecast and we are truly thankful to God for this!

It has indeed been a couple of weeks since the outreach and the reason it has taken so long to blog about it is that many of us are still blown away by the whole thing!

Miles For Smiles Assembly

I've lifted this straight out of the school's weekly newsletter:

"MILES FOR SMILES
THANK YOU! THANK YOU!
THANK YOU!
Through the combined efforts of the International School of Helderberg and Macquarie Securities South Africa, we raised a phenomenal R71878.70 [almost £5700] for Operation Smile South Africa!
Over the last 5 years we have raised almost R200 000-00 for Operation Smile.

Wonderwall

We're very proud of Joel as he played with his fellow guitarists at the school's Music Cafe this morning.

They played Wonderwall by Oasis and did really well.

Local Rag

An update for those of you who sponsored our boys in their Miles For Smiles ride a few weeks ago.

Our local rag the District Mail ran this article today with a lovely photo of Eli in it.