"History repeats itselfHas to
No one listens."
Steve Turner, Poet.
So what has this picture on the right got to do with Trump winning the US presidential race?
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Dean and Paula in Blighty, autumn 2025 -
Dean and Paula pastor The Gathering -
Our beloved Palace - FA Cup winners 2025 -
The Gathering -
Baptising in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit -
Leaders preparing to serve at The Gathering's Soup Kitchen -
Soup Kitchen Xmas lunch
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Serving hands - the heart of The Gatheirng -
Thankful Thursdays -
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HOPE Home Based Care Team -
Gathering Ground -
The Helderberg - The prettiest of the mountains we face
We posted earlier on Facebook about Linden, one of our church members who was stabbed late last night. We now know that he was stabbed three times, twice in the shoulder and once in the neck which severed the femoral artery.Linden is currently in ICU and is being operated on at some point this afternoon.Sadly this incident has been brewing for a while because the family live next door to an illegal shebeen that started operating about a year ago. The family have tried many times to have the shebeen closed but without success, despite it being there illegally!
Last night at gone midnight Linden asked the few stragglers at the shebeen to leave because he had to be up for work at 4am this morning. All we know after this is that a few of the stragglers rounded on him and stabbed him.
This reminds me of some of our Roadshow visits down the years.One of the best was on the Wirral many moons ago. We had been clear with the church as to what we needed tech wise, back then it was as simple as an overhead projector, and the church had promised all would be fine. On the day there was no OHP so we had to pass our acetates around the congregation whilst we spoke. Priceless!
On another not so distant Roadshow, we were in a church where the vicar (an ardent Mac fan) decided to overrule the tech guy and interfere with the PC and our PowerPoint. Needless to say it didn't go well. 😂
I'll probably get told off for this but
We had a great evening on Tuesday night as The Gathering hosted a marriage enrichment evening using Mark Gungor's Laugh Your Way To A Better Marriage.We served pizza and cool drinks with the video and settled back for a lot of laughs and some brilliant teaching.
We've been wanting to do this for a while but getting all of our couples together has been virtually impossible, so we went ahead with most of us there and we're so glad that we did.
South Africa's drought just got a whole lot more serious for those of us down in the Western Cape with Level 3 water restrictions coming into force as of today. This means we have to make a minimum of 30% savings on our water consumption and for those that fail the financial cost will be quite big because all tariffs are increasing from the 1st of December.Our consumption is so low already, thanks to the measures we've put in place, that making a 30% saving is just about impossible, but it does mean that other than using grey water we won't be watering the garden this year. It will be interesting to see how the garden looks next June!
For those of you of the praying persuasion, please stand with us in prayer for this drought to be broken.
Being part of the Hillsong Network is a great blessing to us and we love joining Hillsong for mornings like this one yesterday.It was such a blessing to hear Jentezen Franklin speaking a very simple but powerful message about Jesus washing the feet of his disciples and the fact that he did it so as to avoid causing Judas any shame or embarrassment. That's grace in action and the total opposite of religion.
This morning we had the privilege of speaking at Joel's high school assembly about The Gathering's Soup Kitchen.Paula put a proposal to the school about them getting involved in our Christmas outreach by providing pizza for everyone at the kitchen and gift boxes for the children that attend.
The school have responded brilliantly and after Paula spoke so well (with the PowerPoint slides) at the assembly this morning, the Student Council are meeting later today to sort out exactly how the students will respond.
Hot on the heels of gaining our NPO registration we've had a great morning meeting with Green Shoots to talk about and plan for our Homework Club starting in the new school year in January. We'll be using their Maths@Home programme which is very exciting.We're clear on our hardware needs and hope to have this all sorted in the next couple of weeks, we've got our internet connection sorted, so now we need to identify our facilitator, get some training in place and sort a few policy and admin procedures.
In the next few weeks we'll also start identifying which of the kids that come to our weekly Soup Kitchen will be best served by joining the Homework Club and then we'll be ready to rock n' roll in January.
Please do join us in praying for God's provision in every way.
Thank you LORD!
This is a massive answer to prayer, thank you for standing with us in praying for this.
Thank you LORD!
When I arrived at The Gathering's premises on Thursday afternoon I was feeling fine, but when we left at 6:45 after our soup kitchen had finished I was limping quite badly on my right leg. I have no idea what happened to my leg or why it started hurting, but it was very painful.On Friday morning my leg was feeling OK again and I gave it no further thought until the afternoon when the pain was back with a vengeance. The pain was like an electric shock running down my leg but deep inside the leg. That night I couldn't sleep at all, so in the morning Paula took me to see a GP.
Finally, after months of waiting, frustration and endless emails I've managed to resubmit The Gathering's Not for Profit Organisation (NPO) application.Our previous application was knocked back but no one at the Department for Social Development thought to tell us why!So, this time we've used their template for our Constitution (so if they knock it back again I'll be
According to the website the application should take 28 days,
My Saturday began like any other regular Saturday, I'd taken Eli to football practice and after that I was expecting to have a nice quiet breakfast with Paula and my boys. However, Paula's scheming knows no bounds and I was blissfully unaware of just what she had planned!As Joel & I arrived at Fred & Max I noticed a lot of cars in the car park but just assumed it was a typically busy Saturday, and there's a gym above the coffee shop so that explained things. However as I approached the venue I saw a few balloons through the window and as I entered I was gobsmacked to see so many people. It took a few moments to realise that they were all there for my 50th!
I didn't think I was that gullible but I guess I'll have to work on paying more attention to what's going on around me!
What an awesome time in God's presence at The Gathering this morning!Paula & I had just got back from holiday so we'd asked our friends Flynn & Sally from Word Of Life to minster to The Gathering and we're incredibly grateful for their faithfulness.
We were blessed because they've just returned from a missions trip to Istanbul and we received the overflow of the blessing they had received on their trip.
I've always had a fear that one day someone is going to realise I shouldn't be where I am doing the things I am, but I also feel that until they catch up with me I might as well carry on and see what I can get away with.Part of my plan has been to put this meme into action and I think I might just have pulled it off, but don't tell anyone.
Sadly however, I think JM Barrie was right when he said "All children, except one, grow up". So this is a big year for me as I turn 50 and have been married for 25 years, and if turning 50 isn't proof of growing up then being married for 25 years definitely is.
Still, I'm not going to stop trying to behave as my inner child wants to, but don't tell anyone!
The corruption of our boys is almost complete as Dean's plan for them to have as misspent a youth as his slowly comes to fruition.We've had some fun evenings and some great meals out but tonight at The Hungry Monk was fantastic.
We're having a great time away and as ever we're having a lot of fun in Greyton, our happy place!
I was stood outside The Gathering's premises recently when this rather nice Bentley pulled in to the service station for fuel. Like everyone else, I stood and admired such a beautiful car but then I stood back and watched the bigger picture unfold.But first, a bit of context...in South Africa it is against the law to serve yourself at a fuel station, you must be served by one of the attendants. It's a nice touch and the attendants normally go beyond their basic duty and clean your windows and offer to check your oil and water, invariably this leads to a nice tip for the attendants.
We put this short slideshow together for our Renewal of Vows service at St. George's back in July.
The photos start back in 1985 when we started dating and go right through to this year.
We hope you enjoy it.
We seem to have been celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary for a while now, but then again, why not?! It's quite a milestone and one the world would like to have bet against. We often laugh about the fact that someone (who shall remain nameless) gave us six months when we announced our engagement. 24½ years later we hope they feel differently.In many respects we always believed we would hit this milestone and carry on way past it, but in other respects we're more than amazed that we've gone the distance so far.
To say that we'd have gotten this far without our faith would be foolish, all honour must go to our Lord for sustaining us!
So we've renewed our vows in St. George's, the church we were married in all those years ago. We've been to Paris for a week to celebrate on our own in style and now we're enjoying some special time at home with our boys, who think we're ancient because none of their friends' parents have been married for anywhere near as long. Oh the joys of being older parents!
Here's a thought for all my church leader friends...At your next leaders or elders meeting, forget the business side of things and rather, give each person a mop, broom, duster etc. and get stuck into cleaning the premises.
If any of your leaders complain or refuse to get stuck in remove them from the leadership team.
You'll be doing yourself and the church a huge favour!
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