Women's Day Outreach 2013

We recently asked you to pray for our Women's Day outreach on 9 August and are so thrilled to feedback now to you on how God awesomely answered your prayers!

Ephesians 3:20 tells us that God is "able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to his power that is at work within us"; we know this in our minds but do we really actually "know" this as our experience?

Square Pegs

Having written a reflection post about our recent trip to Blighty I felt challenged to write a more truthful one. Not that I was lying in the previous post, far from it, but there was more going on than I wrote about and it's pretty important stuff.

We were both asked quite early on about what was different with this trip than previous trips back to the UK. This seemed to be born out of the fact that many folk commented on how happy and relaxed we appeared.

From Britain With Love

Tonight at our home group meeting we'll be showing the short film we made of the various responses folk gave to camera about our Roadshow presentations.

All we can say to those of you that spoke to camera is "Thank You!".

Been & Gone

We can't quite believe that after months of planning and preparing for our UK trip it's now over and we've been back home for a couple of weeks. Life is now back into its usual cycle of school runs etc. but we'll attempt to put a coherent reflection together.

We really did hit the ground running and by the end of the first week we were exhausted but absolutely thrilled with what we'd achieved.

The Final Curtain

Last night saw the conclusion of our Facing The Mountain Roadshows as we gave our final presentation to a select gathering of folk right here in Weald village.

It was a truly great evening with an incredibly diverse mix of people from the vicar who was responsible for Paula getting saved through to a complete stranger and his cousin who had seen the event advertised in the parish magazine.

Fantastic!

London Town

I've just had a quick trip out on to the roof of Susan's house to take in the spectacular views over London.

In this photo the Shard certainly makes it's mark upon the capital.

Below it's interesting to see the view of the All England and to get the close ups of the TV camera crane.

Half Time

We're really enjoying our Roadshow events and are particularly enjoying the variety of different contexts in which we get to present about Tree of Life and our amazing friends in South Africa.

Today we were in the well heeled town of Cobham and had the privilege of sharing our Roadshow with a lovely bunch of folk from St. Andrew's, Oxshott.

"What A Refreshing Change"

Many moons ago there was a certain brand of cider with the sales line: "What a refreshing change".

We reckon that this could be a good way to describe Christians Abroad.

In our recent meeting it was such a pleasure to be asked things like:
"How can we partner together to better serve the church?"
"What are your expectations of us?
"What is Tree of Life hoping to gain from this trip?"
These are refreshing questions to be asked by the leaders of an organisation that really cares about and for us and they are questions we've never once been asked before!

"Strike Three.."

..But we're not out!

Rather we've just finished our third Roadshow and once again it went really well. We were with Tuesday @ 2 a group of older folk who are a powerhouse of prayers.

We've been thrilled by the turnout for each of them so far and it's been great to reconnect with many old friends.

Aunty Poppy

We were saddened to learn this morning that Aunty Poppy is again seriously ill and has been admitted to intensive care.

She recently had a major heart attack and home life is very hectic and stressful for her.

Please pray for Aunty Poppy!

One More Sleep!

It hardly seems possible but it's now less than 24 hours until we get on the plane for Blighty.

I guess we're at that point where things that haven't been done aren't going to get done.

Thankfully our Roadshow presentation is all finished, though that hasn't stopped me from checking it every few minutes to make sure it still works. Must switch tablet off!

FTM Roadshows

We've begun sending out invites for our forthcoming Roadshows in the UK.

If you're near one of the venues on the dates above please drop in, we'd love to see you!

For more details Like us on our Facebook page where more details will be posted.

Scary Thought

Here's a scary thought...one month from today we'll be boarding a plane for our UK trip.

It's not that the UK is scary, though watching Sky News we're often left feeling like strangers in a land that once was home. The scary bit is just how much work we've got to do before we board that plane.

Blogging From A To Z 2013 Reflections

The 2013 Blogging From A to Z Challenge was a lot harder than last year, mainly because it crept up on me and I had failed to plan ahead so on the 30th March I found myself desperately looking for a theme and subjects for it. Will I never learn?!

Sadly time was a real issue and I failed dismally in my attempts to spend time looking at other blogs. I managed to visit everyone that left a comment on a post but beyond that I probably only blog hopped on a two or three occasions.

Z Is For Ω

"I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First 

and the Last, the Beginning and the End."

Revelation 22:13

Like the English Z, Omega is the last letter of the Greek alphabet and a fitting way to sign off from this year's A to Z Blogging Challenge.

It's been a lot of fun for me and good to give the blog some long overdue attention.

Hope you've enjoyed it too!

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

Y Is For Youth

If you're of the praying persuasion please pray for us at Tree of Life as we have a great set of young adults and kids who join us faithfully every Sunday.

Sadly because we're still quite small and lacking in resources we're not able to offer them much. In fact we pretty much ignore the young adults amongst us. Not because we want to, far from it!  We did ask a couple to lead our youth work but sadly personal issues have prevented them from getting involved and we're a bit stuck as a church.

So please pray for good solid folk who could take a lead in this for us.

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

X Is For Xylophone

We don't have a xylophone at Tree of Life.

In fact we have nothing that resembles a worship band in any way shape or form and yet we have some of the most liberating and meaningful worship I've ever experienced.

I remember several years ago when Matt Redman brought out his brilliant song The Heart of Worship and many churches responding by stripping their worship back to basics.

W Is For Website

*Updated* Tree Of Life has had a website.

It's not a very good one but it's a start.

We're not very good at keeping it up to date but it's still a good starting point for finding out a bit more about the church and for contacting us.

Feel free to take a look.

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

V Is For Verse

I've posted before on my favourite verse and it remains my favourite.

John 16:33 "I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world".

I love the simplicity and the matter of factness about this verse. In this world you will have trouble. Not you might have trouble but you will have trouble. I always think of the verse when the age old discussion about why bad things happen to good people debate. Quite simply it's not about bad things happening to good people but rather just the simple fact that in this world you/we/me will have trouble. End of.

U Is For Unity

Unity is a word so often bounded around but with seemingly little meaning, and yet in the church context it's incredibly important.

One of my joys in church life is marveling at how seemingly disparate groups of people can be brought together through genuine love.

I'm not aware of any other aspect of life that can bring the unlikeliest people together for the good of themselves and their communities. Local church is amazing!

At Tree of Life we have South Africans, Angolan and Brits amongst us which makes for a great sense of diversity and I believe this reflects the nature of heaven.

T Is For Tree Of Life

Being part of Tree of Life is truly a privilege and a blessing. To be a part of the leadership team doubles that privilege and blessing!

I'm not going to repeat last year's post on Tree of Life but rather talk about the joys of the leadership team.

We're very blessed to serve alongside Gerrit & Sharon and Chris & Veronica, two quality couples with huge hearts for Jesus and the community.

S Is for Sundays

I love Sundays!  

When I first became a Christian many moons ago I loved church. The church I was involved with was a new plant so things were exciting and we were on the cutting edge of things.

Since then my love of church has waned to the absolute low of 2010.

Between 2004 and 2010 I used to joke that we lived in the most beautiful place on earth and had the worst church life possible. I guess it's true, for every action there's an equal and opposite re-action.

R Is For Resurrection

Our faith rests on this one fact; Jesus' resurrection from the dead. So much so that even Paul acknowledged in 1 Corinthians 15:14 that "if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith".

So are we wasting our time?

I would argue that no we're not wasting our time.

John's gospel account of Jesus death is quite clear that when the Romans pierced Jesus' side blood and water flowed out. Anyone with a modicum of medical knowledge knows that in death blood and water separate. So we know that Jesus was dead. Also, he's been brutally attacked in his run up to the actual Crucifixion which would have helped to hasten his death.

Q Is For Queen Size

This is totally unconnected to my theme but I was a bit stumped for this one and I really didn't want to steal yet another post from last year!

So Q is for Queen Size, as in bed.

Being a Brit I fully understand why a king size bed is smaller than a queen size bed and the reason makes a lot of sense. Traditionally the king's bed was a place of business, it had a perfunctory role. The queen's bed however was used by her for luxuriating in and being pampered, hence the size difference.

P Is For Pilate

I really enjoy the Coffee With Jesus cartoons from Radio Free Babylon and I especially like this one about Pontius Pilate.

I've always felt that Pilate got a bit of an unnecessarily unfair press for his role in Jesus' crucifixion.

O Is For Oom Paul

Oom Paul is a great man!

At 86 there's not much in life he hasn't seen and having been married to Molly for a little over 60 years with loads of children, grandchildren and great grandchildren there isn't much he hasn't done.

I've had the privilege of sitting with Oom Paul on a few occasions and consider him to be my very own Nelson Mandela.  I've never met Madiba and am highly unlikely to ever have the chance to, but sitting with someone like Oom Paul is just as great a privilege!

N Is For Names Of God

You can choose which name of God you like the most, for me I like Father.

I had a dream through my childhood that one day I would live with my dad but I was robbed of this dream at 18. Thankfully shortly after my dad died I was introduced to my heavenly father and now my dream has been fulfilled more than I could ever have hoped for.

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

M Is For Macassar

M is for Macassar

I wrote a post on Macassar last year and rather than steal yet another post from last year's challenge I thought I'd have a go at writing something a bit different.

We still serve Tree of Life church in Macassar and spend a lot of our time in the community and we still love it! So in that regard nothing has changed and as a church we are still passionate about winning the community for Christ.

Tree of Life meets on Sundays at Macassar High school so it seems appropriate to focus on education in Macassar.

Education is generally a bit of a hot potato in South Africa and nowhere are the difficulties more pronounced than in Macassar.

L Is For Life

L is for life and abundant life at that! John 10:10 "I came that they may have life and have it abundantly"

L could also be for the person I'm blogging about and it could also be for Lady because she is a remarkable lady. I guess I should also count this post as part of my Heroes Of The Faith series.

L is an amazing lady! She has two sons, both at high school, she's a hairdresser and lives with her mother. all quite unremarkable, but that's one of the things I love about the true heroes in life.

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!