My apprenticeship with NieuCommunities wraps up in 3 weeks. It's been an absolutely fantastic year, with learning so much and growing immensely. Pretoria has been a surprising place - more interesting and diverse that I expected - with great people. I'm going to miss it!

After we wrap up here, I'm going to White River to spend some time with my fiance, Danya. She's wonderful! We got engaged in September and are planning to get married in December. She's been working in Positive Living (holistic health) at York Timbers in Sabie for nearly the last 4 years and will be studying a master's in Diversity Studies at UCT next year...so I'm moving to Cape Town in early February! After we get married in December we're heading to Canada for just over a month, to spend Christmas with her extended family and to see her friends.





We've just started a Heart Project at NieuCommunities: creating a work of art which gives a tangible expression to the past year. I've already come up with some ideas (acrylic, canvas, beads, triptych, photos, white space, video) and will be working on this over the next few weeks.

I was at my sister Lyndi's wedding in Cape Town last weekend - and it was great! She looked stunning and the day came together so well. Congratulations, Lyndi and Andre! They're on honeymoon in Bali right now...and I look forward to seeing them more in Cape Town next year.



Danya and I have found a place in Obz which looks like a good place to start our life together. It's a pretty vibrant community (and no, we're not on the ground floor!) and close to UCT. I'd love to pursue Interactive Visual Art more next year and hopefully make it a full-time thing. Otherwise I'll still be doing freelance web development (about to finalise www.mudanca.co.za - my latest site for a client) and perhaps coaching too.

So that's me! A lot of changes around, a lot to think about and do, but things have been good. Let me know what you've been up to, too :)

So turns out I have a few other blogs - one of which is FutureChurch, where I blog about the future of the church in South Africa. I tend to write my theological reflections there - and more about what is happening at Pangani and NieuCommunities here. This last week I've got some posts out of my system...

While talking about what church could be during our book discussion yesterday, and where Christians would go for community if they left the institutional church, this post was written: Resisting assimilation into the Borg: the future of the church. I'm not really a Star Trek fan, but I thought the tongue-in-cheek metaphor was a not-so-serious fit!

On Tuesday we were looking at the first four books of the New Testament and it reminded me of the first century scholar - N.T. Wright's - research on the Gospel (or "Good News") which the first Christians proclaimed (and why it got them killed by Rome) - "Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not."

I've also recently concluded my series on Easter by looking at Jesus's resurrection on Easter Sunday - and why the Christian hope is that what G-d did with Jesus on that day he will eventually do with all of creation. Earlier posts in that series on are on Good Friday - the death of G-d by G-d - and Holy Saturday - whether following Jesus is worth it.

The last post in my recent return to blogging is on a podcast from the parent organisation of NieuCommunities: CRM. They had a discussion on the shift happening within the church today - away from attractional church and towards missional church.

We have a number of ways to focus on different things as a community this year. One way is through the postures: 6 lots of 6 weeks which help us to orient our common life towards something specific. One definition of posture is a mental or spiritual attitude. For us they will look something like this:

Listening: Learning to listen to God, to our hearts, and to the culture around us.

Submerging: Being the hands and feet of Jesus in the neighborhoods we live in.

Inviting: Becoming fragrant followers of Jesus who gather people around a compelling story.

Contending: Fighting well for the lives and faith of those God has brought into our lives.

Imagining: Seeing and embracing what God has created for us and preparing to engage the next leg of our mission.

Entrusting: Preparing those we have served to go on with God and encouraging them to pass on what they've received.



A blatant rip-off of Chris's post - thanks Chris!

Tonight ends our 3 weeks of orientation. Orientation has been an introduction to South Africa in general, the area in and around Pretoria North as well as doing some self-discovery stuff. It's been great, and also exhausting. A few staff members have said they're really tired, which is either a function of a necessary time of the year, or we're (already!) too busy. Anyway, this is something I hope to keep track of this year - to not get over-busy.

Tomorrow we start our normal rhythm for the year. This means group discussions on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday from 8:15 - 12:30. And one on Friday morning too. I hope we'll have enough free, self-directed time soon!