Quiet. Except for the rhythmically croaking frogs and the busy twittering of birds, the raps on my keyboard and sporadic voices downstairs. Unusually sporadic. It's an unusual night. It's my second-last night in College House.
For four years I have lived in this fine Herbert Baker-designed edifice, a U-shaped building around a courtyard. For four years I have shared this place with more than 50 other young men, many lost, few found. And what difference has it made? Too little, it seems.
Oh, I've done something, I guess. Started a prayer meeting every week in my room for a few committed souls. And God has been faithful because of that. Four years ago, this place was pretty notorious. People got so drunk they broke the courtyard furniture, burnt off the electric wires on the gate.
Four years down the line, this place is at least respectable. Oh, the guys still get smashed on the weekend and play their music loud and bring girls home in the evenings, but not to the same extent as they used to. But I feel ashamed at trying to describe it that way, because externals aren't what matter; people's hearts do.
So what about their hearts? I've witnessed to only about three people here with my words, and I'd like to say I witnessed to more with my actions, but has that made a difference? Has it made people want to know what I've got that they don't have? No. I haven't shone brightly enough, have been ashamed to talk about my best friend, Jesus. I'm sorry, Father.
And now, it's almost too late. I feel sad at what I've been, and am still, too afraid to do. But I believe there's hope. I believe that prayer will go on in this house; that Jesus will continue to be present in it. He's got his men here, and I'm not leaving the scene entirely; just moving a couple of blocks away. I've already been given the role 'the sober old boy' by my warden, and I intend to play it well. But ja, I'm not the Messiah; just his friend. And God's grace is as faithful as ever.
By the way, read Gondayi's enlightening comment on my last post. He's right, of course. It's crude to cast salvation as something you can 'sell', and maybe I fell into the trap of using the commercialised language of this age. It's not our job to 'sell' the Good News; only tell others what God has done for us. Thank God! Only he can convince people of their need for him. So let's follow him and do what he's told us to do. Now if only it were as easily said as done...
Monday, November 24, 2008
Monday, November 17, 2008
Some Questions about Unity and Evangelism
I've been reading through Ephesians in my quiet times this past week. It's an incredible book for anyone who loves the Church (with a capital 'C': not just the building down the road, but the incredibly huge family of God's people all over the world). And if you don't love the Church, it'll tell you why you should! What makes it even better is that one of the big themes is Christian unity, and if you know me, you'll know that unity is something I've got a huge soft spot for.
Back in the day when the Holy Spirit inspired Paul to write the book, one of the big fault lines in the Church was between Jews and Gentiles. Read Ephesians 2:14-18 to show what Jesus did to bring these two groups together:
"For Christ himself has brought peace to us. He united Jews and Gentiles into one people when, in his own body on the cross, he broke down the wall of hostility that separated us. He did this by ending the system of law with its commandments and regulations. He made peace between Jews and Gentiles by creating in himself one new people from the two groups. Together as one body, Christ reconciled both groups to God by means of his death on the cross, and our hostility toward each other was put to death." (NLT)
Jesus smashed the walls that separated these two types of believers, so that we could be one people from the two groups. But as I was reading this, question number one popped into my head:
If Jesus broke down walls between his people, why are we constantly rebuilding them? Why do we separate ourselves from other believers based on race, class, denomination, doctrinal position, worship style, you name it?
Then this morning I read Ephesians 4:1-16. This is one of the most incredible passages on unity there is, and I have to study it a whole lot more. For instance, many of us know this part:
"For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father, who is over all and in all and living through all." (Ephesians 4:4-6, NLT)
It's heady stuff. We share the same body, the same Holy Spirit is in us, we have the same hope, the same Lord, the same faith, the same baptism, the same God and Father, yet we manage to split off from each other at every opportunity. And it gets better. God helped me see these verses in a whole new light today:
"Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ." (Ephesians 4:11-13, NLT)
I'm no expert on the gifts of the Spirit, but what I do know is that we usually talk about them in the context of one particular congregation. We have apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers who can work together as a radical team to build up what? Our local congregation, right? Wrong! They're there for the complete body of Christ, the whole body that Paul was talking about just a few verses earlier! This leads me to question number two:
Why do so many of our gifted Church leaders often think of themselves as 'church leaders', with their role stopping at only one congregation or denomination? And why do so few seem to be leading us to greater unity, as the Scriptures say will be one of the major consequences of our maturing in the faith?
Then to change tack quite dramatically, some things I've observed have left me with a couple of questions about evangelism. I've been trying hard to talk about Christ to a dear friend of mine, and praying for the Spirit to give me words every step of the way (although, admittedly, many times I fail to listen).
Now over the years, I've noticed two schools of thought about what to tell people about Christ: one is the "Do you know what's going to happen when you die?" approach, and the other is the "Your life will be better with Jesus" approach.
The "Do you know what's going to happen when you die?" approach has much to recommend it: after all, isn't the biggest benefit of our salvation the assurance that we will go to heaven one day when we die? Or is it? Whatever the case may be, this approach is completely lost on my friend. He usually doesn't even think about what will happen tomorrow. Trying to think about what happens after death is just way out for him. And even if it did work, would I just be selling him 'fire insurance', leading him to Christ out of fear, rather than showing him to respond to Christ's love?
On the other hand, the "Your life will be better with Jesus" approach isn't always true. In fact, in many parts of the world where persecution happens, your life is guaranteed to become materially worse once you make Christ your Lord. Last night I read a tragic example of how this approach can go wrong.
An article called The Power of Speech tells the story of Daniel Everett, who came to a missionary to the tiny Pirahã tribe in the Amazon basin in the 1970s. Everett learned the tribe's language and wrote a paper about it in which he challenged Noam Chomsky's theories about linguistic universals. As a linguist, I know that's an incredible achievement. However, in spending time with the tribe, Everett also lost his faith. This was the reasoning he gave:
"What should the empirical evidence for religion be? It should produce peaceful, strong, secure people who are right with God and right with the world. I don't see that evidence very often. So then I find myself with the Pirahã. They have all these qualities that I am trying to tell them they could have. They are the ones who are living life the way I'm saying it ought to be lived, they just don't fear heaven and hell."
Obviously I don't know enough about the man to make anything like an accurate diagnosis of what went wrong with his faith, but to me, it sounds like he is suggesting that the proof for Christianity should be well-adjusted Christians here in this world. Now of course, when we walk with God we start to show the fruits of the Spirit, which include peace and build our strength. But if I think of Christ, if I think of the apostles and other heroes of the faith, I don't think of people who were "right with the world". In fact, the very opposite. These were people who had thrown the world away, who battled with it and with their own human inclinations day and night. Without heaven to set their eyes on, they'd be the most miserable people on earth (1 Corinthians 15:19). Maybe being a Christian is not about living a good life, however one may define it; it's about knowing and loving a good God.
So where does that leave us as witnesses? Which approach do we take: the "Do you know what's going to happen when you die?" approach, or the "Your life will be better with Jesus" approach? Or neither? I think the answer might just lie in what I said in the last sentence above. Maybe Christianity's best selling point is not having a great time here on earth or anywhere else. Maybe it's a relationship with the One who loves us most.
That leaves me with one more question:
How do we, as witnesses, sell a relationship with God?
Back in the day when the Holy Spirit inspired Paul to write the book, one of the big fault lines in the Church was between Jews and Gentiles. Read Ephesians 2:14-18 to show what Jesus did to bring these two groups together:
"For Christ himself has brought peace to us. He united Jews and Gentiles into one people when, in his own body on the cross, he broke down the wall of hostility that separated us. He did this by ending the system of law with its commandments and regulations. He made peace between Jews and Gentiles by creating in himself one new people from the two groups. Together as one body, Christ reconciled both groups to God by means of his death on the cross, and our hostility toward each other was put to death." (NLT)
Jesus smashed the walls that separated these two types of believers, so that we could be one people from the two groups. But as I was reading this, question number one popped into my head:
If Jesus broke down walls between his people, why are we constantly rebuilding them? Why do we separate ourselves from other believers based on race, class, denomination, doctrinal position, worship style, you name it?
Then this morning I read Ephesians 4:1-16. This is one of the most incredible passages on unity there is, and I have to study it a whole lot more. For instance, many of us know this part:
"For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father, who is over all and in all and living through all." (Ephesians 4:4-6, NLT)
It's heady stuff. We share the same body, the same Holy Spirit is in us, we have the same hope, the same Lord, the same faith, the same baptism, the same God and Father, yet we manage to split off from each other at every opportunity. And it gets better. God helped me see these verses in a whole new light today:
"Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ." (Ephesians 4:11-13, NLT)
I'm no expert on the gifts of the Spirit, but what I do know is that we usually talk about them in the context of one particular congregation. We have apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers who can work together as a radical team to build up what? Our local congregation, right? Wrong! They're there for the complete body of Christ, the whole body that Paul was talking about just a few verses earlier! This leads me to question number two:
Why do so many of our gifted Church leaders often think of themselves as 'church leaders', with their role stopping at only one congregation or denomination? And why do so few seem to be leading us to greater unity, as the Scriptures say will be one of the major consequences of our maturing in the faith?
Then to change tack quite dramatically, some things I've observed have left me with a couple of questions about evangelism. I've been trying hard to talk about Christ to a dear friend of mine, and praying for the Spirit to give me words every step of the way (although, admittedly, many times I fail to listen).
Now over the years, I've noticed two schools of thought about what to tell people about Christ: one is the "Do you know what's going to happen when you die?" approach, and the other is the "Your life will be better with Jesus" approach.
The "Do you know what's going to happen when you die?" approach has much to recommend it: after all, isn't the biggest benefit of our salvation the assurance that we will go to heaven one day when we die? Or is it? Whatever the case may be, this approach is completely lost on my friend. He usually doesn't even think about what will happen tomorrow. Trying to think about what happens after death is just way out for him. And even if it did work, would I just be selling him 'fire insurance', leading him to Christ out of fear, rather than showing him to respond to Christ's love?
On the other hand, the "Your life will be better with Jesus" approach isn't always true. In fact, in many parts of the world where persecution happens, your life is guaranteed to become materially worse once you make Christ your Lord. Last night I read a tragic example of how this approach can go wrong.
An article called The Power of Speech tells the story of Daniel Everett, who came to a missionary to the tiny Pirahã tribe in the Amazon basin in the 1970s. Everett learned the tribe's language and wrote a paper about it in which he challenged Noam Chomsky's theories about linguistic universals. As a linguist, I know that's an incredible achievement. However, in spending time with the tribe, Everett also lost his faith. This was the reasoning he gave:
"What should the empirical evidence for religion be? It should produce peaceful, strong, secure people who are right with God and right with the world. I don't see that evidence very often. So then I find myself with the Pirahã. They have all these qualities that I am trying to tell them they could have. They are the ones who are living life the way I'm saying it ought to be lived, they just don't fear heaven and hell."
Obviously I don't know enough about the man to make anything like an accurate diagnosis of what went wrong with his faith, but to me, it sounds like he is suggesting that the proof for Christianity should be well-adjusted Christians here in this world. Now of course, when we walk with God we start to show the fruits of the Spirit, which include peace and build our strength. But if I think of Christ, if I think of the apostles and other heroes of the faith, I don't think of people who were "right with the world". In fact, the very opposite. These were people who had thrown the world away, who battled with it and with their own human inclinations day and night. Without heaven to set their eyes on, they'd be the most miserable people on earth (1 Corinthians 15:19). Maybe being a Christian is not about living a good life, however one may define it; it's about knowing and loving a good God.
So where does that leave us as witnesses? Which approach do we take: the "Do you know what's going to happen when you die?" approach, or the "Your life will be better with Jesus" approach? Or neither? I think the answer might just lie in what I said in the last sentence above. Maybe Christianity's best selling point is not having a great time here on earth or anywhere else. Maybe it's a relationship with the One who loves us most.
That leaves me with one more question:
How do we, as witnesses, sell a relationship with God?
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Oh, everything will change!
So by now those of you au fait with the 268 canon of music will know that I've got "The Glory of it All" by David Crowder*Band in my mind. One of my favourite parts of the song is this:
After night comes a light;
Dawn is here, dawn is here.
It's a new day, a new day!
Oh everything will change;
Things will never be the same.
We will never be the same! (Repeat line as desired)
Not the deepest of words, I must agree, but what I love is the sheer delight with which you can sing them. The old is past and we're never going back there! We're changing into something far better, reflecting God's glory more.
I mention all this because we've just been through been a huge week (or so) of changes that excite me. Wednesday we woke up to hear that Barack Obama had been elected as the USA's first black president. Friday we found out that Shikota's new political party had been named "Congress of the People". And (on a more personal note) Thursday I signed a lease for my digs for next year.
The political stuff first: I'm unashamedly delighted about President-Elect Obama. The things I've been reading out of America have been wonderful, comparing this week to our own heady days of 1994 with people partying in the streets for joy. He's done the inconceivable in breaking racial barriers and inspiring new hope in a USA that many of us had written off as incurably self-interested and narrow-minded when Bush won his second term four years ago, effectively sentencing the world to four more years of war in Iraq and threats of war in other places, not to mention lack of will to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions. I'm reminded that "All governments have been placed in power by God" (Romans 13:2 NLT) and I'm grateful for this new USA government.
Then closer to home, I've really started to think that the ANC really did South Africa a favour when it elected Jacob Zuma president and later sacked Thabo Mbeki. No, I'm no Zuma fan, and I'm still rather worried at the thought of a president who already has a less-than-savoury reputation for his sexual exploits and ignorance about AIDS, not to mention the charges of corruption which he tries to evade at every turn. But without these events, we may never have been witness to the birth of a party which shows the potential to become a real challenger to the ANC at election time. That would be brilliant for our democracy, as long as our people do not choose the 'low road' of political violence as they have in the past.
And what's more, the Congress of the People (or COP, as they're calling themselves) are trying so hard to be everything that Zuma is not, that most of their rhetoric so far has stressed the need for clean government, the independence of the judiciary, and the need to build a society upholding the values of respect, integrity and ubuntu. Beautiful stuff!
Of course, I'm not naive enough to think that Obama and the COP are political saviours who will ensure a bright future for us all. As is often the case with politics, good policies are bundled with bad, and people don't keep to their promises. We can't be sure of what lies ahead, but we can pray to the God of what lies ahead about these political developments, asking him to do with them what he wills. Our Christian brother Barack Obama needs our prayers now, as do our president and all our political leaders in this confusing time.
And that brings me to the third change of the week: my digs lease. For me, it's also a leap into the unknown. I don't know how well I'll adapt to life in digs, whether I'll like my new digsmates as much after a few months of living with them (no offence, guys!), if my new room is going to be big enough for me... But I'm excited about the change that God is bringing about in my life, and trusting that he'll glorify his name through it. In the end, that's what life on Earth is all about. Oh, the glory of it all!
After night comes a light;
Dawn is here, dawn is here.
It's a new day, a new day!
Oh everything will change;
Things will never be the same.
We will never be the same! (Repeat line as desired)
Not the deepest of words, I must agree, but what I love is the sheer delight with which you can sing them. The old is past and we're never going back there! We're changing into something far better, reflecting God's glory more.
I mention all this because we've just been through been a huge week (or so) of changes that excite me. Wednesday we woke up to hear that Barack Obama had been elected as the USA's first black president. Friday we found out that Shikota's new political party had been named "Congress of the People". And (on a more personal note) Thursday I signed a lease for my digs for next year.
The political stuff first: I'm unashamedly delighted about President-Elect Obama. The things I've been reading out of America have been wonderful, comparing this week to our own heady days of 1994 with people partying in the streets for joy. He's done the inconceivable in breaking racial barriers and inspiring new hope in a USA that many of us had written off as incurably self-interested and narrow-minded when Bush won his second term four years ago, effectively sentencing the world to four more years of war in Iraq and threats of war in other places, not to mention lack of will to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions. I'm reminded that "All governments have been placed in power by God" (Romans 13:2 NLT) and I'm grateful for this new USA government.
Then closer to home, I've really started to think that the ANC really did South Africa a favour when it elected Jacob Zuma president and later sacked Thabo Mbeki. No, I'm no Zuma fan, and I'm still rather worried at the thought of a president who already has a less-than-savoury reputation for his sexual exploits and ignorance about AIDS, not to mention the charges of corruption which he tries to evade at every turn. But without these events, we may never have been witness to the birth of a party which shows the potential to become a real challenger to the ANC at election time. That would be brilliant for our democracy, as long as our people do not choose the 'low road' of political violence as they have in the past.
And what's more, the Congress of the People (or COP, as they're calling themselves) are trying so hard to be everything that Zuma is not, that most of their rhetoric so far has stressed the need for clean government, the independence of the judiciary, and the need to build a society upholding the values of respect, integrity and ubuntu. Beautiful stuff!
Of course, I'm not naive enough to think that Obama and the COP are political saviours who will ensure a bright future for us all. As is often the case with politics, good policies are bundled with bad, and people don't keep to their promises. We can't be sure of what lies ahead, but we can pray to the God of what lies ahead about these political developments, asking him to do with them what he wills. Our Christian brother Barack Obama needs our prayers now, as do our president and all our political leaders in this confusing time.
And that brings me to the third change of the week: my digs lease. For me, it's also a leap into the unknown. I don't know how well I'll adapt to life in digs, whether I'll like my new digsmates as much after a few months of living with them (no offence, guys!), if my new room is going to be big enough for me... But I'm excited about the change that God is bringing about in my life, and trusting that he'll glorify his name through it. In the end, that's what life on Earth is all about. Oh, the glory of it all!
Monday, November 03, 2008
A holy huddle or a radical family?
So I was planning to follow up last week's post with one on how we need an alternative Christian public sphere, a place where we can share and discuss our views with each other. But then some really exciting things happened and got me thinking that we don't just need to swop opinions with each other; we need to be a different kind of community.
You see, I had the privilege of taking two friends down to Jeffreys Bay for Swot Week. Now you don't want to get me started on how awesome J-Bay is and how I always meet with God while I'm there, and this time was no exception.
It started with a chat I had with one of these friends, Leanne du Preez, at a coffee shop opposite the beach. We talked about how there are certain people who always get us going, spiritually. Each of us know the people we can go to just to chat, bounce some ideas off, pray with. The people who stimulate us in our faith so much that we feel like we could do anything with God after speaking with them. I'll call them encouragers.
Well, as God would have it, one of my encouragers lives in Jeffreys Bay: a family friend who is about my Mom's age. Her name is Avril. Avril truly tries to live in intimate communion with God and obey him at every step, and every time I come to Jeffreys Bay regales me with stories of the incredible things God has been doing with her. I really wanted Leanne and my other friend, Shellique Carby, to meet her and be encouraged by her too. So I invited her round for supper one evening. And yes, true to form, that evening was hugely blessed.
Things were a little awkward when we sat down and began chatting. After all, why would she want to meet my student friends? But as soon as we got down to telling her all about the great things God did through Christians @ Rhodes Week of Worship, and she told us about some of the miraculous things that had happened to her just recently, the vibe changed. This wasn't me introducing my friends to some random, middle-aged lady any more. This was church; this was family breaking bread together.
We got into some deep discussions about problems in each other's lives over coffee and koeksusters after the meal. It got a little intense at times, and after a short while we found we were talking around in circles. It was clear that none of us had the answers, but our Father did. So we got down and prayed about them. Avril began praying in short, simple sentences, letting her words be few as the Scriptures tell us we should. What followed was an intense time of praying into each other's lives. Both Avril and Leanne received some answers they'd been waiting a long time to hear. The room was so filled with God's presence that Leanne's hands were trembling. At the end we hugged each other and I was just laughing for joy in the Lord's presence. God had used each of us to minister to each other!
As Avril left, Leanne commented that it felt like she had known her forever, when we had spent only six hours together. We had a spiritual connection: the same Spirit is in us!
I've been thinking about that time and delighting in my memories of it for a few days now. But it hasn't been the only time this week when I've been overjoyed to be part of God's family. I've been overjoyed at news of brothers and sisters getting together in partnerships in which they have the potential to do far more for the kingdom of God than both of them could do separately. I've been 'adopted' as an extra sibling by another friend of mine. Yet at times I've felt ashamed at these thoughts: Why should I be so happy at being in this holy huddle when there are so many out there who are out in the cold, far from God?
Then this morning, I read something that pulled it all together for me. In Acts 18:9-10, God encourages Paul in a vision. He says "Don't be afraid! Speak out! Don't be silent! For I am with you, and no one will harm you because many people here in this city belong to me." Paul had good reason to be very afraid. He was in an incredibly dark city, Corinth. The god Aphrodite was the centre of attraction, and she was worshipped through all manner of sexually immoral acts. Yet Paul could stand up and speak out because God had many people in that city!
If you read the whole passage, from verse 1 to verse 17, you see these 'many people' in action. Aquila and Priscilla (an example of a couple that functioned like a ministry partnership if ever there was one) took Paul in when he arrived in town, and allowed him to earn an income working in their business. Later, a guy called Titius Justus hosted him. Silas and Timothy came around, allowing Paul to focus his attentions on telling the Good News to the Jews. And Crispus, the leader of the synagogue, no doubt was a great help when he became a believer along with his family.
But notice the purpose of all this teamwork: it wasn't just to make each other feel nice and loved. It was to support each other so that Paul and others could carry on fearlessly telling the Good News! In the same way, we have to be a radical family for each other, helping each other to spread the Good News of the kingdom.
One of the things I told Leanne back in the coffee shop was something my father told me: Major church growth happens when you've got a small group of like-minded people feeding off each other's energy and vision. It's happened in churches like Willow Creek in the USA and Holy Trinity Brompton in Britain. It happened in Corinth. And it can happen here too, if we dare turn our fellowship outwards.
PS. After all that earnestness, here's some pure family lightheartedness to break the exam tension. Take a moment to visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTYr3JuueF4!
You see, I had the privilege of taking two friends down to Jeffreys Bay for Swot Week. Now you don't want to get me started on how awesome J-Bay is and how I always meet with God while I'm there, and this time was no exception.
It started with a chat I had with one of these friends, Leanne du Preez, at a coffee shop opposite the beach. We talked about how there are certain people who always get us going, spiritually. Each of us know the people we can go to just to chat, bounce some ideas off, pray with. The people who stimulate us in our faith so much that we feel like we could do anything with God after speaking with them. I'll call them encouragers.
Well, as God would have it, one of my encouragers lives in Jeffreys Bay: a family friend who is about my Mom's age. Her name is Avril. Avril truly tries to live in intimate communion with God and obey him at every step, and every time I come to Jeffreys Bay regales me with stories of the incredible things God has been doing with her. I really wanted Leanne and my other friend, Shellique Carby, to meet her and be encouraged by her too. So I invited her round for supper one evening. And yes, true to form, that evening was hugely blessed.
Things were a little awkward when we sat down and began chatting. After all, why would she want to meet my student friends? But as soon as we got down to telling her all about the great things God did through Christians @ Rhodes Week of Worship, and she told us about some of the miraculous things that had happened to her just recently, the vibe changed. This wasn't me introducing my friends to some random, middle-aged lady any more. This was church; this was family breaking bread together.
We got into some deep discussions about problems in each other's lives over coffee and koeksusters after the meal. It got a little intense at times, and after a short while we found we were talking around in circles. It was clear that none of us had the answers, but our Father did. So we got down and prayed about them. Avril began praying in short, simple sentences, letting her words be few as the Scriptures tell us we should. What followed was an intense time of praying into each other's lives. Both Avril and Leanne received some answers they'd been waiting a long time to hear. The room was so filled with God's presence that Leanne's hands were trembling. At the end we hugged each other and I was just laughing for joy in the Lord's presence. God had used each of us to minister to each other!
As Avril left, Leanne commented that it felt like she had known her forever, when we had spent only six hours together. We had a spiritual connection: the same Spirit is in us!
I've been thinking about that time and delighting in my memories of it for a few days now. But it hasn't been the only time this week when I've been overjoyed to be part of God's family. I've been overjoyed at news of brothers and sisters getting together in partnerships in which they have the potential to do far more for the kingdom of God than both of them could do separately. I've been 'adopted' as an extra sibling by another friend of mine. Yet at times I've felt ashamed at these thoughts: Why should I be so happy at being in this holy huddle when there are so many out there who are out in the cold, far from God?
Then this morning, I read something that pulled it all together for me. In Acts 18:9-10, God encourages Paul in a vision. He says "Don't be afraid! Speak out! Don't be silent! For I am with you, and no one will harm you because many people here in this city belong to me." Paul had good reason to be very afraid. He was in an incredibly dark city, Corinth. The god Aphrodite was the centre of attraction, and she was worshipped through all manner of sexually immoral acts. Yet Paul could stand up and speak out because God had many people in that city!
If you read the whole passage, from verse 1 to verse 17, you see these 'many people' in action. Aquila and Priscilla (an example of a couple that functioned like a ministry partnership if ever there was one) took Paul in when he arrived in town, and allowed him to earn an income working in their business. Later, a guy called Titius Justus hosted him. Silas and Timothy came around, allowing Paul to focus his attentions on telling the Good News to the Jews. And Crispus, the leader of the synagogue, no doubt was a great help when he became a believer along with his family.
But notice the purpose of all this teamwork: it wasn't just to make each other feel nice and loved. It was to support each other so that Paul and others could carry on fearlessly telling the Good News! In the same way, we have to be a radical family for each other, helping each other to spread the Good News of the kingdom.
One of the things I told Leanne back in the coffee shop was something my father told me: Major church growth happens when you've got a small group of like-minded people feeding off each other's energy and vision. It's happened in churches like Willow Creek in the USA and Holy Trinity Brompton in Britain. It happened in Corinth. And it can happen here too, if we dare turn our fellowship outwards.
PS. After all that earnestness, here's some pure family lightheartedness to break the exam tension. Take a moment to visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTYr3JuueF4!
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
"The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship"
It's been way too long since I did some blogging, but seeing as the madness of my fourth term of Honours has passed and some big ideas have started rolling back to me, I thought this would be the perfect time to revive the habit.
For the last couple of weeks, I've been thinking about what kind of Master's thesis I'd like to do next year. Ideas have come and gone, but I'm firmly decided on one thing: I can only do a Master's thesis grounded on something I believe in. Enter some big ideas about Christian scholarship. After all, we have feminist scholarship, postmodern scholarship, Marxist scholarship. Why can't we actually study the world from a point of view that actually has real solutions, like God's?
Then on Saturday night, just before I went to bed, I idly decided to Google Scholar the string "Christian scholarship" and see what came up. And lo and behold, first on the list was a book with the most exciting title I've seen in a long time: "The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship". Unfortunately I've not been able to read more than the cover blurb so I don't know how good the book is, but I think the author (and I) may be on to something.
The scary thing is that in today's academic environment, the idea of Christian scholarship is completely outrageous. There are two possible reasons for this. Either it's acceptable to inject just about any ideology but Christianity into one's work. You can be a Christian in your own time, but heaven (or The Universe, or whatever folks believe in) forbid that you openly take a Christian viewpoint in your work. You can draw on any number of amorphous spiritualities, African or Eastern, but don't dare look at the cross. Or – and this is even more scary – very few of us have actually even tried to view their studies from a Christian perspective.
But the exciting thing is that the time may just be ripe for a revival of Christian scholarship. Western Christians are discovering that their faith has implications for broader society beyond the usual wedge issues of abortion and gay marriage, as Jim Wallis is fond of pointing out. Here in South Africa, the National Initiative for Reformation in South Africa is getting some Christians thinking about the power of the Good News to transform society. And that, for me, is a huge breath of fresh air when the only academics talking about societal transformation seem to be steeped in Marxist ideology.
And also, postmodernism might just provide the right climate for Christian scholarship to be revived in secular universities. These days we as Humanities students are encouraged,, to confess our ideological commitments and unashamedly consider their implications for our analyses, and rightly so. What better opportunity is there to confess Christ as Lord of our work? It's time that we called the postmodernists' bluff: if they're going to be open to everyone's ideologies, well, they're going to have to be open to ours as well.
But first, as Harry Blamires says in The Christian Mind, we're going to have to learn to think like Christians. The key verse for us must be Romans 12:1: "Don't copy the behaviour and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think." We've got a lot of listening and learning to do, letting God's Word and Spirit be our lecturers. Fortunately, we've got the work of some brave thinkers to help us, legends of a previous generation like C.S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer, and new visionaries like Landa Cope. But there's a lot more thinking that needs to be done.
I don't know about you, but I'm keen for the challenge. Let's ask our friend the Holy Spirit to teach us, and then give us strength to withstand the flak when it comes. Let's be outrageous!
For the last couple of weeks, I've been thinking about what kind of Master's thesis I'd like to do next year. Ideas have come and gone, but I'm firmly decided on one thing: I can only do a Master's thesis grounded on something I believe in. Enter some big ideas about Christian scholarship. After all, we have feminist scholarship, postmodern scholarship, Marxist scholarship. Why can't we actually study the world from a point of view that actually has real solutions, like God's?
Then on Saturday night, just before I went to bed, I idly decided to Google Scholar the string "Christian scholarship" and see what came up. And lo and behold, first on the list was a book with the most exciting title I've seen in a long time: "The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship". Unfortunately I've not been able to read more than the cover blurb so I don't know how good the book is, but I think the author (and I) may be on to something.
The scary thing is that in today's academic environment, the idea of Christian scholarship is completely outrageous. There are two possible reasons for this. Either it's acceptable to inject just about any ideology but Christianity into one's work. You can be a Christian in your own time, but heaven (or The Universe, or whatever folks believe in) forbid that you openly take a Christian viewpoint in your work. You can draw on any number of amorphous spiritualities, African or Eastern, but don't dare look at the cross. Or – and this is even more scary – very few of us have actually even tried to view their studies from a Christian perspective.
But the exciting thing is that the time may just be ripe for a revival of Christian scholarship. Western Christians are discovering that their faith has implications for broader society beyond the usual wedge issues of abortion and gay marriage, as Jim Wallis is fond of pointing out. Here in South Africa, the National Initiative for Reformation in South Africa is getting some Christians thinking about the power of the Good News to transform society. And that, for me, is a huge breath of fresh air when the only academics talking about societal transformation seem to be steeped in Marxist ideology.
And also, postmodernism might just provide the right climate for Christian scholarship to be revived in secular universities. These days we as Humanities students are encouraged,, to confess our ideological commitments and unashamedly consider their implications for our analyses, and rightly so. What better opportunity is there to confess Christ as Lord of our work? It's time that we called the postmodernists' bluff: if they're going to be open to everyone's ideologies, well, they're going to have to be open to ours as well.
But first, as Harry Blamires says in The Christian Mind, we're going to have to learn to think like Christians. The key verse for us must be Romans 12:1: "Don't copy the behaviour and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think." We've got a lot of listening and learning to do, letting God's Word and Spirit be our lecturers. Fortunately, we've got the work of some brave thinkers to help us, legends of a previous generation like C.S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer, and new visionaries like Landa Cope. But there's a lot more thinking that needs to be done.
I don't know about you, but I'm keen for the challenge. Let's ask our friend the Holy Spirit to teach us, and then give us strength to withstand the flak when it comes. Let's be outrageous!
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Passion Johannesburg: Fruitcakes for the Lord!
It's a good thing that Christians are allowed to go a little crazy sometimes; how can we not when we try to comprehend the incredible things God has done for us? Recently I and eleven other Christians @ Rhodes who took a bus up to Johannesburg for the weekend to join in the Passion conference there experienced exactly how insane things can get when we live for God's name and renown.
Of course, we took full advantage of sitting in the sparsely populated white plastic chairs at the back of the hall. There was space for us to worship any way God led us: sitting down, standing, jumping, chair-surfing or kneeling. Chris Tomlin and Fee rocked the hall alive with songs like "How Great is our God", "Hosanna", "Let God Arise", "God of this City", "We Shine" and "Amazing Grace".
The first miracle of the trip was that we got there at all. Money and time were tight, so we decided to cut our schedule as close as possible by taking a bus leaving Kimberley Hall at 6:40pm on Friday night and arriving in Midrand, Johannesburg just 50 minutes before the conference was due to start on the morning of Saturday 9 August. The bus was only slightly late, so we got into the conference hall at Gallagher Estate just as it was about to start. And the bus trips there and back were the zaniest I've ever had. Just look at these photos if you think I'm kidding:
The conference was just one of seventeen stops on a world tour organised to give university students from Tokyo to Sao Paulo a chance to catch the vision of making their lives count for God's name and renown. It's an offshoot of the events held every year in the USA, which a few Rhodes students past and present have been blessed to attend. So you can imagine how excited we were, filing into the massive hall to take our seats behind 6 000 other students who'd come with hearts keyed up to meet with God. Later on, Louie Giglio, the conference's speaker, joked that the crowd stretched all the way to Pretoria, and that's how long the distance to the stage seemed to us.
Of course, we took full advantage of sitting in the sparsely populated white plastic chairs at the back of the hall. There was space for us to worship any way God led us: sitting down, standing, jumping, chair-surfing or kneeling. Chris Tomlin and Fee rocked the hall alive with songs like "How Great is our God", "Hosanna", "Let God Arise", "God of this City", "We Shine" and "Amazing Grace".
In the conference's first session, Louie quoted 2 Corinthians 5:13: "If we are out of our mind, it is for the sake of God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you." He said that if we've experienced the wonder of what God did for us on the cross, it should overwhelm us to the point that we just want to go crazy about it at times. But at other times, we have to keep our cool and remain sane so that we can relate to the people we minister to, and help them to meet Jesus too, so they can go crazy for him! I loved the way he put that.
Later, Louie told the story of a student called Ashley who was a complete heathen, far from believing in Jesus. It so happened that she got a Christian digsmate for her last term at university, and she thought this girl was so crazy that she nicknamed her "Fruitcake". Anyway, Fruitcake helped her through a couple of crises just by being a friend and not judging her, and eventually got a chance to show her some DVDs of Louie's talks. Through the help of Fruitcake and Louie's talks, Ashley discovered grace and gave her life to Christ!
I won't spoil the end of the story for you, just in case you ever get a chance to hear it yourself (it's on Louie's DVD entitled "Hope", apparently), but the story reminded me just how simple it can be to make your life count for God's glory. All it takes is a heart that's totally in love with Jesus and is willing to pass on his love to others.
The story also reminded me how incredible our salvation is. Before Louie told Ashley's story, I was enjoying the times of worship through music, but still felt a stupid desire to be noticed, to get some more credit for having come all the way from Grahamstown for this thing. But after I heard the first part of the story in the afternoon, I was just so astonished at how God's grace can turn a life around (and has turned my life around) that all those proud thoughts faded into oblivion and no one could stop me from going absolutely ballistic in God's presence.
Passion Johannesburg gave me a total new perspective on my future. Before, it seemed cloudy and uncertain to me, because I'm not sure where I'll be next year or even if I'd enjoy doing Master's. Now, even though I have no more certainty about where to go, my heart is light and I'm full of excitement, because wherever I go, I can glorify the one who gave up everything for me. As one of the songs we sang goes, "Take my life and let it be all for you and for your glory." That's the only thing that matters.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Some thoughts from the Mana Pools Men's Camp
Amazing places, amazing wildlife, amazing people and an amazing God: these are the things I'll think about when remembering our trip to the Mana Pools Men's Camp in Zimbabwe this July. And 'amazing' is a terrible understatement.
One of the most incredible things about the Mana Pools camp was the way in which you couldn't separate the spiritual side of the weekend from the other activities we did. Being out in the wild with no walls or fences to insulate us from the rest of God's creation made me realise exactly how closely physical realities out there can mirror spiritual realities in our everyday life.
The camp was designed as a time of physical and spiritual rest for all of us: our Zimbabwean brothers were separated from their daily troubles by the Zambezi Escarpment, a range of wooded hills setting Mana Pools apart from the oppressive atmosphere looming over most of the country. I was more than 2 000km away from home and took the opportunity to seek God's presence and ask him some questions about my future. He answered these by pointing to the wonderful complexity of his creation all around me, and refreshing my wonder at the small corner of it that I study: the way we humans use our God-given capacity for language to convey so many ideas and attitudes, to fight so many struggles in an infinite variety of ways.
I was also reminded powerfully of the reality of the struggles we fight, not "against people made of flesh and blood, but against the evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world..." (Ephesians 6:11). At Mana Pools we had to be constantly alert, watching for dangerous animals who could be lurking anywhere. A talk we had on avoiding sexual temptation was interrupted when a lioness walked through the campsite. A scripture came to my mind: "Be careful! Watch out for attacks from the Devil, your great enemy. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for some victim to devour" (1 Peter 5:8). I have to keep on watching out for spiritual attacks, especially at home in Grahamstown where I least expect them.
God taught me a further great lesson through the lives of the people we met at Mana Pools and on the way there and back. We had gone to Mana Pools partly to encourage our brothers from Zimbabwe. We blessed them by bringing up groceries from South Africa for the camp and also simply by being willing to come there and show that they were not isolated from the rest of the body of Christ. But they encouraged us far more by their living testimonies of how their faith had grown through suffering. We saw how the troubles in Zimbabwe have caused some to grow bitter, but others have depended on God for all their needs, and he has met them in miraculous ways. Some have lost everything and forgiven those who took it from them. Others graciously shared food and fuel with us, even though both are in short supply. One of the Bible study sessions was on learning to be content in every situation, following the example of Paul in Philippians 4:12.
For me, the scripture that summed up the lessons of the camp was Job 38, where God answers Job's questions about his suffering with even more questions: "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?... Who defined the boundaries of the sea?... Have you ever commanded the morning to appear and caused the dawn to rise in the east?" and so on and so on. God's magnificent creation shows us that he is firmly in control of our circumstances, unlike us, and so we can trust him in every situation. While we may not be able to comprehend the reasons for our suffering, he does, and he can help us through it.
And, as James says, "when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be strong in character and ready for anything" (James 1:3–4). God is looking to develop that strength of character in all of us, so we'd do well to learn it from nature and from the example of Christians growing under pressure in places like Zimbabwe.
One of the most incredible things about the Mana Pools camp was the way in which you couldn't separate the spiritual side of the weekend from the other activities we did. Being out in the wild with no walls or fences to insulate us from the rest of God's creation made me realise exactly how closely physical realities out there can mirror spiritual realities in our everyday life.
The camp was designed as a time of physical and spiritual rest for all of us: our Zimbabwean brothers were separated from their daily troubles by the Zambezi Escarpment, a range of wooded hills setting Mana Pools apart from the oppressive atmosphere looming over most of the country. I was more than 2 000km away from home and took the opportunity to seek God's presence and ask him some questions about my future. He answered these by pointing to the wonderful complexity of his creation all around me, and refreshing my wonder at the small corner of it that I study: the way we humans use our God-given capacity for language to convey so many ideas and attitudes, to fight so many struggles in an infinite variety of ways.
I was also reminded powerfully of the reality of the struggles we fight, not "against people made of flesh and blood, but against the evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world..." (Ephesians 6:11). At Mana Pools we had to be constantly alert, watching for dangerous animals who could be lurking anywhere. A talk we had on avoiding sexual temptation was interrupted when a lioness walked through the campsite. A scripture came to my mind: "Be careful! Watch out for attacks from the Devil, your great enemy. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for some victim to devour" (1 Peter 5:8). I have to keep on watching out for spiritual attacks, especially at home in Grahamstown where I least expect them.
God taught me a further great lesson through the lives of the people we met at Mana Pools and on the way there and back. We had gone to Mana Pools partly to encourage our brothers from Zimbabwe. We blessed them by bringing up groceries from South Africa for the camp and also simply by being willing to come there and show that they were not isolated from the rest of the body of Christ. But they encouraged us far more by their living testimonies of how their faith had grown through suffering. We saw how the troubles in Zimbabwe have caused some to grow bitter, but others have depended on God for all their needs, and he has met them in miraculous ways. Some have lost everything and forgiven those who took it from them. Others graciously shared food and fuel with us, even though both are in short supply. One of the Bible study sessions was on learning to be content in every situation, following the example of Paul in Philippians 4:12.
For me, the scripture that summed up the lessons of the camp was Job 38, where God answers Job's questions about his suffering with even more questions: "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?... Who defined the boundaries of the sea?... Have you ever commanded the morning to appear and caused the dawn to rise in the east?" and so on and so on. God's magnificent creation shows us that he is firmly in control of our circumstances, unlike us, and so we can trust him in every situation. While we may not be able to comprehend the reasons for our suffering, he does, and he can help us through it.
And, as James says, "when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be strong in character and ready for anything" (James 1:3–4). God is looking to develop that strength of character in all of us, so we'd do well to learn it from nature and from the example of Christians growing under pressure in places like Zimbabwe.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Only God can rescue Zimbabwe!
On Sunday I arrived in Jeffreys Bay, very much ready for a holiday after probably the longest and busiest term I've ever had at Rhodes University. I am still hoping for a vacation filled with seeking God's face and hearing his voice, getting my mind and heart in order for the next semester and the plans I must make for next year.
When evening comes, I sat down and watch the news to find that Morgan Tsvangirai had withdrawn from Zimbabwe's runoff elections this week. My immediate reaction was, "I need to pray." I'm so saddened that a faint glimmer of hope for Zimbabwe has died. Nevertheless, I can only think that the MDC made the right decision: if Tsvangirai had won the run-off, Zanu-PF may well have unleashed civil war, as Mugabe has threatened many times over the past few weeks. Even after the withdrawal, the situation is still perilous. How long can this last?
So after the news and after I finished supper, I knelt down and flipped through my Bible for one of those nice psalms that rages at the injustice of it all and calls down thunder and lightning from heaven on evil people who just carry on prospering. I settled on Psalm 10, which expressed more or less what I was feeling at the time. The wonderful thing about psalms like these, though, is that they rarely end in anger. Through writing the psalm, the author works through his emotions to the point where he is able to give them all to God, and trust him to deal with the wicked. (Incidentally, this is also Exhibit A in my argument that emo rock can add a lot to our understanding of worship!) Psalm 10 ends this way:
"Lord, you know the hopes of the helpless.
Surely you will listen to their cries and comfort them.
You will bring justice to the orphans and the oppressed,
So people can no longer terrify them." (Psalm 10:17–18, NLT)
I love it! God will not let the helpless remain helpless. Justice will come, if not in this life then in the life to come. And the Lord is still in control.
All of this explains why I was so amused when Mugabe pronounced last week that only God could remove him from office. Funnily enough, a prayer point in my church's bulletin from Sunday 15 June (a few days before Mugabe said this) said "Pray for the land of ZIMBABWE...only God can restore this land and its people." When I was shopping with a Zimbabwean friend on Sunday before I left to Grahamstown, she took one look at the newspapers and said "I'm so glad [Mugabe's] said that. It challenges God to take him out."
I, for one, hope God rises to the provocation, but I know that his plans are not ours and his sense of timing is far better than our limited thinking. He doesn't need to pander to Robert Mugabe's threats, but I know he loves the people of Zim. So let's pray for them right now. Pray that the Lord will be glorified in that country, despite all human plans.
Please pray also for us: a group of seven of us from Grahamstown Baptist Church's 222 Men's Ministry are travelling up to Zimbabwe to join in Chisipite Baptist Church's men's camp at Mana Pools on the Zambezi. It promises to be an amazing time of teaching and relaxation, but pray that we'll be safe travelling through Zimbabwe on our way there and back, and that we can be a blessing and encouragement to those who are suffering there. When we come back, I'll let you know how it went.
When evening comes, I sat down and watch the news to find that Morgan Tsvangirai had withdrawn from Zimbabwe's runoff elections this week. My immediate reaction was, "I need to pray." I'm so saddened that a faint glimmer of hope for Zimbabwe has died. Nevertheless, I can only think that the MDC made the right decision: if Tsvangirai had won the run-off, Zanu-PF may well have unleashed civil war, as Mugabe has threatened many times over the past few weeks. Even after the withdrawal, the situation is still perilous. How long can this last?
So after the news and after I finished supper, I knelt down and flipped through my Bible for one of those nice psalms that rages at the injustice of it all and calls down thunder and lightning from heaven on evil people who just carry on prospering. I settled on Psalm 10, which expressed more or less what I was feeling at the time. The wonderful thing about psalms like these, though, is that they rarely end in anger. Through writing the psalm, the author works through his emotions to the point where he is able to give them all to God, and trust him to deal with the wicked. (Incidentally, this is also Exhibit A in my argument that emo rock can add a lot to our understanding of worship!) Psalm 10 ends this way:
"Lord, you know the hopes of the helpless.
Surely you will listen to their cries and comfort them.
You will bring justice to the orphans and the oppressed,
So people can no longer terrify them." (Psalm 10:17–18, NLT)
I love it! God will not let the helpless remain helpless. Justice will come, if not in this life then in the life to come. And the Lord is still in control.
All of this explains why I was so amused when Mugabe pronounced last week that only God could remove him from office. Funnily enough, a prayer point in my church's bulletin from Sunday 15 June (a few days before Mugabe said this) said "Pray for the land of ZIMBABWE...only God can restore this land and its people." When I was shopping with a Zimbabwean friend on Sunday before I left to Grahamstown, she took one look at the newspapers and said "I'm so glad [Mugabe's] said that. It challenges God to take him out."
I, for one, hope God rises to the provocation, but I know that his plans are not ours and his sense of timing is far better than our limited thinking. He doesn't need to pander to Robert Mugabe's threats, but I know he loves the people of Zim. So let's pray for them right now. Pray that the Lord will be glorified in that country, despite all human plans.
Please pray also for us: a group of seven of us from Grahamstown Baptist Church's 222 Men's Ministry are travelling up to Zimbabwe to join in Chisipite Baptist Church's men's camp at Mana Pools on the Zambezi. It promises to be an amazing time of teaching and relaxation, but pray that we'll be safe travelling through Zimbabwe on our way there and back, and that we can be a blessing and encouragement to those who are suffering there. When we come back, I'll let you know how it went.
Monday, June 09, 2008
A question of unity
Yesterday I was trawling the web and found some interesting articles reporting back on the National Initiative for Reformation of South Africa (NIRSA) consultation that I attended in April. For my whole take on the consultation, visit my post on the Christians @ Rhodes blog: http://christiansatrhodes.wordpress.com/2008/04/29/are-you-ready-to-start-reforming-south-africa/.
Dion Forster, a Methodist theologian from Somerset West, had some great insights on NIRSA in his blog, which you can dig out of the April archive at http://www.spirituality.org.za/www.spirituality.org.za/2008_04_01_archive.html.
Then Ebenezer Ntlali, an Anglican archdeacon from King William's Town, had some good things to say about the consultation, but was also worried that organisations like the SA Council of Churches weren't represented properly and there wasn't enough time for discussion. His report-back is here: http://www.diocesegrahamstown.co.za/articles/nirsarep.html.
But by far the most "interesting" of the accounts to me was this one by Dr Peter Hammond of Africa Christian Action: http://www.christianaction.org.za/articles/nirsa%20Reportback.htm.
Peter Hammond gives what basically looks like a typed-out version of his notes on the consultation, with a bit of his own personal opinion thrown in. He describes thoughts that the conference was completely sidetracked for an afternoon and a morning, including two of the talks I found most insightful. But what puzzled me the most about his critique of the consultation is that he was coming from such a different ideological position to mine that from time to time I had trouble believing that he was speaking about the same talks I heard. As a linguist, I was fascinated at how two people could have interpreted the same talks so incredibly differently.
What this all goes to show is that Christian unity is a hard thing. The Bible tells us plenty of times that revival and reformation won't happen unless his people are unified. And what God has said to us as a nation through many different movements since 1994 confirms this. But can we get there? We don't only have theological differences to worry about; when we speak about reforming the nation, very often political differences become involved and it gets terribly tangled... if we're all relying on our own strength.
It takes brave people of vision, conciliatory people, wise people to negotiate all these differences and decide what we must agree on, and what we can "agree to disagree" on. Or that's what I thought when I read some of these accounts yesterday. But wait, I have a feeling that there's someone better suited to the job. Someone who's in all of us and knows exactly how we all tick. His name is the Holy Spirit. Only in him can we really be unified.
So, I'll leave the last word to another online NIRSA commentator, Johan Boot from Housechurch SA. You can read his report-back on NIRSA at http://housechurch.co.za/2008/05/nirsa-consultat.html.
He says, "My strong conviction during and after the Consultation, was that the only way that this Declaration, would become lived out reality is, if we, as the followers of Jesus, were to put aside our power brokering that so often threatens to divide us from our fellow followers and which prevents us from being a powerful influence in the society of which we are a part. The way forward involves us putting aside our personal agendas to be the biggest and the best and submitting first to God and then to one another, so that the Kingdom of God becomes a reality."
Amen, brother! May we seek God's Kingdom first, and the Holy Spirit will deal with the rest (Matthew 6:33).
Dion Forster, a Methodist theologian from Somerset West, had some great insights on NIRSA in his blog, which you can dig out of the April archive at http://www.spirituality.org.za/www.spirituality.org.za/2008_04_01_archive.html.
Then Ebenezer Ntlali, an Anglican archdeacon from King William's Town, had some good things to say about the consultation, but was also worried that organisations like the SA Council of Churches weren't represented properly and there wasn't enough time for discussion. His report-back is here: http://www.diocesegrahamstown.co.za/articles/nirsarep.html.
But by far the most "interesting" of the accounts to me was this one by Dr Peter Hammond of Africa Christian Action: http://www.christianaction.org.za/articles/nirsa%20Reportback.htm.
Peter Hammond gives what basically looks like a typed-out version of his notes on the consultation, with a bit of his own personal opinion thrown in. He describes thoughts that the conference was completely sidetracked for an afternoon and a morning, including two of the talks I found most insightful. But what puzzled me the most about his critique of the consultation is that he was coming from such a different ideological position to mine that from time to time I had trouble believing that he was speaking about the same talks I heard. As a linguist, I was fascinated at how two people could have interpreted the same talks so incredibly differently.
What this all goes to show is that Christian unity is a hard thing. The Bible tells us plenty of times that revival and reformation won't happen unless his people are unified. And what God has said to us as a nation through many different movements since 1994 confirms this. But can we get there? We don't only have theological differences to worry about; when we speak about reforming the nation, very often political differences become involved and it gets terribly tangled... if we're all relying on our own strength.
It takes brave people of vision, conciliatory people, wise people to negotiate all these differences and decide what we must agree on, and what we can "agree to disagree" on. Or that's what I thought when I read some of these accounts yesterday. But wait, I have a feeling that there's someone better suited to the job. Someone who's in all of us and knows exactly how we all tick. His name is the Holy Spirit. Only in him can we really be unified.
So, I'll leave the last word to another online NIRSA commentator, Johan Boot from Housechurch SA. You can read his report-back on NIRSA at http://housechurch.co.za/2008/05/nirsa-consultat.html.
He says, "My strong conviction during and after the Consultation, was that the only way that this Declaration, would become lived out reality is, if we, as the followers of Jesus, were to put aside our power brokering that so often threatens to divide us from our fellow followers and which prevents us from being a powerful influence in the society of which we are a part. The way forward involves us putting aside our personal agendas to be the biggest and the best and submitting first to God and then to one another, so that the Kingdom of God becomes a reality."
Amen, brother! May we seek God's Kingdom first, and the Holy Spirit will deal with the rest (Matthew 6:33).
Monday, June 02, 2008
Let's look up!
This past week I've been reading through a bit of Numbers, which tells the story of how the Israelites wandered through the wilderness, continually growing and stumbling in their relationship with God. Every now and then they have big failures of faith, and God reacts by saying "You're not ready to enter the Promised Land. I guess I'll have to hold you back longer."
But what really got to me was that these failures of faith didn't often happen in the places where you'd expect them. When the Israelites were preparing to fight a battle against a nation that stood in their way (like the inhabitants of Arad in Numbers 21:1-3 or Sihon and Og in 21:21-35), you'd expect them to be shaking in their boots, but instead they pumped up their faith and they had no problems gaining the victory with God's strength.
Instead, it was in the dreary, routine, desert wandering times that their faith failed. Sometimes this even happened straight after the high of a battle won, when you'd expect them to be ready to believe God for anything. For instance, they started complaining in Numbers 21:4, just after having flattened Arad in Numbers 21:3! Why is that?
I believe the answer is that they stopped looking up to God for strength. When we go through unspectacular, low-level hardship as the Israelites did in the wilderness, it's easy to think we should be able to make it through on our own without God. But then, when we stop depending on God's help, we look around and see our bleak circumstances and complain, instead of looking up and seeing things from God's perspective.
Even Moses was guilty of this. In Numbers 20 :1-13, the Israelites complain that they have no water. Moses asks God what to do and God shows him a rock which he should command to pour out his water. Now I've heard that in the Sinai desert, there are certain rocks which hold in large aquifers filled with water, and if you just hit the rock hard enough, it'll give and the water will come rushing through. So Moses, instead of commanding the rock to pour out water, and trusting God for the rest, decides he can do this in his own strength and hits the rock. It was a terrible failure of faith. Because of that, God didn't let him enter the Promised Land.
I know I try to do things in my own strength that I should be doing with God, all the time. Or there are times when God asks me to pray for someone and I don't, because I don't have the faith that God will do what he's told me to ask him to do. How dumb is that! But when I look at God, everything is put into perspective. Some of my greatest "Aha!" moments come not when I'm sitting around, trying to puzzle an issue out, but when I'm talking with God about it. It's as the song says:
"Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in his wonderful face,
And the things of the earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of his glory and grace."
But that also needs to be complemented with another verse my Mom came up with:
"Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in his wonderful face,
And the things of the earth will grow crystal clear
In the light of his glory and grace."
When we look up to God, all of our circumstances grow both strangely dim and crystal clear at the same time. Strangely dim, because our circumstances matter less than God's power to change them. Crystal clear, because we can see exactly how they fit into his master plan.
In fact, this principle is at the heart of the Christian worldview: first, we look up to God, and then see the "things of the earth" from his perspective, through the eyes of faith. I hope that in future blog posts God will enable me to show how looking up changes the way we see specific things happening in his world.
I've been particularly encouraged by signs that the Church in South Africa is learning to look up. For instance, when some Christian leaders saw bleak circumstances in this land, corruption and weak leadership in government, poverty, violence, idolatry, they decided to look up and so the vision for the National Initiative for Reformation of South Africa (NIRSA) was born.
And it spills over into my daily life too: I can easily become discouraged by the amount of work I have to do for exams and research projects: work I can battle through in my own strength, but do so much better with God's. I need to learn to look up from my academic work and see God's perspective on it more and more often. He will give me the motivation to carry on.
So let's look up! Let's look to God today and see what he wants us to see, so we can live as he wants us to live.
But what really got to me was that these failures of faith didn't often happen in the places where you'd expect them. When the Israelites were preparing to fight a battle against a nation that stood in their way (like the inhabitants of Arad in Numbers 21:1-3 or Sihon and Og in 21:21-35), you'd expect them to be shaking in their boots, but instead they pumped up their faith and they had no problems gaining the victory with God's strength.
Instead, it was in the dreary, routine, desert wandering times that their faith failed. Sometimes this even happened straight after the high of a battle won, when you'd expect them to be ready to believe God for anything. For instance, they started complaining in Numbers 21:4, just after having flattened Arad in Numbers 21:3! Why is that?
I believe the answer is that they stopped looking up to God for strength. When we go through unspectacular, low-level hardship as the Israelites did in the wilderness, it's easy to think we should be able to make it through on our own without God. But then, when we stop depending on God's help, we look around and see our bleak circumstances and complain, instead of looking up and seeing things from God's perspective.
Even Moses was guilty of this. In Numbers 20 :1-13, the Israelites complain that they have no water. Moses asks God what to do and God shows him a rock which he should command to pour out his water. Now I've heard that in the Sinai desert, there are certain rocks which hold in large aquifers filled with water, and if you just hit the rock hard enough, it'll give and the water will come rushing through. So Moses, instead of commanding the rock to pour out water, and trusting God for the rest, decides he can do this in his own strength and hits the rock. It was a terrible failure of faith. Because of that, God didn't let him enter the Promised Land.
I know I try to do things in my own strength that I should be doing with God, all the time. Or there are times when God asks me to pray for someone and I don't, because I don't have the faith that God will do what he's told me to ask him to do. How dumb is that! But when I look at God, everything is put into perspective. Some of my greatest "Aha!" moments come not when I'm sitting around, trying to puzzle an issue out, but when I'm talking with God about it. It's as the song says:
"Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in his wonderful face,
And the things of the earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of his glory and grace."
But that also needs to be complemented with another verse my Mom came up with:
"Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in his wonderful face,
And the things of the earth will grow crystal clear
In the light of his glory and grace."
When we look up to God, all of our circumstances grow both strangely dim and crystal clear at the same time. Strangely dim, because our circumstances matter less than God's power to change them. Crystal clear, because we can see exactly how they fit into his master plan.
In fact, this principle is at the heart of the Christian worldview: first, we look up to God, and then see the "things of the earth" from his perspective, through the eyes of faith. I hope that in future blog posts God will enable me to show how looking up changes the way we see specific things happening in his world.
I've been particularly encouraged by signs that the Church in South Africa is learning to look up. For instance, when some Christian leaders saw bleak circumstances in this land, corruption and weak leadership in government, poverty, violence, idolatry, they decided to look up and so the vision for the National Initiative for Reformation of South Africa (NIRSA) was born.
And it spills over into my daily life too: I can easily become discouraged by the amount of work I have to do for exams and research projects: work I can battle through in my own strength, but do so much better with God's. I need to learn to look up from my academic work and see God's perspective on it more and more often. He will give me the motivation to carry on.
So let's look up! Let's look to God today and see what he wants us to see, so we can live as he wants us to live.
Saturday, June 09, 2007
Critical reflection on the course
I believe that one of the best features of this course has been the overall course design, and so this critical reflection will focus on the course design in general and its component parts. The course allowed us to work as a team and learn by experience in the field, but instruction on how to improve our writing was not neglected.
I thought that the weekly meetings with the lecturers were a good way of holding us accountable to working on stories and thinking of new ideas consistently through the term. I enjoyed interacting with the lecturers on a personal basis, and appreciated their constructive criticism of my work. The meetings also provided a fixed time for our news agencies to meet, which was very necessary, especially towards the end of the term when people were busy with plenty of work on their other subjects as well as Journalism.
The idea of dividing us into news agencies with separate beats allowed us to explore a range of aspects of the university, and allowed good practice in teamwork, a very necessary skill for the workplace. The target of producing five articles each was realistic, and allowed us to put in time and effort to ensure that the articles were of excellent quality. I also enjoyed the way that we were encouraged to have our articles published: this provided added incentive to produce the best quality journalism we could, gave our reporting a purpose beyond simply earning marks, helped us to access sources who may have been less willing to contribute to articles that would not be published, and helped us build our portfolios of published work. This will aid in any job applications we make.
That said, I think that there were a few weaknesses in the course design. The placing of the due date for portfolios in the middle of the examination period was for our benefit, I know, since many people had not managed to finish their work by the end of the term, but it did mean that some people left considerable amounts of work until the examination period, which negatively affected their studying. Even those who tried their best to finish their work during the term would have to collaborate with their news agencies close to the deadline to compile the portfolios, which would have interrupted their examination preparations.
This deadline pressure was exacerbated by some confusion as to what contents the portfolio should have. I must admit that in my case, much of that confusion was caused by not reading the course outline meticulously at the beginning of the term and following it throughout the course, and by not always reading email attachments I was sent. However, I feel there was a lack of communication on the lecturers' part as well: the issue of exactly what to include in these critical reflections was not discussed in class, and the fact that we needed to write individual critical reflections for each article we wrote was not included in the course outline. Where there was communication in class about blogging and other matters relating to the portfolios, this was useful. I found that particularly Sim Kyazze's communication by email was good, but that emails should be sent to the class at least two hours in advance of the lecture they refer to. I realise that as journalists, we should be checking our email regularly, but during the term, not everyone has time to check their email before every writing and editing lecture to see if there has been an e-mail announcement about it.
I also felt that the process of allocating beats to news agencies should have been handled better. In a sense it was some agencies' own fault that they chose such narrow beats that they battled to find articles dealing with them and relating to Rhodes. But I felt the whole process would have been more fair if reasonable news beats were decided on by the lecturers and randomly allocated to us. This would also push us to report more on topics outside our individual fields of interest. However, this may have defeated the purpose of trying to get us to look at the nature of news beats, and what beats would be suitable for covering Rhodes.
Our news agency was very happy with our beat of academics and research, and found no shortage of good articles to write about it. However, I feel that we did not work as closely as a team as we should have. Group work can be extremely time-consuming, so towards the beginning of the term we developed the pattern of having as few meetings as possible, and instead passing work from one person to the other. I feel this was a sensible method of working together, since all of us are busy people and we can usually work more efficiently in a sort of assembly line than trying to complete every task together in meetings. However, this did mean that we were largely independent of each other when it came to investigating and writing articles. We shared story ideas and names of possible sources with each other in our weekly meetings with the lecturers, but then pursued, wrote and marketed stories on our own. We could also have done more to update each other about our progress using the blog. I feel we should probably have done more articles together as a team, rather than separately, and enjoyed the co-operation we had on the one article three of us have written together. At the beginning of term we made a decision that I would subedit all the articles produced by the news agency, but it proved impractical to do this before the deadlines set by our individual publishers, so I ended up subediting all the work after it had been published, for the final portfolio. This whole experience has shown me that for any journalistic work as a group, the group has to decide exactly how labour should be divided and define each person's role, and then stick to those decisions unless they prove impractical. Much communication is needed to ensure this happens.
In class, I felt the opportunities we were given to practice what we were learning during lectures in class assignments was also helpful, since learning writing techniques in theory can mean very little until one can put them into practice. In certain cases, such as the opinion-writing exercise, the deadline was very tight, but this helped to develop our experience, since deadlines in the real world aren't much better. I enjoyed the surprise news quizzes, since I keep up to date with the latest news and so generally do well at these things. I think that remaining aware of both local and international news is essential for any journalist. However, I thought the time spent on those computer-based logic and general knowledge quizzes at the beginning of the term would have been better spent on teaching, since we were never informed about their purpose. I would guess that they were an opportunity to assess some skills and see what areas lectures needed to focus on, but they were never referred to again in class.
I found the introductory news agency vision and mission-casting assignment very helpful. At the time we were asked to do it, I was not too happy with the idea, since I do not enjoy writing reflective reports, but in retrospect, the information we gathered in that process and the decisions we made were invaluable for our later newswriting. The mission statement had a great influence in the story ideas I chose to pursue: most were about explaining how research and academic developments at Rhodes are valuable to those in the broader Eastern Cape community. The introductory civic mapping question in that assignment also helped us decide which sources and avenues we were going to use to find story ideas. While one of these avenues did not prove very fruitful, others were extremely helpful. This reflects one important lesson I learnt this term: that good newswriting requires good homework, both before you even search for story ideas and then as you prepare interviews. I think the responses I received in interviewing sources were dramatically better than they could have been because I had taken some time to research topics and develop informed questions before I attended interviews.
The final civic mapping project, which we completed at the end of the term, was an engaging way of collecting the information about the community we had studied and rounding off the term's newswriting. I have been fascinated for a long time at the way communities and geographic factors interact to create a unique sense of place in different areas, and the civic map gave us some way to express that interaction on paper. In the end, we devised it as a sort of wall-chart guide to good sources at Rhodes, but I can see that one can develop civic mapping far further than that, to get better insights into how a community functions.
The blogging component of the course was a good opportunity to express our personal thoughts about the course and newswriting in general, and to communicate with our news agencies. I am sorry that I only grasped the whole purpose of personal and news agency blogging for the course rather late in the term, but I hope I made up for it by expressing some insights on my personal blog as I was learning them.
On a Media Studies level, though, I learnt that a blog is not an ideal means of communication for facilitating fast, active teamwork. The problem is that team members only see a blog when they choose to log on to it, and if they are forgetful and do not look at the blog regularly, they can miss important meetings and announcements. Another problem is that at times, important information was included in comments, which are not shown on the blog home page, and so can go unnoticed. The latest trend in new media is to ensure that instead of having to search for information on the Internet, consumers can make information come to them through RSS feeds or mailing lists. Perhaps we should have taken that approach and given all team members an email subscription to the team blog.
The last component of the course's work was, of course, critical reflections. For the most part, I find these reflections rather annoying and time-consuming, but I see their usefulness in bringing together all that we have learnt over the past term and getting us to think about how we can improve our news production. Being more self-reflexive is definitely a good thing; it helps to improve my work and prevents me from becoming arrogant. Through looking at each of the articles and writing critical reflections on them, I can see how my writing has improved through the term: my attribution is now more naturally integrated into the text, and I use fewer clumsy, long-winded sentences. These critical reflections, including this piece, have allowed me to put what I have learnt by experience this term into writing, and I hope I will refer back to these lessons and draw on them throughout my journalistic career.
I thought that the weekly meetings with the lecturers were a good way of holding us accountable to working on stories and thinking of new ideas consistently through the term. I enjoyed interacting with the lecturers on a personal basis, and appreciated their constructive criticism of my work. The meetings also provided a fixed time for our news agencies to meet, which was very necessary, especially towards the end of the term when people were busy with plenty of work on their other subjects as well as Journalism.
The idea of dividing us into news agencies with separate beats allowed us to explore a range of aspects of the university, and allowed good practice in teamwork, a very necessary skill for the workplace. The target of producing five articles each was realistic, and allowed us to put in time and effort to ensure that the articles were of excellent quality. I also enjoyed the way that we were encouraged to have our articles published: this provided added incentive to produce the best quality journalism we could, gave our reporting a purpose beyond simply earning marks, helped us to access sources who may have been less willing to contribute to articles that would not be published, and helped us build our portfolios of published work. This will aid in any job applications we make.
That said, I think that there were a few weaknesses in the course design. The placing of the due date for portfolios in the middle of the examination period was for our benefit, I know, since many people had not managed to finish their work by the end of the term, but it did mean that some people left considerable amounts of work until the examination period, which negatively affected their studying. Even those who tried their best to finish their work during the term would have to collaborate with their news agencies close to the deadline to compile the portfolios, which would have interrupted their examination preparations.
This deadline pressure was exacerbated by some confusion as to what contents the portfolio should have. I must admit that in my case, much of that confusion was caused by not reading the course outline meticulously at the beginning of the term and following it throughout the course, and by not always reading email attachments I was sent. However, I feel there was a lack of communication on the lecturers' part as well: the issue of exactly what to include in these critical reflections was not discussed in class, and the fact that we needed to write individual critical reflections for each article we wrote was not included in the course outline. Where there was communication in class about blogging and other matters relating to the portfolios, this was useful. I found that particularly Sim Kyazze's communication by email was good, but that emails should be sent to the class at least two hours in advance of the lecture they refer to. I realise that as journalists, we should be checking our email regularly, but during the term, not everyone has time to check their email before every writing and editing lecture to see if there has been an e-mail announcement about it.
I also felt that the process of allocating beats to news agencies should have been handled better. In a sense it was some agencies' own fault that they chose such narrow beats that they battled to find articles dealing with them and relating to Rhodes. But I felt the whole process would have been more fair if reasonable news beats were decided on by the lecturers and randomly allocated to us. This would also push us to report more on topics outside our individual fields of interest. However, this may have defeated the purpose of trying to get us to look at the nature of news beats, and what beats would be suitable for covering Rhodes.
Our news agency was very happy with our beat of academics and research, and found no shortage of good articles to write about it. However, I feel that we did not work as closely as a team as we should have. Group work can be extremely time-consuming, so towards the beginning of the term we developed the pattern of having as few meetings as possible, and instead passing work from one person to the other. I feel this was a sensible method of working together, since all of us are busy people and we can usually work more efficiently in a sort of assembly line than trying to complete every task together in meetings. However, this did mean that we were largely independent of each other when it came to investigating and writing articles. We shared story ideas and names of possible sources with each other in our weekly meetings with the lecturers, but then pursued, wrote and marketed stories on our own. We could also have done more to update each other about our progress using the blog. I feel we should probably have done more articles together as a team, rather than separately, and enjoyed the co-operation we had on the one article three of us have written together. At the beginning of term we made a decision that I would subedit all the articles produced by the news agency, but it proved impractical to do this before the deadlines set by our individual publishers, so I ended up subediting all the work after it had been published, for the final portfolio. This whole experience has shown me that for any journalistic work as a group, the group has to decide exactly how labour should be divided and define each person's role, and then stick to those decisions unless they prove impractical. Much communication is needed to ensure this happens.
In class, I felt the opportunities we were given to practice what we were learning during lectures in class assignments was also helpful, since learning writing techniques in theory can mean very little until one can put them into practice. In certain cases, such as the opinion-writing exercise, the deadline was very tight, but this helped to develop our experience, since deadlines in the real world aren't much better. I enjoyed the surprise news quizzes, since I keep up to date with the latest news and so generally do well at these things. I think that remaining aware of both local and international news is essential for any journalist. However, I thought the time spent on those computer-based logic and general knowledge quizzes at the beginning of the term would have been better spent on teaching, since we were never informed about their purpose. I would guess that they were an opportunity to assess some skills and see what areas lectures needed to focus on, but they were never referred to again in class.
I found the introductory news agency vision and mission-casting assignment very helpful. At the time we were asked to do it, I was not too happy with the idea, since I do not enjoy writing reflective reports, but in retrospect, the information we gathered in that process and the decisions we made were invaluable for our later newswriting. The mission statement had a great influence in the story ideas I chose to pursue: most were about explaining how research and academic developments at Rhodes are valuable to those in the broader Eastern Cape community. The introductory civic mapping question in that assignment also helped us decide which sources and avenues we were going to use to find story ideas. While one of these avenues did not prove very fruitful, others were extremely helpful. This reflects one important lesson I learnt this term: that good newswriting requires good homework, both before you even search for story ideas and then as you prepare interviews. I think the responses I received in interviewing sources were dramatically better than they could have been because I had taken some time to research topics and develop informed questions before I attended interviews.
The final civic mapping project, which we completed at the end of the term, was an engaging way of collecting the information about the community we had studied and rounding off the term's newswriting. I have been fascinated for a long time at the way communities and geographic factors interact to create a unique sense of place in different areas, and the civic map gave us some way to express that interaction on paper. In the end, we devised it as a sort of wall-chart guide to good sources at Rhodes, but I can see that one can develop civic mapping far further than that, to get better insights into how a community functions.
The blogging component of the course was a good opportunity to express our personal thoughts about the course and newswriting in general, and to communicate with our news agencies. I am sorry that I only grasped the whole purpose of personal and news agency blogging for the course rather late in the term, but I hope I made up for it by expressing some insights on my personal blog as I was learning them.
On a Media Studies level, though, I learnt that a blog is not an ideal means of communication for facilitating fast, active teamwork. The problem is that team members only see a blog when they choose to log on to it, and if they are forgetful and do not look at the blog regularly, they can miss important meetings and announcements. Another problem is that at times, important information was included in comments, which are not shown on the blog home page, and so can go unnoticed. The latest trend in new media is to ensure that instead of having to search for information on the Internet, consumers can make information come to them through RSS feeds or mailing lists. Perhaps we should have taken that approach and given all team members an email subscription to the team blog.
The last component of the course's work was, of course, critical reflections. For the most part, I find these reflections rather annoying and time-consuming, but I see their usefulness in bringing together all that we have learnt over the past term and getting us to think about how we can improve our news production. Being more self-reflexive is definitely a good thing; it helps to improve my work and prevents me from becoming arrogant. Through looking at each of the articles and writing critical reflections on them, I can see how my writing has improved through the term: my attribution is now more naturally integrated into the text, and I use fewer clumsy, long-winded sentences. These critical reflections, including this piece, have allowed me to put what I have learnt by experience this term into writing, and I hope I will refer back to these lessons and draw on them throughout my journalistic career.
Friday, June 08, 2007
I think I get the point of the critical reflections now
I've spent most of the day finalising the portfolio again. It's very fortunate that I had such a suitable gap before the Journ exam on Thursday 14 June to do all this stuff in.
In the morning I wrote the long 1500-word critical reflection on the course. I was dreading it, because I don't usually enjoy writing this type of thing, but it went quickly, and I found I had plenty to say about the course, both ways in which it can be improved, and things I learnt from it. It was a great exercise to pull together what we've been learning.
Now I'm back to subbing articles and getting them in a uniform format for the portfolio. It's monotonous work, but I want this to look good, and feel the subediting will only improve everyone's marks. I'm also still planning to write a short groupwork report, outlining exactly how we co-operated on different articles. It'll be short, but it should help Sim and Adrienne when it comes to allocating marks.
I did a dumb thing this afternoon by scheduling an appointment for 11am on Monday when the portfolio is due at 12 noon. Oh well, I guess things will just have to be ready earlier; if I have everything sorted out by then, it shouldn't be too much hassle to file everything and put on the appropriate logos. I'm glad that things are moving and we'll hand in a quality product at the end of the day.
In the morning I wrote the long 1500-word critical reflection on the course. I was dreading it, because I don't usually enjoy writing this type of thing, but it went quickly, and I found I had plenty to say about the course, both ways in which it can be improved, and things I learnt from it. It was a great exercise to pull together what we've been learning.
Now I'm back to subbing articles and getting them in a uniform format for the portfolio. It's monotonous work, but I want this to look good, and feel the subediting will only improve everyone's marks. I'm also still planning to write a short groupwork report, outlining exactly how we co-operated on different articles. It'll be short, but it should help Sim and Adrienne when it comes to allocating marks.
I did a dumb thing this afternoon by scheduling an appointment for 11am on Monday when the portfolio is due at 12 noon. Oh well, I guess things will just have to be ready earlier; if I have everything sorted out by then, it shouldn't be too much hassle to file everything and put on the appropriate logos. I'm glad that things are moving and we'll hand in a quality product at the end of the day.
Thursday, June 07, 2007
A day of Journ
Yes, today I spent the whole day working on my Journ. It was tough. It was ugly. But I think I'm getting somewhere. It's a pity we had to leave it so late, but honestly I don't think I could have made the time to do this lot during the term. And if this is how us W&E people feel, I can't imagine how bad it must have been for people in specialisations like Design and TV where the assignments come so much thicker and faster.
First thing this morning I sent off my water software piece to Grocott's. I'm pretty proud that I was able to explain all the technical details in it as well as I did, but feel I didn't quite get the "so what" factor right: explaining in the lead why this story is so important and interesting. And my first headline, "Rhodes scientists updating water management software" was rather lame. My latest idea is "Homegrown software helps manage water".
Then I wrote up my bit of the Size and Shape story. I enjoyed that: it's great to see so much research come together, and I think it's going to make a killer article when we're done. I ended up being allocated a lot to write, because I had done the most research into the topic, but that's OK. I'm excited about it. We tried to share the load of research equally, but the way it worked out, I just was allocated more sources who talked well about the subject.
Then I started with the mass of critical reflections. It was difficult to know exactly what to write. I tended to start each with a narrative style, telling about how we got story ideas and how I sourced each story, but ended with more traditional critical comments about what I could have done better. It's been good to look back at all the lessons I've learnt in the course. There've been plenty. I wish, though, that Sim had given us some extra info about what he wanted in these critical reflections. I'll ask him tomorrow.
So yes, it's been a tough day, but everything's finally pulling together and it's one day closer to when that portfolio will land with a thud on Sim's desk, and I can get back to studying!
First thing this morning I sent off my water software piece to Grocott's. I'm pretty proud that I was able to explain all the technical details in it as well as I did, but feel I didn't quite get the "so what" factor right: explaining in the lead why this story is so important and interesting. And my first headline, "Rhodes scientists updating water management software" was rather lame. My latest idea is "Homegrown software helps manage water".
Then I wrote up my bit of the Size and Shape story. I enjoyed that: it's great to see so much research come together, and I think it's going to make a killer article when we're done. I ended up being allocated a lot to write, because I had done the most research into the topic, but that's OK. I'm excited about it. We tried to share the load of research equally, but the way it worked out, I just was allocated more sources who talked well about the subject.
Then I started with the mass of critical reflections. It was difficult to know exactly what to write. I tended to start each with a narrative style, telling about how we got story ideas and how I sourced each story, but ended with more traditional critical comments about what I could have done better. It's been good to look back at all the lessons I've learnt in the course. There've been plenty. I wish, though, that Sim had given us some extra info about what he wanted in these critical reflections. I'll ask him tomorrow.
So yes, it's been a tough day, but everything's finally pulling together and it's one day closer to when that portfolio will land with a thud on Sim's desk, and I can get back to studying!
Monday, June 04, 2007
Stuff for our Civic Map
Here's some of the things I thought about adding to our civic map. I thought I'd post them on the blog as well:
Stuff to add to Civic Mapping:
People:
Dean of Research: John Duncan (didn't ever speak to him, but he could be useful). His secretary, Ilona Visagie, was not terribly helpful. That's one avenue we tried that didn't work too well. Heather Davies-Coleman (Duncan's assistant) would probably be better. I know her.
Mark Hazell, manager of Grounds and Gardens, has a great personality and gives some excellent quotes. He knows me since I'm a friend of his daughter.
Janice Limson (Dept of Biochemistry, Microbiology and Biotechnology): very friendly and willing to comment.
Valerie Møller, Professor of Quality of Life Studies at Institute for Social and Economic Research was great, and very aware of what's going on in town. She reads her Grocott's religiously.
Denis Hughes at Institute for Water Research was also helpful. He's got a son in first year.
Larry Strelitz, acting Dean of Humanities, is a good person to ask about the Journ department and humanities in general, but he's too journalist-aware and very cagey.
George Euvrard, Dean of Education, on the other hand, was wonderful: very open in sharing his faculty's plans with me and inviting me to a faculty board meeting. He knew my Dad from high school, which helps.
Anton Vorster, Director of the Finance Division, was happy to answer my questions and to be e-mailed a follow-up question. He knew my uncle somewhere down the line, but that's a rather vague connection.
Places:
Pick 'n Pay (not a great place to do vox pops in town, but Checkers is worse)
Activate office (good for picking up story ideas and assignments, especially at editorial meetings)
Rhodes e-Research Repository online (for interesting research that can be reported on)
Stuff to add to Civic Mapping:
People:
Dean of Research: John Duncan (didn't ever speak to him, but he could be useful). His secretary, Ilona Visagie, was not terribly helpful. That's one avenue we tried that didn't work too well. Heather Davies-Coleman (Duncan's assistant) would probably be better. I know her.
Mark Hazell, manager of Grounds and Gardens, has a great personality and gives some excellent quotes. He knows me since I'm a friend of his daughter.
Janice Limson (Dept of Biochemistry, Microbiology and Biotechnology): very friendly and willing to comment.
Valerie Møller, Professor of Quality of Life Studies at Institute for Social and Economic Research was great, and very aware of what's going on in town. She reads her Grocott's religiously.
Denis Hughes at Institute for Water Research was also helpful. He's got a son in first year.
Larry Strelitz, acting Dean of Humanities, is a good person to ask about the Journ department and humanities in general, but he's too journalist-aware and very cagey.
George Euvrard, Dean of Education, on the other hand, was wonderful: very open in sharing his faculty's plans with me and inviting me to a faculty board meeting. He knew my Dad from high school, which helps.
Anton Vorster, Director of the Finance Division, was happy to answer my questions and to be e-mailed a follow-up question. He knew my uncle somewhere down the line, but that's a rather vague connection.
Places:
Pick 'n Pay (not a great place to do vox pops in town, but Checkers is worse)
Activate office (good for picking up story ideas and assignments, especially at editorial meetings)
Rhodes e-Research Repository online (for interesting research that can be reported on)
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Interview with Education Dean
I interviewed George Euvrard, the dean of education, yesterday. He was extremely helpful and informative. What helped, of course, is that he knew my dad from his high school days. Amazing what help a little personal connection can be. It's something I must bear in mind for the civic mapping. In fact, during the interview, he kept on calling me by my dad's name by accident!
Anyway, Euvrard was very eager to explain the background behind his faculty's corner of the size and shape debate as much as possible, to make sure we didn't get the context wrong. So the information I got from him was rather interesting. It turns out that Naledi Pandor had a meeting with the education faculty last year, where she said she was impressed with Rhodes's quality of training and our throughput, so she wanted us to do more and take on more students.
He also was very transparent about the faculty's future plans for its size and shape. He outlined the whole plan to me as it stands, and invited me to the next faculty board meeting, where the issue would be discussed. It'll be after the deadline for our portfolios, but I may well go anyway, just to make sure the article is as up to date as possible when it gets published in Activate next term.
Another civic mapping issue I've been thinking about a lot lately has been access to the finance administrators. I asked for an interview with the Registrar: Finance, but he's on long leave until July. His secretary referred me to Sandra Stephenson at the Academic Planning office. I don't think she quite understood that I wanted to learn a bit more about the financial side of the size and shape debate in particular. I'm going back to her soon to ask for an interview with the director of the finance division, to talk with him about government funding of the university, and how expanding the university would affect the budget. I hope he'll be willing to talk with me.
We also discussed at our last news agency meeting what kind of students we should interview about the size and shape debate. Luke Reid made the valid point that first-years are quoted too often in Activate, so I've asked a PGCE student and a third-year for comment. That's another thing to note in civic mapping: how more senior students are generally more in tune with how the university works and so are more likely to offer good comment on matters like size and shape.
Anyway, Euvrard was very eager to explain the background behind his faculty's corner of the size and shape debate as much as possible, to make sure we didn't get the context wrong. So the information I got from him was rather interesting. It turns out that Naledi Pandor had a meeting with the education faculty last year, where she said she was impressed with Rhodes's quality of training and our throughput, so she wanted us to do more and take on more students.
He also was very transparent about the faculty's future plans for its size and shape. He outlined the whole plan to me as it stands, and invited me to the next faculty board meeting, where the issue would be discussed. It'll be after the deadline for our portfolios, but I may well go anyway, just to make sure the article is as up to date as possible when it gets published in Activate next term.
Another civic mapping issue I've been thinking about a lot lately has been access to the finance administrators. I asked for an interview with the Registrar: Finance, but he's on long leave until July. His secretary referred me to Sandra Stephenson at the Academic Planning office. I don't think she quite understood that I wanted to learn a bit more about the financial side of the size and shape debate in particular. I'm going back to her soon to ask for an interview with the director of the finance division, to talk with him about government funding of the university, and how expanding the university would affect the budget. I hope he'll be willing to talk with me.
We also discussed at our last news agency meeting what kind of students we should interview about the size and shape debate. Luke Reid made the valid point that first-years are quoted too often in Activate, so I've asked a PGCE student and a third-year for comment. That's another thing to note in civic mapping: how more senior students are generally more in tune with how the university works and so are more likely to offer good comment on matters like size and shape.
Monday, May 28, 2007
An interesting technique
I was reading through last Tuesday's Grocott's (May 22) today and particularly enjoyed one article, "Fly me to the fun" on page 6, about the recent Aviation Day/Fly-in. The story used the technique of telling the story from the point of view of a visitor to the airshow: in this case, a three-year-old boy.
I think the technique helped to capture the childlike wonder one can feel at events like this, and brought readers closer to the action on the airfield. Unfortunately, the technique wasn't executed perfectly, though, and by the end of the lead paragraph I was left wondering what "Jimbo jets" and heliqwaqwas" were, before realising they were poor attempts at writing down the kid's baby talk. It's easy for this kind of writing to get patronising, or to jump in and out of the participant's viewpoint in an erratic way that simply confuses the reader. But I was still impressed with the overall idea of telling the story from a participant's perspective, rather than the traditional "all-seeing journalist" approach.
I think the technique helped to capture the childlike wonder one can feel at events like this, and brought readers closer to the action on the airfield. Unfortunately, the technique wasn't executed perfectly, though, and by the end of the lead paragraph I was left wondering what "Jimbo jets" and heliqwaqwas" were, before realising they were poor attempts at writing down the kid's baby talk. It's easy for this kind of writing to get patronising, or to jump in and out of the participant's viewpoint in an erratic way that simply confuses the reader. But I was still impressed with the overall idea of telling the story from a participant's perspective, rather than the traditional "all-seeing journalist" approach.
Friday, May 25, 2007
Pilger on Palestine
I just read a very interesting opinion piece by John Pilger on the M&G website. It's available online at http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=309403&area=/insight/insight__international/. In it, Pilger argues that Israel is slowly trying to suffocate Palestine. I first noticed the article because it was written by Pilger, and it certainly lived up to the man's reputation.
His writing plays on the emotions, with a detailed description of what it's like to live in Palestine at the moment. Now, I'm a bit sceptical about all this emotionalism, but Pilger makes it work really well towards his argument. The other thing I noticed about the piece is that although it was commentary, it was backed up by plenty of facts and statistics. I was particularly impressed by what he dug up about Israel having previously supported Hamas to fragment the Palestinian liberation movement. This showed me how an opinion piece can be far more effective if a fair amount of hard evidence is given for the opinion.
Nevertheless, it is clearly an opinion piece: I think Pilger is rather one-sided in criticising the Israelis' intent to destroy Palestine, while accepting at face value what he hears about Hamas being ready to make moves that would effectively recognise Israel. Still, it's an excellent expression of his opinion and a persuasive argument for it.
His writing plays on the emotions, with a detailed description of what it's like to live in Palestine at the moment. Now, I'm a bit sceptical about all this emotionalism, but Pilger makes it work really well towards his argument. The other thing I noticed about the piece is that although it was commentary, it was backed up by plenty of facts and statistics. I was particularly impressed by what he dug up about Israel having previously supported Hamas to fragment the Palestinian liberation movement. This showed me how an opinion piece can be far more effective if a fair amount of hard evidence is given for the opinion.
Nevertheless, it is clearly an opinion piece: I think Pilger is rather one-sided in criticising the Israelis' intent to destroy Palestine, while accepting at face value what he hears about Hamas being ready to make moves that would effectively recognise Israel. Still, it's an excellent expression of his opinion and a persuasive argument for it.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Should have read my course outline sooner...
Yes, there's no excuse for it, I've missed half the point of personal blogging for the Writing and Editing course, and just bumbled along doing what I thought was right. If only I'd read that course outline properly from the beginning! Apologies, Sim.
I had no idea about the need to find examples of good journalism or to comment on civic mapping until I read the outline properly this afternoon. So, before I shower and jump into bed, here are a few thoughts:
Firstly, civic mapping sounds like a wonderful concept. I've always been intrigued at the way societies and spaces interact, and civic mapping sounds like a fun way to do that. I hope that as I learn more about it, I'd be able to comment more on it in this blog. I said at the beginning of the course how Rhodes is, academically at least, rather a hierarchical structure, with information generally flowing down the ranks. It looks something like this: Rhodes administration > academic staff > postgraduate students > undergraduate students > the broader Grahamstown community. The task of a journalist in this kind of world is to fetch information from the top layers, and take it down to the bottom layers, where people aren't always aware of what's going on at the top. At least that's my working hypothesis at present.
Then, while it doesn't exactly qualify as journalism, I'd like to rave about my favourite blog (other than the ones I contribute to, that is). It's www.godspolitics.org , an American site in which several bloggers speak on the connections between Christian faith and politics. It's very activist, trying to plot an alternative to the USA's Religious Right ideology in calling for a broadening of Christians' political agenda from issues like abortion and homosexuality to areas like immigration reform, pro-poor policies and opposing unjust wars. I find it often an insightful alternative commentary on the USA political scene.
I wrote in the Christians @ Rhodes blog (http://christiansatrhodes.wordpress.com) about a news-feature-cum-commentary post on www.godspolitics.org that covered the banning and later unbanning of student Christian societies at the States' Georgetown University. I thought the article was a fairly good treatment of an event and issue that spanned some time, providing plenty of background to readers like me who were unaware of the event at the beginning. But more than that, I found it thought-provoking, like good journalism should be. It encouraged me to draw links between the Georgetown situation and life here at Rhodes. The article's online at http://www.beliefnet.com/blogs/godspolitics/2007/05/nancy-chan-exiled-ministries-return-to.html .
I had no idea about the need to find examples of good journalism or to comment on civic mapping until I read the outline properly this afternoon. So, before I shower and jump into bed, here are a few thoughts:
Firstly, civic mapping sounds like a wonderful concept. I've always been intrigued at the way societies and spaces interact, and civic mapping sounds like a fun way to do that. I hope that as I learn more about it, I'd be able to comment more on it in this blog. I said at the beginning of the course how Rhodes is, academically at least, rather a hierarchical structure, with information generally flowing down the ranks. It looks something like this: Rhodes administration > academic staff > postgraduate students > undergraduate students > the broader Grahamstown community. The task of a journalist in this kind of world is to fetch information from the top layers, and take it down to the bottom layers, where people aren't always aware of what's going on at the top. At least that's my working hypothesis at present.
Then, while it doesn't exactly qualify as journalism, I'd like to rave about my favourite blog (other than the ones I contribute to, that is). It's www.godspolitics.org , an American site in which several bloggers speak on the connections between Christian faith and politics. It's very activist, trying to plot an alternative to the USA's Religious Right ideology in calling for a broadening of Christians' political agenda from issues like abortion and homosexuality to areas like immigration reform, pro-poor policies and opposing unjust wars. I find it often an insightful alternative commentary on the USA political scene.
I wrote in the Christians @ Rhodes blog (http://christiansatrhodes.wordpress.com) about a news-feature-cum-commentary post on www.godspolitics.org that covered the banning and later unbanning of student Christian societies at the States' Georgetown University. I thought the article was a fairly good treatment of an event and issue that spanned some time, providing plenty of background to readers like me who were unaware of the event at the beginning. But more than that, I found it thought-provoking, like good journalism should be. It encouraged me to draw links between the Georgetown situation and life here at Rhodes. The article's online at http://www.beliefnet.com/blogs/godspolitics/2007/05/nancy-chan-exiled-ministries-return-to.html .
Water Modelling Software
Yesterday I interviewed Prof Hughes from IWR about the institute's software for modelling supply of water resources. It'll be difficult stuff to explain in an article, because all that the software does is geared very much at specialists, but I think it's interesting and really does have an impact on how our water resources are managed. The national department of water affairs and forestry even uses the software.
At the moment, a second version of the software is being written by some people at UKZN in co-operation with Prof Hughes and David Forsyth at IWR. I've sent an email to the leader of the project at UKZN and to a user of the software in Sri Lanka, so I should have some good info for the story. I'm thinking of sending it either to Grocott's or the Daily Dispatch. So things are looking fairly good on that front.
I'm thinking of making it a longer news story, with the writing of the second version as a news hook, then explaining exactly what the software does and who uses it in paragraphs further down.
At the moment, a second version of the software is being written by some people at UKZN in co-operation with Prof Hughes and David Forsyth at IWR. I've sent an email to the leader of the project at UKZN and to a user of the software in Sri Lanka, so I should have some good info for the story. I'm thinking of sending it either to Grocott's or the Daily Dispatch. So things are looking fairly good on that front.
I'm thinking of making it a longer news story, with the writing of the second version as a news hook, then explaining exactly what the software does and who uses it in paragraphs further down.
Friday, May 18, 2007
My "There's no story" day
Sigh... Today I found out that two stories I was interested in weren't going to work out. I suspected that my Rooibos story was going to fall through because yesterday the Prof I wanted to interview about it told me that he had played only a minor role in the research on the rooibos-growing projects. That meant I had very little to hook a story onto, remaining within the confines of our beat.
Nevertheless, I went through and interviewed him this morning. It was interesting, of course, but he doesn't know enough about other Fairtrade projects in SA or about the way Fairtrade works in general to do a story on either one of those angles. I could have done a story on one of the rooibos-growing projects, but like I said in my last blog entry, it wouldn't be a great story since I can't go out to the West Coast and interview the farmers personally. They probably don't even have a contact number of their own, from what the prof tells me. So, that's one story on the backburner.
Then last night I'd also told the Activate people last night I'd do an article for them on some students who've come back from an exchange programme and are battling with one department to get credits awarded to them for it. I followed it up and the people involved didn't want to have any comments published about it, since it might jeopardise their standing with the department involved. I enquired about others who might have similar problems, and came to a dead end there too. Sigh.
But I've got another really interesting idea I'm working on at the moment. The Politics department is running a seminar on Friday at lunchtime on China's involvement with Zimbabwe, which sounds like it could be intriguing. Now, as long as it isn't cancelled because a rape awareness march is happening at the same time... - Ian
Nevertheless, I went through and interviewed him this morning. It was interesting, of course, but he doesn't know enough about other Fairtrade projects in SA or about the way Fairtrade works in general to do a story on either one of those angles. I could have done a story on one of the rooibos-growing projects, but like I said in my last blog entry, it wouldn't be a great story since I can't go out to the West Coast and interview the farmers personally. They probably don't even have a contact number of their own, from what the prof tells me. So, that's one story on the backburner.
Then last night I'd also told the Activate people last night I'd do an article for them on some students who've come back from an exchange programme and are battling with one department to get credits awarded to them for it. I followed it up and the people involved didn't want to have any comments published about it, since it might jeopardise their standing with the department involved. I enquired about others who might have similar problems, and came to a dead end there too. Sigh.
But I've got another really interesting idea I'm working on at the moment. The Politics department is running a seminar on Friday at lunchtime on China's involvement with Zimbabwe, which sounds like it could be intriguing. Now, as long as it isn't cancelled because a rape awareness march is happening at the same time... - Ian
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