This is our time: Protea Fire

i was there when Jonty Rhodes did the unthinkable, throwing himself through the air and demolishing Inzamam Ul Haq’s stumps to run him out and change fielding in cricket forever.

Well, i mean i wasn’t actually there, but i was at home watching on my tv and my love affair with cricket had just recently started and that moment sucked me in and injected some cricket-watching D.N.A. into my blood.

i was there for the disappointment of 22 runs off 13 balls becoming 22 runs off 7 balls becoming the ultimate ignomy of 22 runs off 1 ball – still, it was England bowling so anything was possible. But that loss hurt.

As did the Allan Donald run-out in the Lance Klusener world cup where he had saved us game after game but this was one game too many. As had the Herschelle Gibbs “You just dropped the world cup” catch and the Steve Waugh century that followed. And that Zimbabwe game that came back to haunt us…

As did the misreading of Duckworth Lewis.

As did the demolition by New Zealand.

But this year was meant to be our year. With AB Devilliers on an all-time high and with Hashim Amla dominating attack after attack, with Steyn destroying and Tahir picking up the pieces, and with Faf and Miller finally gaining some consistency and scoring some regular runs. i have never been more confident before a world cup that we had the team to win it.

Then came the Zimbabwe game. A little too close, but we were warming up into it.

And the India game. That hurt. And i really thought we had the team to chase an even bigger score had they gotten it, with India looking like one of the weaker attacks in the competition.

We needed to have a big one to restore my confidence and West Indies was that.

But then Pakistan and a target we really should have gotten to took the air out of my lungs again. Was this going to be another one of those world cups.

And today, as we head into ‘battle’ with Sri Lanka, and a team we really should be capable of beating on most days, i think most people believe that we are going to find a way to lose it. My stomach is part of those most people. My head is screaming at me to just give in and admit that it’s probably going to happen. My Improv partner-in-rhyme Megan Furniss has probably run out of nails pre-game and is chewing on a corner of the sofa [she’s probably not!] and as much as she desperately wants to believe [and will be stressed out by my optimistic tweets throughout the game no matter how it is going] she is strongly suspecting that this will be a repeat…

But against all that, i choose to believe!

This is going to be different.

Today is the day we win our first knockout game and the impetus from that will propel our confidence to new heights and make the next two a breeze in comparison.

This. Is our world cup final.

Today.

And i choose to believe.

Nervously, for sure.

But because i KNOW without a shadow of a doubt that we have the team to do it. We don’t need to play an exceptional game of cricket. We just need to play our traditional game of cricket.

i’m not sure if they’re going to do anything different at the top because QDK has been killing us with his nervousness and bad run of form. If he gets going and gets going well it will be game over before it starts. But will they drop him down a little in the hopes that we can get a solid opening platform – Rilee and Amla or even Faf and Amla. But if he does start, then he really needs to get a score – even a quick 30 off 15 will be good enough to get us out of those starting blocks at pace.

We have the team to do this. AB needs to not be doing it alone.

It is time for the fire to be lit. And for the game to be won. Come on ‘boys’ – i believe in you.

Who is with me?

[And whichever way the result goes, i back you guys – you have entertained me well through the years – you’re my team, win or lose. But win!]

Book launch – ‘i, church’ – one mouthful

So the books have arrived and with one week to go [well three days] until launch number 1 [which is totally FULL UP], i thought i would give a more sizeable taste of what you can expect.

One of the chapters in the book is titled, ‘6 passages the church needs to take more seriously’ and while i do believe the church needs to take the whole bible seriously, these were 6 particular passages that stand out to me, that we REALLY need to start getting more right more frequently.

And this is the first of those:

[#] Matthew 22.34-40:

”Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested Him
with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Jesus replied: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind’. This is the first and greatest
commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbour as yourself’. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments”.

This is the whole Bible summed up in four words for me – Love
God, Love people. Whenever it gets confusing or complicated or
whatever, i think it is good to head back to this foundation of the
church and be reminded of what it is all about.

What i’ve noticed about this passage is that it seems like a
contradiction if we approach it mathematically. If you love God
with ALL your heart, soul and mind then you actually have nothing
left to do any more loving with, because you’ve used it all up
already, right? i mean, that’s what ALL means surely?

Unless you realise that the two commandments are not to be taken
separately at all. As we “love your neighbour as yourself” so we are
demonstrating our loving of God with all our heart, soul, mind.

Loving God means doing His will and His will is that we love other
people and so by loving others, we demonstrate our love of God.

So it is more a two part commandment than two different rules
for living. If we love God with everything, then it will naturally
pour out into loving people around us. And as we love the people
around us, so we are demonstrating love for God because we are
obeying His command.

The second thing to note is Jesus’ little p.s., “All the Law and the
Prophets hang on these two commandments”.

What were the Law and the Prophets? It was Jesus’ Bible. It was
the Jewish scripture and if we continue the metaphor on to us
today now that the New Testament has been written we can take it
to mean that the whole of scripture hangs on those two simple
commands. Love God, love people. Simple in understanding but
not so simple when we try and live them out all the time.

If the church could keep on coming back to this passage when
things get tough or complicated, we would cover a multitude of
sins and confusions and unnecessary conflicts. When we have a
denominational issue, when someone in leadership is caught in
sin, when we are deciding how to use the budget, when there is a
public debate on abortion or homosexuality, do we approach it
from the point of view of, “Is this loving God?” and “Is this loving
people?”

This is the foundation – everything hangs on these two ideas.

We need to keep on going back there and holding firmly to
them. And if anything we are doing or saying or getting involved
in is ever contrary to either of them, then we need to really
rethink and replan and do things differently.

As one rabbi said, “Love God, love people, all the rest is
commentary”. If Jesus says this is the most important thing, how
dare we ever make anything else the most important thing?

To find out what the other 5 passages are, you’re just going to have to get the book… [or ask me what the other five passage are – either way.] 

[To see where the venues are for the book launches and to read a little more what it’s about, click here]

the moment it all became more slightly real… So

So maybe 15 years ago i wrote a book called, ‘If your christianity is easy, you’re doing it wrong.’

i put it on a metaphorical shelf and waited for something to happen with it and nothing did. And there was evening, and there was morning… the first day.

A few years later, i wrote a book called ‘All’ which was a play on the popular saying, ‘All or nothing’ but without the ‘or nothing’ part, because, as the tagline suggested, ‘Because there is no choice’ with the idea that choosing to follow Jesus meant you had to commit yourself totally. But in effect, ‘All: Because there is no choice’ was simply ‘If your christianity is easy, you’re doing it wrong’, updated and repackaged.

Evening, morning. [Repeat]

Years later, the book-writing bug hit again and so once more i used a lot of what had existed in ‘All’ and repackaged, updated, cut and added and neatly trimmed and just before we moved to Americaland [three years ago] i had finished my book, which was now titled, ‘i kissed hating [the church] goodbye.’ [a play on the very much outdated Josh Harris novel, ‘I kissed dating goodbye.’]

During our time in Americaland i did manage to get it in front of a publisher or two and while the feedback was good, i also realised that specifically with my style of writing [and intentional mangling of the english language and it’s rules of grandma] that the book would have to be self-published. More work, few more chapters, few retractions and of course a new title…

And so ‘i, church’ was born, or created, or something.

Then there was a process of editing and proof-reading and trying to find a cover [HOW AMAZING IS IT? Kirsten Sims, you absolute legend of note!] and finally taking it to the printers and going in to take a look at the pre-print copy and then returning home and waiting.

And all this time i felt like a confused goat wearing a suit being pointed at by the hand face of a suit-wearing hand-face man…

By this i mean it was all pretty surreal… it’s been a long time coming… and at some point it feels like you are going to be continually caught in this perpetual looking-forward-to-the-next-stage-but-never-quite-getting-thereness of it all.

Until yesterday.

Which is when THIS happened.

A real live in-the-flesh [well paper flesh] book arrived at my door, bringing with it 999 of its friends. Or to be more precise 873 of its friends. [Not quite sure what happened there – emails were sent – we’ll figure this out – CALM. THE. FLIP. DOWN. PEOPLE.]

And suddenly it was real.

Posted a pic on Facebook and within like thirty seconds or so it had been liked by 30 people.

Which was surreal in itself.

And then comments by people saying they wanted to read the book or even better, that they couldn’t wait to read the book.

To watch the like counter go up on the book picture was pretty special [and i know the praise for that has to go to Kirsten for delivering such a perfectly beautiful picture for ‘i, church’. Not quite what i originally wanted but exactly what this little thing needed.] and it now sits at more than 160.

We have a full first book launch and a growing second one in Cape Town, with a more intimate house kind of launch happening in the Winelands and busy working on ones for KZN and Jhb/Pta and even hopefully a small one in Oakland in June. So there again, people coming together to hear about the book [and some may actually buy a copy!]

Maybe it should have started out as, ‘If you think your book publishing is easy, you’re doing it wrong.’ Excepting that, although it took way longer than i would originally ever have hoped, i am confident that the book we have now [and it is a ‘we’ thing cos so many people have helped bring this together] is a whole lot better than what i started out with. It is not perfect, because if we waited for that it would never have gone anywhere – we did eventually just need to call it on the tiny edits and say, “Let’s do this!” But i am grateful for the time – it feels right.

And just so grateful for everyone who has shown the love – on Facebook, in real life… it has been such an encouraging time leading up to the time when anyone actually reads it and then we’ll see for sure. But much appreciative of the various communities i am immersed in. Thank you everyone. Looking forward to seeing you at one of the launches.

[and if you are overseas and can’t wait for a local tour, then if you head into the Amazon and google ‘i, church’ and brettfish you are likely to find it there]

[For a generous mouthful taste of ‘i, church’ to get a better idea of what to expect, click here] 

Book launch – ‘i, church’ – the MC’s

Three book launches, three MC’s to walk you safely through them… and just TEN DAYS TO GO til the first…

Focusing on one of the strong themes of the book, ‘i, church’ that the church is far more about the people than the place, we decided that the MC’s of the book launches should reflect that. Thus i invited people who are both important and significant to my life to host the events from the front and help keep the times short, sharp and interesting.

Theran Knighton-Fitt

Theran Knighton-Fitt i have known ever since the day i was subbing in for his grade 6 afrikaans class and he came and asked me how to spell a particular word. i can’t remember what the word was but i immediately started spelling and he was carefully writing down the letters W…O…O…R…D…E…B…O…E…K… When i was done i said to him, “What does that say?” and he replied, “Woordeboek” [Afrikaans for dictionary] and i responded with, “Correct, go and look it up.” [Which is perhaps why i am no longer allowed to be a teacher]

i have always known Theran as someone who takes life and spirituality seriously, not content to be spoon-fed answers or ever satisfied with the status of the quo. He and his wife Debbie and their growing family have just returned from a long stint in Canada where he studied theology at Regent College and it is great to have them back in South Africa.

He [or at least his alter ego Faran], was also largely the inspiration for my silly Dangerous Things You Can Least Expect character, Brad Fish. So you can know you will be in for a fun, entertaining and philosophical evening.

Theran will be hosting the book launch at Vovo Telo, Thursday evening the19th, starting at 6.30pm – only 18 spots left and so imperative you RSVP to brettfish@hotmail.com soon if you are hoping to make this one.

Arthur Stewart

Arthur Stewart is an American-African [my description!] who i met many years ago when he was running an intentional community up in Pretoria and i was interested in hearing more about that. Since moving to Cape Town we have connected on a number of different occasions from Warehouse events and Selah reflection days to Generosity Dinners and more. With a huge heart for pastoring and drawing alongside Christian leaders and others, as well as seeing the kingdom come in real and transformative ways, Arthur is someone who tbV and i share some substantial D.N.A. with.

Arthur also kindly stepped in and facilitated a time of listening and prayer with some of our favourite people, when we were looking for a place to stay, which really helped give us some direction and affirmation at an important time. So with Arthur the mood is likely to be reflective and thought-provoking.

Arthur will be hosting the Saturday 21st March morning launch at The Warehouse, which is at 12 Plantation road in Wetton and which will be starting at 9.30am. There is still considerable space at this one, but please stilol RSVP to brettfish@hotmail.com so we know how much coffee to coffee.

tbV aka The Beautiful Val

Often referred to as ‘The Lovely Val’ by people who didn’t quite get the tbV memo, this lady probably needs a little less introduction, but my amazing wife Valerie will be taking on MC duties for the Stell/S West leg of the Cape Town launch.

Val has been hugely supportive in creating opportunities for me to finish the book [pre-Americaland] and then touch it up, finish it off and get it into book-resembling being’ness and it will be an absolute pleasure having her as one of the MC’s. Her tendency to challenge ideas and refusal to settle for the way things have always been has been hugely helpful in terms of formulating some of my own ideas on things as far as church is concerned and we try to figure out this thing together. With tbV at the helm, expect light-hearted, provocative and eloquent all rolled into one. [And maybe even a foreign accent if we’re lucky!]

Valerie will be hosting the book launch in Vlottenberg on Tuesday 24 March at 6pm at Clubhouse, Digteby Estate, Vlottenberg, Stellenbosch.

So there you have it – the clock is ticking and we are so looking forward to hanging out with all of you – please feel absolutely welcome to invite friends and anyone else you know who might be interested in hearing what this is about. Just please get them to RSVP to brettfish@hotmail.com so we can expect their arrival… see you soon…

[To see a little bit of the journey from Surreal to “Hey, i have a book”, click here] 

Open Apology for all the bad things on my blog

So this morning was a little bit of soul searching time for me as i took into account a lot of what different people have been saying in the comments on my blog recently [and over a longer period of time].

i realised that not only are some of the things that have been said true, but also came to think of some other things i’ve been doing that have actually been completely unacceptable and so i needed to apologise. And for something of this magnitude, i didn’t think written word would actually be enough. So i went for face-to-face by recording this shortish video in the hopes that those i’ve wronged will see it and really hear my heart on these things. And that we can move forwards together in the hopes that i can be better moving forwards.

So thank you for the words that caused me to really think about these things – i hope i am a changed man:

 

Chill for a minute and share a Sider with me.

This morning tbV and i went to the Warehouse in Wetton for an informal talk and conversation with Ron Sider [ah, you see what i did there, you should apologise for thinking bad thoughts about my spelling prowess!] who is the author of, among other things, ‘Rich Christians in an age of hunger’ which is completely the sound of a book title that needs to be in my queue.

Anyways we had a most excellent time as he looked some issues regarding to Christians and Social Justice from a theological [but seriously not boring and completely relevant and hands on] point of view. He will be doing another session there tonight [12 Plantation Road at 7pm, rsvp Linda@warehouse.org.za] and if you can make it, you really should try and come.

But i thought i’d share some thoughts in the form of one liners and sound bytes that i was able to furiously scribble down [cos seriously, who writes these days? You take your finger muscles completely by hysterical surprise any time you try to] during the speak and Q & A that followed. This is obviously not as helpful as if you’d been there [come tonight!] but hopefully there are some moments of lightbulb that you can take away from this:

Firstly, Ron Sider is a 75 year old Jewish man who converted to becoming a follower of Jesus and then got completely dissatisfied at their response to issues of poverty and social justice until he researched a little more and saw that Jesus and the whole bible was actually all over that stuff:

One of the things Craig [who MC’d the vibe] mentioned was that when he was a frustrated Christ follower during his varsity days because of the disparity between the politics of the land and the actions of the church, that reading Ron’s book gave him permission to have an authentic faith that caused him to engage with the politics of the land. [Too many of us were shut down by the ‘You can’t mix the church and politics’ narrative when we were growing up and yet if God is a part of every part of your life then surely He needs to be in your politics?]

# Maybe the statement i liked best out of the whole morning was another one Craig said while speaking about Ron’s stance from his book which was ‘I’m not a social activist, i’m a disciple of Jesus.’ That is just s beautifully true. These are not the acts of a social activist specifically or separate to them being the acts of someone who genuinely follows Jesus and tries to live up to His teaching and example.

# From a conversation Ron had with a jewish student one day who was attracted to the passion of the christians in terms of meeting together and so ended up at one of their conferences, but then ended up in long conversation with Ron saying, ‘I don’t want to be like these white christians who sing about heaven and talk about Jesus but don’t care about justice in South Africa.’

# Referred to the book of Amos and how this prophet tackled both the sexual injustice that existed in the present time BUT ALSO the structural and economic injustices that were rife. How often we as the church have picked and emphasised the first almost at the complete expense of the latter.

# The importance for both evangelism [ we need ‘good people’ so people who have been transformed by God] and structural change.

# That the Gospel is NOT purely forgiveness of sin, but the Good News of the Kingdom. Jesus formed a new community when He came, who lived out His message and challenged the status quo in many ways:

– Jesus and the lepers and blind people was Jesus connecting with groups of people who had been completely alienated and shut outside of the city

– Jesus and His attention and focus on women was radical for that time period where they were considered not just not equal to men, but as animals in some cases – the one quote Ron read was that a jewish saying at the time was that it was better to burn the Torah [the first 5 books of our bible] than to teach it to a woman [we’re talking hectically radical in approach of both teaching and living.

So both the forgiveness of sin and the formation of a new Messianic community where justice and peace break in.

# Also Ron mentioned, like in the Acts 2 and 4 pictures of the church, that a huge evangelistic tool that the early church had was the way in which they lived this teaching out, like in areas of social justice – looking after widows and orphans and the poor.

# Ron shared about how in Romans 8 it talks of the groaning creation that will be liberated. In Revelation 21 and 22 it talks of the glory of the nations being taken up into the New Jerusalem and then later about the healing of the nations. And then referred to the N.T.Wright book ‘Surprised by Hope’ where one of the conclusions is that we don’t try to escape the world [christians with a heaven only point of view] but we try to change it.

# An important mindset to cultivate is that God is obviously on the side of the poor [hundreds of verses throughout the bible back this up] but that God loves both the oppressed AND the oppressor and is wanting both sides to be liberated.

# Ron said that he thought many people misunderstood the Acts 2 and 4 passages as indicating that the early church had a common purse [shared money that belonged to everyone]  – the form of the Greek verbs gives the translation to be more like ‘In the habit of’ when it comes to giving so it was not an obligation but something that seemed to come naturally to them because of their changed dispositions.

They were so committed to each other that they went to dramatic extents.

In Deuteronomy 15 vs 3-4 it says ‘If you live this way there will be no poor among you’ [echoes of Acts 2] but then a few verses later it says there will always be poor among you. [As if it’s a wink from God saying because I know you].

One part of what it means to be the church = dramatic and significant economic sharing.

And a quote from i forget where, ‘As long as some christians are trapped in poverty, the eucharistic celebration is imperfect.’ 

One of Ron’s last points was almost like a prophetic declaration, saying that, ‘It would be an incredible thing if the whole church of South Africa would get the economic call of the bible and start living it out. This would be the hugest witness to the world – it would involve costly redistribution..

And then during the questions, a comment that my friend Rene made, was ‘The church doesn’t see itself as the empire’ and there is much to be discussed around that and i think it touches on the whole race/reconciliation/privilege conversation as well. It’s not me – it must be someone else.

But all in all a really great session – hope there was a morsel in there for you to grab hold of and if you are in Cape Town and can possibly make yourself free for tonight – this does feel like it will be a significant meeting time.

Book launch – ‘i, church’ – the teaser

So by now you may have heard that we had three Cape Town book launches and one in Durban [with one coming up in Oakland, Americaland in June and then hopefully at a later stage one in Pretoria ad Johannesburg], but what exactly is it all about?

Besides church…

To give you an idea, i thought i would drop a little bit of a teaser so you can get an idea.

In many ways this is a book written for people who love Jesus but have been hurt by the church somewhere along the way and so are a little wary of being associated with one any more… trying to be ‘christians without church’…

In other ways this is a book written for those who attend a church service once a week and yet are not necessarily seeing the transformation in their lives and in the lives of those around them and so on some senses might have slipped into a kind of ‘going through the motions’…

And for everyone in between, this is hopefully a challenge or an encouragement or a breath of fresh air or some inspiration towards some ways you can get your creativity on in terms of life to the full and seeing the kingdom of God grow itself here on earth as it is in heaven.

Not all of it is for everyone, but if you are a follower of Jesus, then i’m pretty sure there is at least something in here for you, hopefully of a significant nature.

Here is a short taste from early on in the book.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

‘That is maybe how it is with the church sometimes. That it is not always intentional. Sometimes it is just through not saying it as opposed to deliberately holding it back. Usually it is because the church is made up of messy, broken people who have been hurt and who hurt, all the while trying to get it right, for the most part.

And so we end up at a place that, if we’re completely honest with ourselves, looks a lot like Augustine might have suggested when he said, “The church is a whore, but she’s my mother”.  One of the biggest problems we face, I think, is that some people get way too hung up on “the church is a whore” part while others get way too protective  of  the “church is my mother” bit. So we are left with a ‘them’ and an ‘us’ no matter which side we stand:

# The church is the best thing in the world, ever.

# The church is the worst thing in the world, ever.

Both sides are right. And both sides are wrong.

The purpose of this book is to hopefully invite each side to take a few steps close to “the other” so that we can move away from that kind of language and mindset altogether. There are enough people both inside and outside the church, who  are  quick to throw  stones  at it. Whether we see it  as the building   or   the   people   or   the   meeting   or   the   tradition,   it   has become an easy target.

What is going to be more helpful is if we can take a step back from the muck, put any kind of frustrations or anger or resentment or bitterness aside,  and start to look a little harder, listen a little more closely and return to the One who this church thing is all about. Maybe then we’ll truly be able to kiss hating [or just really, really, really not liking] the church goodbye.

You see, it was never meant to be a concept… or an organisation… or a meeting… it was meant to be an organism – living,   breathing, causing revolution, pointing people towards Jesus, and turning the world on its head.

Maybe you don’t see it like that. Maybe you’ve never seen it like that. I urge you to read this book with an open mind. Head back with me to scripture and see what God says about the church – His plan and idea and mission for it.

Because maybe once you’ve really seen that, you will find a whole host of new reasons to love being an active engaging community­transforming member of this living Church.’

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

i would love to see you at one of the Book Launches… and if you’re in Oakland, USA, or Joburg/Pretoria, get hold of me, cos we are hoping to be dropping in there for a book share of your own…

[To find out how you can host your own Church Q & A with me and some of your friends, click here]

[For an excellent post on the idea of your church map possibly being wrong, take a read of this one]