Cheering Section: the art of mentoring – part mentee

i am participating in NaBloPoMo which is known as National Blog Posting Month in which the invitation or challenge is to post a blog every day [except on day 2 of the month when you are camping in a place with no internet signal even for your cute little hotspot device!] and for this one i decided to take up one of the prompts they provided:

Do you have a mentor? Tell us about him or her. Are you a mentor to someone else? Tell us what that relationship has added to your life.

i wouldn’t say i have a mentor. in fact the only story i tell of having a mentor is one i had for literally five minutes. a great pastory guy by the name of Craig Duvel who i have grown to respect in leaps and bounds over the years but who always lived in a province far away from mine [and since he moved to my province, i moved country so that didn’t help a lot]. i remember sitting with him at a camp and i think it was related to my struggles with pornography/masturbation at the time but his advice was, ‘Keep a Short Account with God’ and i have used that and shared that many times since then. He told a story of how one morning at 3am he was woken up and remembered some unconfessed sin in his life and how he went to the lounge and fell facedown before God and made it right with God… the idea being that you start a new day with a fresh slate not being burdened or judged by your brokenness or any recent mess you may have been the cause of. And it works. When we allow sin to build up, it is like building a tab at a bar – it gets to the point where it is more natural to say, “Stick it on my tab” than it is to really be grieved by it or want to deal with it. So any time you become aware of sin in your life, or anything breaking intimate relationship with Him then right there and then, or as soon as possible, deal with it, make right and if you need to make right with people too, then do it as soon as you can.

so only 5 minutes of mentoring, but it was completely helpful.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE MENTORS GONE?

for me it has usually been a story of either not recognising any older men in the contexts i am in who i respect in the sense that i would want them mentoring me, or that those people who i have seen with those things  just seeming so incredibly busy with so much other stuff that they would not be suitable candidates. i definitely had a mentor in my earliest youth leading role in terms of helping me lead and grow in confidence and maturity in a lot of leadership related areas, but i think to some extent we had a difference of vision and ethos and so it didn’t feel like the kind of mentoring i imagine, but i am completely grateful for his presence in my life back then and owe a lot to him.

but in the absence physical mentors in terms of men who are older than me pouring into my life it has become a combination of literary mentors [so the influence of passionate men of God like Keith Green and John Wimber and others who spoke into my life through the pages of books], peer mentors [so being co-mentored by good friends of a more similar age or even younger like Sean Du Toit, Bruce Collins, Rob Lloyd, Andy Pitt and i could go on] and also through men like Paul and Peter, David and Moses, and of course Jesus Christ. none of these were formal mentoring relationships, but through watching and listening and late night conversations and hearing stories of and from, these people spoke [and continue to speak] loudly into my life.

‘Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses.’ [Proverbs 27.6]

i have absolutely loved this verse and i stand by it. if you do not have people in your life who have the invitation to speak honestly [and cause something that feels like a wound cos who likes rebuke ever?] then you are doing yourself an absolute disservice. Rob Lloyd has been one of those voices in my life [his description of me as reminding him of Paul – “passionate yet tactless” – is one that stands strong in my memory] and i have so much love and appreciation towards him for that and taking a quick look over myself, all of those bruises have healed in such a way that i can’t even remember where they were [but the lessons have stuck!]

so be mentored! it is so important – any fool who thinks they can walk this life well by themselves is one. and a good way to start is by asking – is there a man/woman you deeply respect or feel you can learn something from? Ask them if they will have coffee with you once a week, once a month. [hint: pay for it! This is completely something worth investing in – for the price of a regular cup of coffee or breakfast you can have your life revolutionised? seems about right] The worst they can do is say no. [Well, i guess the worst they can do is whip out a swordfish and carve their initials in your face but if that happens it is an indication that they were possibly not the right person to be mentoring you?]

and if you can’t find someone to ask then do what i did in terms of finding mentors and role models elsewhere. be careful not to pedestalise them – the closer you get to those ‘perfect’ people who are so close to God and so good at life, the more flawed you will see them to be, so stay grounded in admiring the Jesus in them and learning from that.

try and be mentored by a diverse crowd. if you are a white male [as i am] and only invite white males to mentor you [through the books you read, music you listen to, preaches you hear] then you are missing out on a whole lot of good life lessoning. invite someone from a different race or culture than your own. from a different gender. from a very different generation. and start with stories – listen to their life, hear lessons they have learned, obstacles they have overcome, failures they have endured and successes they have witnessed and been a part of.

it may not look like you want it to look. but if you are not being mentored it is largely your own fault. do something about it.

and perhaps a great way to start is to find someone who you can mentor, meet with regularly, intentionally pour into… but more of that in my next post…

[And if you have a moment to comment, I would LOVE to hear some stories of people who have mentored you in a way you found helpful]

[To continue to the next part on being a MENTOR, click here]

Sharing Dreams: Meet Uel Maree…

I discovered that this week was the Global Week of Sharing [sharemydream.org] and the invitation was to be ‘sharing your website or blog this week with someone who’s dream you share and want to encourage. Ask them to write a guest post for your site about their dream.’ My South African friend Uel Maree was the first guy that came to mind and he agreed to share his story on my blog, for which i am eternally grateful… meet Uel Maree, the life of the party:

…and then i dived into the river & broke my neck.

Prior to that i “had it all”. 27 years old, a job i loved, living in beautiful Cape Town, beach on the weekends, outdoor adventures on the surrounding mountains, involved in my local church. Life was good.

However after my accident, being paralysed from the shoulders down, there was a definite spanner in the works. No more job, no more beach, no more mountains, no more church, no… more… movement.

100 days in hospital, operations, emergency procedures, tubes down my throat, purified foods, specialists telling me to accept my condition…. Why not just let it rain indoors as well? Hahaha.

I was an avid rock climber so people used to ask me, “Why do you climb the mountain & not use the cable car?” I always remembered then the bruises & cuts i received along the climbs, looking up from the base at what seemed like an impossibility but then i would forget its size but rather focus on the next step & the next handhold. Eventually i would look down from the peek & smile over the world. You see, mountaintop experiences are great but what makes them truly special is the work it took to get there. Generally free things are never as appreciated as earned things.

We stretch & work our body & senses more often than we do our mind & spirit, they need exercise too. For many of us, our cushy jobs, easy lifestyles & facebook addiction this fast world assaults our senses with, keeps us so busy floundering around the shallows that we never explore the deep recesses within ourselves. I know, i was there & at times still am. I was forced into having  a time-out from the world after my accident & i’m grateful that the experience taught me that the eternal things really worth putting effort into in life are friends, family, relationships, love & God. The flashing lights & latest gadgets can only satisfy for short periods until u need your next fix. Its taking half a day to sit without a phone, book or IPod & explore that dusty room in your mind, open its curtains, sweep its floors, rearrange its furniture & see who you really are. I pray that nobody ever has to physically go through what i am BUT, i do hope that everybody takes time out for self-discovery before ending up in a difficult situation (which you will) or before time runs out (which it will). The magic doesn’t happen in your comfort zone. Your career generates your salary, but its your calling that makes your life.

Forward thinking is great, future planning is wonderful.

Yes we’ve seen this day’s dawn but that doesn’t guarantee us this day’s dusk.

Stop living only for this coming weekend, stop living only for the next holiday,
but start living for the only moment that is truly ours, right here, right now. Make these seconds count more than the thoughts of a future that is not yet yours.

I know, i almost died… face down in a river.

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” (James 4:13-15)

“2 farmers pray for rain but only 1 of them goes out to prepare His field. Which 1 do you think trusts God…. ” – Facing The Giants

Seems like im finding myself standing at my field, being reminded by God & my peers, to not turn away but to keep sowing with an expectant heart…

Though sometimes we get so fixated on staring at the ground or other people’s fields, waiting for the seed we want to grow, that we forget to look up at the rest of our field & see the endless sunflowers that we planted a while back but are now waist high 🙂

I’m convinced that seeds take longer to grow when we stare at them 😛

We cant bear fruit until our trees are grown.

So my outlook has changed. Sure i cant walk… yet 😉 but i have more now then before my accident & that’s thanks to having learnt (& still learning) how to reevaluate all i see & have through a different filter….. eternity.

We’re all different & there’s different ways to do things BUT its all built on a universal Truth & there’s no changing that.

Uel Maree 

“Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.”

[You can join the Pray for Uel Maree group on Facebook to stay in touch with his progress and more importantly his wickedly good sense of humour]

imagine a world where this was the norm…

this is a clip with the passing-it-forward [Jesus kinda provided the inspiration with ‘Love your neighbor’, right?] idea that is powerfully dramatised and passed on to me by my friend Kevin Smuts:

 

and then a friend of Kevin’s posted this short and true story which is apparently the inspiration for the first piece.

while i hope our motivation for doing ‘random’ acts of goodness is never to try and one day get free medical procedures, these certainly are a great reminder of how generosity breeds generosity… and the best kind may be when you don’t expect to be rewarded in any way…

what is something generous you have the power to do today? 

 

CCDA day 4 – last meeting – so i’ve figured at least one of the C’s stands for Cry [and now!]

so yes, i thought CCDA stood for ‘Christian Community something something’ but after last nite’s session and God speaking to me after last nite’s section and just the general worship vibes here and then this morning’s session, i have to conclude that at least one of the C’s has to stand for ‘cry’ – i have been on the edge of emotion for these last powerful 24 hours and wish all of you could have been at this last session with me cos words are going to horribly fail to convey much of what happened.

Lisa introduced the session by mentioning a book she had recently read called ‘Everybody poops’ which sums up so much and which i’ve been saying for years [your poo is the same colour as mine, whichever power-hungry attention-seeking celebrity you are] and was a great way to level the playing field.

today’s focus was young leaders and specifically emerging marginalised leaders so we had mentors and young people on stage as a panel and they shared testimonies and were asked some questions. and after last nite’s proclamation that i pretty much mostly only stand up for Jesus, i was the first one on my feet after Daniel who has cerebral palsy finished his speech… yes, speech, a guy who battles to speak coherently introduced by a beautiful spirited african american woman who began by telling us to “Stop what you’re doing and listen!” – put your pens down and your cellphones away and just concentrate and you will begin to understand what Daniel, who struggles to speak in a way we can clearly understand, is going to share with us.

and it was so completely powerful, and i definitely needed the introduction that called me to listen and validated his voice as someone speaking for the physically challenged [i am so over PC’ness and can never remember which term or label is okay so sorry to whoever i may have offended if i did but get your head out your ass and can we just see people already – enough with the labels! and the constant microscopic dismembering of them. rant over.] but i stopped and listen and heard [a lot, not all, but a lot] of what he had to share and to hear Daniel talk about his ministry and his mission and his gifting and how he takes opportunities – flip it just blew me away [i later wrote in my notes ‘i want to be a person who really listens to people’ – i think i am a fairly decent listener of people but i don’t know that i would have ever recognised that Daniel even had a valid voice – largely cos of my fear of what if i don’t understand, what if this becomes awkward or embarrassing? you know what? so what? work through the awkward and embarrassing together]

so yes, i stood up and applauded loudly and was deeply moved by him, and the lady that so lovingly introduced him and helped validate or give foundation or invitation to his voice… 

and then they followed it up with this young woman [well young to mid thirties maybe] whose name i missed who started by saying a picture often speaks 1000 words and showed five pictures of herself looking pretty hectic which i only realised later were her five conviction police line-up pictures. She had gone to jail five times for stealing and had done a bunch of drugs “I spent 20 years with a needle in my arm” and was just a complete mess, until someone took a chance on her and made her head of Restorative Justice in some organisation and when she said she had no clue how to do it, her mentor responded with ‘learn. google it. read. figure it out.’

she is now the director of Restorative Justice and two semesters away from getting her degree and about to be married in January – a whole bunch of stuff she thought she would never be able to do because of who she was and what she’d done and the addictions she had been involved with and in.

she shared how at one point she used to live on the second floor of a building opposite a church and on Sundays she would sit on the balcony with a beer and look at all the pretty people going off to church and she wanted to cross the street and go with them: “I didn’t know how to cross that street. I just wanted to get across that street!”

she reminded us that “you’re dealing with a lot of young people who don’t really believe in themselves” [echoing the Unconditional Love we were reminded about last nite]

she told us that when she met her fiance who was brought up in a Christian home and had a faith background he didn’t want to know about her past in terms of letting it define who she was but was more interested in who she was now and who she was going to be.

She finished off by telling us that if we see someone in the street we should extend the hand and offer to try to lift them up. It might be hard for them. It might be hard for you. But just do it. Cos that’s what we’re about, right? Being our brother’s keeper? 

i finished the session by writing this in my notes: I want to stop being afraid of people I can love/help because I might “do it wrong” or not be able to understand them or know how to help.

man, this account doesn’t even start to capture today at all. just imagine a really emotional and really profound experience of viewing lives that had been touched and changed by other people who took the time [and often it wasn’t easy and often the stories don’t end like these ones] and energy to build into their lives – to love them and believe in them and offer them an opportunity to live and thrive and have another chance at being a world transforming person.

every person has value. do we see it? 

[To see the start of this series of talk summaries and moments, click here]

CCDA day 3 – the P.M. of Father Santa’s message of gang rehabilitation

it is a travesty that i don’t have a video clip of this whole talk for you. this post will not do this justice. but hopefully i can share some glimpses.

but this one left me messed up. sitting in the hall long after the majority of people had left and even after they had cordoned off my edge of the hall so they could use the middle section for the time of open mic. that was about to follow. i was just left sitting there stunned and broken and crying out to God for a sign [and would you know He sent one – who God? Never. i thought He didn’t exist or something? Oh well, must have been just a coincidence then. But no it was God!] and thinking and silently praying and watching and just trying to take it all in.

This guy called Father Boyle [who someone later said had been on Dr Phil before and i imagine given him a hard time cos he was on it!] came and did closer to a time of stand-up comedy than a talk [at 50 to 60 years old i imagine and without appearing to try to hard – just comes naturally to him but had crowd in hysterics – amazing storyteller. Has worked with gangs for 30 years i think it was and looks a bit like a friendly Santa Clause type but also a hint of no nonsense although completely passionate.

# first story he tells about this gangster called Chuckie – the police told him they were looking for Chuckie for 3 murders so Father Boyle goes looking for him and finds him with a bunch of his friends and calls him across to him [typical ‘grief’ from his friends as if he was being called to the principal’s office] – a few day’s later Father Boyle is preaching and mid sermon Chuckie comes into the church and starts shouting at him from halfway up the church “You wanted to see me, here i am. [What would have happened in your church service if this had happened? A well positioned usher quietly tries to remove him from the service?] Father Boyle stops the service and says, “Okay, let’s do this now and push pause on the message i was giving. Leads him to the Lord.’ Three days later he gets a call from the police that Chuckie has been murdered.

# second story he tells was a prompting he has to go and tell this gangster Corey about the gospel. Corey listens but responds with “Not now” – the next day Father Boyle gets a message that Corey was shot in the head, dead.

Romans 5.8 it was “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Good reminder! Not get sorted out and then we’ll talk salvation – saved first and then cleaned up afterwards.

# big focus on Unconditional Love

He read out a prayer that was prayed to remember Oscar Romero:

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction
of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying
that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.
This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well.
Amen.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realising that. This enables us to do something and to do it very well. So powerful!

# He spoke of a verse in Habakkuk 2.3 which reads:

For the revelation awaits an appointed time;
    it speaks of the end
    and will not prove false.
Though it linger, wait for it;
    it will certainly come
    and will not delay.

# We are called to cultivate a community of kinship, so much so that God might see it and recognise it.

Father Boyle told a powerful story of him travelling to go and do a talk and taking three of his gangster guys with him. While they are driving there Manuel gets a phone call. It’s Snoopy [another gangster back at the base] and on speaker phone he tells them “I just got my ass arrested and I’m down at the jail and being charged for being the ugliest guy in the world. I need you to come down so i can prove they have the wrong guy.”

Father Boyle pauses for a moment as the laughter in the audience dies down, before saying, “And I realised… these are rival gang members… they used to shoot bullets at each other, now they shoot text messages.” [getting emotional again just typing it! do you realise the transformation locked up in this story?]

# He told another story about a 16 year old in his office and i can’t remember the specifics of the story but he finished by saying, “Kinship happens so quickly. I defy you to tell me who’s the service provider and who’s the service recipient… cos it’s mutual!”

# At one point in his talk he mentioned how this last week he buried his 193rd gangster youth… in 30 years… that is a hard one to walk.

# He mentioned a whole list of things that these rehabilitated gang members are working on and the one was a formerly abandoned bakery that is now called ‘Homeboy bakery.’ Former enemies now work together baking bread.

# He mentioned one of the failed businesses they attempted was Homeboy plumbing. He was surprised that nobody wanted gangsters in their homes. Who would’ve called that?

# They have a free tattoo removal service – there is no place in the world where tattoos are being removed as frequently as there.

# He mentioned something like 15000 people go through their drug rehabilitation centre each year.

# Another funny story was when oscar award-winning actress Diane Keaton came to their ‘Homegirl diner’ [used to come regularly]. The one day she was served by Glenda who as she took her order stared at her for a bit and said “I think I know you from somewhere. I’ve seen you before” Diane Keaton humbly stated something kindly about “perhaps having one of those faces that people think they’ve seen.”

But when Glenda came back with her food she exclaimed, ” No, now I remember where I’ve seen you before. We were locked up together.”

# Father Boyle reminded us that one huge aspect of Jesus’ prayer in the garden was the phrase “that they may be one”

“Our compassion is not measured in our service of those on the margins, but in our willingness to be in kinship with them.”

– We are called to reach in and dismantle the messages of shame and disgrace that the people on the margins constantly hear in their ears.

# Father Boyle reminded us of a less mentioned aspect linked to the Acts 2 church – “and awe came upon them.”

# “It’s impossible to demonise those you know. You just can’t sustain that.” 

And pointed out that ultimately it is no surprise that “they may be one” turns out to be our deepest longing too.

And finished off by saying, “This conference is not a place you go to, it’s a place you go from!”

i wish you could have been there for the whole thing!

[To read the next post on some inspiring young people and the encouragement to reach out a hand, click here]

How to raise your children as world changers: Meet Lara, Chris, Alexa, Moriah and India

apart from having one of the greatest full names known to personkind [say Lara Harler Lahr out loud or sing it to the tune of ‘Deck the Halls’] Lara and her husband Chris and their daughters Alexa, Moriah and India are good friends of ours that we met in Philly in our previous season of life…

having made some very similiar decisions to Nigel and his family in the previous post and demonstrating some true inspiration of what incarnation is really about and how perhaps more of us are called to live like this, here is Lara Harler Lahr…

from left: Moriah, Lara Harler, India, Chris, Alexa

We started raising our kids to be world changers before they were even conceived. The day we returned from our life changing summer in  India in 1997, we decided to live differently. It was that experience that led us to name our first daughter Alexa, which means defender of mankind. Soon after, we moved from Wilmore Kentucky to Philadelphia PA. We sold everything except what we could load into our van and bought a house in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Philadelphia 13 years ago. I knew that bringing an almost 1 year old to the ghetto of Philadelphia made no logical sense to our family or much of our friends…and there were days that I thought we were crazy as well!

Our next door neighbors fought a lot. I remember fearing for the woman next door and for those sweet boys of hers. As the screaming went on for hours on end, all we could do was pray…or so we thought…. We started talking to our neighbors a little here and there and eventually decided to take down the little gate between our two back “yards.”  We went in halfsies and bought a baby pool.  I never had any deep conversations with them during that first year, and never pried into their problems. One day Chris was on the front porch hanging out when he saw our neighbor talking to other neighbors. Afterwards she came to Chris and said “Did you see that?! I just talked to a neighbor!! I never talk to neighbors, but I have been noticing you and Lara talking to neighbors and I decided I shouldn’t be the neighborhood bitch anymore!” Then she went on to say that she had noticed our relationship and it really brought hope for a healthy marriage!!

We realized at that point that having a healthy marriage and a healthy relationship with our kids does change the world!  Especially in the area where we live…where hardly and kids have a two parent home!!

Fast forward 13 years to today. We have three daughters who go to a local charter school. We have been part of a local church in the heart of the “Badlands” of Philly.  They witness the reality of poverty, drug addiction, prostitution, incarceration, shootings, and other violence. We have had to listen to our girls share heart breaking stories that they have heard from friends at school. My younger ones love to play homeless like most kids like to play house! This is just the world they know. Because my girls are exposed to such difficult and seemingly unchangeable circumstances, we put a lot of energy into teaching them to pray.  We have had morning devotions every morning for several years now and we are teaching them to pray and believe.

Two years ago we were able to travel to India to visit with our friend and her 48 kids and the child that we have been sponsoring for years. I had been in a car accident that left me with a settlement that covered our trip, and I wanted to go there more than do anything else so that my kids could witness and be a part of the faith of these kids in India. I could go on and on with stories of how much faith these children have and how God answers their prayers. I want my girls to know that closeness with God and to have that kind of faith. My girls hearts were changed. They are being molded more and more every day by their experiences which give them love for people and a deeper reliance on the power of prayer that does change the world.

[For another exciting story on raising children as world affecting people, click here for the story of Lisa Scandrette and her family]

 

How to raise your children as world changers: Meet Nigel and Trish Branken and their family

I have already shared an article on my blog about Nigel and Trish before and how they moved into what is known as one of the most dangerous neighborhoods with their family and how some of that has played out. Val and i managed to have a Skype call with Nigel a few weeks ago and it was truly inspiring hearing some of the story of how they got to where they are and how it has been playing out. Nigel takes some time here to share about some of the ways in which their decisions and actions have influenced their children in growing up as World Changers…

Nigel,Trish,Hannah,Rachel,Jordan,Daniel,Sarah

Reflections on parenting: Choosing to put God first

When my wife and I moved into Hillbrow, Johannesburg over a year and a half ago, the main concern expressed by many of our loving friends was for our children. People literally asked questions like “What if one of them is kidnapped, raped or murdered?”. Hillbrow is just one of those communities which seem to invoke fear.

We were however convinced that God had spoken to us about moving into the neighbourhood, about downward mobility, and about standing in solidarity with our urban poor neighbours. Trish and I had long discussions about the call of God on our lives, and in fact the potential suffering that following Jesus may cost any believer, and therefore also us. The question we had to answer was whose voice would be louder… the voice of God or the voice of fear.

We searched the Scriptures and were convinced that if Jesus were alive today, He would be spending his life not in comfort and convenience, but rather in places like Hillbrow as friends of prostitutes, drug dealers and the homeless. The more I studied Scriptures, the more I became aware of the dangers of greed, individualism and consumerism.

We drew courage from reframing the question as this: what is more dangerous for our children, given the realities of eternity – to grow up in a society and culture which teaches you to worship the unholy trinity of “me, myself and I” or to be in a potentially physically dangerous place where you can learn the values of Jesus of justice, compassion and love?  Jesus said “What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? (Matthew 16:26). An important reflection.

We started to dream of a new world, the kind of world we would want to leave to our children.

“We want to see a world in which the rich do not tolerate extreme poverty and inequality. We want to see many people actually laying down their lives of comfort and convenience for the sake of bettering the lives of others. Seeing people freed from poverty, inequality, racism and exploitation is more important than fulfilling our lust for more things! We want to be part of a society in which people are valued more than things. We want to see the god of consumerism in South Africa bowing its knee to a love motivated revolution which results in freedom from oppression and exploitation. We want to see this for all people, regardless of class, citizenship, race or religion. We dream of equality in every sector of society. We believe that if the education system is not OK for a rich kid, it is not OK for a poor kid. The same goes with healthcare, housing, security. The same goes for rural kids and inner city kids. The same for black kids and white kids. We are not more valuable than the least valued in our society. We are doing our lives in a new way. We are going to live our dream and see this reality briefly described above happening around us. We hope others will join us and this will happen around them too. Who knows, very soon, the world can be a different place!”

As we weighed up God’s Word, His call and his promises, we finally came to the decision to move regardless of the cost. As a side reflection, I have subsequently found that the time God gives you grace to do something often coincides with the moment of your decision to obey His Word to you. Grace comes through faith and faith comes from putting the Word of God into practice in your life.

So fast forward a few years from when we made this decision, and here we are living in what many describe as one of the most dangerous neighbourhoods in the world. As responsible parents, we do all we can to protect our children. They know the rules and the risks and we are always close by to protect them. What we have found is that rather than restrictions, we are now in the most spacious place in our lives and the move has in my opinion been the best thing we could have done for our children. So often we think doing radical things for Jesus will harm our children, when in fact the opposite happens – they grow and develop.

I am so often overwhelmed by the things my children do in response to the poverty they now see in the lives of their friends who they love. My son Jordan, aged 8, has spent very little of his pocket money on himself since we have lived here. A little while after we moved in he came to me with his savings and said “Dad, you give me everything I need, I don’t need this money, who do you think we should give it to?” Needless to say my chest swelled as I held back tears of gratitude at the work God was doing in my boy’s heart. He has since done this again and again. His little brother, Daniel, aged 6, also loves to give his pocket money away or to buy food for the homeless with it.

In our block of flats, one of our children’s friends is a little boy named Sipho. Sipho lives with his 4 year old brother, Thabo, and his two year old baby sister, Princess, (not their real names)and single mother in a single room that they sub-let as a family. The room is barely big enough to fit the double bed which they all share. His father is legally not allowed to see him after he tried about 2 years ago to poison the two little boys and himself in an attempted family suicide. Their mom works at night and so the boys are often chased out the flat during the day so she can sleep. They are often hungry and so our two older girls love making them food. Sipho recently turned 8 years old. It was obvious that his mom was not going to throw him a birthday party or buy him any presents. Enter my children! All by themselves they conspired to bless this boy with a birthday party. They all pooled their pocked money together. Hannah, our 12 year old and Rachel, our 10 year old baked the cake. Jordan bought the presents. It was an amazing event. Through these and other similar stories I have become convinced that you cannot teach your children how to love and show compassion through  your words, you have to demonstrate it as a parent and create opportunities for them to take the initiative. Living among the urban poor and standing in solidarity with our neighbours constantly presents opportunities for acts of love.

I have so many more stories to tell, like how Hannah, our 12 year old has become a real advocate for the rights of the oppressed. Our children have had opportunities to speak on radio and television and to many journalists about how society should be helping their friends. Hannah often comes to me and asks me to help a friend get back into school or to get some form of assistance for someone, whether adult or child. We have often involved friends who are lawyers to help her friends and have even taken cases to the Constitutional Court (South Africa’s highest court) on behalf of Hannah’s friends. God is not only doing a work in their hearts, He is giving them a voice to the world.

Moving into Hillbrow has been the best thing we could have done for our children. When we put God first in our lives, He takes care of all the details of our lives. He really does love us and wants the best for us and we can trust Him with our children as we pursue Him and His call with all of our lives. We should never let our children set the agenda in our lives, as precious as they are. We believe they are more precious to God than to us and that He will work in their hearts and do things in them we could not even dream of if we allow Him to really be on the throne of our lives completely.

So in conclusion, let me quote Jesus who said, “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” We have found this verse to be true in our new life and Hillbrow and know that Jesus can be trusted!

To follow their story a little more closely, check out www.transforming.org.za or connect with Nigel on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/nigel.branken

[For the next inspiring story, with a similiar flavour, in this series on raising world changers, read this one on Lara Harler Lahr and family in Philly]