We would love to have your Two Cents…

Two Cents is the blog associated with Common Change, the non-profit that tbV and myself work for. It is a blog site which we are hoping till become a hub for conversations, dialogue and media sharings on the theme of where FAITH intersects with ECONOMICS [with a healthy measure of JUSTICE added in] and it is starting to gain momentum. Here are a selection of some of the top articles from the last couple of weeks that people have been particularly interested in. We would love for you to pick one [or all of them] and go and read it and leave your thoughts [your two cents?] in the comments section…

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http://twocents.co/features/the-amish-and-economic-innovation

‘What can we learn from this case study about finding imaginative and innovative ways to stay true to our own principles in the modern economy?’

http://twocents.co/articles/moving-from-a-minimum-wage-to-a-living-wage

‘The principles and foundations Nigel expresses have deep significance across geographic contexts. What does it mean to pay a living wage in our context? What will paying a living wage “cost” you and what are the potential effects doing so will have on the individuals and societies you find yourself engaged in? Is it worth “finding a bargain” on wages that impact people’s ability to live?’

http://twocents.co/articles/a-pontiff-for-the-poor-is-there-any-other-kind

‘In his short tenure, Pope Francis has redefined and breathed life into the papal office. As a result, a office that many saw as dead and irrelevant; is now brimming with life. While we at Two Cents applaud much of what he has done, we are especially interested in how he views the intersection of faith and economics.’ 

http://twocents.co/features/the-liturgy-of-abundance-and-the-myth-of-scarcity

‘Can we, like Jesus, imagine a new reality, an economy of enough, a liturgy of abundance? “When the disciples, charged with feeding the hungry crowd [as told in Mark’s gospel] found a child with five loaves and two fishes, Jesus took, blessed ,broke and gave the bread. These are the four decisive verbs of our sacramental existence. ” But our taking, blessing, breaking and giving – our sacramental expression of our fundamental belief in “creation infused with the Creator’s generosity” and our call to express this same open-handedness to our neighbors – cannot exist if we continue to believe in the myth of scarcity. With that all we can do is  hoard, profane, accumulate and keep to ourselves the richness of God’s abundance.’

http://twocents.co/features/the-not-so-simple-life

Below are three points I want to remember as I attempt to gouge entitlement out of my own life. I suspect, like pulling weeds, it’s going to be a life-long exercise:

1. I have enough.

2. People matter most.

3. God simplified.

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So there you have it – just a glimpse of what we are trying to do at Two Cents and we would love for you to get involved which you can do in a number of ways:

[1] Visit the site, read the articles, comment on them – share them with people who you know that you think they will resonate with.

[2] Send me articles/videos that you feel are relevant to the theme of where FAITH meets ECONOMICS [with a generous helping of JUSTICE] – I won’t be able to use all the ones I get but if you find something that is particularly challenging or encouraging then please email it to brett@commonchange.com and give me the option of using it.

[3] Suggest a writer – if you know someone that writes well on that theme who might be up to writing an original piece for the site, please send them my way.

[4] Volunteer – we are looking for a team of 10 to 20 people who will donate an hour or two a week to Common Change by committing to visiting Two Cents a few times a week and commenting on at least one but preferably two of the new articles we post. If this sounds like something you’d be up for or if you know someone who has a passion for this theme of stuff then email me at brett@commonchange.com and sign up.

Part 3 of the Andersons next journey – the excitement of support

this is also my 800th blog post altho that is completely irrelevant but a nice round number nonetheless…

so if you are reading this, then by now you know that myself and tbV are heading to Oakland, California to work with Common Change, and you also probably have some idea of what our specific roles with CC look like, and so the last thing i want to comment on is the support aspect.

Val and i have different opinions on the raising support aspect of the work we are about to do altho neither of us are particular fans and if there was another way of doing this particular next part of our life journey, then we would have probably jumped at it. But there wasn’t and so it quickly became a reality that if we were going to do this it would require that and so we breathed deeply and went ahead with it.

How it is going to work is that Common Change is going to be covering our accommodation costs and so we had to take care of our flights [done, thankx to an uberly generous gift from a good friend] and our month to month expenses which we have estimated [food, transport etc] as roughly $1000 per month [or close to R9000]. So that is the monthly support we have been seeking from friends to cover the 18 months we will be working with Common Change starting in March. The one aspect of the support raising that we were both happy with is that it is for a set time – so we have asked people to get involved for 18 months and then it is done.

At the point of this going to [word] press [yes, i did that!] we are sitting at about 50% of what we need and the idea was that we would wait til we hit 60% before i book my flight and trust for the rest to come in after that. We did have a proviso that if the 60% doesn’t come in before the 20 March that Val would fly home and we’d start looking at a plan B as neither of us were particularly amped about being on different continents for too much longer.

So the money side of things is a practical need, but the support part that Val and i are both super excited about is the idea of people journeying with us on this mission. So we are building up a support base ranging from people who want to receive the monthly newsletter we will be putting out, to those who are committing to keep us in prayer for this time and then those who are committing financially to the journey. At the moment we have over 50 people who have stuck their hands up and said “We want to be part of this with you!” And that feels like a really good thing.

The idea behind Relational Tithe and Common change feels like a really great one and we have seen it work really well in a number of peoples lives and so the connectedness with people from back home in South Africa also means that there is opportunity for the idea to take root in different wants here and start affecting our country more directly. I have already had one person who has expressed interest in starting something like that or being part of a group here and we are excited about the potential of a group of people trying it out in the South African context [there is a Caribbean cluster that meets in Cuba and has been a very successful part of RT so we believe it can work!]

So there you have it – a deeper glimpse into the journey that Brett and Val are about to start [officially in two days time, Val from Oakland and me from here til i get there!] and if you would like to be a part of that journey in any of the three ways mentioned then please drop me an email at brettfish@hotmail.com and i can add you to the newsletter list.

thank you. [and you and you!]

so as tbV and i are nearing the end of our time here at the Simple Way in Philadelphia, Americaland, we have had to focus a lot on looking forwards at the exciting times and opportunities that lie ahead, but i also want to be mindful of taking some time to look back – there is a lot to be grateful for…

there is a saying that ‘God owns the cattle on a thousand hills’ but i would go one further and add that for the most part He seems to have placed that cattle in other peoples possession and without a bunch of generous people coming on board, we would have really struggled to make it here as relatively easy as we did.

december 2010: having alerted the church where i worked almost a year previously as to my intentions, i resigned after 6 years at the Stellenbosch Vineyard church and Val and i were obedient to what i had strongly felt God telling us in terms of waiting on Him for the next move… for Val is was a huger step of faith in a sense as she had not heard from God but had to trust that i had. So we started 2011 with not too much money and relatively no income.

waiting on God for the next steps can be a daunting thing, especially when you have no income and it is not as if expenses have dried up – we still were renting an apartment and paying for petrol [that’s gas for you Americaners] and trying to eat on occasion. Val was finishing her Masters thesis and apart from some tiny TheatreSports show income [altho to be honest, petrol to the show usually exceeded money from the show so that was never likely to send us overseas] and then later some dictation work we did, there was not a lot coming in. i was salaried for January and then nothing.

and when you start writing lists of people to thank, you will always leave out some key people, but there are some names i do want to mention that stand out and trust that if you did not get a mention it is just because it is early morning as i type this and for a minute you slipped my mind – we are completely grateful for anyone and everyone who helped in various ways.

Tim van de Venter is one who comes to mind who ‘randomly’ during one of the months we didn’t have salary, called us up and told us God had told him to pay a month of our rent. That was the only time that happened in a couple of months of not having rent and it turned out it was the one time e really needed it. i do remember a specific time [and think there were more] of needing to pay something on the Friday and knowing we didn’t have enough in the bank and going online when i got home to find someone had mysteriously deposited just what we needed in our account.

my friend and ex youth guy Steve Legendwood and his wife Anne totally blew us away with a gift from London that far exceeded ‘hey, here’s a nice little gift’ proportions, at a time when we really needed to buy air tickets to get over to Americaland.

one of the faceless [to me, i’m pretty sure he has a face] recipients of the weekly ‘Thort for the Week’ messages i used to send out weekly, a man named William Bates,  suddenly appeared out of nowhere and decided to start blessing Val and i with R500 in our bank account every month for a year [and i am pretty sure that year ended a while back, while the support didn’t]

shortly after we got here, an old family friend who i had not seen for probably ten years or so, Lisa Pieterse and her husband Jacques, started sponsoring Val and myself a generous amount per month to be used specifically for date night money, which was an incredible way to give us a gift [as we were able to use it solely for that without feeling guilty or as if we should be spending it elsewhere] and so it was really great when we got to host them between midnight and i think 4am one night as they had a Philly stopover on the airport and catch up and meet them for the first time.

my buddy Duncan and his wife Megs and young son Connor ‘What’s that?’ Houston [of the clan Houston] who invited me and Val into their home for the last week or ten days before we left South Africa [despite my housesitting reputation of setting off pretty much every single alarm in any house i have ever housesat and, sure enough, at something like 1am the one morning…] and have just been crazy generous in a lot of other ways as recently as lending the money [that we have coming in from tax back home but don’t have yet] to be able to buy a ticket so i can fly home and once again daring to have us stay with them once more.

our friend Naomi Brooks from Scotland but really Stellenbosch and now Scotland again, who has been uberly generous in all kinds of ways and manners since we have known her, but particularly for opening her flat to us before we left and then keeping us supplied with cards and letters and chocolate stash and gifts while we have been here – there are still not many things that beat receiving fun mail in the post that you can hold [and eat!]

and then those who i lovingly refer to as ‘My Top Deck crew’ and my, there are a lot of you… a few years ago i was awakened to the horrors of ‘Americaland chocolate’ in the form of something called Hershey’s [which is not chocolate – i hate to use the word ‘vomit’ so i cannot tell you what i honestly think of it, but it is bad] and while there are some saving graces in products like Dove and Ghirardelli [and the free ball they give you every time you visit a Lindt shop!] that do exist over here, nothing Tops the Deck and at times the generous donations from friends and family back home have really lifted me emotionally and given me strength to face another day, moment or challenge. after years of research back home it was shown that melted Top Deck, accompanied on occasion by melted Smartie Eggs, is at the top of the chocolate food chain. for some reason ‘left in the sun’ [and drunk from the bag] beats out ‘nuked in nukrowave’ in quality of taste and experience, but both are great. so THANK YOU – you know who yous are.

as i said, there were more people and occasions than i can possibly remember – i just felt it important to highlight a few [and special mention must go to Dreadlocked Mike and formerly Emo Kev who took hours out to start off my dreadlocks a day or two before we flew over here, and my beautiful wife for setting that up] in terms of letting you all know how grateful and thankful we are for the provision of God’s cattle, whether directly from Him [and we had the sense of those times] or indirectly through people in many ways, shapes and forms – we literally, figuratively and metaphorically could not have done it without you.

we have met so many generous and loving people here as well and give much thankx to the friendships and encounters and experiences and hospitality God has placed in our paths and a special mention must go to our friend Jon Butcher, who within a week or so of knowing me had offered to buy me a new laptop in place of my ailing one and who introduced us to some really cool friends and had some great hanging out times.

we love and appreciate and thank God for you all and for the hundreds or maybe even thousands of you who have stayed in touch and been praying and taken time to find out how we are doing and those who have visited or skyped or written… thank you, thank you, thank YOU! we have felt extremely loved. and supported.

 

Weekly Writing Challenge: Mail it In

dear nigerian widow

firstly, thank you. your mail came as a huge surprise to me. i really appreciated you writing the entire correspondence in caps as my eyesight is not what it used to be. having it all condensed together in one run-one-line paragraph saved me a lot of time while conveying the urgency of your news and the need for me to act quickly on it.

your husband [what was his name again?] and i had not been in communication for i do not know how many years and so hearing of his sudden death of course caused me to have to take a moment and reflect on the brevity of life and the fact that before you can even really hardly get to know someone at all really, at all, they can be gone and you will never get that opportunity back to maybe get to know someone you have maybe not yet gotten to know, yet.

congratulations seem a little late, and possibly insensitive, but to have married someone who has so quickly risen to the rank of general in his country is not something to be sniffed at, especially at this time of his sudden passing, but i trust you had some valuable time together and had opportunity to enjoy it with him for a season.

i also really appreciate the fact that in the midst of the turmoil that your country seems to currently be in, that is restricting your ability to get yourself or your money safely out of the country, that you had the time and sensitivity to contact me and be thinking so strongly about someone other than yourself.

when i saw the sum of money you were wanting to transfer into my account i really had to double take as i was not aware that such large numbers even existed and had to google the amount of zeros simply to find out how to accurately share with my friends and family how much i was going to receive.

mrs widow, this is where i must just pause and express my genuine affection and how your mail deeply moved me. you see, i have been struggling with low self-esteem of late, due to some challenges in my personal and work environments. so when you mailed to say that you viewed me as a trustworthy and reliable person [or company] who will “kindly help us to accommodate and safeguard this fund into his account to save us from the calamities of the present clamp on her husbands bank accounts/assets all over the world,” well i just burst straight into tears.

thank YOU, mrs general [what was his name again?]’s widow. or maybe i can express my feelings with more meaning by saying THANK YOU. AFTER ALL THESE YEARS OF STRUGGLE WITH WORK THREE JOBS JUST TO GET THE BILLS PAID AND TRIED AND MOVE OUT OF MY MOTHERS IS HOUSE IT IS SO SATISFYING AND JUBILATE TO KNOW THAT THE END IS NEAR. THEIR IS NO THING THAT CAN STAND BETWEEN ME AND MINE DREAMS NOW AND I HAVE YOU TO THANK AND LOOK FORWARD TO HELP YOU IN THIS MANNER THAT WILL SAFELY GET THIS MONEY INTO MY COUNTRY FOR YOU, FOR A SMALL PERCENTAGE IN RETURN.

if you could please email the specifics of the transaction to my primary email address [it should be in your husband’s inbox] we can speedily proceed with this matter further

yours sincerely
to whom it did concern

[title Weekly Writing Challenge: Mail it In]

Conversations 1: part poverty definition

my friend and bossman, Darin, shared some stuff on Saturday’s Simple Way Conversations day on the theme of stewarding your treasures [your money and things] well in the world we live in…

one really interesting thing he said which made me think was when he asked about the definition of poverty and said that often poverty has been defined as THE LACK OF STUFF? that’s true, right? i’m sure most of us would agree…

but then he turned it on it’s head – he looked at each of us in the room and said to us, what happened if after this meeting [bit of a parry-phrase happening here, don’t quota me by this] you got a couple of phone calls, telling you you had lost your job and there had been a fire at home which had burnt down the whole place including all your stuff and the bank called telling you that someone had gotten into your account and cleared out all your money and there is nothing you can do about it… and so within fifteen minutes of this meeting you had lost all your stuff..?

how long would it be before you had your next meal?

how long would it be before you found a place for you and your family to sleep for the night, or the next few weeks or months of nights?

how long before you found yourself a new job, whether back as a powerful executive in a company or serving coffee at the local Starbucks?

and the answer to each of those questions, and possibly some others, was not long at all…

so possibly the definition of POVERTY is not so much the LACK OF STUFF as it is the LACK OF FRIENDSHIP OR TOGETHERNESS

because that is how you would get your next meal, a place to stay, and your next job – through the people and network resources and connectivity you have…

certainly something to think about, especially when we try to solve POVERTY by simply GIVING PEOPLE STUFF… could it be there is another way?

to read some more about some difference between guilt and conviction, click here…

Conversations 1: part outgiving God

yesterday at the Simple Way we had our very first session of Conversations at the Simple Way which three of us had largely been working on pulling together for a while – 15 people signed up to hang out with us as we did a couple of different sessions including one on intentional community, a practical serving the community aspect, a story over lunch from someone in the neighborhood who is involved in doing some really life-giving stuff within Kensington, where we live, and a sharing and question time around a specific theme – this one being ‘how to serve God with your Time, Treasures and Talents’ – it really was a great day and a few lines of thort or concept struck me as different people were sharing and i wanted to be able to pass those on:

Coz is a friend of ours from Australia [i know!] and he shared a little about being a good steward of your Treasures [so money and things] and one thing he said which really stood out was that “You can’t outgive God!”

now, maybe to some of you that will seem like an obvious thing. But i think to many of us, and even perhaps a lot of us that ‘know’ it as ‘an obvious thing’ we often don’t really believe it. i mean, not really. Rather our picture of God [whether stated or not, and usually not] is that of this long-bearded fellow sitting on a cloud with his lightning bolt waiting for the second we step out of line so that He can absolutely nail us and make sure that we behave better [which is possibly why we as the church have ended up so often focusing on what we are against and trying to avoid than what we are for?

but it is so true that we cannot outgive God – God is so completely generous and Loving and kind and compassionate and opportunity-giving and the list just goes on… we just maybe need to realign our minds [and our actions] to the fact…

it reminded me of this passage in Luke 11:

“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

“Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

Coz spoke about it in terms of putting the focus on our giving. Trusting God and at times risking what might seem ridiculous in terms of being generous to others with the idea in mind that we cannot outgive God and so God will constantly supply our needs and how much more so if we have held loosely on to the things He has entrusted us with before. Those who are faithful with little will be entrusted with much.

How are you doing on the scale of generosity? [money yes, but also time and things and energy] And would it help you to be a little more generous if you truly believed that you had an uber generous God watching over you?

to read about “no technology time” head over here…

new year’s evolutions to consider part iv [spending time, money, energy]

continuing with this series of new year’s evolutions – with the idea of moving beyond a dream list of ‘i wish this for next year’ to some specific steps and actions to put into place to help you transform yourself into a better person in 2012. and my next evolution suggestion is this:

SPEND YOUR MONEY [AND TIME AND ENERGY] WELL:

this one follows on from yesterday’s live in the present (with the future in mind) and it’s about being intentional with your resources…

hebrews 12.1 speaks about throwing off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles and run with perseverance the race marked out for you. while it will be good to deal with any ongoing sin that is tripping you up, another area to look at in terms of having a more effective year, is those things in your life which hinder you from living well.

the three areas i’ve mentioned are the three foundations of resources you have available to you and it is worth taking some time to think about how you spend each one of these – your time, money and energy

# TIME – how much time do you waste in procrastionary activities, whether it be silly facebook games or vegging in front of the tv for hours or googling japanese game shows… things that are not necessarily bad in themselves can become bad if you take too much time on them [we’ve been on holiday for a week and so i’ve been playing a bunch of mindless facebook games to pass time and refresh, but last nite i did a big delete as we head back to work tomorrow and i need to cut out unnecessary distractions] and so it’s good to regularly take a look at how you spend time during the week and make sure you are using it well. how much of your time do you spend in acts of service to others? discipleship, ministry, reaching out to ‘the least of these’? is there a change you need to make in how you use your time in 2012?

# MONEY – saw this quote by Tim Keller [author of ‘Generous Justice’ which is a great read and also the marriage book that tbV and i are currently working through together] this morning – “Christians should be pressing to keep their costs as low as possible so they can give as much as possible.” – i find that if you are not aware of how you spend your money, then it can very quickly get away from you in terms of being wasted on unnecessary things [takeaway coffees, eating out too much, junk food] when you could be using it creatively on significant things. the concept of tithing is an important one where you take a percentage of your money and set it aside before you spend the rest on yourself and your needs and wants. how much of your money do you spend on others? if you got one less cup of coffee this week, ate out one time less, watched one less movie, bought one less game, how could you use that money to benefit someone else? is there a change you need to make in how you use your money in 2012?

# ENERGY – this is closely linked to time so i will just leave you with the same questions and invite you to take some time to look at this area of your life as well. how much of your energy is devoted to kingdom things? is there a change you need to make in how you use your energy in 2012?

another great quote i was reminded of again recently goes something like this – “he who dies with the most toys is still dead.” if you want to evolutionise in 2012 then make sure that you invest in people more than you invest in things [whether it’s job, toys, holiday houses, clothes…]. the currency of the kingdom of God is people and so it makes a lot more sense that we spend our energy, time and money on things related to people and not just on things…

spend your money [and time and energy] well in 2012.

to continue to the next evolution looking at community, head over here.