Pre-Update Release

In the next few weeks, I am hoping to have another video update out to everyone. Before that comes out, I wanted to give you a “teaser”.

As you have been reading and hearing about, I’ve established a very strategic partnership with a ministry called Pure Hope. This ministry is seeking to establish full time teams in communities around South Africa that develop holistic ministries that develop those communities. This involves education, leadership training, life skills training, etc… The partnership is really taking off as we’ve been working this year, but looking into next year, we believe God may have lined up the right people to actually place a permanent team in the township of Mabopane.

The update coming out next month sometime will include footage of the area we’re going to be placing this team, as well as some shots of the pregnancy development! There may also be shots of a jumping castle in our backyard Keep an eye on your inbox for that update!

How Peyton Manning ministers to me…

I did something really great for my soul today.  I blocked out my schedule from 3-6 p.m. to get a pizza, a 2 liter of Coke (with some nice sweet cherry syrup) and watched the replay of Monday Night Football game on ESPN International.  That may sound pretty lame that this ministers to my soul, but if you’re from Indy, or just a Colts fan in general, you understand.  I needed that break today.  Life Compass has taken my schedule and basically doubled it.  But if you’ve followed my posts, you’d know I don’t just shut down… my mind keeps going, so here’s something I learned during the game as it relates to some things I’ve been working on.

1.  Teaching pools in churches are probably one of the best things a leader can implement.  I know that many leaders want to hold onto that spot because it’s their prime time to stand before a congregation and give words of direction.  But tonight was a good example of this.  One of the things I’ve been working on is forming an environment where we could transplant Nieu Communities discipleship stuff into local churches.  I had invited a guy, Nick (a theology student at TUKS) to help me in that process some (along with my friend Chris who is an apprentice this year).  Nick has a style very different from mine, and having him in this teaching pool with me gives the church an angle on scripture that is uniquely communicated.
Peyton sort of has his own teaching pool going on (too bad the defense isn’t part of it… wow they’re bad!).  He creates environments on the field for each teammate to shine.  Did you see the last touchdown with that 1st year wide receiver?  PRIME example of a leader creating an opportunity to shine.

2.  Don’t wait for your team to live out your purpose.  Case in point, the Colts have hardly any defense.  Peyton had the ball for less than a quarter, but can score a touchdown in under 15 seconds.  Waiting for the defense to get their game plan going would have resulted in a loss for the organization.  Living out your calling without waiting gets your team down the field.  Granted, if the defense could just do something, I’d have more fingernails on my right hand right now!  For the sake of the kingdom, move and don’t wait.

3.  Watching football with junk food in hand is how God refills my tank.  I need to pay attention to that.  Thanks to the Reverend Manning for ministering to me in ways that are specific and refreshing.

oh… and whose in first place in the AFC South?  BOOOYEAH!!!!

Life Compass Week 1

I’m convinced more and more that our history will inform our future. God does not take us through seasons of life for no good reason. Life Compass (a 3 week process) just finished its first week. Here’s where we’ve been.

1. Everyone worked out a very in depth timeline by naming key people, events and achievements they have experienced. We named the painful moments and the highlighted moments. We saw how God was working.
2. We named how we’re wired (personality traits and spiritual gifts). We’re seeing how God shaped and formed those through our life.
3. Over the weekend, we wrote out the spiritual gifts, natural abilities others possess, and the personality traits we see in each individual doing the Life Compass process. This was done with the belief that those in our community, who see us living and working out our faith, can speak into this process. Tomorrow we share those things with each other and move towards understanding what God might be pointing us to do with our futures.

Everyone doing this process has been getting a lot out of it. Thank you all for your prayers during this, the most intensive but rewarding parts of our year!

Common Day Conversing

Today, I had to go to the Post Office for some Nieu Communities business stuff.  I say “had to” because going to the Post Office here is always a chore, but especially lately (see what’s been going on here).  The line to the counter came outside the building and to the curb.  But it worked out to be a really enlightening experience.

As everyone was standing around growing more and more frustrated, I entered into a “random” conversation.  The guy in front of me, Mike, is a coal miner somewhere near Witbank (a city about an hour from Pretoria).  He gave me quite an ear full of his life story, which was pretty intense, but also pretty revealing.  When he asked me what I did for a living, I told him about Nieu Communities.  Then I had an audience.

“What’s this about?  Are you like a pastor or something?  Why would you move your family to South Africa (undertones of ‘you’re a complete fool’ being spoken by his facial expression), etc…”  So a handful of us got into a conversation about the Church, Jesus, etc… it was pretty interesting to say the least.  On one side, there were very frustrated white guys and on the other side, very frustrated black guys.  The conversation on spiritual things was an informative one (them informing me) about how the church was during Apartheid.  Needless to say, there was some disagreement across the aisle.

I wonder how critical more of these kinds of conversations might be in South Africa.  Where the story is retold and sorted out together and a new South Africa emerges as a restored place.  I think there’s some health here, if orchestrated in culturally and personally sensitive ways.  I think people left the conversation with better perspectives, and after an hour in the que at the post office, I’d imagine they appreciated the meaningful conversation over the dull lull in the wait!

Here’s to more “random” conversations in our future, friends!  May the kingdom come in the post offices, the churches, and wherever else we might meet!

Pivotal Part of Our Year

Starting tomorrow and running for three weeks straight, we will be in the most intense part of our year.  We begin a process called “Life Compass”.  In my humble opinion, it’s the biggest strength of what we offer in Nieu Communities.

The Life Compass does an in depth analysis of events in a person’s life.  How have those events been used by God to shape them into who they are now?  It also pulls from personality and spiritual gifting tests to get a gauge on how people have been individually wired to respond to such events.  At the end of the time, individuals come away with a better sense of vision for their future.  The material pulls a lot from Robert Clinton’s work in “Making of a Leader”.

As we move ahead, we’d covet your prayers for everyone who is participating in this process.  God has used this tool in magnificent ways.  Many have left this process and gone on to do remarkable things in ministry with confidence.  We firmly believe God will continue to do what He has begun in the lives of everyone we’ve been working with this year.

4 Cities… or 4 different Countries?

We just got back from holiday in Cape Town.  This marks the 4th major South African city I’ve spent significant time in, though I’ve also been in some pretty small towns and what not as well.  All this to say, I have a few thoughts on mission here in South Africa that may seem a bit obvious, but I think need to be said.

When we were first getting ready to come to SA over a year ago, I had some conversations with people about what mission in South Africa would look like.  When I got here, it didn’t look like that exactly.  Then I visited some other sections (like the Cape Flats where the black and coloured communities were forced to move during Apartheid) and I understood what they meant.  Pretoria just doesn’t role the same way Cape Town, Durban, or Johannesburg role.  Things look, feel, smell, etc… way different EVERYWHERE.  There’s just not a cookie cutter approach to mission here (is there really one for any town on the globe?).

This post goes along with another one I posted a while back on focus.  Look, there’s a LOT of need in South Africa.  AIDS is killing a generation.  Poverty rules the lives of millions.  Rape is a common place headline in every major city’s newspaper.  It’s hard reality.  But how we address each need is neighborhood specific, and we need to get strategic in how we’re addressing specific community needs.  On top of that, I’m not convinced that every organization can really do all things to end all problems in a neighborhood.  We’re going to get stronger when we do those things we’re set up to do… really well.

So networking becomes pretty important then.  We’ve met a lot of people that are much better at addressing human trafficking that we are.  So we’re working with them on how to support what they’re doing without sacrificing what God’s called us here for specifically.  Same thing with the AIDS crisis.  We have a sister ministry in one of the townships doing incredible work dealing with the AIDS crisis.  And they’re licensed and qualified to do what they do!

It’s time to pull together the business people, the medical people, the social service people, and the local church people to collectively develop communities of hope here.  I think there’s a lot of that going on now… So how do we multiply those kinds of things all throughout our area and our country?

The Failed Dolphin Rescue

This was too good to wait until we got back to Pretoria and post. The other day, we took the kids to to Cape Point. In the park, there are tons of things to see… views you can’t really capture with photography. One of the spots that blew my mind was Cape of Good Hope. It’s rocky shores with massive waves crashing in captured my heart and reminded me why God gives us vacations. Then something incredibly sad but adrenaline giving happened.

From a distance, I saw some tourists from Singapore running to the water. When I looked over, I thought I saw a shark snapping at them. In utter disbelief (as in, why would ANYONE run TOWARDS a shark), I got closer to see what was going on. At a closer look, what I found was incredibly sad. A dolphin had been injured out at sea, and was swept up into the rocky shore line. I ran to help the other tourists, and in a few failed attempts, we just weren’t able to lift it over the massive boulders it had gotten caught up in. As the dolphin blew its last breath out, we looked out and saw how badly beaten she had been and realized there really was no hope even if we had gotten her off the boulder she was stuck in. The shore line would never have allowed it.

There’s a lot of spiritual stuff you could pull from this. But right now, it’s just a sad… albeit highly random story (me and a handful of tourists from Singapore in Cape Town trying to rescue a wild dolphin? How many people can tell THAT story?).

Off to Cape Town

Starting on Tuesday, the family will be turning it off and heading to Cape Town for 9 days. It’s a much overdue vacation for us coming off a very intense year so far. The timing is pretty amazing as well…
-Joe has the whole week of Labor Day off, so we can literally shut it down that whole time.
-When we get back, Nieu Communities starts a very intensive month called the “Life Compass” where we walk back through and evaluate God’s vision for our individual lives. (all of the staff are going to be going through it again this year it looks like… great tool as we look to realign NC in South Africa)
-After the Life Compass process, our boss Rob will be coming back to begin looking to what our future holds in South Africa.

Please be in prayer the next two months. The vacation will be a complete halt and rest building up into some pretty intense (though very exciting) conversations.

FYI – we will be offline from September 1-10th, and will most likely be taking some of the 11th-13th away from the computer (though I may sneak a few blog posts from my journal while we’re away). See you all on the other side!

Find Focus…Bring the Kingdom

There has been a theme in my life these past few weeks.  The theme of focus.  What are the important things, the strategic things, the wins of life?  When those things are unclear, we try a million things out and never really become competent on what we were designed for.

I find this is true in many genres of organizations as well.  We see the latest product making a major success, so we things get replicated.  Take Microsoft’s version of the iPod as an example (Zume).  It just never seemed to take off.  I wonder how many millions were lost in the endeavor to be all things?

But what if we recognized that we have specific things to offer the world, or simply, your market audience?  What if as an organization you were made to do one specific thing really great?  Well, I suppose you’d delegate the rest of the stuff you’re trying to add, or just drop it because it’s not important enough for who you are.  The same is true as an individual isn’t it?  How much of our week is made up of stuff that lacks an overall focus?

Focus brings the kingdom…specifically, tangibly, and accurately!  Find yours and may the kingdom come.

Pure Hope Update

A while ago, I told you about a group I’ve been entering into relationship with called Pure Hope.  Pure Hope works to develop teams of people for mission in specific locations around Pretoria.  The places they work are hard (the juvenile prison, inner city Pretoria, etc…).  I have been ultra privileged to work with them in providing some of the Nieu Communities preparation tools for their team, and I think our grand experiment is having a HUGE return on investment.  Let me tell you this brief story without giving out names.

One day during my time with the team, we got off the notes.  That’s usually a sign that the Holy Spirit is up to something.  One of the teammates began delving into the hard places of his heart with me.  When I say “hard places” I mean those very formative life experiences that have shaped who he is and where God might be taking him.  The conversation went on for about 75% of our time together and what blew my mind more was how the rest of the team came around him, cared for his heart in that moment and spoke deeply into his story.  THIS is the kind of formation we’re looking for.  THIS is how a team remains healthy long term.  This is exactly why we’re in South Africa.

This guy is going to be a leader among leaders.  God’s done so much inside of him and consistently (from what I can see) does so much through him at a really young age.  Please continue to pray for the Pure Hope team.  Our work together is still very new.  There are many kinks to be worked out, but we both believe that this partnership is the furthest thing from an accident.  Thanks so much for your ongoing support and prayer!