Full immersion or sprinkling?

Getting wet at Winter Conference

I should have known it was trouble from the start.

The campsite in the Magaliesberg (a pretty rural area just north-west of Jo'burg) had a pool, and spanning it were three logs, each evenly spaced along the edge. All day, the logs sat there, beckoning people to showcase their balancing prowess. The blue waters ebbed benignly.

I already knew about these logs: we'd come out to the campsite a few week earlier to plan how to make use of the venues, and two of my fellow apprentices, Kylie and Kim both came to grief falling off the logs into the pool. I hadn't been sympathetic either, at the time.

But at the camp: with an audience, a bright winter sun, and giddy with self-confidence, I figured it was my time to shine. These logs were all about deceit. The span was maybe eight metres across over the water, and the first two or three were a piece of cake. But by the fourth metre, things started going wrong. The log started to shake, gradually at first, then outrageously. I knew the key was not to stop, so I tried a few more unsteady steps, but it was to no avail. I was gone.

The water was much, much colder than I'd expected. I should have known, really, considering the low-single figure morning temperatures, but I completely underestimated it. It was like knives, or that feeling of touching a metal telegraph pole on the coldest of winter days.

But I recovered. I went on to run a couple of seminars: one on sexuality for the gents, and one on interpreting film as a Christian. In fact, my encounter with the pool is really a poor lead-in to recounting our Winter Conference. It was a raging success: something like 55 students attended, and we spent three incredibly full days exploring the Scriptures on the topic of the cross.

Camp held plenty of amazing moments for me: in our main sessions we heard the testimonies of many of the students I've been working with for the past eighteen months, and hearing that I'd actually been able to play a key role in the spiritual growth of some of the guys was profoundly inspiring.

One man, Patrick, a biochemistry student from Gabon in central Africa, told of being introduced to Focus by his lecturer, a good friend of our, and then unfolded his spiritual journey: the frustration in Libreville, then a scholarship to France falling through, and finally ending up in Johannesburg where he met Christ. Through his ministry, something like ten of his friends have become connected to Focus and our church.

Or another young woman, Lelethu, a first-year from the Eastern Cape province, talked about coming to faith in a small town where being a young person and a Christian was unthinkable, but then coming to Jo'burg and finding a whole community of Christian peers who have become a new family to her.

And so it went, story after story of God in action.

The evening service is back

Airtime, our evening service, returned after the holidays - because the congregation is ninety percent students we take a break when they return home - and I preached the first week, on the Christian's response to and role in renewing the culture, from Isaiah 60. I found the whole thing pretty challenging, and I still get a pretty serious case of nerves every time that I preach (some, no doubt, as a result of a desire to preach clearly and faithfully, and some from the less admirable desire to look good and be the next Tim Keller.)

I'm growing as a teacher, but the more I learn about biblical teaching and doing it well - in a way that really illuminates the Scriptures for your hearers - the more difficult I find it.

Thembalethu

Thembalethu continues to challenge and stretch me. I've found the ministry more difficult lately. Homeless youth are a difficult group to have heaps of glowing success stories with: their situations rise from deep-rooted and multifaceted, from dysfunctional families as well as some of the giants that face South African society, like massive unemployment and HIV/Aids. Thembalethu as an NGO is still young, and we're still working out what we need to be doing, and how to do it. Sometimes I feel that we're making progress structurally, and sometimes I'm less convinced.

But there's been some exciting developments in the last few weeks: we now have a nurse coming weekly to help with medical issues, and we've deepened our partnership with an evangelistic ministry called Sports in Action. We've formed a football team, Thembalethu Stars FC, and Sports in Action is providing resources and has been organising fixtures -- this Sunday the Stars will be playing in Brits, a town in the North West.

But the streets of Jo'burg are always stalked by tragedy. I just got back from the mortuary this afternoon - one of the homeless guys was murdered in the early hours of Saturday morning, but only today did someone come forward who knew his family. We found the investigating officer at the police station, and headed over to the mortuary to identify his body. We needed to get there quickly, so that we could get some breathing space for his family to get here from the Free State before the state gave him a pauper's burial. We got there too late to formally identify him today - we'll formalise it tomorrow - but we did see a picture of his body, his stab wounds obvious. His name was Lucky.

We stepped out of the mortuary afterwards into the afternoon light and prayed there on the street. Sometimes I find it hard to know where God is in this city, but the cool breeze and the radiant blue sky reminded me that he is still there, and that he is still good, despite all the contradictions.

in Christ,

Andrew