The Finnie family in Blighty, December 2021
Dean and Paula pastor The Gathering together
The Gathering
Baptisms at The Gathering
Preparing to serve at The Gathering's Soup Kitchen
Soup Kitchen Welcome To 2022 lunch
Serving hands - the heart of The Gatheirng
Thankful Thursdays.JPG)
HOPE Home Based Care Team
Gathering Ground
Staying fit as a family
The Helderberg - The prettiest of the mountains we face
At The Gathering we've been praying for numerical growth for so long that now that it's happening it seems a bit surreal, but we're incredibly in awe of our faithful prayer answering God.
As Mongezi opened our gathering we were already pretty much full, but as our gathering progressed we had to get more and more chairs out from the back so that everyone had somewhere to sit.
The mice come in through the shop next door's storeroom at the back, but they don't realise there's a problem because they have a cat which keeps the mice pretty invisible on their side.
Quite why the mice bother coming through to our premises, and what it is they find so exciting is a mystery as all our Soup Kitchen foodstuffs are in plastic tubs as is pretty much everything else, so the pickings for them are quite slim.
Despite this however, things are getting out of hand for both ourselves and for the launderette next door.
So this post is a rant for Coach Cris whose most recent fight was wrongly declared as a TKO win for his opponent.
Hold on tight because this is a disgraceful story in which certain players should hang their heads in shame...
The queue was one of the biggest we've ever seen and folk were patiently waiting from before 5pm knowing that we don't begin serving until 6pm.
As ever the vibe was very relaxed and despite waiting for quite a long time, everyone was very grateful for what they received.
I made 100 litres of Cream of Beef & Tomato soup for last night and though I say it myself it was rather good, and it certainly went down well with everyone because it was all gone in twenty minutes!
Sparring has to be one of the most fun things I've ever done.
It took quite a while from first stepping in to the boxing gym to stepping in to the boxing ring, but the minute I did I was hooked.
The very first time I stepped in to the ring was with Coach Cris who was very gentle and patient with me and helped me to control my temper, it's natural to get angry when you've been hit!
Paula went out and as she did so I was about to get in the shower when I heard a strange hissing noise. Initially I thought it was coming from her car, so I quickly threw my clothes back on and went out to check all was OK, but Paula had long gone, but what was that noise?!?
Respect is earnt goes the old adage, and whilst there's an element of truth in this, it also suggests that there's a time for disrespect, and I'm not so sure about that.
One of my proudest achievements as a Dad is to have raised two sons who understand the power and significance of respecting others, and I love that throughout their entire school careers we had endless comments from teachers about how respectful they both were. I've drilled my sons on respect and they know that respect is given, whether it is earnt or demanded is irrelevant.
They were first published in London in 1867, and were named after John Douglas the 9th Marquess of Queensbury as he publicly endorsed the code. However, a little known fact is that they were actually written by a Welsh sportsman named John Graham Chambers.
Prior to the adoption of the Queensbury Rules, boxing was covered by the London Prize Ring Rules and many of the rules first laid down within these are still in effect today. So rules forbidding the use of head-butting, gouging, scratching, kicking, biting or hitting a man whilst he's down were first listed in the London Prize Ring Rules. However these rules were superseded by the Queensbury Rules.
The most obvious piece of protective equipment is the boxer's gloves. These come in various sizes which are dictated by weight. Personally I like to use 16oz gloves, but for white collar boxing match (that will be my W post) gloves are normally 12oz.
At Knockout Centre (owned and run by Corné Blom a former MMA fighter) it's used to denote an open session on Saturday mornings, in which boxers can come and do their own workouts as well as spar with other willing members.
For me it's a new idea and one I really like and enjoy, especially the sparring aspect of it (that'll be my S post).
The Gathering was on fire this morning as we celebrated Christ's resurrection from the grave, a cold & hard historical fact.
The worship was awesome and it was a joy to share a word laid on my heart a few weeks ago about the three times Jesus spoke to his Father from the cross, as well as giving a clear gospel presentation for those that don't know Jesus yet.
The purpose of the neutral corners is to provide a space that a boxer can be sent to by the referee, for example whilst counting down a felled opponent.
The Gathering's weekly Soup Kitchen remains the highlight of my week.
Whilst it's always a calm and laid back affair in which the church is able to be incredibly generous to those that come for food, it's different every week and you can never fully be sure of what you might see or hear during the course of it.
Each week we get a never ending stream of tales and stories about why we should give someone more of this and someone else more of that...
I'll get this out of the way up top... I know for some this will be a controversial topic given Tyson's well publicised troubles outside (and even inside) of the ring, however for the purposes of this post I'm only looking at Tyson the boxer.
For me, Mike Tyson aka Iron Mike is the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time.
Sometimes our view on stuff is clouded/tinted by the generation in which we grew up, and I was a teenager in 1980 so the early/mid 80s were deeply influential in my life. By the time of Tyson's first televised fight in Feb 1986 I was 18 and very impressed by what I saw, and the rest of my early adult life was dominated by Tyson's burgeoning career in the ring as opponent after opponent got obliterated by him.
In my previous white collar fights I've been known as Pastor Punch as I dispense the five-fold ministry to my opponent.
I always found this quite an amusing play on Ephesians 4:11 "So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers" and the idea of 'give me 5', or rather giving my opponent five.
However, in view of my age and health issues, not least of which is a collapsed disc in my spine, if I do ever fight again I will be renaming myself as Dino The Lumbering Dinosaur.
Until recently we were part of the CEY family, but they needed the space for their growing Crossfit classes and the boxing side of things needed space to grow too, so it felt natural to separate the two out.
The biggest joy of now being in our own venue is that the boxing ring is back! At CEY the ring had to be sacrificed due to space demands so it's great to have it back.
Knockout Centre is the only gym in the Helderberg area with a proper boxing ring which speaks volumes about the quality of the place!
I always think one of the highlights of church is being linked with other churches and outreach projects, supporting and encouraging one another to do our best as we serve the poorest and most vulnerable in our communities.
So at The Gathering it has been a real joy to support two Soup Kitchens in Macassar with monthly food contributions.
I thought this was particularly apt for boxing, a sport which on the surface may appear to be one of brute aggression and the basest of instincts, but is a sport that in reality has parallels with chess. I've seen how brutal some of those chess players are!
Like many other folk I'm appalled by the illegal invasion of Ukraine by Russia and feel powerless to do anything, so I'm proud of my favourite band for joining with Andriy Khlyvnyuk of Boombox to raise funds for Ukraine.
The new track can be purchased here.
So this is H For Health - An Update...
Last year ended poorly from a health & fitness perspective. I already knew and accepted that between going on holiday in late September and hopefully flying to the UK for Christmas in late December I would be battling to keep the weight off, after all, what are holidays for if not a bit of indulgence...
Initially we only had the small punchbag, but a bit later we were able to get hold of a proper 50kg heavy punchbag and that made a world of difference to our home boxing sessions.
Whilst the Soup Kitchen itself passed off peacefully as usual, thank you LORD! It was chaotic outside with one of the local youngsters getting herself run over causing the driver to crash in to a parked car.
Amazingly the ambulance actually turned up (they rarely do in these communities!) followed by a fire engine (why?!?) and eventually a traffic cop showed up too.
The guard is arguably the most important part of the boxers game, given that the defence and attack all spring from a good guard.
There are several different guards which can be employed by a boxer, but a good boxer will employ more than one, if not all of them at some point during a fight.
Friday night is fight night - this used to be an exciting refrain to hear as a kid, and even now I find it quite exciting, though one rarely hears it.
At the tender age of just 54 I had my first real life experience of Fight Night as my boxing gym hosted an evening of White Collar (my W post) boxing.
My fight was with Conrad who became a good buddy and went on to be a great help to my son as he went to college to study sound engineering.
Anyway, back to fight night...
We had a great fight and though we were the lowest billed fight on the card that night, we were voted *Fight Of The Night* because we went heavy ad hard and really battered each other. It was a LOT of fun!
It has been said that boxing is the art of hitting without being hit. I can't find any attribution for this, but there is an element of truth about it.
It's easy to think of boxing as pure pugilism in which two opponents merely slug it out, hitting each other as hard as they can until one is knocked out. However, boxing is about the defense just as much as it is about the offense.
Jim over on Missionary-Blogs.com has featured Facing The Mountain once again.
This time we're part of his Awesome God in Amazing Africa post on the Missionary Blog Watch page of the website, where Jim picks up on our post: Savouring Every Last Drop, a short post as Jim describes it "Just a little simple post of thanksgiving!".
I do try and focus on the blessings as much as possible on the blog and this particular Soup Kitchen was a tremendous blessing to us as well as to our regulars.
It's always humbling and a privilege to have any of our posts picked up and shared by others, so thanks Jim!
My Dad was, is, and always will be my true hero!
Dad, born Donald Coutts Finnie in 1929 sadly died in 1984 (I was just 18) after a long battle against MS.
I won't bore you with the long story, but in a nutshell... when I was 2 (my two brothers were 4 & newborn) we were taken in to local authority care after my Dad was imprisoned for beating up our mother's boyfriend. Sadly, due to health issues which were complicated by his MS, we never got to live with Dad again, but he used to regularly visit us in the children's home and later I would cycle to see him most weekends.
Anyway, my Dad instilled a love of boxing in me and I used to love looking at his trophies and hearing his stories, though he was most proud of his brothers, particularly Dave who was a notable professional middleweight contender in Scotland.
Thanks to the generosity of My Father's House, we were able to share with each of them: 25kgs of oats, 20kgs of maize meal, 2 boxes of peanut pastes and 4 boxes of Easter eggs for the kids.
Cris is the real deal! Also known as The Warrior of Faith, he is a professional boxer and belt holder, he is currently holder of the World Boxing Federation (WBF) Welterweight International Champion. He also held the African Boxing Union Title (ABU) Champion which he successfully defended twice. Cris now coaches boxing for the love of the sport.
A bit of background: Cris is Angolan but lives in South Africa, he's part of the Angolan diaspora caused by the civil war in the country which eventually ended in 2002. He arrived in SA as a youngster and now resides here permanently. Cris started boxing in Luanda aged 15 as a distraction from the gangs he was involved with and his passion was sealed.
It was such a blessing to have Shaddie & Liza from My Father's House ministering to The Gathering this morning.As ever Shaddie was on fire and was stirred to share a specific word with two different members of church as well as having a word based on Daniel 3 for The Gathering.
This word fit perfectly with what God has been saying about the purchase of the building and it really stirred the hearts and faith of all our members.
Following our prayerletter which we sent out yesterday and which can be read here, we want to explain a little more, give a bit more info to the background and answer a few questions...
At The Gathering we have never wanted a building for the sake of having a building, rather, we have always wanted a venue from which we can serve the local community from Monday to Saturday with Sunday Gatherings being merely the cherry on the cake.
The first record (or physical depiction) of boxing comes from around 3000BC in Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq). Since then there have been other notable ancient depictions of boxing and in 1650BC we have the first depiction of Boxing in front of spectators, dating back to Thebes in ancient Egypt.
The first illustration of boxers with gloves was seen on a fresco from the Minoan civilization dating back to the Bronze Age in Crete c1650BC.
The modern day sport of boxing as we would recognise it has some seriously dodgy roots and was pretty much outlawed within what we would know as *civilized society* through most of the 19th Century. In America, boxing's roots are directly traceable to the illicit world of gambling and casinos.
As I said in my Theme Reveal post, I'll be looking at my A To Z of Boxing.
This isn't a definitive A to Z of boxing, rather it's an A to Z of my journey in boxing and my love of the sport, which was instilled by my Dad, himself a keen amateur boxer in his day, but more of him later in the month...
It also helps that the scenery is stunning and each ride is different. One never knows what one might see, be it the feral horses roaming freely or the cattle wandering aimlessly around the village grazing on some of the best kept gardens in the Western Cape.
It's certainly never dull here!
Initially there was broad support for the lockdown despite the fact that before it started there had been no local Covid related deaths and infection rates were minimal.
However, not all things are equal.
Dean seems to be getting away with the lightest symptoms, Paula's definitely the worst and then some, whilst Joel is just really fed up with not being able to go to work.
For the first time since South Africa entered its 21 day lockdown two years ago, The Gathering has had to close its weekly Soup Kitchen because a few of us are ill with Covid.
We've done our best to ensure that word is out, especially amongst the Macassar folk to save them the walk for food later.
There's little worse than seeing our church venue locked up with no sign of life, especially when we make such an effort to be open as much as possible so community members know where they can find The Gathering when they need us.
Either way I know we're both feeling a bit rubbish, so it was nice to have a delicious Dirty Mac & Cheese with steamed broccoli for dinner, even if Paula couldn't taste it.
As a church we are fully committed to the working out of the priesthood of all believers (1 Peter 2:5), so this morning we gave over our Gathering to a Seven Minute Challenge in which we allow members the opportunity to share God's word for up to seven minutes.
This morning Gloria, Linda and Leilani rose to the challenge. Each of them were diligent and faithful in their preparation and spoke with immense authority.
I'm not sure why, but for some reason somewhere along the line we seem to have stopped taking time out just for ourselves.
Sure we go out for dinner once a week and chat over a good meal & a drink, but that just being together for the sake of being together that we are all so good at when we're dating or courting just seems to have got lost along the way.
Paula wrote the following on Facebook and I can't say it any better:
"Happy 19th birthday to you Joel, our amazing miracle child! You have blown Dad and I away from the moment we knew about you. Today I celebrate you. You are thoughtful and kind, strong and courageous, an overcomer, wise and brave. I love that you are living a life of purpose, running hard after the things of God and unafraid of what people might think. Dream big and fly my boy, this dark world needs you! I love you forever and always."
Once again we prepared 100 litres of delicious homemade Cream of Chicken Soup, only this time it had a slight Cape Malay curried edge to it which went down a storm.
The Gathering has been running the weekly Soup Kitchen for so many years now that we really shouldn't be surprised that yet again it was a really chilled vibe with lots of thanks and gratitude for the church's generosity in making sure everyone had their fill with plenty to take away too.
However, every week we remain incredibly thankful to God for the peace and calm that pervades the Soup Kitchen.
Thank you LORD!
I do believe that in leading The Gathering Paula & I are privileged and blessed to be leading something quite exceptional.
This is not a boastful post, but rather a celebration of church and how The Gathering is (in my view) a quite excellent church.
Many will speak of the priesthood of all believers (1 Peter 2:5) but few seem to allow it to flourish in the day to day reality of church life, but it's something that has always been a bit of a defining edge to our ministry.
There are a number of factors that have limited my time on my unicycles lately (laziness, the wind and a few other excuses...), so I decided it was time to stop making those excuses and just get back on with riding again.
So for the last couple of weeks I've been trying to crack off a couple of 10k rides on my Kris Holm 26er and generally I have managed it.
The joy of riding regularly is that I can feel my core getting a good workout which means that my back is less likely to cause me any grief, added to that the health benefits of regular exercise (as if Boxing 4 times a week wasn't enough!) and it's a win win.
South Africa has this ridiculous system called loadshedding in which the state monopoly power provider switches the electricity off at various points around the country for 2 hours at a time. Somehow they think it's all made more acceptable and manageable by having an actual schedule for this nonsense, but this schedule is adaptive depending on which particular stage of loadshedding we happen to be enjoying.
In my first Challenge (and last year's) I couldn't think of a theme so decided to keep things random, but this year, as in 2013 I have a theme. Hooray!
It was great to be able to spar at Boxing again this morning. It's been a long time since we've been able to do this, so it was good to be at it again.
It might seem like an odd thing to be doing and enjoying (especially at my age), but there is something very satisfying, I guess almost cathartic, in stepping in to the ring to hit (and be hit) by someone else, but it really is a lot of fun, especially knowing that you both chose to be there and are keeping things under control.
