O Is For Oom Paul

Oom Paul is a great man!

At 86 there's not much in life he hasn't seen and having been married to Molly for a little over 60 years with loads of children, grandchildren and great grandchildren there isn't much he hasn't done.

I've had the privilege of sitting with Oom Paul on a few occasions and consider him to be my very own Nelson Mandela.  I've never met Madiba and am highly unlikely to ever have the chance to, but sitting with someone like Oom Paul is just as great a privilege!

N Is For Names Of God

You can choose which name of God you like the most, for me I like Father.

I had a dream through my childhood that one day I would live with my dad but I was robbed of this dream at 18. Thankfully shortly after my dad died I was introduced to my heavenly father and now my dream has been fulfilled more than I could ever have hoped for.

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This post is part of a series in the Blogging From A To Z Challenge, April 2013.

M Is For Macassar

M is for Macassar

I wrote a post on Macassar last year and rather than steal yet another post from last year's challenge I thought I'd have a go at writing something a bit different.

We still serve Tree of Life church in Macassar and spend a lot of our time in the community and we still love it! So in that regard nothing has changed and as a church we are still passionate about winning the community for Christ.

Tree of Life meets on Sundays at Macassar High school so it seems appropriate to focus on education in Macassar.

Education is generally a bit of a hot potato in South Africa and nowhere are the difficulties more pronounced than in Macassar.

L Is For Life

L is for life and abundant life at that! John 10:10 "I came that they may have life and have it abundantly"

L could also be for the person I'm blogging about and it could also be for Lady because she is a remarkable lady. I guess I should also count this post as part of my Heroes Of The Faith series.

L is an amazing lady! She has two sons, both at high school, she's a hairdresser and lives with her mother. all quite unremarkable, but that's one of the things I love about the true heroes in life.

K Is For Kingdom

Here's a question for all church leaders...

Are you kingdom building or empire building?

Jesus spoke of the Kingdom of God 116 times across the four gospels, so it was obviously an important part of his message. Much of what we do in church is about building and extending the kingdom for His glory. Sadly this sometimes goes awry.

J Is For Jesus

I make no apologies in stating that as far as I'm concerned it's all about Jesus.

Whilst there seems to be a growing fashion to remove Jesus from church as certain leaders gain celebrity status I have to say that for me and Tree of Life Church, Jesus is and will remain central to all that we do.

Lecture over!

I Is For Indecision

I is for Indecision though arguably it should be for Déjà vu.

I couldn't come up with anything for I so I'll go away and hope that J might come along to rescue me.

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This post is part of a series in the Blogging From A To Z Challenge, April 2013.

This is a stolen /plagarised post from last year's challenge.

H Is For History

I'm taking a break from my theme to look at a hot news topic.

Margret Thatcher Dies

I'm not going to rejoice or gloat in her death (I've probably already said too much on Facebook and will no doubt get into trouble for this post) but neither will I mourn her passing. She was a deeply divisive politician and depending on your political persuasion she's either the saviour of the UK or the devil incarnate.

G Is For Grace, God & Go

"There but for the grace of God go I" 

This is a quote attributed to John Bradford (1510-1555), an evangelical preacher and prebendery of St. Paul's cathedral. Though there is no actual evidence to support this attribution I'm sticking with it because it's so fitting given that he is said to spoken these words whilst he was in prison.

The story goes that one day as he was looking out of a window in the Tower of London he saw another poor soul being lead to his execution and uttered this now immortal phrase which has subsequently been used and abused to the point that it has entered the common vernacular of many cultures and languages around the world.

F Is For Fellowship

I've always found fellowship to be a bit of an odd word, preferring instead to talk about friendship. However in church circles it doesn't always work.

Fellowship is about sharing similar interests, ideals, or experiences which is pretty much what we do when we're with fellow Christians.

E Is For Ecumenical

Ooh, that's a big word!

One of the joys we've had in our many years in mission and leadership is that we've never really behaved as we should have. I'm not saying we were naughty or doing things we shouldn't have but rather I'm referring to the fact that we've never really gone to the churches we were expected to.