U Is For Unity

Unity is a word so often bounded around but with seemingly little meaning, and yet in the church context it's incredibly important.

One of my joys in church life is marveling at how seemingly disparate groups of people can be brought together through genuine love.

I'm not aware of any other aspect of life that can bring the unlikeliest people together for the good of themselves and their communities. Local church is amazing!

At Tree of Life we have South Africans, Angolan and Brits amongst us which makes for a great sense of diversity and I believe this reflects the nature of heaven.

T Is For Tree Of Life

Being part of Tree of Life is truly a privilege and a blessing. To be a part of the leadership team doubles that privilege and blessing!

I'm not going to repeat last year's post on Tree of Life but rather talk about the joys of the leadership team.

We're very blessed to serve alongside Gerrit & Sharon and Chris & Veronica, two quality couples with huge hearts for Jesus and the community.

S Is for Sundays

I love Sundays!  

When I first became a Christian many moons ago I loved church. The church I was involved with was a new plant so things were exciting and we were on the cutting edge of things.

Since then my love of church has waned to the absolute low of 2010.

Between 2004 and 2010 I used to joke that we lived in the most beautiful place on earth and had the worst church life possible. I guess it's true, for every action there's an equal and opposite re-action.

R Is For Resurrection

Our faith rests on this one fact; Jesus' resurrection from the dead. So much so that even Paul acknowledged in 1 Corinthians 15:14 that "if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith".

So are we wasting our time?

I would argue that no we're not wasting our time.

John's gospel account of Jesus death is quite clear that when the Romans pierced Jesus' side blood and water flowed out. Anyone with a modicum of medical knowledge knows that in death blood and water separate. So we know that Jesus was dead. Also, he's been brutally attacked in his run up to the actual Crucifixion which would have helped to hasten his death.

Q Is For Queen Size

This is totally unconnected to my theme but I was a bit stumped for this one and I really didn't want to steal yet another post from last year!

So Q is for Queen Size, as in bed.

Being a Brit I fully understand why a king size bed is smaller than a queen size bed and the reason makes a lot of sense. Traditionally the king's bed was a place of business, it had a perfunctory role. The queen's bed however was used by her for luxuriating in and being pampered, hence the size difference.

P Is For Pilate

I really enjoy the Coffee With Jesus cartoons from Radio Free Babylon and I especially like this one about Pontius Pilate.

I've always felt that Pilate got a bit of an unnecessarily unfair press for his role in Jesus' crucifixion.

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.