Last days in NY and first days in Jackson.

I’m sitting at David and Sheena’s kitchen table, pinning down all happened the last couple of days!  Still have to pinch myself every now and then to believe that we’re really in Jackson Mississippi of all places!  But let me recap:

Monday morning started with a final project presentation by Brandon Addison, planning to plant in Boulder, Colorado (www.theboulderproject.org).  It was great!   I must say that I’ve learned very much from the different projects from all over the world! 

After this we had a session on movement dynamics.  It so important when planting a church to keep in mind that it is God's working!  It’s the Holy Spirit who change people’s lives and that this is not something we can organize!  We can however make sure that the basic canals through which the Spirit work is in place.  That will be things like prevailing, corporate, kingdom centred prayer and gospel centred preaching and teaching.  Godly, humble, serving leaders also become instruments in God’s hands for his glory and the coming of his kingdom, but for this they must be open to the lead of the Holy Spirit through his Word.  They must especially not try to control what the Holy Spirit wants to do through other people and must keep a balance between organising the church and letting it be the organism that it is supposed to be.  To build movement dynamics into the core of your church also entails having the vision to be a church planting church, partnering with like-minded churches to further the kingdom of God in your city. 

After lunch we had time to prepare for our final session with Tim Keller.  Before each session we had the opportunity to work through our most prevalent questions for Tim and in the end choose the top ten or so.  The focus was on evangelistic preaching.  Great to hear his passion for this and got a lot of insight as to how we should go about it!

Monday evening we all went out to buy take away dinner and then came back to eat together at the City-to-City offices.  It was such a good time together and we will cherish this for a long time!

The last supper (with our new friends).

Tuesday was evaluation day!  John Thomson (who did most of the teaching during the 5 weeks) led us in this.  We had to pin down our most important insights on post-its.  It was so good to see what everyone has learned.  We also had the opportunity to give feedback on where we think they could improve, in the same way.  We ended the session by of writing words of affirmation for each other on big posters that they printed out for each of us.  This was very special. 

Then came the difficult part of greeting!  This lasted quite a while.  It was a special and life changing time together.  

Last day of the intensive.

Luckily we booked a trip on the Circle Line boat around Manhattan to look forward to in the afternoon.  This was a great experience! 

Circle Line boat cruise and Statue of Liberty.

Afterwards we took our first bus to Grand Central Station.  What a beautiful building, outside and inside!

Grand central station and the Chrysler building.

Grand central station.

Grand central station.

After we had some dinner it was back to our apartment to start packing! 

Wednesday was almost all pack and travel!  Left the apartment at 12:00 and landed in Jackson at around 18:00.  We had a brief stopover in Charlotte.  David came to pick us up from the airport and took us for our first Chick-Fil-A (www.chick-fil-a.com) dinner.  Very good!  (Interesting fact - this chain is owned by Christians and they are not open on a Sunday...)

The evening we spent time catching up with David and Sheena and also preparing for our presentation to the Missions Board, early Thursday morning.   

And that’s how Thursday started out:  Breakfast with some of the committee members and then the presentation.  We’re so grateful to say that it went well.  It was of course very good to have David there because he could anticipate questions that the people would have and asked these too help clarify where we were unclear.  They seem very excited and supportive of our plans and we were invited to go through the routine application process in the nearby future, as soon as we have our final budget. 

After the presentation David took us through the offices and sanctuary of First Presbyterian Church Jackson (www.fpcjackson.org).  It is quite impressive!  The congregation is about 3500 members strong with 10 full time ministers.  Every minister has a whole staff team.  They further house about 10 or so interns (students who are studying to become ministers).  It’s a big organization.  With a budget of more or less $4 000 000 of which they give away $1 000 000 to mission work all over the world!

Sean, David and Jason in the church building of First Presbyterian Church, Jackson.

The rest of the day we were in the hands of two of the interns, Sean and Jason, who took us all over Jackson.  We visited a couple of different neighbourhoods, had a great lunch at a local diner and ended our tour with the best milkshake I ever had, coming back from visiting the Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson. 

Lunch time.

We still had time for an afternoon nap and a nice stroll around the pond near the Strain’s house before dinner!

Joel, Jawé and Euan.

Jawé and Joel in deep conversation.

David is back now, so we’re going to have coffee and watch The Help (the movie plays off in Jackson and shows the diner where we had the great milkshakes!)

(Our flight back to South Africa is scheduled to arrive at Wednesday morning, 16 October.)

Our last weekend in New York

Friday, Thomas went to the sessions (on preaching) alone and Jawé and I spent the morning doing some school work.  All the wives of the church planters were invited to spend the afternoon with Shari Thomas (a church planter's wife but also the founder of Parakaleo (http://www.parakaleo.us/about.html) - a lifeline for church planting spouses.  It’s a ministry designed to provide ongoing training, coaching, and relational support to empower spouses for their vital role in kingdom work.)  It was a great afternoon of sharing and encouragement. 

The rest of the weekend was full of visiting and sightseeing...

Friday evening, we were invited to dinner with Naldus and Santie Pienaar.  (They are family of friends back home.)  Naldus drove all the way from Basking Ridge, New Jersey (about a 45 minute drive) to come and fetch us (and bring us back!)  We had lekker lasagne and Mrs. Balls chutney.  :-)  But the best part was just getting out of the city and having good conversations with what felt like friends - although we just met!

Saturday morning, we were on slow-go.  But we did manage to watch the rugby online.  Although we were disappointed that the Boks lost, we were still very Proudly South African in Jersey City!

Go Bokke!

After the rugby, we decided - on the spur of the moment - to treat ourselves to the Circle Line (a boat cruise around the whole of Manhattan).  Unfortunately, we missed the boat (long story) and traveled to the station of the Roosevelt Island Tram.  It's a cable way to Roosevelt Island.  Definitely a must do when you are in New York!

Roosevelt Island Tram.

Sunset from Roosevelt Island.

Then we traveled all the way to the Brooklyn side of the Brooklyn bridge and walked over to the Manhattan side.  We were too tired to go home for dinner, so Anton treated us to dinner on his last night with us in New York.  Another great day out!

Brooklyn Bridge.

Farewell dinner with Anton.

This morning (Sunday), Anton left to go back to SA and we went to Trinity Grace Church, Tribeca (http://tgctribeca.com/).  Another couple attending the Intensive (Brandon and Amy and little Aiden) was also there and we decided to have lunch together.  Jawé and Aiden had such a great time of playing together!

Trinity Grace Church, Tribeca.

Afterwards we visited the 9/11 Memorial.  It struck us that the 9/11 attacks did not only affect America, but actually the whole world, as people from 70 countries all over the world died in this tragedy.

9/11 Memorial.

9/11 Memorial.

We hung out in Battery Park for the rest of the afternoon until it was time for the Downtown Redeemer Church service...

Battery Park - Jersey City skyline in the back.

 

Connections, sessions, book launch and Sleepy Hollow.

“I don’t know how it got so big.”  This was Tim Keller’s words to me (Thomas) as we walked out of his office to the elevator and walked passed most of the staff.  When I looked at him I could see the earnestness in his eyes.  He has lots to boast in, humanly speaking, but he really sees himself as only an instrument in God’s hands. 

We really prayed for good connections and one of them came in the person of Moné Dye, a South-African lady who spent almost 8 years in New York but now lives in South-Africa.  While in New York, she became good friends with Tim and Kathy Keller.  Kathy invited me and Erna and One and Confidence Mokgatle (From LIGPUNT, Pretoria) to meet her.  She was back in New York for the UN meetings.  We had lunch together on Sunday after Church (as Erna told you already) and then met again for tee in Tim’s office on Monday afternoon.  It was so good to see South-Africa and the need for Gospel centred churches in South-Africa through Moné's and Andréa’s eyes.  They will be able to help us a lot when we are back home. Tim Keller joined us at the end of the conversation.  It was special. 

Another good connection that God provided, and which caused us to alter our traveling program, is the connection with our minister of years back, David Strain.  We mentioned this in a previous blog!  What we did not mention was the possibility of being invited by David’s church, First Presbyterian Church (www.fpcjackson.org), to come and present our plans with the possibility of getting financial support from them.  They indeed invited us and after discussing it with the leadership back home, we decided to go ahead with this trip.  We can’t but see God’s had in this opportunity.  This means another week in the States.  On the one hand we are grateful for this opportunity.  On the other hand we are really tired and missing home.  So please pray for us for the energy to serve God in this also.   

Monday morning sessions kicked off in Brooklyn.  We visited Jamison Galt and his church plant in Clinton hill, Brooklyn (www.resurrectionclintonhill.org).  This was once again a powerful experience; even more so because I attended the worship service 2 weeks before!  Jamison was very honest with us about the difficulties and challenges they are facing, about his personal struggles, about his personal accountability structures, about unmet expectations and also about God’s amazing grace and providence.

Resurrection Hill.

After an amazing Indian lunch, provided by the Indian church plant team (Jeyakaran, Mike and Stacy), we had time to prepare our questions for our Tim Keller session.  We had a powerful session with him about preaching the Gospel to the heart. 

Tuesday was a full day.  Although we stared at 10:00, there was almost no break till 16:30.  We started out speaking about what it really means to be a missional church.  It has become such a buzz word, but sadly many churches are only missional in name.  We spoke about the fact that a true missional church is missional in it’s very existence, in its being.  Why?  Because we were brought together because of the mission of God, coming to reconcile us to himself and each other through Jesus!  As reconciled children of God we are now on mission with Him, bringing the message but also the evidence of what it means to be reconciled to God.  People of the Kingdom of God live according to a new set of rules when it comes to things like money, power and sex and this should make us an attractive yet distinct community. 

We had lunch with Terry Gyger, the man of God who had the vision for Redeemer, and was instrumental in calling Tim Keller to New York.  He also served as Redeemers executive pastor for many years.  It was great to be in the presence of this 78 year old man, still full of enthusiasm for God’s kingdom!

We ended the day of with a session on leadership by Katherine Leary Alsdorf.  The book we had to read for this was Leadership on the line which I can highly recommend.  We had some good discussions and I learned a lot.  The biggest thing being that leadership always involve leading people through change and that change involves loss.  Deep, heartfelt understanding of what the people you are leading are going to lose when they follow you, can be very helpful in being a good leader. 

Tuesday evening we had another good small group meeting for which Anton and Imke joined me.  They are focusing on what it means to have a public faith.  It was good to hear these New Yorkers sharing some of the challenges of living out and sharing your faith with non-believers. 

Small group meeting.

Wednesday we took time off and headed North, out of the city to a small town called Sleepy Hollow.  Yes, it’s the town of the famous headless horseman, but no, we did not see him except on posters.  It was good to see a small town with its BIG meals.  What we enjoyed most was the quiet.  New York is so noisy!  (More photos at the bottom of this post...)

Sleepy Hollow.

We ended the day with a great book launch event!  Tim Keller's new book, Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering.  It’s another must read!  And it’s not just my opinion!  Read a good review here: http://thegospelcoalition.org/book- reviews/review/walking_with_god_through_pain_and_suffering

Walking with God through Pain and Suffering.

Today (Thursday) we stared with a Preaching Intensive which will continue and end with Tim Keller’s session on Monday about Apologetics and Evangelism.  Today and tomorrow we are focusing on:
•    Preaching to Christians and non-Christians at the same time.
•    Preaching grace and not moralism.
•    Preaching Christ from every text in the Bible.
•    How to aim your preaching at the “heart” and not just the mind or the emotions.
•    How to stay faithful to the text and to route your sermon in faithful exposition. 
•    How to grow in your skill of delivery of a sermon. 
So, let me get to my reading for tomorrow!!!

Doing school work with the Statue of Liberty in the background.

Sleepy Hollow cemetery.

Sleepy Hollow sightseeing.

Halloween everywhere you look!

Sunday's experience!

I can't believe there is only 1 week left of our time in NY!  I can honestly say this is one of the best experiences in my life...

I wanted to share with you what we, and me (Erna) specifically, experienced this past Sunday.  We had a "City-to-City Sunday" again where we (the intensives) were introduced to the Redeemer West side congregations - all 4 on 1 day!  The aim is to raise $150 000 to cover the part of our training cost for City-to-City.  To be honest, I was not looking forward to the long day. Thankfully, God didn't change His plans for the day based on how I was feeling... :-)

To make things worse, the train we took was stopping at more stations than usual, which made us late.  We had to take a taxi from the station to Redeemer because we didn't have time to walk the 11 blocks.  Thankfully, it was Sunday and a short distance, so we only paid $5.

Taxi ride.

So there I was sitting in the first service, still not quite ready for the day, when we were called to the stage for the introductions.  We introduced ourselves and then the congregation applauded us, long and loudly.  It was overwhelming.  I got very emotional, realising the big responsibility of these people applauding us on planting churches and spreading the Gospel.  After the introduction, we slipped out to get some coffee and visited with another couple in the intensive, Mike and Stacey.  I shared with them how I felt that this is too big!  Maybe we must just stop trying to plant churches and go back to our "normal" life as we know it.  (Looking back on the day, I think the Lord smiled when I said that, knowing what was about to happen next...)

After the services, Redeemer has "coffee hour" and we were suppose to be at coffee hour to give people the chance of talking to us.  So there I'm standing, and this couple walks directly to me and said: "Goeiemore! Ons is Shaun en Welmain Page, van Suid Afrika."  (They greeted me in Afrikaans and told me who they are.)  But what they said next, was amazing: "We just wanted to come and tell you that we were part of a church plant in South Africa that is part of the Redeemer City-to-City network, and we want to encourage you to plant churches because of what the church there meant to us."  WOW!  Can you believe it?  It was as if God himself spoke to me and say: "Erna, I know what you are thinking, and no, you can't quit."  (We are hopefully meeting Shaun and Welmain for coffee tomorrow night.  They are in NY for 3 years.)

Fritz (the professor at Potch Theological Seminary) also came for the first service and met a few of our training facilitators.  All the conversations we had was so encouraging.

Fritz and Thomas.

We sat through the whole 2nd service.  Tim Keller was preaching about why and how we should make our faith public out of John 4.  Great sermon!

After the service, we had coffee hour again.  I can't remember if I mentioned in a previous blog that Kathy (Tim's wife) asked us to meet with her and Mone, a South African friend of hers who is currently in NY.  Mone and one of her friends, Andrea, was at the second service and we had such a good time talking, that we decided to go out for lunch together.  It was a good time of talking about a lot of South Africa's challenges and how to make a difference.

The evening services have a jazzy worship character.   I loved it! :-)  Anton, Imke and Jawé joined us for the 3rd service, after which we again had good conversations at coffee hour with an American who usually hunts in SA, and 2 former South Africans.  At the last service, Jawé came with us on stage when we introduced ourselves.

Introducing ourselves to the congregation.

All in all this was a memorable day - full of experiencing the Lord's love and nearness in our lives!

What if...?

The end of week three...

Before I can get to Friday until Sunday, I just need to add a few comments to the previous days! 

One of my highlights, as Erna mentioned, was a dinner with one of the Redeemer small groups.  Anton du Plessis (one of the Reformed Church Randburg elders and a good friend) had the opportunity to go along.  It was just a great evening of fellowship.  What was very good to see, is this diverse group of people, really uniting in the Gospel and their love for their city and therefore in their commitment to bring the Gospel to the people of this great city.  I'm looking forward to visit this group of people again next week.  It's great to see the vision of Redeemer not just on paper but living in these people's hearts.

Another thing that stood out was our time with Robert Guerrero on mercy and justice.  Because of his own experience and upbringing he does not address these issues from a academic, theoretical perspective but really from a heartfelt passion, believing that the Gospel of Jesus can, and was meant to change all of life, and that faith without works is dead.  I was really touched by his heart and convinced anew of the importance for us as Christians in South Africa to get involved in the spiritual AND physical needs of the people of our Country.  The hope is that Jesus will, as He did with the multiplication of the bread and fish, take our little, if we are willing to bring it, and use it in miraculous ways so that we ourselves, as well as those who benefit from it physically, fall down in awe and wonder before Him. 

The time with Tim Keller was also a great experience!  Not so much in the content of what he shared (I've spent far to much time reading and listening to him to hear something new!) but just in his character.  He is a man of God, open, humble, honest and a committed follower of Jesus.  It was great to experience this first hand.  Looking forward to the next two sessions with him. 

Friday morning started out with an intense session.  It was named, Dangerous calling, after Paul Trip's book with the same title.  We had to read the book for this session.  I will recommend the book to all people in ministry and to all who want to understand the difficulty their pastors face better.  It's a serious book, not beating around the bush, but so good.  We had good conversations about the idols in ministry, the danger of not living out of your identity in Christ as a saved, sinner in need of God's love and grace constantly, of not allowing the Christian community into your own struggles, not abiding to the principle of Sabbath rest!  Good, helpful and needed indeed.

The afternoon we traveled to Flushing (Queens) to spent time with Peter Ong, planter of Kings Cross Flushing.  It was like traveling to a different planet although it was only 35 minutes by train.  Asians (Japanese, Korean, Chinese) make out the majority of this community.  It was again great to see someone who loves God, loves the Gospel, and love his community with so much zeal.  His testimony of how the Holy Spirit is really changing people, bringing them out of lives of promiscuous sexual activity, of captivity to their honour and shame based culture, was gripping and encouraging. 

Peter Ong and the intensives.

 

Graffiti.

Walking the streets.

What was only supposed to be a nice family outing to Toys R Us, (not something me and Erna was particularly looking forward to :-)), turned out to be another one of God's providential moments!   Just before we left we bumped into Fritz de Wet, a professor in Practical Theology at our Theological Seminary in Potchefstroom.  How great was that.  We invited him to one of the Sunday worship services where we would be introduced again and he came!  We appreciated it so much and had a great time just thinking through our situation and calling in South-Africa together as members of the same denomination.

Fritz and Thomas.

Saturday was all play and no work!  We took the free ferry to Staten Island!  Waved to the statue of Liberty as we went by and had the best Pizza ever in New Dorp on the island.  After a quick rest we went into town again to go to Top of the Rock!  What a sight.  If only you could capture this on camera.  We ended of the evening having dinner with Michelle and Berry.  Michelle works for the new president of City to City and she invited a group of us for dinner.  It was once again such a good time of fellowship.

Ferry to Staten Island.

Top of the Rock.

Top of the Rock - view over Central Park.

Today (Sunday) is CHURCH, CHURCH, CHURCH and another CHURCH.  We have to attend all 4 Redeemer services to raise money for City-to-City and cover the cost of our training.  Hard work, but worth the while.  To experience the love, the encouragement and support of these brothers and sisters in Christ is overwhelming.   We met wonderful people afterwards.  Even had the privilege of being taken out for lunch after the second service.  (Erna will share more about this in our next blog - so watch this space...)


We are so grateful for this opportunity.  Please keep praying for us that our gratefulness, our awe of God's providence and love for His people, will enthuse us long after we return. 

Us, Jesus, Jairus, the bleeding woman, David and Tim

Dear everyone.  Today I (Erna) am not attending any sessions.  Have a bit of work to do and want to spend some time with Jawé.  That explains why I'm writing the post again. :-)  Thomas still needs to tell you about the Bible study he and Anton went to on Tuesday, but he can do that when he writes the next post...

We started off Wednesday by talking about things that might derail your CP (church plant) project.  The top 3 things that stood out were: 1) Inward focus - when your CP stop begin Evangelistic, stop having an outward focus.  2) Overstated sense of who you can reach - be careful not to make too many adjustments to reach people you can't reach, and in that, NOT reaching the people you can!  3) Unhealthy definition of success - you must ask the right questions to measure the success of the CP.

The next session was about Mercy and Justice.  Just a few key points from this session... 
- The gospel must influence our reaching out to the poor.
- See the image of God in other people.
What also struck me was the story about Jesus brings the daughter of Jairus back to life, but on His way there, heal the bleeding woman (Mark 5:22-43).  So we know Jairus was a very important man.  In contrast, the women in those days were not important at all - especially this woman - all her money spent on trying to be healed.  What does Jesus do?  He makes a very public deal out of this woman's healing and her faith - she needs to be brought up.  But regarding the miracle or raising Jairus' daughter from the dead?  He only takes her parents and his 3 disciples into the room - a very private healing - and told them not to tell anyone.  Jairus needed to be brought down.

Next we listened to Elise Chong (the Executive Director of Hope for New York - http://hfny.org/) about the non-profit organisation, Hope for New York.

Wednesday was also great because David Strain (he was the minister of London City Presbyterian Church when we lived in London and is now a minister in Jackson, Mississippi) came to NY for a missions event.  We spent the whole evening visiting and had such a wonderful time!

Dinner with David Strain.

Thursday morning we talked about the issue of difficult conversations.  A very good and practical session - learned a lot.  Actually I think this will make a great session at a marriage enrichment course! :-)

Self packed lunch on Broadway (street).

Thursday afternoon, Tim Keller (senior pastor of Redeemer), had a session with us on Gospel Spirituality.  It was a good session where we learned lots of things, but I think one thing that stood out for me, was something he said regarding our idols (the things or people that are more important to me than God.  He said we must ask ourselves: "How can I treat God this way (not loving Him enough, not honoring Him, not putting Him first) if Jesus gave His life for me?"  Maybe take some time and think about that...

Gospel spirituality with Tim Keller.

Greetings, until our next blog post...

City-to-city Sunday, Launching and Kingdom Centered Prayer.

It feels like because of a lack of words to describe what we are experiencing, I (Erna) want to start each blog post with WOW, WOW and double WOW! :-)

So Sunday was busy with us visiting 4 Redeemer congregations, introducing ourselves to the congregations.  Through this (City to City Sunday), City to City hopes to raise $150 000 to cover the cost to them for our intensive training (https://giving.redeemer.com/giving/gift/id-219).  That amounts to R100 000 per church planter!  It was also very encouraging - the people in these congregations got very excited about church planting in cities all over the world.  They also prayed for us.  Next Sunday we will visit the other 4 Redeemer congregations.

City to city Sunday at Downtown Redeemer

Our fellow intensives

In the church bulletin

Monday we learned a lot about launching your church plant.  Church planters witnessed to how they launched their church plants - not hiding the mistakes they made and how they could have do it differently.  Al Barth (the church plant director for Europe, Africa, The Middle East, and North America) shared a lot of stories about church plants all over the world.  To me it was a great encouragement to hear about how the Lord gathers His church - in spite of our shortcomings as church planters.  We were in tears after hearing about an outspoken atheist coming to Christ.  We also learned that we have to know how to interact with non-believers - to introduce them to the Christian message.

Today was very special.  This morning we had a session about Kingdom Centered Prayer.  We really need training in praying Kingdom Centered prayers!  We must pray for a "spirit of prayer" (Acts 4 and Zechariah 12:10).  We must start prayer walking in our neighborhoods... walking around and praying for people we see, people we may meet or just for certain households that the Spirit presses on our hearts.  We must pray that "we'll stick to our assigned tasks of PRAYER and speaking God's Word." (Acts 6:4)  We must pray for boldness and courage, open doors and open hearts and deliverance from the devil's attacks.  We need this prayer walking in our community to acknowledge our community as a place of mission!

After a wonderful lunch, we talked with John Hutchinson (president of City to City) about the vision of a church plant.  Not having a "corporate" vision, but having the vision GOD has for our mission!

We had a opportunity to present our church plant to our fellow intensives at the end of today.  All went well - I'm sure that is because of all the prayers from you!  We are really grateful for all your support!  Thank you and God bless!