The Suburban Christian: Typologies of renewal: Three routes, four models, five streams

An interesting post on the changing shape of some varieties of Christianity. The Suburban Christian: Typologies of renewal: Three routes, four models, five streams:

This is something of a follow-up to my previous post on emergents and new Calvinists. In the comments, Claytonius linked to a post he'd written last year about three routes of escape from the pragmatic evangelical church. He observed that many young adults who leave evangelical churches tend to head to three other places

To summarise, the places these restless pragmatic evangelicals tend to head to are:

• Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican churches
• Emerging Churches
• Reformed Churches

And there are four kinds of Emerging Churches:

• Deconstructionist
• Pre-modern/Augustinian Model
• Emerging Peace Church Model
• Foundationalist Model

As a language pedant, I find the growing misuse of "typology" a bit annoying. Surely the correct term is "taxonomy"?

My (secular) dictionary (Collins Millennium Edition) gives:

• typology n Chiefly Christian theol. the doctrine or study of types or of the correspondence between them and the reality they typify.
• taxonomy 2 n the science or practice of classification.

Typology usually has to do with one event foreshadowing another -- for example the Passover and Exodus as types of Christ's resurrection.

There's still a language problem, though, because I'm not sure what "pragmatic" evangelicalism is, and I get the impression that "evangelical" means, or has come to mean, something different in the USA from what it means in Southern Africa. For example, in posts such as the one I was referring to, "evangelical" is mentioned in the same breath as "megachurches".

In South Africa "megachurches" (ie the barn-style "everything under one roof" hypermarket-style super-congregations like Rhema, Christian City, The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God etc) are almost invariably Neopentecostal, rather than "evangelical".

Evangelicals are spread over a number of different denominations that tend to have normal-sized congregations -- Baptists, a few Anglicans and Methodists and the like. Evangelicals are also concentrated in some parachurch organisations like Scripture Union, Youth with a Mission, African Enterprise, and so on, which were regarded as more evangelical if they were anti-charismatic, and less evangelical if they were pro-charismatic or at least tolerant of the charismatic movement.

So where do "pragmatic" evangelicals fit in?

Another observation is that in South Africa these distinctions seem to be far more important to white Christians than to black ones.

I once attended an ecumenical mission conference where my room-mate was a hyper-Calvinist member of the Church of England in South Africa, who kept interrogating me with the TULIP test, and when I failed the test he found my presence unbearable. He kept phoning home to ask for advice on what to do, and must have been advised to "Come out of Babylon" because after a couple of days he left and I never saw him again. Back in those days I was a hands-up and knees-down Anglo-Catholic Evangelical Charismatic Anglican, with bells, smells and singing in tongues, and believing in things like "one man one vote", which was very politically incorrect in the days of PW Botha, Adriaan Vlok, Magnus Malan and the Total Onslaught, all of which was anathema to the Church of England in South Africa. The Church of England in South Africa (CESA) is changing too, though -- as Stephen Murray's blog shows.

But even today, white Christians in South Africa tend to do the classification thing and create taxonomies. Yet among black Christians the church that is emerging is a kind of generic Protestantism. Anglicans, Assemblies, Baptists, Congregationalists, Full Gospellers, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians and Zionists are all coming to resemble one another more and more.

White Christians (some of them) are interested in the Emerging Church, but the church that is emerging among the majority is somewhat different.

So I think our taxonomies might be somewhat different from the American ones, and what is emerging isn't necessarily Emerging.

London hotel to hold convention for bogus witchdoctors?

The following news clipping about the arrest of some bogus witchdoctors has just attracted a most extraordinary comment:

clipped from www.iol.co.za Four bogus witchdoctors were arrested in Witbank for allegedly defrauding a man of R48 500, Mpumalanga police said on Thursday. Spokesperson Captain Leonard Hlathi said the four illegal immigrants were arrested on Wednesday. "It all started when the complainant picked up a pamphlet from a distributor in town. Amongst other things, it informed the readers about doctors who could assist to cleanse bad luck." According to Hlathi the man went to borrow R38 000 from the bank and borrowed R20 000 from his employer and gave the doctors R48 500. He said the man went back to the doctors who instructed him to put the money in a trunk which was full of R100 notes. The trunk was found empty and they were charged with fraud, corruption and being in the country illegally. Three were from Uganda and the other was from Kenya. They will appear in the Witbank magistrate's court on Friday. -

And here's the comment:

Hilton Hotel London Metro Pole.
225 Edgware Road, London, United Kingdom W2 1JU
Tel: 0044 - 703-187-1809.Fax: +44-20-7724 8866.

From Mrs Elaine Mary Hayes, Manager Hilton Hotel Metro pole London.
This Invitation mail is from Hilton Hotel London, Pls Hilton Hotel Needs Men And Women, Who Can Work And Live here In Hilton Hotel London. Hotel Will Pay For Your Ticket And The Visa Fee In Your Country,If You Are Interested kindly Contact Assistant Manager, Sir, Sherard Frank Coles, Via This E-mail Address Bellow;. hiltonhotelslondon022@yahoo.co.uk For More Information.
Cheers, Mrs Mary .E. Hayes General Manager Hilton London Metro pole.
Hours of Operation: 7:00 am - 7:00 pm CST, Monday - Sunday.

At first I thought it must be a bogus hotel (what hotel closes at 7:00 pm?), but it appears that it really exists, or at least it has a web page.

The response seems to be the ulimate non sequitur. Why should a report of bogus witchdoctors in Mpumalanga lead to a call for staff at a London Hotel -- unless, perhaps, the hotel is going to be hosting a convention for bogus witchdoctors? After all, the hotel does boast facilities for 40 conferences simultaneously, so a conference for bogus witchdoctors is not beyond the realms of possibility. And, according to the original report, there is a lot of money to be made by being a bogus witchdoctor, so hnaving a bogus witchdoctors' convention at such a hotel is not quite beyond the realms of possibility, with a lot of imagination.

But the mind still boggles.

Participation in blogging, and church

Bishop Alan’s Blog: How do people use Church (or not)?:

The categories are made up around what you do online. Spectators read blogs, Critics Comment on blogs, Creators originate blogs. Joiners use Facebook et al. You get the idea. An individual can be on several rungs at the same time. Proportions on each rung are vastly different in different cultures. In the US, 25% are creators — in Europe only 10%. 53% of Europeans are inactives, 41% of Americans, only 37% of South Koreans.

OK Team. This method has absolutely no tested validity at all in the field of religious participation, but let's sketch on the back of an envelope. If patterns of church involvement were similar, and for all I know they are, In the UK roughly 70% = 35m people say they are Christians. Most actives would be, er 10% = 3,5m weekly participants. Anglicans would be just under 1m bums on pews a week. Inactives would be 53% = 26,5m. They are.

What do you think the proportions are in your neck of the woods?

The Poor Mouth: The plagiarising Polish priest prison palaver.

The Poor Mouth: The plagiarising Polish priest prison palaver.:

Poland's 28,000 Roman Catholic priests have been told by church authorities that they may be fined if they are discovered to have plagiarised their sermons from the internet, and could even face up to three years in prison. The church has published a self-help book on writing sermons to lure parish priests away from stealing the words of their fellow clergy.

Meanwhile, back home, our bishop sends out weekly printed sermons every week for the clergy to read. He doesn't write them all himself -- he asks other clergy to take a hand in writing them, but it's a very different attitude to the Polish one.

Xenophilia versus xenophobia

There have been many media reports of incidents of xenophobia recently, where the homes of illegal aliens and refugees have been burnt down (sometimes with the people inside) that this comment on Roger Saner's blog Beyond the Boerewors Curtain: Zimbabwe for the weekend comes as a refreshing change:

A few of us have started the 100% tip challenge. It works like this: when we eat at a restaurant we ask the waiter where they're from. If they're from Zimbabwe we tip them 100%. It's amazing how many Zimbabweans are working in Gauteng, serving as a lifeline to their family's back home.

Of course once the word spreads in the catering industry you'll probably find that every single waiter in every single restaurant is an expatriate Zimbabwean! But it's the thought that counts.

Last night at the Vespers of Love at St Nicholas of Japan Orthodox Church in Brixton, Johannesburg, we read the Gospel in several different languages, as is the custom. At the end of the service Azar Jammine, one of the parish leaders, remarked that when we started the parish 21 years ago, we wanted it to be a truly multi-ethnic Orthodox Church, and that vision was being realised right now: the priest, from Kenya, read the gospel in Swahili. A Congolese student read it in Latin. An student Angolan read it in Portuguese. A Greek read it in Turkish.

And somehow some of the words we sang seemed to stand out more than usual:

This is the day of resurrection.
Let us be illumined by the feast. Let us embrace each other.
Let us call "Brothers" even those that hate us, and forgive all by the resurrection, and so let us cry:

Christ is risen from the dead
Trampling down death by death
And upon those in the tombs bestowing life.

We sing it every year. But this year it seemed more real. Let us call "Brothers" even those that hate us. Let us replace xenophobia by xenophilia.

Archbishop leads day of fasting for Zim

The Times - Archbishop leads day of fasting for Zim:

The Archbishop of York led prayers and a day of fasting Sunday in support of Zimbabweans who he said were 'living under the tyranny' of President Robert Mugabe.

John Sentamu, who cut up his clerical collar in a symbolic protest against Mugabe in December, urged people to light candles as a demonstration of support for those living in Zimbabwe, a majority Christian country.

'As a Christian community, we must all stand together with our brothers and sisters living under the tyranny of Mugabe and pray that they will find deliverance,' he said.

Zimbabwe is awaiting the outcome of a presidential vote more than one month ago, after a partial recount of the ballots handed the opposition an historic victory in parliament over Mugabe’s ruling party.

A rather strange and confusing report. How can Zimbabwe be "awaiting the outcome" if, as we are told, the outcome is "a historic victory"? Now you see it, now you don't?

And then they are having recounts before the results of the first count were announced. The Zimbabwean elections have been bad enough without the media muddying the waters with confusing and contradictory reports about the unknown known outcome.

Why Haiti starves: USA wiped out its farms

Forced to accept competition from subsidized American rice, Haitian farmers could not survive.

This, of course, is in part the problem of Zimbabwe, though far more damage was done to Zimbabwe's agriculture and economy by its own government.

Hat-tip to Monte Asbury.

clipped from www.democracynow.org the United States and the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, all of which we, the United States, dominate, have for the last twenty-five, thirty years have insisted that in order to get the loans, which Haiti and these other countries, agricultural countries, need, Haiti had to change their economic system so that their country was open to competition from other countries on agriculture thirty years ago, Haiti imported almost no rice, was an exporter of sugar and other things. Today, Haiti imports nearly all of its rice. rice from the United States at low or below cost— and destroyed the ability of farmers in Haiti to be able to grow rice. And as a consequence, the country now depends totally on imported rice. Cost of import—cost of rice around the world has gone up over 100 percent since January. the people of the United States have no idea that our government has destroyed not just Haiti, but the agricultural bases of lots and lots of very poor countries

Antioch Abouna: True Hope

People often assume that all Christians understand the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in much the same way. This is true if you only take Roman Catholic and Protestant views into account.

Antioch Abouna: True Hope: "what is this fundamental commonality between most non-Orthodox traditions and where does Orthodoxy differ? With Pascha (Easter) approaching in the Orthodox Church it is crucial that we acquaint ourselves with these issues because they touch upon the whole meaning of the gospel, its preaching and celebration."

Biofuels and food prices

The Washington Post reports on its front page today: "More than 100 million people are being driven deeper into poverty by a 'silent tsunami' of sharply rising food prices, which have sparked riots around the world and threaten U.N.-backed feeding programs for 20 million children, the top U.N. food official said Tuesday."

MARIA LUISA MENDONGA, marialuisa1@uol.com.br,

Maria Luisa Mendonga is based in Sco Paulo, Brazil, and is director of the Social Network for Justice and Human Rights. She co-wrote an article titled "Agrofuels: Myths and Impacts." She said today:

"In many regions of [Brazil], the increase in ethanol production has caused the expulsion of small farmers from their lands, and has generated a dependency on the so-called 'sugarcane economy,' where only precarious jobs exist in the sugarcane fields. Large landowners' monopoly on land
blocks other economic sectors from developing, and generates unemployment, stimulates migration, and submits workers to degrading conditions.

"This model has caused negative impacts on peasant and indigenous communities, who have their territories threatened by the constant expansion of large plantations. The lack of policies in support of food production leads peasants to substitute their crops for agrofuels, and,
as a result, compromises our food sovereignty. In Brazil, small- and medium-sized farmers are responsible for 70 percent of the food production for the internal market.

"It is necessary to strengthen rural workers' organizations to promote sustainable peasant agriculture, prioritizing diversified food production for local consumption. It is crucial to advocate for policies that guarantee subsidies for food production through peasant agriculture. We cannot keep our tanks full while stomachs go empty."

RACHEL SMOLKER, rsmolker@globaljusticeecology.org,
Research biologist at the Global Justice Ecology Project, Smolker said today:

"The massive diversion of crops and land to producing biofuel crops instead of food is a major factor in the very dramatic food price increases. Governments and industries have foolishly pursued biofuels in spite of this and in spite of a cascade of scientific studies and statements from all levels of society which clearly demonstrate that biofuels are not only exacerbating hunger, but also rural displacement, climate change and deforestation. Last week the UK instated its Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation for the use of biofuels even as the European Environment Agency warned that the EU-wide mandate should be reconsidered. Even the World Bank recently stated that biofuels are contributing to rising food prices and hunger.

"Incentives and mandates for the use of biofuels are being promoted by agribusiness giants like Monsanto, ADM and Cargill along with big oil, biotechnology and automobile industries -- all of whom stand to profit enormously. The price is being paid right now by those who can no
longer afford food or access to land. Civil society is pushing back: this week the Round Table on Responsible Soy is meeting in Buenos Aires and will be met with intense opposition as people denounce the entire concept of 'sustainable industrial agriculture' of the sort that has
despoiled so much of Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil.

"The International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development report took a strong position opposing industrial agriculture and GE [genetically engineered] crops while a major new report from University of Kansas makes it clear that GE crops have not
delivered on the promise of increased yields. We need new models for food and energy production that do not leave people hungry and displaced, do not contaminate our crop biodiversity and pollute our water and soils, and do not leave food and energy production in the
hands of profit-seeking multinational corporations. People are beginning to wake up to this fact.

"Meanwhile, the food crisis is pushing biofuel proponents to argue that the next generation of technologies based on cellulose will avert problems with food competition and deliver greater climate benefits. In fact they could worsen the problems: There is limited space available
and we are losing land to desertification and deforestation at an alarming rate. A few weeks ago, [the journal] Science published a pair of articles showing that the greenhouse gas emissions that result from indirect land use changes far outweigh any gains from substituting fossil fuel use. Wood is considered to be one of the most promising feedstocks. But demand for wood is skyrocketing as countries attempting to meet Kyoto commitments are shifting to wood and other biomass for heat and electricity production, as well as chemicals and manufacturing processes.

"On top of that, the pulp and paper industry is undergoing a planned fivefold expansion and China has a very rapidly expanding wood products industry. The scale of demand for wood to satisfy all of these demands can only be met by further deforestation and by enormous industrial
monocultures of fast-growing trees. The biotechnology industries are racing to genetically engineer both trees and microorganisms for these uses. Next month at the Convention on Biological Diversity, civil society organizations will be asking for a moratorium on the commercialization of GE trees because of the potential risks of contaminating native forests."

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Institute for Public Accuracy
915 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045
(202) 347-0020 * http://www.accuracy.org * ipa@accuracy.org

One very good reason for using Twitter

This sounds like a very good reason for using Twitter.

U.C. Berkeley student's Twitter messages alerted world to his arrest in Egypt - San Jose Mercury News:

When Egyptian police scooped up UC Berkeley graduate journalism student James Karl Buck, who was photographing a noisy demonstration, and dumped him in a jail cell last week, they didn't count on Twitter.

Buck, 29, a former Oakland Tribune multimedia intern, used the ubiquitous short messaging service to tap out a single word on his cellular phone: ARRESTED. The message went out to the cell phones and computers of a wide circle of friends in the United States and to the mostly leftist, anti-government bloggers in Egypt who are the subject of his graduate journalism project.

The next day, he walked out a free man with an Egyptian attorney hired by UC Berkeley at his side and the U.S. Embassy on the phone.

The problems I see with it, however, are:

• 1. I've never managed to get Twitter to work on my cell phone.
• 2. I've never managed to persuade any of my close family to use Twitter, so they might discover it 20 years after I'd starved to death in a dungeon somewhere, with my skeleton covered with dust and cobwebs.
• 3. None of the people who've wanted to "follow me" on Twitter know me at all, and so probably would never see the message, and if they did would have a hard time remembering who I am or why they wanted to "follow" me in the first place.

Hat-tip to AdesBlog.

A victory for workers' solidarity with the Zimbabwean people

South African trade unions, churchmen and lawyers combined to turn away a ship carrying arms to Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe at present has no legitimate elected government, since the results of an election held three weeks ago have been suppressed by former president Robert Mugabe and his junta of generals.

South Africa: A victory for workers' solidarity with the Zimbabwean people | Links:

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) welcomes the statement by a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman that the China Ocean Shipping Company which owns the An Yue Jiang, has decided to recall the ship because Zimbabwe cannot take delivery of the 77 tonnes of weapons and ammunition onboard.

If true, this is an historic victory for the international trade union movement and civil society, and in particular for the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU), whose members refused to unload or transport its deadly cargo.

Nicole Fritz, of the Southern African Litigation Centre, and Rubin Phillip, the Anglican Bishop of Natal, applied to the Durban High Court for an order to prevent the arms being landed or transported to Zimbabwe.

IOL: Chinese arms ship heading for Luanda:

Fritz said the Durban High Court granted the order for the ship's conveyance permit to be suspended and that there could be no movement of the containers in which the arms were packed and no movement of the ship.

But lawyers were told by the sheriff of the high court that when an attempt to serve the order on the ship was made it was found that it had put to sea.

There are reports that the ship may try to offload its cargo in Walvis Bay or an Angolan port, but Namibian unions have been reported as taking similar action to the South African ones.

Kill the bastards!

After urging the police to shoot to kill, Deputy Minister of Safety and Security has now advised ordinary citizens to do the same if they are threatened by criminals pointing guns or other lethal weapons at them.

clipped from www.pretorianews.co.za Deputy safety and security minister Susan Shabangu has said that ordinary citizens of South Africa who are threatened by criminals pointing guns or other lethal weapons at them do not have to fire a warning shot before shooting to kill. Section 49 of the Criminal Procedure Act, which governs the use of lethal force when dealing with criminals, made it clear that police and ordinary citizens were entitled to shoot if their lives were threatened, she said in Cape Town. Laughing off her choice of the word "bastards" to describe the criminals responsible for the violent crime wave sweeping the country, she said that part of her speech had not been scripted. But in her search for the right way to express herself, she had succeeded in getting across her message. On why police routinely opened murder dockets against citizens who killed criminals who had threatened them with guns or other lethal weapons, Shabangu said there had to be an inquiry into the process.

Another synchroblog - Emerging heresy

There's yet another synchroblog -- this time on "Emerging heresy". Here are the contributions:

• Aratus - The Gender of the Creator and Face forward
• Cobusvw - Conversing with the heretics
• FakeExpressionsOfTheUnknown Who's Heresy
• Liquid Light - Coming out a heretic emerges
• Mike Smith - Emerging Heresy
• Nic Paton - The Lif Cycle of Heresy and The Blessings of Heresy
• Roger Saner Towards a heretical orthodoxy
• Ryan Peters - Calling the "H" word and dropping the "H" bomb
• Steve Hayes Cult
• Tim Victor - Confessions of a heretic

For the rationale behind it see Emerging Africa -- emerging heresy.

And, though not part of the synchroblog, this post is about a related topic, which may be of interest too: open source research: A New Kind of Christian is a New Kind of Atheist: Truth and A/theistic Orthodoxy in the Emerging Church Milieu - part one

The Mighty males of God conference -- under the radar

Yesterday I saw a Rapport headline about the gathering of 60000 South African males at a farm near Greytown, KZN. I looked in vain for any reference to it in the Sunday Independent. As far as the "English press" was concerned, it passed right under the radar. I would have known nothing at all about it if Dion Forster had not written about it in his blog.

Dion's random ramblings: A reflection on a great blessing. The Mighty men of God conference.

It was a great weekend at the Mighty men of God conference - I could have done with a few more 'home comforts', but then again, I am a city boy! Seriously though, being on crutches is not very comfortable in the middle of the mealies, and it got a little less comfortable when it started raining last night. But, heck, that's all part of the experience!

The conference was great. I didn't learn anything new, and I guess that the intent of the conference was not to teach new things, but rather to remind us to do things that we should be doing anyway!

Thanks to wireless networking Dion has kept us updated on what has been going on at this conference, though I wonder how he managed to charge his laptop computer while he was there -- or did he take a couple of spare batteries?

What I'm more curious about, however, is how such an event managed to pass almost completely under the radar, until Rapport put it on the front page as it was ending. There have been bigger Christian gatherings in South Africa -- the Zion Christian Church manages to get a million or more at its annual Easter gatherings. But that is a single denomination, and they presumably have internal communication networks, and anyway since those gatherings happen every year the members know what to expect.

But here was this event, apparently organised by one bloke, with little advance publicity, and 60000 people (apparently all male) turn up.

I first became aware of it when David MacGregor blogged about it here, and the next thing was Dion's reports from the conference itself.

What is so amazing about this (to me at any rate) is that an event like SACLA (South African Christian Leadership Assembly) in 1979, with a great deal of advance publicity, only managed to attract 5000 people. And the follow up, SACLA II, in 2003, only managed to attract 3000.

Actually, it's not only amazing; I find it rather disturbing.

Yes, it's nice that 60000 people turn up to a Christian event that hasn't been publicised much, or at least seems to have been publicised mainly by word of mouth. One feels a bit like Elijah when he was told that there were 7000 in the land who had not bowed the knee to Baal. The very hiddenness is rather encouraging.

But where were these 60000 males when SACLA II was on?

And if the other half had been there, there should have been 120000.

I've read Dion's reports, and it all seems a little bit, well, self-indulgent.

I may be wrong, but it seemed a bit too much like the Christian equivalent of motivational speakers and self-help books (my son, who works in a book shop, tells me that the bestseller at the moment is The secret).

At the risk of appearing to contradict what I wrote in the recent Synchroblog on Social Justice, where I stressed the importance of being rather than doing, there is still a disturbing sense that Christianity in post-apartheid South Africa has lost its way, which came out at SACLA II, and also, apparently, at this Mighty Males conference. As I wrote a few months ago in Notes from underground: Postcolonial Christianity in Africa:

Five years ago we had SACLA II, the Southern African Christian Leadership Assembly, but where did it get us? We were supposed to face up to the 'giants' that threatened our society, which included unemployment, poverty, crime and violence. But there seemed to be a reluctance to face up to the giants behind the giants -- America, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, structural adjustment programmes and the ideology of neoliberalism that they have been peddling to African governments. My recollection of SACLA II was that some American came round and gave out free copies of a rather kitschy book called The prayer of Jabez, which seemed to be a good example of what Karl Marx described as 'the opium of the people.'

SACLA I was tremendously important for South Africa. I believe it was one of the things that helped to turn South Africa around, away from apartheid. Like Gideon's 300, the 5000 "mighty men" (in that case, male and female) at SACLA went back to their home congregations with a new vision for a new South Africa, a vision which they shared with others. The full story of that has yet to be written. But after 1994 Christians seem to have sat back, and waited for others to realise the vision.

Tagged!

I was tagged by The Western Confucian.

The rules are:
1. The rules of the game get posted at the beginning.
2. Each player answers the questions about himself.
3. At the end of the post, the player then tags five people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

What was I doing 10 years ago:
Visiting Greece and Bulgaria to do research for my doctoral thesis on "Orthodox mission methods".

Five things on my To Do List today:
1. Write journal article on Orthodox ecclesiology in Africa
2. Write paper on witchcraft & sorcery for ASRSA conference
3. Go to bank to sort out problem with credit card
4. Get lubricant for locks
5. Get fish to eat on Palm Sunday

Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

• Take a trip driving from Vladivostok to St Petersburg
• Build churches in Mamelodi and Tembisa where we now worship in classrooms
• Build community centres next to the churches for ministry to widows & orphans, job skill training etc

Three of my bad habits:
1. Blogging.
2. Procrastinating
3. Disorganized desk.

Five places I’ve lived:
1. Durban, KZN
2. Windhoek, Namibia
3. Melmoth, KZN
4. Johannesburg
5. Tshwane, Gauteng

Five jobs I’ve had:
1. Bus conductor
2. Bus driver
3. Proof reader
4. Theology teacher
5. Editor of academic texts

Five books I’ve recently read:
1. Beckett, Simon. 2007. The chemistry of death.
2. Rimington, Stella. 2007. Secret asset.
3. Bruen, Ken. 2007. Priest.
4. Baroja, Julio Caro. 1964. The world of the witches.
5. Reichs, Kathy. 2005. Grave secrets.

The five I tagged:

• Digitaldion
• r0g3r
• Tauratinzwe
• Fr Justin
• Fr John d'Alton