Originally posted at Regeneration by Graeme Codrington.

I have known Terry Rae since I was 8 years old. My father moved to Rosebank Bible College as a lecturer. Terry was senior pastor at Rosebank Union Church, where I was a member until I got married. I was best friends with his son, Andrew throughout my teen years.

In recent years, Terry has left church ministry and heads up an evangelistic, church planting and church leadership development ministry. I have found his recent sermons to reflect a deep and impressive shift in his outlook and insights.

He preached at our home church on 28 October 2008, and it was one of the best sermons I have heard in a while. He preached on Jesus healing the blind man, and the different perspectives different people had - the spiritual leaders (the established church), his parents, friends and the community, Jesus’ disciples, the blind man and Jesus Himself.

I think this is one of those definitive sermons - it defines a new way of looking at the world, at the church and at Jesus. I HIGHLY recommend you download and listen to it: get it here - right click and save as (7.8Mb, MP3 file).

Thanks, Terry!!

A sermon by Graeme Codrington, preached in October 2006.

This morning, I preached a sermon at Bedford Chapel, just around the corner from my home. The topic was “The Kingdom of God is now”. This comes as close to being my personal manifesto as you can get. If I had to write it down and script it, I may say things slightly differently, be more succinct, or clever. But, as a sermon, this is my manifesto in raw form.

You can listen to this podcast by downloading the MP3 file here (right click and save as). Its about 7Mb in size.

A message by Claude Nikondeha delivered at Amahoro Gathering in Uganda in May 2007

Claude grew up in Burundi constantly hearing that “Jesus is coming back…soon.” He relates a story of a young girl who, when telling her pastor she wanted to go to school to get an eduction, was told that her Christian duty was to worship in church, not to worry about studying, because “Jesus is coming back soon.”

Claude says, “The problem with a Gospel that only promises release when Jesus returns, is that Jesus has not yet returned. The people are not released – they live in suffering, poverty, famine and wars.”

“The Gospel is not a doctrinal formula for the salvation of the individual but it is the Good News of God’s movement through Jesus Christ to carry out his purpose for the entire human race.” - Rene Padilla

Claude continues, “Jesus did not come to announce an evacuation plan, but a transformation plan.” He explores what the evacuation Gospel has done to Africa.

amahoro02_Claude_Nikondeha.mp3 (3.2 MB’s)

This recording is courtesy of Graeme Codrington who has also posted a summary of Claude’s talk.

A sermon by Graeme Codrington preached in May 2007. His notes are here. I think it’s an appropriate way to start the new year: by taking about fear and hope.

Living in South Africa right now is not for sissies. The country’s transition to democracy has been miraculous on one hand, and yet is fraught with the societal ructions every country that has ever made this transition has discovered. In particular, in the past few months, there seems to have been an upswing in violence, and crime aggravated by violence. A national debate has ensued on crime, reaching all the way to the Office of the President.

How should Christians respond? 69 times in the NIV, we are instructed (!!): “Do not be afraid”. But what does that mean? What difference does it make that we are Christians when faced with fear?

I preached a sermon on this issue this past Sunday. It felt inspired, and the feedback has been amazing. It is available as an MP3 download. 45 minutes, 3.12 Mb. Right click here, and save as. (Note, quality of recording has been dramatically reduced to ensure small file size).

Dr Kenzo Mabiala gave a brilliant talk at the first Amahoro conference in Uganda in May 2007. Graeme Codrington recorded this on a handheld recorder - it’s worth persevering through the low quality because this lecture is sheer genius. Kenzo says that theological work done in Africa has the imperative to differ from theology from the West, and must have the courage to denouce Western theology - which “came of age during the rise of colonialism” - as being used to seeing itself as the centre around which other theologies must orient themselves (in other words: theological arrogance which claims that Western theology is the only correct theology, and all other theologies need to understand themselves in relation to Western theology).

This is the best lecture I have heard in 2007. Graeme posted his summary at his Regeneration blog.

amahoro01_Mabiala_Kenzo.mp3 (size 5.9 MB’s).

The Christian community globally has begun, in the last ten years, grappling with the philosophical, theological, and hermeneutical issues associated with the postmodern turn in philosophy and culture. But the other side of the coin is the postcolonial conversation. This conversation requires us to grapple with issues of justice and with the ways in which Christian faith has become overly accommodated to Western Civilization (and more recently, Euro-American Empire). Since Jesus was a Middle Easterner, it is important for us not to let him be held captive by Western, European, and American assumptions and standards of justice. This conversation is especially important now that the center of gravity for the Christian faith has shifted to the global south. Brian explores both sides of this important, exciting, and sometimes frightening but needed conversation.

Post-modernandpost-colonial.mp3 (6.4 MBs)

Post-modernandpost-colonial.m4a (12.4 MBs)

This talk was given at TGIF Cresta in Johannesburg.

Deshun Deysel has been described as the only black female high alititude mountaineer in the world. She grew up in Uitenhage close to Port Elizabeth and was part of the Sunday Times Everest Expedition in 1996 as well as the Discovery one in 2003. She had to turn back an agonising 350 metres from the summit due to bad weather.

She spoke at TGIF last Friday morning about her experiences on Everest, how she first became interested in mountaineering as well as her faith. The second time she attempted Everest she says, “I prayed every second!”

Deshun_Deysel-Mount_Everest.m4a (12.9 MBs)

Her talk is around 55 minutes long and she showed quite a few video clips - none of which I can include in this podcast - but I think it’s still a fascinating story.

‘When you climb Everest your very sanity comes into question. Your being gets tested on all levels. The mountain peels away at you physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, until there’s nothing left but the desire to get it over with. As a woman, the extreme conditions on big mountains test you even more.’

This is Brian McLaren speaking at the Sunday morning service of First City Baptist in East London, South Africa on March 19, 2006. His address is entitled “Seek first the ‘what?’ of God” and is thinking around the idea of “What is the Kingdom of God?” His wife Grace was also there (if you hear a female voice laughing in the background - that’s her!). She’s great - I enjoyed hanging out with her and I’m glad she joined Brian on this trip. John Benn - the senior pastor - introduces him at the start.

Here’s the file:
Seek_first_the_what_of_God.m4a (7.1 MBs)

I’ll probably be using the m4a format instead of mp3 simply for compression purposes. iTunes has built-in podcast compression presets and this one gives me much smaller files than mp3 compression. This may well mean that you’ll have to have an iPod or iTunes to listen to it - sorry!

I’ve known about podcasting and have downloaded a few, but the thing that tipped it for me was meeting Tim Pynes who let me sit in on his interview with Andrew Jones about the connections between the emerging church conversation and the house church network. Tim had a great setup (2 mics and a recorder) and watching him do it made me think, “Hey, I can do that!”

Then Dawid Venter (and ex-South African living in Washington State who runs Emerging Connexion) got hold of me asked if he could interview me for a podcast he was putting together on the emerging church in South Africa. We did it over Skype (which dropped our connection a few times) and it was good fun (should be up in the next few months). Next was finding out that an iPod can record quite decently (using a Griffin iTalk and running Linux) and since my Dad is making a trip to Hong Kong I asked him to pick me up one.

What influenced me even more was spending some time this last week with Brian and Grace McLaren. I asked Brian a specific question: “What stories do you think people in the rest of the world want to hear told out of South Africa?” His response was threefold:

• How we’ve rethought our theology since the demise of Apartheid (and what theology was used to propogate it).
• How we deal with HIV/Aids.
• Talk about racial integration.

It is to these things which I dedicate this podcast. There are many stories which can be told and many which I’m sure will surprise me, so this is as much a journey of discovery for me as it will be for any listeners. I hope to chat to 2 of my white friends who’ve just adopted black babies, an Afrikaans pastor who’s taken a lot of flack from his congregation because they don’t like black people coming to their church as well as people from a variety of traditions talking about the future of the church in South Africa.

Firstly, though, will be the Brian McLaren tapes. He’s been here for the last few weeks and I flew from Joburg to East London to spend last week with him. My friend Sean Tucker lent me his minidisc recorder and so just about all our time with Brian was recorded. Hooray!