A dream about John Wimber

On Wednesday 20th October I had a rather interesting dream. This is rather unusual because I rarely dream (at least dreams that I can remember the next morning!). The whole dream had rather a "Lord of the Rings" feel to it.

The dream began with John Wimber in a forest at night, sitting next to a clear pool of water. He was praying and appeared to have been crying. Under the water in the pool was the dead body of a very young women with dark hair. She had a pale skin, but the body was clearly blue and lifeless.

Suddenly her eyes opened and she rose up out of the water. John was extremely surprised that his prayer for her resurrection had been answered.

Next they were walking out of the forest through long grass, hand in hand. The sun was breaking through the remaining treetops and as they walked John Wimber rather sheepishly asked her, "At the moment you came back, I could see inside your mind and understand your thoughts. Was it the same for you?" She smiled and replied and said, "At that moment I could understand exactly what was in your mind."

God reminded of this me of this dream last night, and I realised that I had not posted it on our blog. At the time of the dream I did forward it to Costa Mitchell, who is the National Director of the Vineyard in South Africa. I believe that it may have some application for our church, but probably also for the wider Vineyard movement.

Posted by Ryan @ 3:58 pm
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Derek Morphew on the resurrection

I have discovered a really excellent teaching series by Derek Morphew on the resurrection, for download on the Kenilworth Vineyard website. This has to be the best intellectual presentation of the gospel that I have ever heard. For those of you who have never heard him preach, he is really brilliant. Derek heads up the Vineyard Bible Institute and is an internationally recognised teacher and theologian, and has been around since the early days of the Vineyard.

The audio files are in DSS format, which means you have to download the DSS player, but this format seems to really compress the size of the files. Along with the audio files are PowerPoint presentations.

It is really worthwhile. Check it our here.

Posted by Ryan @ 3:54 pm
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Our first Sunday morning meeting

Our first Sunday morning meeting went well. I must admit that feels very different from meeting on Saturday night. I still enjoy the energy of Saturday nights, but I enjoyed seeing all the children there more. That is a huge leap forward.

During last week we had the partition moved back a couple of metres to give us some more space. This gives us more room for new people. We just have to get the floor in that area sorted out now.

Posted by Ryan @ 12:09 pm
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Sunday morning meetings

After a great year of meeting on Saturday evenings we have decided to move our meetings to Sunday mornings.

One of the main reasons for this is the changing make up of our community. Once Joshua arrived we realised the difficulties involved in including small children in an evening meeting. Since then Andrew and Jacquie have had a son, Brogan. Other couples in the church are also looking at having children. This is a good thing, but we have to make room for children in our program.

Another reason is that we constantly have to overcome the mental block potential visitors have against Saturday nights. Some people think it is very cool, but most people think we are a bit odd. It has also not born the fruit that we thought that it would in terms of reaching the unchurched. As a growing church we believe we will have more impact on a Sunday morning

One of the things I really appreciated is having a full day’s rest on a Sunday. I think it is one of the reasons I stayed sane last year. I still love the idea of Saturday night meetings and I think that if we grow to the point where we have two services, the second will be on a Saturday night.

See you at 09h30 on Sunday morning!

Posted by Ryan @ 3:10 pm
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C³ Communities

We have relaunched our small groups with this new title. The new name is indicative of a new approach, which ties in strongly with the vision God has given us as a church.

Essentially the meetings consist of three elements:

» Communion Meals
» Conversation and Sharing
» Care through Prayer

The idea of sharing communion over meals is a very biblical one:

“They worshiped together at the Temple each day, met in homes for the Lord's supper, and shared their meals with great joy and generosity...” Acts 2v46

The aim of this approach is to provide a place where people can be cared for, and minister to one another. This approach is not about learning more theory or theology; rather it is about putting the theology of love into practice. On his last night with his disciples before he was crucified, Jesus washed his disciples feet and shared communion with them (John 13). Afterwards he said, “You know these things - now do them! This is the path of blessing.” (v17)

This is all about loving one another and caring for one another in real and practical way and hopefully having a lot of fun along the way.

Posted by Ryan @ 3:06 pm
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Catching up

It has been a while since I last blogged and there are a lot of things to catch up on.

We had a good festive season, and a great end of year party. We chose a really cheesy theme – Hawaiian Luau, which was a whole lot of fun! A lot of people put hard work into making it really special. Thanks to everyone who contributed especially Sam and Glenda. Check out the photo’s here.

The Christmas service went well. We had a candlelit service with carols the Saturday before Christmas, and then had a two-week break over Christmas and New Year.

On a sad note we bade farewell to Richard who left for Cape Town to pursue his architectural career. We are already missing his energy and contribution, especially musically.

More recently Alan, Ros and Gloria took on the challenge of Valentines Day. They transformed the room with hearts and candles and set up a really funny version of the old Springbok Radio show “Check your mate”. The contestant couples were Piet and Arlene and Glenda and I. The van Rensburg’s pipped us by the narrowest of margins, but we still won some chocolate, which is ok with us. We all had a lot of fun.

Being a dad is wonderful and lots of hard work at the same time. The disturbed sleep has been taking its toll, particularly on Glenda, but the smiles and fun definitely outweigh this by far. The challenge facing us now is teaching Joshua to sleep through the night.

God really blessed our family with a new place to stay. We were given notice on the garden cottage that we had occupied for 10 years in Gonubie. With the property market booming we found it very difficult to find a suitable place. One of our prayers was to be close to the church. After months of searching and lots of false starts we found a beautiful two bedroomed cottage no more than 300m from where we meet. It has everything we need and is only a year old and has been finished really well. I know that stacks of people saw it before us, but the owners decided that we were the people for the place! God exceeded our expectations by far and answered our prayers, and we are really happy living where we are. Now we can walk to church. He is Good!

Posted by Ryan @ 3:02 pm
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