Bandana Sunday

Every year we buy and wear bandanas in support of the sunflower foundation to raise funds for those suffering from leukaemia and related illnesses. This year the Grace congregation combined this with a special guest service and invited friends and neighbours to come along to a service where Theo preached about God in the midst of trouble.

Our services were well attended and many bandanas were sold making a special difference to the Sunflower Foundation.

Our Church Gardens

We are privileged not only to have a beautiful building, but also really beautiful gardens. We are very grateful to have Dina Harding and Lazaros Mahlafunya who put in such a huge effort to maintain and beautify our gardens.

 These photos are a tribute to them and we extend our grateful thanks to Dinah and Lazaros for the hard work they put in to make our place of worship such a signpost to the glory of God!

Click on the photos to enlarge them....
 








 








 








 

 

 

 

 












 

Global Leadership Summit

Every year we block book for the Global Leadership Summit which is run by Willow Creek Southern Africa and then we nag people to attend. This year there were over 70 people who were booked through Emmanuel and they were thoroughly blessed!


Here are some of Theo's Highlights for the Summit:

1. Bill Hybels: Why can't our next five years be our best?
2. Len Schlesinger - serial entrepenuers have a bias toward action
3. Cory Booker - If it needs to be let it start with me
4. "We dig the ditches - only God can make it rain" - Steven Furtick
5. "Because the tide is out does not mean there is less water!" - Seth Godin
6. Pastor Tadessa Asay: Twice they tried to execute him by electrocution and failed. His response: To carry on preaching.
7. Mama Maggie Gobran: Through silence we discover that the Kingdom of God is in us!
8. Michelle Rhee: Mediocrity? Not on MY watch!
9. Erwin Macmanus: Are you taking your dream to the grave?

A week later we met to reflect on the summit and agreed that we had been powerfully moved, challenged and inspired.

Robbery at the church

Here's the letter Theo wrote to the congregation....

Dear Emmanuel Family

Lazaros and Theo repairing the window...

This morning at 3h08, the church was broken into. They rolled a drum from the braai area, stood on it, broke the window above the serving hatch in the kitchen, crawled through and went into the cry-room where they grabbed the sound system and speakers there. (The cry room is not covered by the alarm) 

When they ripped the wiring of the speakers, they also ripped the cabling of the alarm which runs through there, setting off the alarm.

ADT were very quick to respond and they called me at 3h30 and I got to the church at 3h45. The Boschkop police were also quick to respond.
Both ADT and the SAPS need to be commended for rapid response, professional conduct and super helpfulness.

We haven't lost too much in terms of stuff (We estimate the sound system is worth about R3000)
The niggles are waiting for fingerprinting and cleaning the mess that leaves, repairing the window and the alarm. Please pray for the office team who have had a very busy and challenging couple of weeks and have to get everything sorted before the Global Leadership Summit tomorrow.

This is not a welcome straw on our backs, but we won't let it break us!

We'd really really welcome your prayers for energy, perseverance and wisdom!

Let's pray about the crime and those who feel that they have no other option than to rob even churches. Let's pray for those who get sucked into crime and let's pray for our economic situation that leaves people feeling that crime is their only option. Let's also not give into negativity and cynicism - As we saw in church on Sunday, God is at work in our congregation, we should not be surprised by opposition from the forces of darkness!

With much love between the yawns!

Eternity Day of Giving

Today was our Day of Giving Sunday - A day which we all work towards and strive to give an "over and above" offering to God for His goodness to us. This our "Oblation" (Solemn act of Thanksgiving)

This year we did something special in that Theo, Craig and Susan put together a very special presentation based on the story of Arthur Stace who was known by many in Sydney Australia as "Mr Eternity."

Arthur Stace's story goes like this:

• He was born in 1884, Sydney Australia.    His mother and father, his two brothers and two sisters were alcoholics.  He grew very poor, looking after himself and stealing as needed.
• At fourteen he found his first job, in a coalmine, and at fifteen he was in jail for the first of many visits.
• He had no education - couldn't write his own name
• He was in World War One. He served in France, returning partially blinded in one eye, and suffering the effects of poison gas. He was drinking methylated spirits at sixpence a bottle, and living on handouts.
• On August 6th, 1930, he attended a meeting for men at St Barnabas' Church. Noticing six tidily dressed people near the front, he asked the man sitting next to him "Who are they?"
  "I'd reckon they'd be Christians", he replied.
      Stace said: "Well look at them and look at us. I'm having a go at what they have got,"
   -- and he slipped down on his knees and prayed.
• This changed his life!!! He sobered up, got a job and was regular in church.
• Two years later he heard a sermon: by the Rev. John Ridley who said
      "I wish I could shout ETERNITY through all the streets of Sydney!"
   Stace, recalling the day, said: "He repeated himself and kept shouting 'ETERNITY, ETERNITY' and his words were ringing through my brain as I left the church. Suddenly I began crying and I felt a powerful call from the Lord to write "ETERNITY". I had a piece of chalk in my pocket and I bent down there and wrote it."
• From that moment on Arthur would get up early every morning and go to whichever part of Sydney he felt God was prompting him to go and he would write his one-word sermon wherever he could. 
• He did it in secret for 26 years before someone finally spotted him!
  It is conservatively estimated that in 37 years he wrote the word ETERNITY half a million times... (That's nearly 40 times a day!)
• He was just a simple uneducated man, but his one word message reminded everyone to think about the fact that we live for every - that God has put eternity in our hearts.
• He died in 1967 and one would have thought that that was the end. But "his word" was the grand finale of the Sydney fireworks show for the turn of the Milennium and then at the 2004 Olympics and the entire world watched one television.
• I wonder if God patted him on the back and said "Well done good and faithful servant"

In preparation for the service, which was repeated at Grace and then two weeks later at the Evening Service. We prepared a blackboard "road" for people to write on and we wrote and spraypainted the "Eternity" word all over the building. Craig put together a Powerpoint slideshow to accompany a song written by Nathan Tasker that tells Stace's Story. You can listen to it HERE.

People found the service very very moving and challenging. The good news is that over R80,000 was raised by the Day of Giving and God's People were encouraged to serve God faithfully like Arthur Stace did.