Explore Life in 2018!

In 2018, at Grace Generation Church in Pelham, Pietermaritzburg we are going to be running pilot programme to explore life.

i-Life stands for “Investigate Life”. i-Life is a forum to discover the reason you are alive, a place where you can investigate who you are made to be – your identity, your belonging and purpose.

We are going to be looking at Life – real life, full life, life lived to the max – and unpack what this life looks like, what it is about and why it is the life that you are called to. We are going to do this by comparing different views of reality and the answers they give including pre-modern, modern, postmodern, religious and Christian views.

i-Life is aimed at students and young adults and anyone who is young at heart – at those who are hungry to learn! Student life can be about academic knowledge that isn’t easily applied to life. We want to provide an opportunity to integrate that academic learning with application to reality to assist in equipping you for real life, for a maximized life. We are going to look in to Life with both academic rigour (the facilitators mostly have Master and PhD degrees) and with practical engagement and relational encounter.

SMS 0828297959 to Register:

Please give: First Name, Last Name, Age, Student Institution or Work Organisation, Year at the Institution or Years of Work, What you are Studying or What is your Role at Work.

Sunday, March 4, 2018	Session 1: Introduction to Life What do we mean by life? Session 2: There Must be More to Life! The longing for more than what is
Sunday, March 11, 2018	Movie Club Inception
Sunday, March 18, 2018	Session 3: Where has all the Life Gone? What is wrong with the world? Session 4: Where did Life Come From? The origins of life
Sunday, March 25, 2018	Break
Sunday, April 1, 2018	Movie Club The Passion
Sunday, April 8, 2018	Session 5: How do we Reclaim Life? Recovering paradise lost Session 6: Who can Lead us to Life? Who are the authorities that we will believe?
Sunday, April 15, 2018	Break
Sunday, April 22, 2018	Movie Club The Matrix
Sunday, April 29, 2018	Session 7: But Small is the Gate and Narrow the Road that Leads to Life, and Only a Few Find It The road that leads to life Session 8: The Life Appeared God moved into the neighbourhood
Sunday, May 6, 2018	Movie Club Gran Torino
Sunday, May 13, 2018	Session 9: I Am the Way and the Truth and the Life Finding the life we long for Session 10: Whoever Finds their Life will Lose It, and Whoever Loses their Life for My Sake Will Find It What it takes to gain life
Sundays, May 20 and May 27, 2018	Break
Sunday, June 3, 2018	Session 11: What Must I do to Inherit Eternal Life? Encountering the author of life Session 12: Now this is Eternal Life: That They Know You, the Only True God Becoming children of the Father
Sunday, June 10, 2018	Movie Club Les Miserables
Sunday, June 17 – Sunday, July 15, 2018	Mid-Year Break
Sunday, July 22, 2018	Session 13: I Came that You May Have Life, and Life to the Full There is a plan for your life Session 14: I Urge You to Live a Life Worthy of the Calling You Have Received Living the rest of your life in relationship with him who is Life
Sunday, July 29, 2018	Movie Club Babette’s Feast
Sunday, August 5, 2018	Session 15: Choose Life In personal relationships Session 16: Choose Life In sexual relationships
Sunday, August 12, 2018	Movie Club Courageous
Sunday, August 19, 2018	Session 17: Choose Life In marriage Session 18: Choose Life In family
Sunday, August 26, 2018	Movie Club Paljas
Sunday, September 2, 2018	Session 19: Choose Life In church Session 20: Choose Life In community
Sunday, September 9, 2018	Break
Sunday, September 16, 2018	Movie Club Amazing Grace
Sunday, September 23, 2018	Session 21: Choose Life In work Session 22: Choose Life In wealth: Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life
Sunday, September 30, 2018	Movie Club Arrival
Sunday, October 7, 2018	Session 23: Choose Life In public life Session 24: Choose Life In power
Sunday, October 14, 2018	Movie Club The Hunger Games
Sunday, October 21, 2018	Session 25: Choose Life In communication Session 26: Choose Life In creativity
Sunday, October 28, 2018	Break
Sunday, November 4, 2018	Movie Club Slumdog Millionaire
Sunday, November 11, 2018	Session 27: Choose Life In learning Session 28: Choose Life In wisdom
Sunday, November 18, 2018	Movie Club Forrest Gump
Sunday, November 25, 2018	Movie Club Life of Pi
Sunday, December 9, 2018	Movie Club Jeaux Nouelle
Sunday, December 23, 2018	Movie Club It’s a Wonderful Life

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Handling Conflict

We have been preaching a series at Grace Generation Church here in Pietermaritzburg on “God’s Family”. I preached yesterday on “Handling Conflict”. There was an enthusiastic response from a number of people and many asked for access to the material. So I put together the video below. Also below is a link to the PowerPoint presentation on SlideShare as well as a link through to our Africa Media Online Company Culture document. That may also prove helpful.

• Slide Presentation on SlideShare
• Africa Media Online Company Culture document

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A fire on every mountain and in every valley

When Google Maps directed us off the main tar road down a potholed sand track into a township in Maseru, we wondered if we had got the right address. Shirtless children playing in the dirt at the edge of the road looked up at us as we bounced by. Although we have lived most of our lives in KwaZulu-Natal, Province, South Africa, we had never been to Maseru. There was much that reminded us, though, of Maputo or Nairobi, Lusaka or Bulawayo. Google Maps called us to a halt in front of a steel gate. An old man who spoke no word of English opened up for us. All about was dust, but inside was a regular grassed and flowered urban garden. The Wests had been hard at work bringing order and life in unexpected places!


Pete and Jo West and their three boys – Jacob, Ben and Sam, in their garden in Khubetsoana, Maseru

Pete and Jo West relocated to Maseru two years ago to lead a church that had been planted some years before. River of Life meets in an area called Seapoint. The vibrant community meets in a small hall beside a bakery behind the local shebeen (bar). While coming to Maseru seemed strategic for advancing the work in Lesotho, The West’s had to give up a lot to come and serve in this bustling city.

River of Life in Seaport, Maseru, meets beside a bakery and behind a bar. They have not had water in their taps for 2 years and there is no electricity to the building, only generator power – yet they are a vibrant, grateful community

The West’s introduction to Lesotho was to the rural area across the border from Clarens in the Free State. Something amazing had happened at Dihlabeng in Clarens, South Africa. Hundreds of people made a commitment to Christ and People would cross the river from Lesotho on Sundays to go to church at Dihlabeng.  When that became an international issue between South Africa and Lesotho in 2008, Rehobothe Church was planted in Lesotho to serve those people. In 2008, Pete and Jo relocated from Clarens to Lesotho to support the Rehobothe congregation in the remote village of Habafokeng. They arrived with Jo heavily pregnant with their second son, Ben, and initially lived in a house with no running water or electricity.  Combining the gospel with ‘Farming God’s Way’ or Conservation Farming, the work grew to become a church of over a 100 people, a clinic with a doctor and 6 health workers as well as an agricultural work extending into the surrounding villages.

One village, in particular, caught the vision.  Through implementing what they had learnt, in a year of drought, Maloseng village had a yield more than ten times the yield anywhere else in Lesotho. Another village that saw amazing transformation on the back of the agricultural training was Maloseng, where 85 people responded to the first presentation of the gospel and a second church was established. They met with Pete and Jo under a tree for the first 4 years.

While living in the mountains God gave the West’s a vision of “a fire on every mountain and in every valley” In November this year, they saw a little more of this happening when a team comprised of believers from Harding, Umtata, Clarens and Maseru headed out on foot from the mountain base of Liphakoeng (in Mantsonyane district) in groups, carrying little for the journey, and split up to visit villages in the area which have no churches.  In each village they went from home to home bringing the gospel, praying for people’s needs and inviting people to an evening meeting.  At one village an elderly lady, who walks 2 hours every week to church at Liphakoeng, asked about the baptism of the Holy Spirit.  She was powerfully filled with the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues. A young deaf boy also received his hearing.


At certain times of the year Maseru, Lesotho’s capital city, is home to a quarter of the country’s population

In 2014, having established the work at both Rehobothe and Maloseng, Pete and Jo handed over the work to two of their “sons” in the Lord, Chigo and Biggy, and were called to the capital city, Maseru.  River of Life, Maseru had been planted by Steve Oliver in 2005 who asked them to assist. Pete and Jo felt that establishing a strong base in Maseru would help to further the vision of “A fire on every mountain and in every valley”.  Pete is trusting God for a time when they would be able to see 20 new churches planted every year in Lesotho.

Khotatso, is the first fruit of that vision.  Raised in Mantonyane in the mountains of central Lesotho, Khotatso met Jesus at River of Life, Maseru, on his way to find work in Johannesburg.  But God has got a hold of Khotatso’s heart and he felt he should leave Johannesburg to return to his own village to share the good news of Jesus’ death and resurrection with the people there.   A year ago Pete led a team from Maseru to Mantonyane to baptise 18 of Khotatso’s congregation. The team this year, that went out on foot, was another step in their vision of the flames going out through the mountains.


Pete and Jo moved to Maseru because they believe it is a step to seeing “a fire on every mountain and in every valley in Lesotho”

Pete and Jo live in Khubetsoana, an area of Maseru, with their 3 boys, who Jo homeschools: Jacob, Ben and Sam. Pete and Jo have both learned to speak Sotho and have laid down much to minister to the people of Lesotho. Life is without many of the comforts they grew up with in Zimbabwe and the UK respectively.  Yet they are amazingly at home here. And their home is a place of peace, where all kinds of people, particularly Basotho, are welcome.

To find out more about what is happening there or to support the work in Lesotho and the West’s specifically contact Pete and Jo on peteandjowest@gmail.com

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Miners Shot Down

I saw Rehad Desai’s “Miners Shot Down” documentary at a film festival not so long ago and it undid me. It stirred within me again the emotions I felt which moved to be involved in the Struggle as a student in the late 1980s protesting against an illegitimate and unjust state. That was in the bad old days of apartheid. But this, this is in the “New South Africa”.

Yet on the other hand I was not surprised. When we used to run a training programme for youths from all over South Africa and the World in the early 2000s we used a game developed by African Enterprise called “the power game” where those in the game who manage to accumulate the most are at some point allowed to change the rules. Every time we played it, those at the top changed the rule to maintain their power. At a fundamental level we are all like this. We all change the rules and uphold systems and structures that maintain our own power. The is, I believe, the default position of human nature apart from a transforming encounter with God. I see it in my own heart. Marikana has provided us with an insight into our nation’s soul, and what we see there is little different from what we saw on June 16, 1976. We are still human, still in need of a Saviour!

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Her and Courageous

This weekend Rosanne and I watched two excellent movies that provided a dramatic contrast to one another. Both had to do with relational values. On Saturday night we watched Her after Common Sense Media gave it a 5 star rating. Sunday evening, with the family, we watched Courageous.

Her takes the virtual life to an extreme in a story where a man falls in love with a computer. Even sex is virtual in this futuristic reality. It is a brilliantly acted and filmed story showing the disillusionment and estrangement of a World where sex becomes a commodity and relationship narcissistic to the extreme. The movie certainly has adult content and so you should be aware of that before watching. Yet is asks such critical questions of our post modern culture and the limits of our technological selves.

Courageous is a movie created by a church. In that sense it is independent of the big studios. With that in mind, it is an amazing effort. What a powerful message about the need for fathering and the centrality of relationships. It has certainly impacted many fathers I know and has given further impetus to my convictions about the critical nature of the father role in the lives of young people. At the end of the day, it is this movie that provides the real answers to the question of identity and satisfaction that we all seek. Where her asks more questions than it answers, Courageous provides a path out of the post modern malaise.

Gary Turk has one response to some of the questions raised by Her:

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The Man Who Inspired My Career

This is the man that inspired me to become a journalist which led on to me becoming a photographer! In January 1996 had fallen ill on the way to Cape Town with salmonella poisoning. Peter’s daughter was giving Rosanne and I a lift to Cape Town and because of my illness we ended up spending the night at Splashy Fenn farm with Peter and Almary Ferraz. It was one of those pivotal moments in life when one wonders what is the next step. I could have taken a number of roads, but was toying with the idea of becoming a journalist after Eugene Peterson, Professor of Spiritual Theology at Regent College got one of my papers published. Peter heard my story and put heart into me about being a freelance journalist. He said I could do it, and I did, for many years I did. Thank you Peter! Rest in peace father of my career.

Read his final newspaper piece: http://underbergdiary.co.za/cancer-chose-treatment-option/

Almary and Peter Ferraz in Zimbabwe’s Matobos National Park.

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Prayers for Peace

I came across this story in the Adobe Inspire digital Magazine. Dustin Grella, a stop motion animator did this for his parents in honour of his younger brother. It is all done on chalk boards and totally blew me away.

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Hope for a Building for Grace Generation Church, Pietermaritzburg

Our church community here in Pietermaritzburg, has been on something of a journey. For many years the church was based in a hall behind the old Pietermaritzburg prison. At that time the church was spearheading a Christian response on behalf of the wider Church in Pietermaritzburg to the Seven Days War in the early 1990s and later to the HIV/AIDS pandemic through Project Gateway. The Project had been given the prison by the government and so the church that served to make the project happen took up residence in the hall.

In June 2008, however, we moved. We moved from the prison into a school hall – Scottsville Primary School. For some time we had been looking to build our own building and had raised some capital toward that goal. Our time at the prison had come to an end and as a leadership we believed God was calling us to focus more on the church rather than the enormous project that seemed to overwhelm the life of the church. So when God seemed to sovereignly open the door for us to relocate to Scottsville Primary, we leapt at the opportunity. So on June 8, 2008 we made the move with great joy even though there was some real sadness at the time as some of our folk decided to stay and keep on being the “Gateway church”.

The six years we have been at Scottsville has been a time of amazing favour from God. We came here somewhat exhausted and rather beaten up as a community in many ways. There had been a lot of sadness around leaving the family of churches we had been a part of for decades called Newfrontiers, and difficulty around leaving Project Gateway. But we came into a space where we just grew in joy and peace. There was a real sense of favour from God. In the midst of that we felt led to change our name from Pietermaritzburg Christian Fellowship (PCF) to Grace Generation Church (Grace Gen as people say). Our congregation has changed too. We are younger and have more people of African and Indian descent and fewer of European decent than before. And bit by bit we have grown to the point where the current venue is actually too small for us and is preventing further growth. So it has come time to move again.

Last year one of our leaders, Avril Potgieter, alerted us to the fact that the Dutch Reformed Church in the suburb of Pelham may be amalgamating with the Hayfields Dutch Reformed Church and if that is the case then perhaps their building may become available for sale. We investigated and even got to meet with their leadership and make an offer, but in the end they were not ready to sell and needed time to work matters out among the two congregations.

In May this year we celebrated 21 Years of God’s faithfulness to us at Grace Generation Church. We honoured the founders of the church who in 1991, ahead of transformation in South Africa, had brought a Zulu speaking church, and Afrikaans speaking church and an English speaking church together to form PCF/Grace Generation. The day after that celebration the DRC church met and came to a decision to sell the building.

The building is in Pelham, close to where we had thought of building a building some years ago. It is a classic Dutch Reformed Church which a sanctuary that could handle 400 to 500 people and a hall, office space and a resident creche. Next door is the Manse with 4 bedrooms and a study and a large back garden which will make nice field for games for the Kingdom Kids and Youth.

The Dutch Reformed Church building in Pelham, Pietermaritzburg.

We gathered as a church the Friday before last for a “half night” of prayer. It was the best prayer meeting I have ever experienced at Grace Generation. There were so many amazing words from God and we had such a sense that God is with us. We prayed a lot for the DRC Council as they considered our offer the Sunday to come. We were full of faith that God is with us and will make a way even though we are not a wealthy church with our very mixed profile in every way. This past Monday evening as a leadership we met with the DRC committee and they have accepted our offer subject to some fine detail. What thrilled me is that we have offered what we can afford for the main building, which is not a lot in terms of the bricks and mortar that is there, but they accepted on condition that “the building is used for the furtherance of the Gospel and the glory of God.” It was the very thing we felt as we prayed, that here are people who have faithfully served God and given toward the construction of this building and that the baton is being passed on. In many ways we are a New South Africa community taking over, but the mandate to see the work of the Kingdom extended is still there.

So now we actually have to come up with the money, and we have a month to do it in. We are needing to raise R100,000 in a thank offering as a war chest and then for seven years we need to be paying R16,000 over and above our current income to make repayments. That is no small task for us since that represents about a 20% increase in our monthly giving, but we are full of faith. We know God has spoken and so we’re trusting him.

For me, the word that has stood out most strongly for us has been one of revival. There has been a real sense that this building is part of God getting us ready for revival – a place where meetings can take place no matter the time or day (unlike in a school hall). Here is a sermon I preached which touches on the journey that our heavenly Father has graciously led Grace Gen on. It’s called Ready for Revival.

If you feel stirred by this, pray for us. Pray particularly that we would be ready for revival in every way!

And give hilariously if the Spirit leads you to. We’re taking up a special offering as a church this Sunday (July 6, 2014). So there is an opportunity to give. But you could equally join in giving monthly for a period of time. The Grace Gen bank details are here. I would assume you mark it for the Building Fund.

Please read the comments below for updates to this blog post – a lot of developments have happened since I wrote this…

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Interview with Tony Campolo

Some years ago I was editor of SACLA News, a newspaper that ran ahead, during and after the South African Christian Leadership Assembly II (SACLA II). During that time I, together with two other journalists, including Kevin Baker, had the privilege of interviewing Tony Campolo. What an incredible inspiration. He has thought through some of the major issues of our day with such clarity. Here is the interview in full: SACLA 2003 Interview with Dr Tony Campolo

Sociologist Dr Tony Campolo addressing a plenary session at SACLA II. The Second South African Christian Leadership Assembly (SACLA II) was held in Pretoria in 2003 to call the Christian Church in South Africa together to deal with the major issues facing the nation at the time identified as (1) HIV and Aids, (2) violence, (3) crime, (4) racism, (5) poverty and unemployment, (6) sexism, and (7) family crisis.

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Architectural Inspiration

It is amazing living in the digital age where there is so much inspiration at one’s finger tips. Here are two sources of inspiration for house designs that I have been working on: Houzz.com and PinInterest.com. Here are my collections on each of these platforms – buildings that inspire me:

David Larsen’s Architecture Board on PinInterest.com

The gallery below only shows part of my Houzz Ideabook. If you want to see it all click on the link above the gallery.

david_larsen's Ideas

And here is a great blog about some creative homes made from shipping containers.

For some time I have been fascinated by what this company that emerged out of research projects at the University of Bath have been doing in terms of creating a prefabricated straw bales wall solution called Modcell.

Here is a full on Australian bush fire test that was done on a straw bale prefab construction in Australia proving that straw bales are surprisingly resilient.

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