E-mail spam

Today I received yet another e-mail claiming that I have won the UK Lottery for the umpteenth time, added to this all the mails inviting me to claim my prize in the US Sweepstakes and any number of European lotteries.

Cash falling from heaven?  Not likely...

If such prize winnings were in fact genuine (doubtful, since the first rule for any hope of Lotto winnings is that you actually need to purchase a ticket - which I haven't), I would probably by now have been able to single-handedly pay for the building of the entire Seminary, as well as eliminate all forms of Connexional and District assessments forever.

The sad thing is that these idiots persist in sending me (and, no doubt, millions of others) this junk because many people fall into their trap, which is to obtain banking details and/or advance "processing fees".  Needless to day, the victims never see a brass farthing of any Lotto winnings, and in many cases are left with their bank accounts cleaned out.

So if I can say this simply, and slowly: If you receive ANY e-mail from someone you dont know, claiming that you have won a prize in a competition that you KNOW you did not enter, DELETE IT ON SIGHT!!!

Mvume Dandala to return to the MCSA

I've just seen an interesting article on the Mail & Guardian website announcing former COPE leader Mvume Dandala's proposed return to the Methodist Church of Southern Africa, from which he resigned as a minister when taking up his position in politics.

What saddens me, though, is the comments that appear below the article - commentators that are clearly ignorant of the relationship between the MCSA and its ministers.  The fact of the matter is that Rev Dandala was required to resign as a minister, since our Laws and Disciplines do not allow for its clergy to hold party political posts.  In fact, as ministers we are even discouraged from being members of political parties (although freedom to vote for the party of our choice is not impacted).

My own opinion is that this is a sound policy, for the simple reason that as a minister, we are called to serve all the members of the congregation, and I don't see how this can be done with integrity if one is a member of a particular party.  The risk of alienating those who align themselves to other parties is too great.  Incidently, Rev Dandala believes that there is no inherent conflict, and that ministers should be allowed to take up party membership and even political leadership positions.  His argument, expressed at a recent Ujamaa conference in Pietermaritzburg, is that Christians should be influencial in all spheres of life, including politics. I must respectfully differ with him on this one.  While I agree that Christians can (and should) serve God in all areas, when it comes to full-time ministry, I  believe that clergy must choose which hat to wear - politics, or ministry.

So now Rev Dandala has submitted an application to come back into the MCSA fold, having resigned from COPE's leadership and left active politics.  I have no problem with that - by all accounts, he left the MCSA on good terms, and in terms of our policies, a Pastoral Commission has been convened to consider his application for reinstatement.  Due process was followed when he joined COPE (i.e. he resigned), and it appears that due process is being followed concerning his return.

Although I don't know Rev Dandala personally, I do believe that he was called by God to ministry - certainly his track record as a minister and leader in the MCSA speaks for itself - and the fact that he has spent a season in the political arena does not mean that he has abandoned that call, particularly given his views expressed at the Ujamaa conference.  He had also done the honourable thing by resigning when it became clear that there could be no meeting of the minds between the different camps in COPE - and given the number of power-hungry megalomaniacs in South African politics today, honour and integrity is a rare character trait.

So I pray that the Pastoral Commission will be just that - pastoral - and that God's will be done, whatever the outcome.  And my prayers are with Rev Dandala, that he will not only seek God's will concerning his return to ministry, but that he will also find healing after what could only have been a trying time during his season in the political arena.

"All of self, and none of Thee..."

I went to a Circuit Quarterly Meeting last night, which started at 7 pm and finished at around 11:30.  Unfortunately, for reasons I'm not at liberty to go into on this forum, it seemed that Jesus had left the meeting at 9.

Sad when some people consider themselves above the work of the ministry...

Meetings!

It always amazes me that a meeting is defined as an activity that involves hours and hours of tense debate, ultimately producing a result called "minutes".

And this past week has had more than its fair share of meetings.  On Monday we had a rather tense Community Forum meeting at the Seminary, in which Ross addressed us with a number of grave matters relating to our community living as well as other rather sensitive issues.  Then on Tuesday I attended a meeting of the Circuit Executive with two of my Seminary colleagues, which was part of the viability and visioning exercise we are assisting this particular Circuit with - and it was a tense affair starting at 7pm and ending just before 11.

Wednesday was the turn of our Leaders' Meeting at Prestbury, which Michael asked me to chair, and one or two sparks flew there as well.  Although that one "only" lasted 2 1/2 hours, I was still pretty shattered at the end of it.  Moving on to Friday, we had a dinner held in honour of Alice O'Neill who has just achieved her Springbok Scout, the highest award in Scouting.  While this was not a "meeting" in the true sense of the word, there was quite a number of speeches and (once again) I only arrived back home at 11.

After a mere five hours of sleep it was up again to take part in a tree-planting community project that the Scouts were involved in.  This entailed a 3.8km uphill schlep through the forest paths behind Cascades shopping centre to the place where the trees were to be planted.  The fact that I busted my second pair of sandals within a week, courtesy of the left sole becoming completely detached (we'll have no cracks about a Methodist minister losing his sole/soul, if you don't mind...) about 800m into the walk meant that I trekked the remaining 3km with a serious wheel alignment problem.  My feet, knees, and hips were NOT happy!  Thankfully I was able to hitch a lift back down.

Finally, to round off the week, I was asked to attend a congregational meeting at Pietermaritzburg Metropolitan Society this morning (also to do with the Circuit exercise referred to above), which I arrived at just after 10 (having ducked out halfway through he service at Unit 14).  Ross had been preaching and was planning to attend the meeting as well, but I suspect that as soon as he saw me he figured that this would present the perfect opportunity for a well-executed escape.  (Ross - you owe me one!)  After just over 3 1/2 hours of fairly intense debate, I hauled my sorry self back to Waalhaven, where the ministrations of my wife's roast beef, mash and veg, and sparkling grape juice re-fortified my weary soul.

The rest of today was spent basking my brain with Greek, ready for tomorrow's test.  At this stage I have to confess that it's all Greek to me!  Languages are not exactly my forte, and since turniong 40 I seem to have lost my capacity for rote learning as well.  In short, I'm up to my ankles in it, except that I'm head first.

Put it this way - if some people in the Seminary are getting up to mischief (and I stress, some - by no means a majority), quite frankly I don't know where they're getting the time!

PhD, relocation, and other permutations

I am a member of a task team comprising seminary students who are tasked with assisting a local Circuit with a viability and visioning assessment exercise, part of which entails regular feedback and strategy meetings on Thursday afternoons.

After today's meeting Ross asked me, quite out of the blue, whether the plans for my proposed PhD are on track.  More particularly, whether we could do any advance spadework with the University of kwaZulu-Natal so that I could be "pre-registered" for the PhD programme so as to start as soon as I have completed my seminary studies in June next year.  (For those who are not aware, simultaneous registration with more than one educational institution is prohibited under South African law, otherwise I could have possibly been registered for the PhD already).

But the conversation soon turned to other matters surrounding my future study plans - in particular, whether my family and I are still on board with the idea of staying on at the Seminary for a further year (i.e. to the end of 2012), the purpose of which is to be within striking range of the University.  And I must say that I have mixed feelings about this.  While Seminary life is challenging in many good and pleasant ways, in particular from an education and formation point of view, it also comes with some less pleasant challenges (some of which I've articulated in a previous post).

The other matter relates to our parents, with both mine and Belinda's mothers living in our property (a pair of semi-detached houses) in Johannesburg.  The financial upkeep is substantial, but manageable.  However, of greater concern is their ages - my mother is 72, and Belinda's mother is 75 - and we are experiencing a growing degree of discomfort with having them live on their own, 500km away.  So selling up and relocating the folks to Pietermaritzburg is an option to consider.

There's also the matter of James starting high school in 2012, and given that the MCSA's stationing process can literally send you anywhere in Southern Africa (my colleage Kevin Endres, for instance, is being stationed in Windhoek, Namibia next year), I have reservations in allowing him to start high school and then have to change schools after a year.  This points to me leaving Seminary at the end of 2011.

On the other hand, if I am accepted into the PhD programme, then from that point of view, leaving at the end of 2012 is the better option.  It is also not absolutely out of the question that a station could open up in Pietermaritzburg or within striking range, whether for 2012 or 2013, and I have already indicated to Ross that I would like to be up for consideration should such a post become available.  Certainly we've settled in nicely in Pietermaritzburg, what with my attachment to Prestbury, Belinda serving in a number of different ministries, James at Sunday School, both James and I involved in Scouts, his sport, our new friends...

Obviously, if this doesn't happen, then I need to be prepared to go whever the Church sends me.  It's difficult, this - especially given the need to honour my commitment to "go to whichever Circuit I am sent to".  And I have no intention of dishonouring this commitment.  However, one has to also consider the needs of family, and hopefully the Church will be pastoral in this regard.

Still, I have time on my hands - time to talk, time to pray, and time to engage with the appropriate people.  And when all is said and done, time will come when I need to simply leave the whole thing in God's hands, knowing that it is ultimately God's ministry that I am called to serve in.

Petrolheads!

One of my passions is cars.  Before I was even out of nappies, I could tell the difference between the engine note of a V8 and a straight six, and as a child with a father who sold cars for a living, there was nothing cooler than spending Saturday mornings at work with him.  From the age of about seven, my job was to start up each and every car on the lot and give them a bit of a rev (so the battery wouldn't go flat, of course!).

Yet despite me being a petrolhead of note, my ownership experience of cars has been ... er ... boring?

My first car was a 1984 Ford Escort 1.3L (the first front-wheel-drive ones), which had (unbeknown to me) been rolled by its previous owner and so the roof had not been put back on quite straight.  It had a top speed of about 130km/h (down a mineshaft, with a tailwind), and 0-100 took about three weeks.  Still, I had some fond memories of that car - especially when I was washing it at my then-girlfriend's house and she brought me one her mother's pristine white towels to dry it with, so as to not scratch the paintwork.  (I figured there and then that she was a "keeper" and married her four years later).

Tiring of the 'phone messages to call the Escort agency every time I took it in for a service, I got this rush of blood to the head and decided to buy (and restore) my late father-in-law's old 1.6 Corolla - the last of the rear-wheel-drive models.  It had an asthmatic 50kW engine, leaked every kind of automotive fluid known to humankind, and had a gearshift that felt like a wooden spoon in suet pudding.  It's only redeeming feature was that i had put a reasonable sound system in (comprising "the" tape deck to have in those days - a Pioneer Arc Component, coupled to their famed GM120 amplifier).

In a bizarre way, this dog of a car cemented my burgeoning love affair with Toyotas since I traded it in (or rather, asked the dealership to take it away and burn it) on a 1987 FWD 1.6GL Corolla.  Now THAT was a great car - I bought it in 1992 with 88,000km on the clock for R22,000, and sold it seven years later with 246,000km on it - still with the original clutch - and got R18,500 for it.

Enter my first "real" job, and to go with it I bought my first "real" car - a 1991 BMW 325i (yes, the one that epitomised the "feline shriek" of a BMW straight six).  It was a seriously fun car to drive, with 126kW on tap (exactly double that of the Corolla), but after a holiday to Cape Town with wife, mother, 18-month-old son, and 3 tons of luggage and baby paraphernalia on board, I knew I needed a bigger car.

So what would any self-respecting, 30-year-old professional on his way up the corporate ladder, who had just spent two years of "sheer driving pleasure" in one of BMW's finest, buy next?  Not what you'd expect.  The honours for my first new car went to ... a boring grey Mazda 626, whose main feature was a boot that was probably big enough to park the BMW in, had I kept it...

Five years later and 151,000 trouble-free kilometres later, I made what was probably the stupidist automotive decision of my life, and traded the Mazda in on a Renault Scenic.  Great car, with it's high-up stance and millions of hidey-holes, but one couldn't complain about the service - 'cos there wasn't any.  Then came the calling to ministry, and with the prospect of being posted off to the boondocks, and glad for an excuse to get rid of that horrid French thing,  I threw all caution to the wind and bought the gay Chinese truck (see previous post here), for which I have developed a distinct fondness over the past three years.

In the meantime my wife also took to the road, with her first car being her late father's 1.3 CitiGolf.  I should have suspected that lightning would, in this case, strike twice in the same place given my experiences with his old RWD Toyota, and so it proved with the Golf being held together with prestik and wire.  When the VW finally expired, I decided that my significant other needed something more reliable, which came in the form of an Opel Astra Estate, which was quite zooty with its aftermarket mag wheels and "Bite Me" logo on the rear.

Unfortunately, after a mere 12 months with the Opel, Belinda had an altercation with an Oshkosh on the N12, in which the Astra came off second-best.  So now she drives a motorised sofa with a boot big enough to take another sofa in it, otherwise known as a Toyota Camry.  It's big, it's lazy, and it's an automatic - and it's probably THE most comfortable car I have ever driven.

However, despite my wife and I owning what many would consider to be the most boring transport on four wheels during the 19 years of our marriage (except for the aforementioned BM), my son has, thanks to Messrs Clarkson, May, and Hammond of TopGear fame, become a petrolhead in the making.

This morning, in reference to the expressed desire of Jeremy Clarkson that, when he dies one day, he be driven to his funeral at 100 miles an hour in anything with a V8 under the bonnet, James decided that if he were to die anytime soon (God forbid), he wants to go one better - a Bugatti Veyron Super Sport, the most insanely powerful (and expensive) production car in the world.

There's just one problem - since the Veyron doesn't come in an estate version, and the exhaust configuration precludes the fitment of a towbar (which would be sacrilege), the only way to turn a Veyron into a hearse would be to put a roofrack on it.

And that's just WRONG!!!

Uncelebrated milestone

It's just struck me that my last post two days ago was Number 400.  Who would have thought that so much verbiage could flow from my keyboard in what has been a relatively short period of time (three years)?

Jenny also mentioned to me that she looks for a blog post for me when things aren't going well.  Part of the reason is that I find blogging to be quite therapeutic  Which means that when I don't blog for a long time, things build up inside like a volcano waiting to erupt - which it eventually does!

Different people blog for different reasons.  What are some of yours?