James and Beth Roper's blogs

Open Source Developers

Since everyone's doing it, I thought I'd do it too. My contribution to the What people think I do meme:

The contrasts of snow

What runs around like all its Christmas' have come at once while everyone else around it is groaning? An Australian when they see it snowing in their city for the first time! On Saturday last week Berlin got 2cm of snow, and another 3cm fell on Thursday night. While everyone else is bemoaning the cold and increased work that the snow presents, we have been running around like tourists, taking photos, having snow fights, kicking up snow and making right royal fools of ourselves. We've learnt a few things over the past week:

It's actually true that snowflakes are 6 pointed stars with intricate patterns, and can be quite large.
Snow is not always hard and wet. As long as it's cold enough, it is soft and powdery, and will stay that way on the ground for as long as it stays cold.
There are magical elves that come and sweep the snow off the paths and road within hours of it snowing. We haven't seen any yet, but that's the only explanation we can think of for how the snow is so promptly cleared after it snows.
If your ears are hurting, it's not cold. Cold is when you stopped having any feeling in your ears a long time ago, and talking is getting hard because your cheeks are hard and numb.

Of course, the reality of snow is that while it may be beautiful, it is also very cold. This morning we went for a walk in a beautiful forest. It was sunny, but there were just enough clouds for snow to be glittering through the sunlight as it fell, landing on our jackets where we could marvel at the intricate patterns of the flakes. Everything was silent but for the creaking of trees as they swayed slowly back and forth, and the atmosphere was magical. However, we couldn't enjoy it for too long, because it was so cold, -14°C!

This contrast of beauty and hardship is similar to some of the experiences we are having in church at the moment. This Sunday we are starting something new, a course called Mizizi. Mizizi is the Swahili word for roots, the course was developed by Mavuno to show new Christians and to take old Christians back to the roots of what it means to be a disciple. When Mavuno first started, it was done by every member of Mavuno, and since then it has been the first step for everyone to get involved in Mavuno. The course has been translated and adapted to German culture, and it is our hope that this course will help inspire people to get out of the church and into the culture around them, shining as bright lights on tops of hills.

In order to emphasise the importance of this course and ensure that everyone does it, we are doing it on Sundays. Every second Sunday, we do it instead of church, in our homes, and every other Sunday, we do it as part of church. This has been met with considerable resistance. Many people are worried that without a church service every week we will lose our commitment, and others are worried about what will happen if visitors come on the weeks that we don't have church. Most weeks we do get some visitors, but they are always Christians. Jesus said that it's not the healthy that need a doctor, but the sick. If only healthy people visited a doctors surgery, there would be no need for the doctor to be there. Similarly, if only Christians are visiting our church on Sunday, there is no need for us to be there on Sunday. Those Christians that do visit will be more than capable of finding another church, and we consider it no loss that a Christian that might have joined our church didn't — Christians swapping churches does nothing to build the kingdom.

Please pray for our congregation, that they will understand the reasons behind why we are doing what we are doing. Please pray that the Mizizi course would inspire them to engage the society outside the church; we would love nothing more than the result of doing Mizizi to be that our church as one, stops and says "Hang on, why are we spending all our energy running church services when no one is coming to Christ as a result? Let's stop, focus our energy on engaging with people outside the church, and draw them into church, and then start putting energy into doing church services again." If that were to happen, it would be a miracle. Fortunately, God is in the business of miracles, so please pray!

Beth and James in the church carpark.

A glimpse of summer

According to our German friends, this winter has been a warm winter. This time last year there were periods of weeks where the temparature never rose above -10°C, some days the maximum temperature was -20°C. This winter we've been braving sweltering temperatures hovering around 0°C, and much to our dismay, there has been very little snow, and none that has settled on the ground. Nevertheless, it's cold! At a time when we're supposed to be having BBQs on the beach, and sitting back watching the cricket, beer in hand, the cold drizzle of Berlin weather takes its toll on our morales. So what better thing to do than to head down to Kenya for a couple of weeks to thaw out!

Mombasa

Our primary reason for going to Kenya was to join the Mavuno staff retreat. Mavuno has about 80 staff members including interns across its campuses. We made the 12 hour overnight bus trip (including a change of buses and a ferry) to Mombasa with the team, and stayed at a lovely resort on the beach. But don't think we were relaxing! A packed program each day starting with breakfast at 7am and activities all the way through to the night kept us very busy. In between activities we did have some brief chances to swim on the beach, and try out full contact water polo which the Kenyans play like their lives depend on it.

The theme for the staff retreat was change, with Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson being the main reading. You would think a church like Mavuno, that has redefined church in such a way that unchurched young adults feel right at home in it with no awkward church culture to get used to before they feel comfortable, wouldn't have to worry too much about changing. In fact it's change that has made them who they are, and as they become a large organisation, they more than anyone else need to be ready to adapt to change as the culture around them progresses forward. Pastor Muriithi posed the interesting question to all his staff, "What if I fired all of you today, what would you do?" He wanted us to think outside the box of our roles in our churches, and see where God has given us passion to serve and flourish.

For us, the big take away was that we need to step up our thoughts for making a night club church, and turn it into a reality. Mavuno has some big visions, they want to plant a culture defining church in every African capital city, and all the gateway cities of the world, by 2035. We shared with the Mavuno team our vision, and now we have the whole Mavuno staff team watching us, waiting to see how it goes. It's exciting, but at the same time scary and overwhelming. We've got no idea what such a church will look like, but at least we know what we want to achieve, we want to create a church that the people of Berlin's clubbing scene will feel 100% at home in.

Leisure

While the purpose of our trip was to join the staff retreat, we weren't going to pass up the opportunity to see the best that Kenya has to offer... wild animals! We spent three days in the Maasai Mara, observing lions, elephants, rhinos, hippos, giraffes, and the highlight, a cheetah searching for, stalking and then killing a gazelle. Our accomodation was the so called "outdoor" Kenyan experience. For seasoned trekkers such as ourselves, it was a little underwhelming compared the expactions the name conjured up, a better name would be a luxury hotel with canvas for walls. That said, it was very nice, we've never had a hot water shower and flushing toilet en-suite in a tent before!

We also had the chance to go where the tourist buses don't usually go to, that is, to the slums. We visited a Mavuno initiative called Maono, which sets up groups of people that do village banking, so each group has rolling funds that can be used to make micro loans to each other. These groups teach their members discipline and money management skills, as well as give them access to capital for business investments that they wouldn't usually have access to. We also had an opportunity to visit a school that Mavuno supports, and serve the children lunch.

Praise God that:

We had a safe and enjoyable time in Kenya
We made some lasting friendships with the very warm Mavuno staff team
God has fired us up for continued work in Berlin

Pray that God would:

Help us to not be overwhelmed by the tasks ahead of us
Give us wisdom on what the next steps forward are
Help us to settle back into a daily routine

A few more safari pictures, because who doesn't want to see pictures of wild animals!

Beth on Safari

An elephant eating some shrubs

Beth's favourite: some giraffes

A lion cub crossing the road