Stewart 5

Do you ever stop and ask yourself, “How did I get here.” I’m not talking about those eerie moments when you are stopped at a traffic light and realize that you have been driving without paying attention for several miles. I mean, in life in general. Your job, your family, where you live, the people you spend time with. How did I get here?

I have lived in South Africa – SOUTH AFRICA – for over three years.� Weird! And while there are all the obvious and recent developments in my life that have brought me here, there are a lot of other things, little things, in my past that I think are also part of the journey to where I am now.

Things like

• Watching the movie “Zulu” as a child. Random, I know, but it left a lasting impression on me of the Zulus and the British in South Africa. Why?
• Attending the only black high school in Fresno. Add to that my Rastafarian phase, and I have a whole lot more black in my growing up years than most white boys I know. Not that I am claiming to have had any sort of “black experience,” but I do have a great appreciation for the richness of the black American culture.
• In my senior year, for reasons more complex than I can explain here, I chose to fail some sort of state-mandated essay exam. I don’t even remember what it was for. I just remember that I wrote the words “Free South Africa” over and over, on every line of the book. BTW, I got in trouble for this.
• Watching Nelson Mandela walk out of prison as a teenager in 1990 and crying. Going to Rwanda in 1995 for three months. This was life-changing, and I think our trek back to Africa was inevitable from that day.
• And am I the only person who remembers the song, “Ain’t Gonna’ Play Sun City?” A protest song by a collection of musicians boycotting the fancy-schmancy white resort in SA by the same name.

Coincidences? I think not. And there are lots more. When I think of where I am now, all these small things gain significance in the timeline of my past.

So, question for you: How did you get to where you are? Look at now, and use that as a lens to peer back over your life. I’ll bet some things will jump out that you never really noticed before. Would love to hear what some of those are…

One of the things that has been running through my mind recently is how our team - NieuCommunities South Africa - can allow/encourage/foster individual senses of vision and calling while also holding a corporate sense of mission. And, how can I as a team leader, help that? And, how can I help infuse a sense of vision without overriding everyone else’s dreams?

I’ve been thinking, talking, praying about it. Then, I come across a quote in Michael Frost & Alan Hirsch’s book The Shaping of Things to Come that nails it for me…

What a great visionary leader does is awaken and harness the dreams and visions of the members of a given community and give them deeper coherence by means of a grand vision that ties together all the “little visions” of the members of the group. (p. 188)

That’s what I want to do - help each of us discover our own dreams. Then, look at them together and see what it all means. To celebrate and integrate those individual pieces into the whole. To help us come to OUR vision.

BTW, this is an excellent book. If you are beyond learning about the idea of the emerging church and are busy trying to be the Church and figuring it out along the way, I would say it is a must read. Alan Hirsch is going to be with us in SA in September