FutureChurch

Transformation: Insight into a problem does not solve the problem

Roger Saner — Thu, 06 May 2010 12:09:17 +0000

I've been thinking a lot recently about personal transformation and how that works as a Christian, because G-d is supposed to be transforming us constantly. "How specifically does that work?" I've been wondering.

Say a friend says to you, "I am struggling with [X] which I really want to change," what do you tell them? To have more faith? To understand it more? To see a psychologist? A spiritual director? A doctor? To read the Bible more? To have a stronger will? To be more conscious? To pray, and somehow G-d will make it better (but we're not quite sure how that works, or when it might, if at all)?

The psychoanalytic approach is based on the concept that insight produces change. I think that can be valid to a point (self-understanding is good) but that it's unnecessary for insight to precede change.

To that end, I've spent a good deal of time being trained in a specific way of communicating and understanding others: Neuro Linguistic Programming. Yes, it's a mouthful and I feel clever when I say it, but the reality is is that it's given me the tools to help people facilitate change within themselves, without needing to go the psychoanalytic route or the "just have more willpower" route.

Here is the introduction by Richard Bandler (one of the co-founders of NLP) to his latest book, "Get the life you want" (forgo the cheesy title, please!). I'd welcome comments on this, particularly as he's presenting an alternative here to the "insight produces change" paradigm.

I think this is a vitally important conversation for those of us who work with others to have, helping them to better understand themselves and make changes for the better. If we're using an approach which feels good and helps others unpack their realities in a way to better understand them, but doesn't lead to any change (let along generative change!), then we may want to be open to wonder about other approaches which are more helpful for the client.

Here's Bandler:

THIS BOOK IS DESIGNED to be a guide for your behavior. It is a guide to help you make changes and avoid therapy-and avoid a slow, long process of change by helping you learn to change more quickly. One of the things I discovered in my work is that people acquire problems very quickly. It only takes one close call in an airplane for somebody to get an airplane phobia. After one bad accident, people can get a driving phobia. It takes bees to swarm once and people become phobic of bees. If people can learn to have fear in a short period of time, there's no reason why it should take a long period of time to learn anything else, so my policy has always been to use another approach to find a quick way to do things.

What exactly was this different approach I took? When psychologists wanted to study a particular difficulty, like phobias for example, they got together a bunch of phobics and tried to figure out why they were the way they were - effectively they looked at what made them tick. They tried experiments, like having the phobics face their difficulties and try to help them desensitize to their fear over time. The psychoanalytical approach of traveling back in time and reliving traumas, looking for deep, hidden, inner meaning was used. This idea was based on the concept that insight produces change.

This seemed like a wonderful idea! If you could understand your problems somehow or other, they would just disappear. Sigmund Freud started the concept and it was, at the time, a great innovation and has been tried for some 100 years in various forms. The suggestion was that understanding the psyche could produce change. The idea that you could help a person change verbally rather than physically was a promising insight itself. However, the idea of getting insight into your problems just does not work.

Over the years, people have used both psychological approaches and physical approaches. They've tried things like operant conditioning, conditioning people by rewarding them for good behavior and negatively reinforcing bad behavior. They would take smokers and give them a cigarette and shock the hell out of them. The problem is that most people who smoke for a while realize that it's not good for their health. They may even know why they started smoking - to look cool in front of their friends or to get over a nervous habit or to not eat so much-yet even though people know why they smoke, it doesn't make them stop.

Many people also know why they have fears. I had a client who very much understood her fears. When she was a young girl, she was attacked, not by one person but by a group of people. She was severely beaten. She was brutally raped and developed a fear of other people. She had a fear of going outside. In fact, she had a fear of almost everything. She'd seen a psychiatrist who treated her with therapy and drugs. I have to admit that taking valium made her more relaxed but, then again, taking narcotics makes heroin users more relaxed-but it doesn't deal with the real issue.

The real issue is they've developed a habit of being afraid when they don't need to be. They have learned to engage in a certain behavior that is, in and of itself, destructive. It destroys your quality of life. It destroys your freedom. It destroys the opportunity you have to live in a free society.

That particular girl didn't live in a terrifying place where bombs drop every day. She wasn't being attacked, and she hadn't been attacked in over twenty five years. Yet, every day she woke up afraid. Every night she went to sleep afraid. She was afraid to meet people, afraid to date, afraid to love, afraid to work, afraid of everything.

When she came to me after all the years of therapy, it was quite by accident. She enrolled in a course with over 500 people. I have people throw notes in the box on stage with questions they have, and she literally wrote down what had happened to her. She said she understood why she had a problem but still she didn't seem to be able to get away from it.

After I'd spoken to her privately, I brought her on the stage and explained to her the real truth-that I didn't need to understand how she became the way she did. I needed to understand how she kept being that way. It was pretty obvious why she was the way she was - something bad happened to her and she kept reliving it and everything in the world triggered that memory.

That wasn't based on what had happened. It was based on what she did with what happened. It was based on the fact that when she woke up she was asking the question What could go wrong? and the same answer came up every single time. She would imagine a life-size memory where she saw the bad thing happening to her over and over and over again.

It only took me a matter of twenty minutes to get her to stop doing this because I didn't have to find out why she did what she did, I just had to get her to stop it. Better yet, I had to get her to do something more important: develop a habit of feeling happy.

If you've been afraid most of your life, you may not have good examples of what "happy" is. In that case, you can build it in. That's what I do. You have to give people a really strong feeling of being relaxed, a really strong feeling of feeling good as a guide for their behavior. You do this so that, in the future when they wake up, they start asking, How much fun can I have today? How much freedom can I find? How much more can I do than I've done before?

When people start asking good questions, they make good pictures inside their heads. If you make good pictures, you will get good feelings. Then life becomes something that you feel more enthusiasm for. This girl is a good example of how you can go from having almost no life to having a rich, full life where things get better from the top to the bottom.

In order for you to turn your own life around, it's good for you to know how all these ideas came about so you can discover why they are so effective. When I first started out, I asked psychiatrists to name one of the toughest problems they faced, and they would tell me it was phobias. So my approach began by figuring out how to help people get over phobias, and the same approach turned out to work well for other problems too.

When I studied phobias, I didn't study the people who had them. I studied the people who got over them. I found a whole bunch of people who, without any kind of therapy, had gotten over them. These people had beaten their fears. I began to interview them methodically, using the tools I had developed in writing my earliest book, The Structure of Magic: Volume One. In this book, we discovered some of the secrets of the most successful therapists of the time and created a model of their skills. This was known as the Meta Model.

The Meta Model is a way to ask questions to find out how people process information at that time. It's not concerned with how they processed it in the past, or even how they will process it in the future, but what they do right now. How do they manifest their fear? How is it done as an activity? How is it done over and over again as an activity? Better yet, How did they get over their fear? What were the steps they took to overcome the phobia after being paralyzed for years?

A few of the people I talked to couldn't get on elevators. There were some with a phobia of bees. I had another person who had a phobia of dogs and several people who had a fear of driving. There were people with a fear of heights and a fear of open spaces. I even went to interview a few people who had agoraphobia, a fear of going outside of their home, and, suddenly, it was gone and they were able to go everywhere.

All of these people, as they told me their stories, shared certain things in common. One example was that they reached a point where they got so fed up they stopped thinking about what scared them. They started to look at themselves being afraid and started thinking, This is really silly. Elements like these, which they all shared in common, allowed me to develop the first "phobia cure." It wasn't really a "cure" so much as a "lesson."

It was at that point in time that the psychiatrist who I worked with sent me droves of people with different kinds of phobias so I could test the work I had developed. I took the mental process of people who successfully got over phobias and I undertook installation. Very simply, this is the process of teaching people to think differently. Thinking isn't a passive process unless you do it passively. Thinking should always be an active process where you think in a way that gets you the results you want.

This approach turned out to be applicable to almost all the other problems people had. If you can help people to think differently and actively, they can change their lives. If you're trying to motivate yourself and you're thinking about how hard it is, it will be hard. I always say to people, If you're lookingfor difficulties, you'll always find them. If you ask the question, What can go wrong? then something probably will. On the other hand, if you're asking the question, What works? then you can find it and, in this case, I did.

Starting at about 1974, right up to the present date, I have yet to have a single individual come in with a genuine phobia and walk out with it. Many people ask me about the amount of resistance I must have faced over the past thirty-five years, but I never did face very much of it for one simple reason. What I was doing was working!

When you learn how people think, you can teach them how to change the way they think. The process I learned from these people was something that could be recapitulated not just by me but by others. I could teach it to people in a short twenty-minute lesson. I've done it over and over again.

I made films back in the early 1980s where I took three people: one with panic attacks, one with a terrible phobia of leaving Huntington, West Virginia, and one with a fear of authority figures. Their phobias all disappeared. Each of them was treated slightly differently but each of them was taught a lesson about how to think of their fear in a new way.

When you think in a new way, you get to do new things and you get to feel new things. This whole book is about ways of thinking differently. Think about it as a lesson plan for future living. This is only one example of the things that matter when people want to make changes in their lives. You can take the process that is common to a bunch of people, apply a successful technique, and refine it down to something that can be taught to an individual.

We also did it with simple things like spelling. When people are good spellers, it turns out that they make pictures of the words, remember the pictures, and they check them with their feelings to make sure they're right. So, we developed an educational program where we taught kids to look at words and we made every single letter a different color.

After they'd looked at the words, we had them close their eyes and make a mental picture of them, and then we began to ask them questions like, What color was the third letter? What color was the last letter? The only way to answer those questions is to have a truly remembered image of the word, and we had them check it with their feelings. We'd show them the word spelled incorrectly so they got a bad feeling with that. Then we showed it to them spelled correctly so they got a good feeling with that. Mentally, they began to develop a process that worked.

When you see a word, you can encode the image of it. In order to remember things, you have to first encode the memory. If we teach children to properly encode the spelling of words, they'll be able to properly decode the spelling of words. The same thing is true about all memory tasks which is why the educational system has been affected by my work. If you check out Kate Benson's website Meta4Education, you'll find all kinds of information for teachers.

There are now many books on Neuro-Linguistic Programming for the field of education. There are books on NLP applications for sports athletes. We found golfing strategies telling how great golfers are able to go into an altered state and visually adjust their body. Prize fighters and football players also use NLP to improve their performance. All people can learn to do things better.

Every task has a mental component to it. A lot of what we call talent is when people stumble upon these strategies easily. Certainly, you can't beat a good set of genes. If you're seven feet tall, it's easier to be a good basketball player. If you like basketball, it's easier to practice. If you like playing guitar, it's easier to practice, but if you don't have the mental capacity of a great musician, you can begin to adjust it and to learn talent. Talent isn't just God-given. It's partially God- given; the other part is accessed by human beings insofar as they're able to teach each other.

Lessons aren't just about what to learn. Lessons should be about how to learn. It's not enough to show a child words and ask them to remember them. You have to tell them how to remember them. It's not enough to tell a phobic not to be afraid; you have to teach him what makes fear dissipate.

For almost four decades, I've gone through and I've studied everything about people with all kinds of problems. I've worked with people who were schizophrenic and have learned from people who weren't schizophrenic and were able to do specifically what a schizophrenic was unable to do.

One of my more famous cases was brought to me by a psychiatrist a number of years ago. This was a lady who couldn't tell the difference between fantasies and memories. Every time she would come in to the psychiatrist, she would cry and moan about having killed her parents. He would bring in her parents and she would chat thoughtfully with them, but when they left she would claim she had killed them.

Why she fantasized killing them isn't important. The fact is she couldn't tell which memories were real. So I turned to the psychiatrist and asked him how he knew which one of his memories was real and which ones were fantasies. I had them both make up a memory on the spot. They both made up a fantasy of how they got to my office and put in all the necessary details, and then I asked them both how they got there.

The psychiatrist answered me calmly. The patient screamed and moaned that it was one thing and then it was the other and then it was one thing and then it was the other. She couldn't tell them apart. It turned out that when I asked the psychiatrist how he knew, he told me that his fantasies had a black border around them and his memories didn't. This was a very precise way of knowing which images were created and which images were remembered. I'm sure he had no problems telling his fantasies from his reality.

I hypnotized this lady into a deep altered state and had her lift up her arm and go through the fantasies she had made up and put black borders around them. She had to do so with everything from killing her parents to any other fantasy, including the one she had made up in the room for me. I then told her that when her brain had gone through and recoded all this information, she could let her hand come down. When she opened her eyes, I asked her if she'd killed her parents and she calmly said no.

This approach is about being able to teach people as opposed to therapize them. The truth is that after all the years of giving people insight and change not occurring, the lesson to be learned was that insight was a great idea, it just didn't work. Communism was a good idea, but it didn't work in practice.

When ideas don't work, you have to put them out in the backyard with the square wheels because when something isn't working, it's just not working. So, what I've tried to do over the years is find the things that work in human beings-simple things, teachable things. Some of them are taught better in the waking state, and some of them are taught better in a hypnotic trance. To me, it doesn't matter which it is, it only matters that people get to where they want to go. It matters to me that they have the freedom to live, the freedom to be happy, and the freedom not to waste their time with bad habits. I believe the truth is that most ongoing problems are just a manifestation of having the same bad habit over and over again.

People with obsessive compulsive disorder have the bad habit of building rituals to try to stave off their anxiety. Every single ritual may give them a little bit more comfort, but in the end it continues to build more fear.

The more comfort you have to build, the more fear you need to have. It's a vicious cycle, and most stupidity works in this way. I'm not saying stupid in the sense that it's bad. If you discover something's stupid and you laugh at it and you stop it and build something more effective, life just gets better. I'm a firm believer that you can learn to get over your problems.

For thirty-five years, people have walked in my doorway miserable and walked out with more freedom. They have walked out happier and continue to walk out that way. People have always said, Well this phobia cure is good, but what if it comes back in six months? Simple: you just take another twenty minutes and you banish it again.

The truth is that it will only come back when you start doing the same things you did before and thinking the same things as you did before. Otherwise, it will stay gone forever. In fact, something wonderful will happen. You'll have more time to enjoy your life.

All of the time you spent feeling bad, you could be feeling good. That doesn't mean that bad things don't happen. People die. Horrible things happen. Sometimes people get into car wrecks or they go into debt. There are horrible things worth feeling bad about, but those are things worth doing something about so you get on with your life as quickly as you can and become the best person you can be. If you can look at yesterday and say you are a better person today, even if it's just a tiny bit, then you're still headed in the right direction.

This book is about how you do just that. The outline of the book is very simple. First, I have outlined an inventory, which will explain the basics and help you to take stock of the tools you have at your disposal.

Next, I will discuss many of the problems that you might face in your life. You'll learn about how to get over problems such as bad fears, memories, and relationships. You'll find out how to get through things like bad habits, recovery, and the times when you feel like giving up. You'll discover how to get to the things that make life worthwhile such as fun, love, sex, and making big decisions about your life.

Throughout the book, I'll be sharing certain stories and insights I have gained into working with each problem and challenge I deal with. You'll also find plenty of techniques and tips outlined in a step- by-step guide so that, as you read, you can change instantly. Again, it's critical that you follow the steps and you do them thoroughly.

I got a postcard one time from the Grand Canyon. When I first wrote the book The Structure of Magic, I didn't get too many postcards. However, when I wrote the book Frogs into Princes that laid out ways people could get rid offears and anxieties, I got a postcard from the Grand Canyon.

Somebody wrote me a postcard and it simply said the following:

"I'm hanging off the side of the Grand Canyon. I had a height phobia for many years. I spent lots of money on therapy. But for just $8.95, my problems disappeared. Thank you." When I decided to write this guide so people could get over their own problems, what I had in mind was something that would allow you all to write me a postcard.

Amahoro is taking place currently

Roger Saner — Wed, 05 May 2010 08:16:53 +0000

Amahoro is currently happening in Kenya. Wish I was there! The theme is "Christ, Creation & Community"

I hope someone will be recording the sessions so we can get a taste of what's happening. I've heard that many Capetonians are attending, so hopefully we can have a get-together in a few weeks or so to continue the conversation.

Technorati Tags: Amahoro

Ignore Julius

Roger Saner — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 21:30:54 +0000

Much of the fear Julius Malema has managed to inspire is not because of his vast intelligence or ability to provoke the masses into mindless violence; it's that he says the craziest things which would never be uttered by any responsible public figure of any depth in post-Apartheid South Africa. He contradicts himself, by the way, first by saying

"The reality is that the majority of white people, despite the practical assurances made by our democratic Constitution and government; continue to believe that black people are out to get them. They feel threatened, but there is no basis for their insecurity." Source: ANC Youth League website

and then by singing "Shoot the boer," which even if he doesn't mean it literally and is merely celebrating the history of the struggle movement (which I doubt), it gives insecure whities some basis for fear (which is why the ANC told him to stop singing it). You can't sing "Shoot the boer" and then say, "White people shouldn't believe that black people are out to get them."

One reason Malema seems to have power is the massive exposure our local media gives him. It's come to the point where they're not merely objectively reporting on Malema, they're actually encouraging the madness he encourages. And so we should ignore Julius, which is what the rest of this post is about, posted on many other South African blogs.

Julius Malema has exploded into political... prominence... by making himself hard to ignore. Inheriting a platform that drew attention to the accidental outrages he tripped into, he quickly learned to stoke outrage and roar back at any responses he provoked. For the media, trying to gauge the state of the nation's health from moment to moment, this makes him a much more attractive candidate than the business-as-usual official announcements of the ruling party proper. But Malema's sound and fury signify nothing, and his disproportionate voice in South Africa's public conversation is only hurting our ability to speak to one another, and to speak sense when we do. We think it's time to ignore Julius, and invite you to join us.

For the week of 7-14 April 2010, we undertake to talk about this country, its challenges, its promise, its news, and to ignore Julius while doing so. Join us in this initiative. If you blog, join the roll. If you Tweet, add the hashtag #ignoreJulius to your daily output. However you communicate, take a week off from Julius.

Here is the list of blogs that are participating in this initiative:

http://rwrant.co.za
http://zoem.co.za
http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/mariusredelinghuys
http://memyselfandkarin.wordpress.com/
http://robsramblings.co.za
http://antithesis.blognation.co.za/
http://singe.za.net/
http://blog.empyrean.co.za
http://www.pinkhairgirl.co.za
http://www.macgeek.co.za
http://www.futurechurch.co.za
http://www.cptawesome.co.za/
http://www.indigogirl.co.za/

Technorati Tags: activism Julius Malema politics South Africa

Unite South Africa

Roger Saner — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 07:53:08 +0000

This is part of a blogging campaign to Unite South Africa, given the recent events in the country, which show a disturbing increase in violent rhetoric and alarmist reasoning. You can follow the conversation on twitter as it unfolds here: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23uniteSA

South Africa stands at a crossroads – a time in which racial tensions run high and the world is focused on us. Neither the people of South Africa nor the country itself can afford to have negativity and irrational outbursts rule our daily lives.

To that end, UniteSA is an attempt to bring people from all corners of our nation together in a call for peace, calm and rational thought.

Various ministers have called for restraint as has President Zuma – certain organisations have chosen to use this time to push a political agenda and we appeal to them to allow the authorities the chance they need to resolve the issues.

We urge the people of South Africa to express faith in the police force and the justice system at this time.

We call upon the ANC to rein in Julius Malema appropriately and urge him to behave responsibly.

We call upon the AWB to continue to act responsibly after the tragic death of Eugene Terre’blanche.

We call upon the National Government to plan for protection of farmers as they worry about their futures.

We express our solidarity and empathy for those who have suffered because of crime and corruption in our country.

We are far stronger united than we are apart.

Christ is dead: entering into the Easter journey through Holy Saturday

Roger Saner — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 08:16:25 +0000

Steve Lewis posts a semi-apology about coming across a little cranky when he hears about the anticipation of Easter Sunday. Not because Sunday isn't important (and it really is!), but in our eagerness to celebrate the most important day in history, we can too easily skip over the challenging details of the Easter journey.

Many Christians focus on Easter Friday, on the cross of Jesus, the place where our sin is dealt with with. Their focus is on the unjust suffering of Jesus, who was bruised for our sins, and suffered for our transgressions. Easter Friday tells us that we are free, forgiven, and that a man (God!) died to accomplish this.

Other Christians focus on Easter Sunday, because it is our greatest hope - the promise that what God did with Jesus on that day, he promises to do with all of creation at the right time. The resurrection is why I remain a Christian, because it's the promise of justice, of new life, of new creation. It cannot be relegated to "It's a really powerful metaphor, but we know that Jesus didn't actually come back to life." N.T Wright says,

"People have been told so often that resurrection is just a metaphor. ...In other words, [Jesus] went to heaven, whatever that means. And they've never realized that the word 'resurrection' simply didn't mean that. If people [in the first century] had wanted to say that he died and went to heaven, they had perfectly good ways of saying that." The whole point of the Christian story is that the Resurrection really happened, Wright insists. The disciples rolled back the rock on the third day, and Jesus' body was gone.
Source: Newsweek: Far From Heaven

Very few Christians talk about Holy Saturday, perhaps because it's far too uncomfortable to dwell on, yet it's no less important than Good Friday or Easter Sunday. Perhaps it's the paradox of the death of God by God which makes it hard. God dies...by his own hand.

Yet it was the LORD's will to crush him and cause him to suffer - Isaiah 53:10

If we are to fully enter into the Easter journey, we cannot be satisfied with Friday's "sin is dealt with" or Sunday's "new creation has started". If we are to live Easter as the first disciples did, we must carry their expectations: that Jesus was going to become king of Israel, and rid the country of their oppressive occupiers (Rome). Palm Sunday celebrates Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem - as a king (another paradox there: a king who enters a city riding on a donkey). The first century expectation of Jesus' followers was immense, and the hope placed upon him cannot be understated. But then Jesus dies, and with him, that hope.

When Jesus appears to the disciples on the Emmaus road, what are they doing? They're heading back home, to their old lives. Their hope of something new, of freedom, has died with Jesus. What seemed so certain is no longer. What they'd given up their lives to believe in, was not true. Imagine this utter despair, of everything upon which your life was staked, to be false.

And what was worse, is we know that God did this. God removed the hope of the disciples. God killed God.

Most Christians skip over this disturbing truth, and so gloss over what seems to be a periodic part of life: times when hope seems lost, and everything worth living for is gone. When even God seems to have died, and we’re left with…nothing.

The gift of Holy Saturday is that it invites us to enter into this paradox, and meditate on its disturbing reality. Where is God? God is dead. What does that leave me with? What, indeed...

To frame this despair with, "Don't worry, Sunday is coming!" is to miss the point, and to miss out on this question that God poses to each of us: What do you do when God is dead, and when the death of God has been caused by God himself?

Far from finding this disturbing, I find comfort that this difficulty has been built into Christianity itself, by God. Too many times to count, I've had my theology stripped from me (perhaps in the same way that the Palm Sunday altar is stripped for Maundy Thursday), my relationship with God exposed to be something about which I can't tell what about it is real. God is silent so much of the time, and I cannot hear him. My world clamours with conflicting claims of God ("He's good", "He's angry", "He's impotent", "He doesn't exist") and what's worse, God doesn't step in to settle the argument.

In the middle of this, conversations happen which question the role of Christianity in the world, and what its relevance (if any) is. I wonder if the church really will survive another 50 years, and if it does, if it will have any impact on South African society.

This is not the Good Friday reality. This is not the Easter Sunday reality. This is Holy Saturday, where God withdraws from the world, the angels are silent, and we mourn.

The prayer goes,

Christ has died.
Christ is risen.
Christ will come again.

On Holy Saturday it should be,

Christ has died.
Christ is risen.
Christ will come again.

Or simply:

Christ has died.

This is what God invites us to contemplate.

Technorati Tags: Death of God Easter paradox

Bloggers for a Free Press

Roger Saner — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 07:29:24 +0000

This article is a call by Sipho Hlongwane for bloggers to join in the protest against the tactics the ANC Youth League are employing to try and destroy the freedom of the press. The Twitter hashtag for this is #SpeakZA

Last week, shocking revelations concerning the activities of the ANC Youth League spokesperson Nyiko Floyd Shivambu came to the fore. According to a letter published in various news outlets, a complaint was laid by 19 political journalists with the Secretary General of the ANC, against Shivambu. This complaint letter detailed attempts by Shivambu to leak a dossier to certain journalists, purporting to expose the money laundering practices of Dumisani Lubisi, a journalist at the City Press. The letter also detailed the intimidation that followed when these journalists refused to publish these revelations.

We condemn in the strongest possible terms the reprisals against journalists by Shivambu. His actions constitute a blatant attack on media freedom and a grave infringement on Constitutional rights. It is a disturbing step towards dictatorial rule in South Africa. We call on the ANC and the ANC Youth League to distance themselves from the actions of Shivambu. The media have, time and again, been a vital democratic safeguard by exposing the actions of individuals who have abused their positions of power for personal and political gain.

The press have played a vital role in the liberation struggle, operating under difficult and often dangerous conditions to document some of the most crucial moments in the struggle against apartheid. It is therefore distressing to note that certain people within the ruling party are willing to maliciously target journalists by invading their privacy and threatening their colleagues in a bid to silence them in their legitimate work.

We also note the breathtaking hubris displayed by Shivambu and the ANC Youth League President Julius Malema in their response to the letter of complaint. Shivambu and Malema clearly have no respect for the media and the rights afforded to the media by the Constitution of South Africa. Such a response serves only to reinforce the position that the motive for leaking the so-called dossier was not a legitimate concern, but a insolent effort to intimidate and bully a journalist who had exposed embarrassing information about the Youth League President. We urge the ANC as a whole to reaffirm its commitment to media freedom and other Constitutional rights we enjoy as a country.

Blog Roll
http://thoughtleader.co.za/siphohlongwane
http://vocfm.co.za/blogs/munadia/
http://vocfm.co.za/blogs/shafiqmorton/
http://blogs.news24.com/needpoint
http://capetowngirl.co.za
http://thoughtleader.co.za/sentletsediakanyo
http://thoughtleader.co.za/davidjsmith
http://letterdash.com/one-eye-only
http://boyuninterrupted.blogspot.com
http://amandasevasti.com
http://blog.empyrean.co.za/
http://letterdash.com/brencro
http://6000.co.za
http://chrisroper.co.za
http://pieftw.com
http://hamishpillay.wordpress.com
http://memoirs4kimya.blogspot.com
http://thoughtleader.co.za/azadessa
http://watkykjy.co.za
http://fredhatman.co.za
http://thelifeanddeathchronicles.blogspot.com/
http://blogs.timeslive.co.za/common-dialogue/
http://www.clivesimpkins.blogs.com/
http://mashadutoit.wordpress.com
http://nicharalambous.com
http://sarocks.co.za
http://blogs.timeslive.co.za/stompies/
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Technorati Tags: ANCYL freedom Julius Malema media South Africa SpeakZA

Richard Rohr in Cape Town, May 2010

Roger Saner — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 19:54:25 +0000

Richard Rohr will be in Cape Town in May 2010, organised by Sergio Milandri. Here's what you can join in.

From Wild Man To Wise Man

May 7 to May 9, 2010 at the Mizpah Retreat Centre, near Grabouw.

A wilderness retreat for men on the spiritual journey. As men, we are a pivotal influence in our family and society in bringing healing and restoration to relationships. Richard Rohr is an exceptional author, speaker, teacher and retreat director and has taught and guided retreats around the world for the past 30 years. He has a passion for developing and rooting men's spirituality. It is our hope that men will not only engage and deepen the experience of their own spirituality but also be involved in the formation and mentoring of other men. This retreat is for men who are on that journey.

Restoring Male Spirituality in family and community

May 10 to May 12, 2010 at the Schoenstatt Centre, Constantia.

A workshop for men and woman on re-affirming the male soul in social relationship. A must for anyone involved in engaging and developing masculine sprituality - especially for men, women, community leaders and pastors. Richard Rohr is an international author, speaker and retreat director and has taught and guided retreats for the past thirty years. Richard brings a wealth of experience and wisdom to the everyday issues we face as men and women.

To place your booking, please go to: http://www.relating.com/richard-rohr-bookings.html

A new home for this blog - please update your bookmarks and email feeds

Graeme Codrington — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 12:35:00 +0000

I have now begun the process of moving this blog to a new home at http://www.futurechurchnow.com - this affects just my part of this website, not Roger Saner's.

There are about 250 subscribers to this blog who receive email updates from "Regeneration [at] Futurechurch [dot] co [dot] za". Please will you delete your current subscription, and subscribe to my new blog at: http://www.futurechurchnow.com/feed/

There are some new entries, and over the next few months I'll be moving entries from this site to the new one. This site will shut down at the end of 2010.

As always, please feel free to interact with me on this blog, or by email to graeme [at] futurechurchnow [dot] com

Thanks,

Graeme

Technorati Tags: General

Amahoro: a gathering exploring post-colonial Christianity in Africa

Roger Saner — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 08:03:03 +0000

2010 is a big year for us South Africans - World Cup and all. It's also the 4th Amahoro Gathering, in Mombasa from May 3 - 10. I've been to two Amahoro Gatherings and have found them immensely significant, since Amahoro is on the other side of the coin to the emerging conversation (taking place in Western contexts) as it looks at the impact of the colonial narrative on the Gospel, and where that leaves us now.

Brian McLaren spoke about "Post-modern and post-colonial": two sides of the same coin, in Johannesburg just before the first Amahoro Gathering, in 2007. It's one of the 3 best talks I heard that year.

There are many things I like about Amahoro: the family reunion feel, the people, the diversity, the topics we address, and that we're taking theology developed in Africa by Africans seriously. Kenzo Mabiala is the resident theologian of Amahoro; he completed his doctorate under D.A. Carson before returning to the Congo to head up a theological college.

Carson asked him why he was interested in the emerging church conversation (primarily happening in the West), and Kenzo answered that the emerging church is asking the right questions.

For more information: The Amahoro website.

And now to encouraging comments on this post: why is it important to understand how the Gospel was shaped by the rise of the colonialism, and what are the implications for those who live in post-colonial contexts?

Technorati Tags: Amahoro postcolonial postmodern

The emerging church blends into the mainstream?

Roger Saner — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 08:37:34 +0000

I like Andrew Jones. He's a missionary who's been around for ages, and probably has the most complete history of the emerging church movement (blogged, not in a book).

I'd like to draw a few quotes from him, firstly from Emerging Church Movement (1989 - 2009)?:

"In my opinion, 2009 marks the year when the emerging church suddenly and decisively ceased to be a radical and controversial movement in global Christianity. In many places around the world, the movement has already been either adopted, adapted, or made redundant through the traditional church catching up or duplicating EC efforts."

"In 2009, the emerging church either grew up, stopped being offensive, switched gear from experimental to normal, became the new mainstream, or a bit of each."

Andrew fleshes it out a bit more in his 10 types of emerging church that will no longer upset your grandfather, which he lists as:

Culture-based communities
GenX, Postmodern, and "Emergent"
The new-monastic orders and intentional communities, as well as Celtic churches
House churches, simple churches, organic churches
Cyberchurch and virtual online communities
Alternative worship/fresh expression/new-liturgical churches
Pub churches and coffee shop churches
The contemplative prayer movement
Christians who dont go to church, sometimes called "Churchless" Christians" or "believers who don't belong"
Social enterprises leading to missional communities

Andrew is wondering what the contribution of the emerging church is now, or if its contribution has already been made (by affecting the mainstream) and that now there isn't a necessity for its existence.

I've always thought that the value of the emerging church conversation is because it operates at a higher/more abstract/more general level than theology/church/practice. The conversation (at its best) is about how we have a conversation with others who are different to us, about how we hold our faith, about how we approach our theology, and about how the bigger stories which we live within shape us and our faith.

I'm glad the conversation has helped contribute to new forms of church, but the conversation isn't done.

Technorati Tags: Emerging Church