Nothing New Under the Sun

What does man gain from all his labor
At which he toils under the sun? (1:3)

The Protestant work ethic pervades so many success stories.  Too often, either vocational training or entrepreneurship training, or both, fail to have the desired effect.  Then someone looks deeper into the underlying attitudes and superstitions of the trainees. The phrase “colonization of the mind” suggests that some people really believe (perhaps subconsciously) that they cannot compete.  Or their work ethic has been undermined by a sense of entitlement.

This was a busy week at C4L.  Another NGO called Phakamani rented the facility to train its own staff for 5 days.  A round table of member groups of our provincial youth organizations forum was held for 2 days.  20 high school learners are boarding on campus for a year.  So we had 30 - 40 guests at every meal!  What does man gain from all this labor?  Indeed.

I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless (1:12)

At the time that Ecclesiastes was written, most work was done under the sun.  The Industrial Revolution had not arrived yet, nor the Productivity Revolution ushered in by Frederick Taylor in the 20th century.  Solomon had no air conditioning or elevator music.  It is as hard to square the Protestant work ethic with this Old Testament classic, as it is to reconcile the hopes and dreams of the Africa Power and Light Company to the notion that everything under the sun is meaningless!  But then Solomon had never heard of terms like photo-voltaic or photo-thermal.  We see what is done under the sun as optimistic – not absurd!

Thami and Sibusiso have just completed their Assessor training.  Last month they did their Facilitator training, so they are now able to both train other youth and sign the graduation certificates.  This follows on from their technical training last year, as Plumber and Solar Technician respectively.  C4L is now “fit for service” to provide accredited training to youth .  The first Solar Technician course starts February 21st and the first Plumbers course on Feb 28th.  Walk with us!  This is not meaningless, it is pro-poor and environmentally friendly!

And I saw something else under the sun:
In the place of judgment – wickedness was there
In the place of justice – wickedness was there (3:16)

Even the church does not escape this penetrating insight.  In one chapter of Revelation, it is called a harlot.  That is wickedness.  But many church-goers will be surprised to hear the Bridegroom say “Depart from me”.  Along with that Protestant work ethic came a pretty deep suspicion of pleasure!  Puritanism collided with hedonism.  Gnosticism reared its head again with an over-emphasis on spirituality – at the expense of the physical (including the arts, liturgical worship - especially sacred dance - and the deception that “sex is dirty”).

This week C4L sent an appeal to a dozen church organizations to help fund a poster campaign.  I was bewildered by the diverse reactions.  One reply questioned whether that was even ministry.  Another ordered 85 posters – one for each church in their denomination!

Again I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun (4:1)

The poster has a back-wash photo of Jimmy Mohlala, one of those local leaders who paid the ultimate price in what the press is now calling “the January murders”.  At the top of the poster is written “17 Reasons to Demand Transparency”.  Then comes a litany of the 17 names, by year, from 1998 to 2011.  At the bottom it reads: “Good leadership is not possible without good leaders”.  May the winds of Egypt blow to Mpumalanga!

Again I saw something meaningless under the sun
There was a man all alone
He had neither son nor brother
There was no end to his toil
Yet his eyes were not content with his wealth
“For whom am I toiling?” he asked
 “and why am I depriving myself of enjoyment?” (4:7-8)

This reminded me of The Giving Pledge.  Billionaires no longer need to toil, they need to enjoy being well off!  A new layer has been added to the top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.  Self-actualization is no longer the most sophisticated need.  It is: giving back, saying Thanks.

I have seen a grievous evil under the sun:
    Wealth hoarded to the harm of its owner (5:13)

The corollary of that new layer in Maslow’s hierarchy is that hoarding wealth can be hazardous to your health.  I wouldn’t know!  But I can tell you that emptying yourself out for other people is scary as hell – but my health is bearing up!

There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: righteous men who get what the wicked deserve, and wicked men who get what the righteous deserve. (8:14)

 
There is a jazz club in Maputo called Shithappens.  That might serve as a paraphrase title for Ecclesiastes?  Fine citizens like Jimmy Mohlala get gunned down in their own back yards while dictators like Mubarak get 30 years at the helm.  C.S. Lewis would have called it “nonsensical” but the writer of Ecclesiastes is much more solar!

Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun (9:9)

This one hurt most.  Could this explain why the church seems to peddle Divorce as the holy way past a broken marriage?  Brought to you by the makers of the Protestant work ethic and Puritans Against Hedonism.  It is not the Christian way, and certainly not the African way.

Contentment
I made a short list of some things that are not new under the sun, but as good as ever:

• Bread and butter
• Cold mineral water
• A spectacular sunset
• Sitting beside a fire in the dark
• Reading a psalm
• Swimming on a hot summer day

Individual Exceptions Don’t Absolve Collective Guilt

It reads like an African story, maybe even a plot-line for Scandal!  He had 13 children by 4 women – 1 daughter and 12 sons.  Two of these women were his wives.  So he was a polygamist.  They were sisters.  The other two women were maids – one deployed by each of the two wives to procreate more children.

Jacob tricked his older brother out of his birthright.  So he had two flee into exile, where he met his match – an trickster called Laban, his mother’s brother.  The bride price for his daughter Rachel was 7 years employment, but it didn’t seem long to Jacob as he loved this lady so!  But on his wedding night, his uncle slipped Rachel’s older sister Leah under the veil, forcing a second 7-year contract on him. 

However, on the 7th and last day of that wedding feast, Jacob did receive Rachel “on credit”.  In one week he went from being single to having 2 wives.  His first wife Leah bore him seven children – six sons then a daughter.  Rachel did not produce children at first so she offered her maid Bihah as proxy.  It worked, as she bore 2 more sons.  Not to be outdone, Leah deployed her maid Zilpah as well – and she produced 2 more sons.  Then Rachel came right and mothered 2 sons – Joseph and Benjamin.  One BIG happy family?

Well, not exactly.  Dinah had no sisters so she looked for friends in other homes.  In her socializing she was noticed by the Mayor’s son, who dishonored her.  However, he genuinely fell for her, and sent his father the Mayor to negotiate lobola for her with Jacob.  This posed a challenge, for she could not marry someone who was uncircumsized.  As a result, the Mayor agreed that he, his son and all the men in Shechem would be circumsized.  Ouch!

This left them vulnerable, unable to defend themselves.  Two of Leah’s sons (Simeon and Levi) committed one of the most heinous crimes ever recorded… on the third day of the collective male suffering through this act of attrition and good faith, they murdered every man in town, pillaged the city and absconded with its women and children.  Their father Jacob never forgave them, even on his deathbed.

Jacob also deprived Reuben of his birthright.  (First his own brother Esau and then his eldest son!)  He passed this on to Joseph, the eldest son of his beloved Rachel.  This was because Reuben got a little too close to his auntie Rachel’s maid, Bilhah, who while not technically his mother, was one of the 4 mothers of his father’s 13 children.


Communal responsibility

In the light of the background above, it is easier to contextualize the act of the older brothers turning on Joseph.  “Here comes the dreamer” they scoffed when he came into sight on an unexpected visit.  Some think that the 4 sons of the 2 maids would have ranked the lowest, and resented him most.

All the other sons at this point (assuming Benjamin came along later as the “late lamb”) would be sons of Leah.  Six in all.  Plus the four sons of the 2 maids.  Joseph was the first son of Rachel, and perhaps there was a rivalry within the family?  Was it just plain jealousy?  (For Jacob showed favoritism to Joseph.)

They were going to kill him and cover it up.  But Reuben, acting in his capacity as the eldest, convinced them to throw him down a pit.  In fact, he came back later intending to free Joseph only to find the pit empty.  To his dismay, brother Judah had made a counter-suggestion that they sell him to a passing caravan as a slave.  Double bonus!  They get rid of him, and get some money out of it too!

It was several decades before they met again.  The tides had turned.  Joseph has risen to become the second ranking government official in Egypt, under the Pharoah himself.  He had foreseen famine based on the Pharoah’s dream and was put in charge of disaster mitigation.  For seven years he built up a strategic reserve.  Regional drought arrived in the eigth year, and Jacob sent ten of his sons down to Egypt for food aid.  He kept Benjamin at home, not wanting to risk Rachel’s only remaining progeny.

Joseph was a trickster like his father Jacob and his great uncle Laban.  He put his brothers through the paces, even holding Simeon as surety so that they could go back home and bring Benjamin down to Egypt too.  But on their return, Jacob refused to let them take Benjamin.  Until in the second year of famine the hunger became unbearable, and he had to relent so that they could go down and get more assistance from Joseph’s food bank.

This time, Judah offered himself as surety to his father Jacob, that Benjamin the youngest son would not be harmed.  In fact, it was when Judah finally implored Joseph to let Benjamin go based on this personal guarantee, that Joseph finally broke down and disclosed who he was to them.  He couldn’t take it any longer because after the callous and cruel way that they had treated him as a youth.  He now saw them protecting the youngest and knew that they had changed, because they came to see the gap that a missing brother left in family life.

There were individual exceptions to the collective crime (Plan A)… Reuben convinced the brothers not to kill Joseph, just to fake it (Plan B).  Judah suggested that they rather exploit it as a money-making opportunity (Plan C).  Simeon was held as surety by Joseph.  Then Judah offered himself as surety to his father to protect the youngest brother.


Collective Guilt for Climate Change

Individual exceptions do not absolve us of collective guilt.  Wangari Maathai won a Nobel prize as a green crusader.  She said we should take what we need, not more, and leave the rest for future generations.  Yet the plunder continues, the African symbol being rhino horns.

As the Durban conference approaches, we have to come to this point that the brothers of Joseph came to.  They took a wrong turn.  They exchanged a brother for money.

Collective guilt can be ascribed by generation.  For example, the baby boomers.

It can also be ascribed by race.  For example, the disparity in terms of sharing resources under apartheid.

It can even be ascribed by class.  Desmond Tutu complains about the level of littering in Africa, but poor people’s first and foremost concern is not environmental responsibility.

Inheritance may have been the deepest issue in the story of Joseph, the older brothers resenting that the eldest, Reuben, had lost his birthright.  It had passed to the youngest, Joseph.  In the case of Climate Change, the younger generations are the ones who have been robbed of their inheritance.


Leaving a legacy for youth

It is too late to put back the non-renewable resources that have been used up greedily by a generation.

But it is not too late to redress disparities, lest they become structural.

As for class, one does not have to be rich to be responsible.  But attitudes of resentment and fatalism are encroaching African values.

No one will be affected more by future Climate Change than our youngest brothers and sisters.  They need to be alerted and resourced to fight the good fight against environmental degradation.

Einstein said that you will not change the current state of crisis by applying the same thinking that caused the crisis in the first place.  That’s precisely what Joseph was doing to his brothers – ensuring that they were thinking differently from they way they thought when they sold him out.

As much as we need individual acts of courage and wisdom in this eco-Struggle, what we need to do is ALL CONFESS our need for a new way of thinking and acting.

This begins with adopting a youth-led solution to the new problem which is apropos of the Pharoah’s dream.  The fat years of the present are going to cause some lean years in future – of depleted resources, extinct species and global warming.  The Pharoah put the Solution into the hands of a youth who was a foreigner.

Too Close for Comfort

I was asleep in my room this week when burglars broke through a window and got into my cottage.  Only a locked wood door separated them from me, snoring obliviously.

They nicked my LCD screen, my cell phone, my external hard drive, my camera and my flash drive.  They found two sets of keys, one to my front door and one to the C4L bakkie.  So they let themselves out and tried to start the bakkie… without success.  They appear to have left in haste, as I found my brief case behind the bakkie, open and all the papers strewn around it including my passport.  Later we found the car keys in the grass near the brief case.

Much of that day was spent tidying up… fixing the burglar bars that they bent to get in, police reports, the fingerprint team, getting a new cell phone and SIM card.

I knew these routines because the week before, burglars broke into the C4L Board room during the night and stole my laptop.  Worse of all was the loss of a lot of data.  It is really disorientating and you lose so much time with the aftermath, rebuilding databases, etc..

Prayer Partners

Here’s the thing…  I had taken my laptop to South Sudan, where I created a mailing list on it called Prayer Partners.  From there, I sent out weekly dispatches.  Even since my sudden return from Juba, I continued to keep the people on that list informed – at a more personal and frequent level than C4L Bulletins.

But alas… I lost that list with the laptop.  So today I am getting around to trying to replicate it – on my desktop at home.  Luckily that escaped the robbery… although later in the day when I could not print, I realized that the printer cable had been detached – so the burglars were interrupted and left before they could get the tower disentangled.  It's a thumb-suck... I can only guess at who was on that list.  And I can't ask those who were not to remind me!


Deteriorating Security

Sadly, I don’t see this government being very preoccupied about crime.  Former police commissioner Selebi is now in jail.  His successor Cele is now in court defending himself against misconduct.  The trickle-down to local level is that the police are fatalistic.  For example, when I asked the guy taking fingerprints what his recovery rate is – how many perpetrators have been caught this way – he could only remember 3 cases.  That’s not 3 %!  That is 3 cases.  He did not hold out much hope.

One Zambian colleague told me that no matter whether I was a missionary or a champion of poor and unemployed youth, I am seen as a “farmer” (boer) and C4L is seen as a “farm”.  He said frankly that this will not change, and that I should take the appropriate security measures.  He suggested a big electric gate at the entrance to C4L, which would forever change our ethos of openness and accessibility, especially for those on foot. (Which is the way most people arrive here.)

I can only think back to the years that I spent in Angola, during a war.  It was tense and risky, but we believed what a senior missionary there once told us there – that “there is no place safer than where God wants you”.  So this incident does not scare me away.

Comfort?

I have often quoted Dorothy Day’s philosophy ““comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable”.  That is our role as leaders of nonprofits.

So I guess that it is fitting, especially at Lent, to ask ourselves if our comfort zone is getting to big?

In Africa, especially in the context of poverty, the Prosperity Gospel is very popular.  It is to explain to someone who grew up malnourished, how St Francis of Assisi was inclined to give away his family fortune and take a “vow of poverty”.  Perhaps that is more fitting for some one who comes from among the “haves” and wants to work with the “have-nots”?

But neither do I buy poverty as a rationale for crime.  Certainly the disparity in South Africa must cause a lot of jealousy, resentment and temptation.  But who says that poor people do not (or worse yet, cannot) have their honesty and dignity intact? 

It seems to me that contentment is a virtue for both rich and poor.  John the Baptist’s ministry can be summed up in two words – contentment and sharing.  He did not say that if you had two shirts that you should give them both to poor people who need clothes.  His message was to give away what you do not need.  Is that not contentment?  St Basil the Great wrote:

The bread which you do not use
Is the bread of the hungry
The garment hanging in your wardrobe
Is the garment of him who is naked
The shoes that you do not wear
Are the shoes of one who is barefoot
The money you keep locked away
Is the money of the poor
The acts of charity you do not perform
Are so many injustices you commit

He was truly on John the Baptist’s wavelength.  Contentment can also work on the other side of the tracks, not as an opiate but to create the conditions for honest development.  This is what disturbs me about the talk of nationalizing the mines.  There may be some advantages in this, as it has been tried in different countries, and in some cases like Botswana it succeeded.  But some attitudes suggest to me that poor people would trade their dignity for wealth.  At that stage I preach contentment to them too.  Warwick put it this way:

He gives not best who gives most
He gives most who gives best
If I cannot give bountifully
Yet I will give freely
And what I want in my hand
I will supply with my heart

Crime is robbing Africa, not just of its wealth, but of its dignity.  This is a greater loss - spiritual burglary.

Living the Paradox

“Innovators, like immigrants, feel compelled to take the step because they can no longer tolerate the place where they are.


“Complexity theory shows that great changes can emerge from small actions, that the possible, even the “impossible,” can happen.  That’s the part that involves keeping your head in the stars.  But what about keeping your feet on the ground?  How do social innovators do that?

“They face reality.

“Reality testing has a bad reputation among some visionaries.  Leaders tend to attract and surround themselves with believers – true believers, positive thinkers, hope-springs-eternalists.  Criticism is well known to undermine creativity, which is why it’s outlawed in brainstorming exercises.  But how can social innovators fully engage both their critical and creative faculties?  The answer lies in a commitment to reality testing that is no less fierce than the commitment to reach for the stars.

“Jim Collins, author of the best-selling management book Good to Great, studies with his research team how good companies become great.  Not many companies actually made the grade, but those that did all had leaders who lived the paradox between absolute dedication to a great vision and ruthless commitment to staring reality in the face.  Collins called this the Stockdale paradox in honour of James Stockdale, the fabled American navy officer who survived years of torture in North Vietnamese prisons.  Stockdale had an unwavering belief that he would survive and an equally unrelenting vigilance about the realities of his captivity.  He was constantly attuned to what was happening to him and his fellow prisoners, and adapted his survival strategies and tactics accordingly, day by day.  When, after a period of unusual good treatment, he realized that he was about to be used as propaganda to show the world how well prisoners were being cared for, he brutalized his own face so that he could not be so used.  Hearing how Stockdale managed to stay ever hopeful and survive, Collins asked him how he would characterize those who didn’t make it, those who died in captivity.  That’s easy, Stockdale replied.  The people who died were the unwavering optimists, the ones who said they’d be out by Christmas, and then by Easter, and then by summer’s end, and then again by Christmas, always and only focusing on some future hope.  They died, he said, of broken hearts.

“The great companies Collins’s team studied all shared an unrelenting belief in a better future and an obsession with data about the realities of the present.  They monitored the results of their initiatives relentlessly, tracking what was working and not working and how their environment was changing.  They allowed themselves no rose-coloured glasses, no blind spots, no positive thinking.  Ruthless attention to reality was the common path to attaining their visions.


“Social innovators epitomize the Stockdale paradox.  They are fiercely visionary and hopeful even while determinedly grounding their actions in the cold heaven of daily reality testing.  For them, hell is not failing; hell is delusion.  Hell is kidding yourself about what is going on, for therein are the seeds of failure sown.  In its essence, developmental evaluation is about learning what works, acknowledging what doesn’t work, and learning to tell the difference – with none of the blaming of cold heaven attached.”


You may be glad to know that I finally finished reading Getting To Maybe (How the World Is Changed).  These are the last quotations that I will use in a C4L Bulletin.


Without diminishing in any way what Jim Stockdale lived through, I can say that C4L is currently staring reality right in the face! 

On the one hand, the campus look green and trim, and has the biggest and best team that C4L has ever started a year with.  There is also more approved funding “in the pipeline” than ever before at the beginning of a year.  C4L continues to generate outputs – more training materials, more events, more outreach to youth and OVC. You can get dizzy from counting them all.

On the other hand, a close look at cash-flow caused C4L to literally increase its mortgage bond just to keep the wheels turning in early 2010.  The annual grantseeking drive is underway, and there are prospects.  Campus bookings are few and far between, as many NGOs are shrinking and some have closed.  So we actually have no choice but to watch that daily balance closer than ever!  At times like this, you ask yourself why donors insist that you spend every penny, and don’t allow retention!

It is not the first year that the early months have been tense – but in 2010 it is on a grander scale than ever, because C4L is growing.  I am not going offer optimistic forecasts that say it will be over by Easter.  Just ruthless attention to reality – C4L has the resourcefulness to pull through this slump in its annual cycle.  Just like real estate agents know the times of year when house sales are up, and when they are down – C4L is pinching but is gradually becoming drought-resistant.

The attached document refreshes the Vision that C4L has shared with you time and again.  It reiterates the same Mission of equipping God’s people for works of service.

Hell is not failing, if you don’t make it through the gauntlet.  Hell is delusion – thinking it will be a cake-walk.  We may be day-dreamers, but we are hard-nosed too.  We know where we stand.

We are living the paradox.

Because we can no longer tolerate the way things are in Africa.

The Best Way to Give

Perhaps the predominant theme of my prayer letters since returning from South Sudan has been how to resource a ministry in the context of a shrinking economy.  Thus an article in today’s New York Times caught my eye.  I have cut and paste about half of it for you:

Welfare Limits Left Poor Adrift as Recession Hit

Excerpts from: Joshua Lott for The New York Times

PHOENIX — Perhaps no law in the past generation has drawn more praise than the drive to “end welfare as we know it,” which joined the late-’90s economic boom to send caseloads plunging, employment rates rising and officials of both parties hailing the virtues of tough love. 

But the distress of the last four years has added a cautionary postscript: much as overlooked critics of the restrictions once warned, a program that built its reputation when times were good offered little help when jobs disappeared. Despite the worst economy in decades, the cash welfare rolls have barely budged. 

The poor people who were dropped from cash assistance here, mostly single mothers, talk with surprising openness about the desperate, and sometimes illegal, ways they make ends meet. They have sold food stamps, sold blood, skipped meals, shoplifted, doubled up with friends, scavenged trash bins for bottles and cans and returned to relationships with violent partners — all with children in tow. 

Critics of the stringent system say… the revamped law encourages states to withhold aid, especially when the economy turns bad. 

The old program… dates from the New Deal; it gave states unlimited matching funds and offered poor families extensive rights, with few requirements and no time limits. The new program… created time limits and work rules, capped federal spending and allowed states to turn poor families away. 
“My take on it was the states would push people off and not let them back on, and that’s just what they did,” said Peter B. Edelman, a law professor at Georgetown University who resigned from the Clinton administration to protest the law. “It’s been even worse than I thought it would be.” 

But supporters of the current system often say lower caseloads are evidence of decreased dependency. 
Even in the 1996 program’s early days, when jobs were plentiful, a subset of families appeared disconnected — left with neither welfare nor work. Their numbers were growing before the recession and seem to have surged since then. 
 
No Money, No Job
 
While data on the very poor is limited and subject to challenge, recent studies have found that as many as one in every four low-income single mothers are jobless and without cash aid — roughly four million women and children. Many of the mothers have problems like addiction or depression, which can make assisting them politically unpopular, and they have received little attention in a downturn that has produced an outpouring of concern for the middle class.
 
This really grabbed my attention!  It is so similar to the controversy that South Africa is facing!

As I have stated repeatedly, there is a double jeopardy for youth in South Africa, where the populations chart bulges at the bottom (not at the top like North America).  Not only is unemployment on the rise, but demographically the ranks of the unemployed are comprised largely by those under 35.

Under apartheid, a minority of “the haves” kept at a distance from the majority of people who were “the have-nots”.  They mixed during working hours, but after that each had to go into a zone defined by skin-colour.  This was immoral.

Today the scenario is that during working hours, the work place is occupied mainly by people over 35, while 74% (national average) of the 45% unemployed (in our province) are out of work?  They don’t mix with youth in the work place, but then they go back after hours to “the community” where youth are idle, frustrated and angry.  This is immoral too, in my view - a kind of generational apartheid.

When ever the subject of unemployment comes up in South Africa, government’s one-liner is always “skills development”.

But I have to wonder how far-sighted that is.  Why give skills to youth in the context of a shrinking number of jobs (it’s down 3 million since 1995)?

While I am a great believer in promoting Entrepreneurship and the “informal sector” as the best way to create employment, I also feel that Welfare is part of the problem.  Almost one in three South Africans in on some kind of direct state assistance – over 13 million the last time I saw statistics.  This must be rising too, unlike in the USA - according to the article above, where states have kept the lid on it.

I have to say that some kind of increase in Welfare is inevitable here, as South Africa passes through this period of world economic recession.  The big challenge is that “welfare as we know it” can create Dependency.  Particularly when offered to youth whose prospects of entering the job market are dismal.  What a terrible way to start out your life as a young adult!  And so many of these are the ones who lost one or more parents ten years ago when government was resisting the roll-out of ARVs!  Is their government going to fail them again, by taking away their incentive and entrenching the grid lock that keeps them out of jobs at entry level?  A new way needs to be found.

At Easter we celebrate something that could not happen – but did.  Pray for such a miracle in South Africa.  Another such miracle.  In the age brackets used in South Africa, Jesus was a youth.  (Under 35.)  Just about the same age as Julius Malema is today!

Another Prayer Priority

"No one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields - and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life.” (Mark 10: 29-30)


I hope so!


I hang on to the promise of eternal life, although I worry that it can become an opiate...


Yes I have experienced persecutions.  In the past year these include deprivation by an abusive boss who has held back over 50% of my annual income, isolation like Elijah in the cave, hate-speech, and invasion of my privacy.  Was it "for me and the gospel"?  I say so - because I stood up for justice, I blew the whistle on corruption, I hated evil (Romans 12:9) and I contested xenophobia.  Even the deprivation of my salary was justified in one deposition on the grounds that I am a missionary and therefore should contribute my time to community service.  (Even though this same guy had signed an employment contract with me 2 months earlier!)


You have heard this all before, in one prayer letter or another!  So I will move on to the light at the end of this long, dark tunnel.


Tomorrow is the fourth major meeting in as many weeks.  It started on Monday Feb 4th when I met a Director General in Pretoria and 6 of his advisors, accompanied by a fellow C4L Board member.

That meeting had a domino effect... on Tuesday Feb 12th a Round Table of 15 role-playes was convened to hear C4L's case.  The consequence of that meeting was an invitation by our counterpart organization to meet again in Pretoria on Tuesday Feb 19th.  By this time they realized that we had "blown their cover" and that they were in check.
Tomorrow I hope we can put them in check-mate at the fourth meeting, here in White River, in the offices of C4L's attorney.


I was surpressing tears this morning in church as we sang these words from an old hymn: "That Christ has regarded my helpless estate".  I can tell you, Elijah in a cave is truly a "helpless estate".  That is where I was only weeks ago.  But He can turn weakness into strength.  The same One who created a universe out of nothing promises me "much in this present age".

Please remind Him for me of His promise, and that tomorrow's meeting could seal the deal that will put C4L back into its righful place in an equitable and just Joint Venture.


Nevertheless, we are still insisting on Partition.  Once bitten, twice shy.  We want our counterpart organization to work on the highveld and let C4L run the CWP programming where we are located, here in the Lowveld.  We are citing irreconcilable differences and just asking that a space be carved out for C4L in its own natural habitat.


My counterpart is facing several counts of fraud and his NGO is shaken by the prospect of his possible departure - to jail.  DV.  So they are back-peddling.


So please pray for me as we enter this final phase of negotiations.  Failing which C4L is in a legal position now to effect dissolution.  And speaking morally, to do so without it seeming like we are suicide bombers!  For the consequences of dissolution are chaotic.  But all the role players are now forewarned and forearmed and there is growing recognition that C4L has been abused, sidelined, maligned and deprived... so no one will be too surprised if it comes to that.


Thanks for your prayers.

Expecting the Unexpected

Summer is here is all its glory.  Longer days, such heat that it generates “weather” that closes in and cools down temperatures.  Plenty of good rainfall, making the hills and mountains green, green, green.

Christian Week is one of the journals that I receive from Canada on e-mail.  The current issue has an article by Glen Shepherd, the president of Health Partners.  In it he mentions a booklet by Henri Nouwen - A Spirituality of Fundraising - in which one of my favourite writers contends that fundraising is the opposite of begging.  It is actually, says the late Nouwen (who was a Dutch Catholic priest), a form of ministry: “fund-raising is as spiritual as giving a sermon, entering a time of prayer, visiting the sick, or feeding the hungry."

If you think that I write too much about charity and giving then please look up this link.  From my work with NGOs, I have learned that the more senior you become in an organization, the less you can escape this ministry!  Truly I enjoy my involvement in programming more, but you can’t enjoy driving or the scenery unless you stop periodically to refuel!  It’s a fact of NGO life, and of my life.

I was recently reflecting on the contextual changes that have affected this ministry in recent decades.  It took me back to the first years of my life in colonial Africa, and through several phases up to the present.  In fact, I would say that we are still in transition to another new phase, but no one is sure exactly what it will be like.  The following table sums it up.  If you want a deeper analysis, contact me and I will send a 2-pager to you:

Context	Missionary outreach	Approach
Colonialism – Major economies ruled areas overseas (ended in the 1960s)	Like David Livingston, close alignment with colonial powers… mostly expatriates	“Support” – regular giving from families, friends and churches. Long periods away.
Independence – New countries emerging under the U.N. framework needed “balance of payments support” (until 1980)	Mainline churches declared a “moratorium on missions” but this was not observed by most evangelicals	“Mission-initiated churches” expected programme funding from their mother agencies, who found it hard to wean them
Grantmaking – Donors wanted more transparency and to target their funding to “projects” (peaked around 2005)	Missions were able to wean some expenses, like schools and hospitals, and to switch the focus to other priorities	Paradigm-shift caused resources to flow to agencies like World Vision more and to classical Missions less
Corporate Social Investment (CSI) – Government funding mainly for bi-lateral or U.N. while NGOs tap funds mainly from private sector	Strengthening civil society in every country has caused a huge proliferation in the number of “partners” – to say nothing of “projects”!	For better or for worse, churches and even companies began to be more “hands-on”, bringing a more corporate ethos to “the business of aid”

Speaking of CSI, there is an annual CSI Handbook published in South Africa and C4L’s solar/youth programme is featured in it, thanks our corporate donor – ABSA Foundation.  Just released!

By the way, at this stage grantmaking has not been entirely replaced by CSI, but there is a fair level of disappointment with the project paradigm.  It was mainly an exit from the previous phase!  But it was not a final destination after all.  CSI has also had mixed reviews, so there is experimenting going on with new paradigms.  Four of these are:

Context	Missionary outreach	Approach
Quick Wins - $200,000 was raised in one afternoon in Oregon to save a beached whale.  From fast-food and Polaroid to aid: “We want that problem fixed – now!”	Short-term missions allow the givers to get involved – like CSI.  A Kindle run by solar energy now offers a listening Bible in the vernacular for $5!  Literacy just takes too long!	On-going missionary support or programme funding seem tedious by comparison.  But some things – like that 9 months gestation period – just cannot be hastened!
Augmentation – The opposite of proliferation.  The business world thinks “merger” unlike churches and NGOs which have tended to split easily.	C4L is hosting foreign learners attending a local private school.  This raises C4L’s occupancy rate and generates some baseline income.	C4L never wanted to split, and is looking for other synergies.  For example, with another NGO specializing in rainwater harvesting, to link to our Solar.
Inclusive Business – When it comes to job creation and some sectors like Renewable Energy, it may be better for business to be the channel, not an NGO?	C4L has started the Africa Power and Light Co-op in part because NGOs really can’t do business (it would be unfair trading as we are tax exempt).	This is basically what St. Paul did – he produced tents to support his own ministry.  One missions paradigm is thus called “tentmaking”…
Supporting key people instead of projects – For example, Tearfund has a programme called “Inspired Individuals”.  The funding is linked to a person rather than a plan.	Mother Theresa was partly funded on this basis.  For example, she could board KLM going anywhere, at no cost.  That is how the airline honoured her and her work.	It may take time for those “Inspired Individuals” to become recognized?  That could be another trap that favours the advantaged and disfavours Youth?

On a personal note

As many of you know, I am hoping to announce soon, possibly in my next prayer letter, a new conduit of Canadian funding for C4L.  There are always two sides to the ledger, and my decision to stay put at C4L comes with some costs to C4L.  These costs do not relate only to orphans, although C4L’s Child Protection programme does continue to operate.  To a great extent, my role at C4L has been, is and will continue to be resource mobilization.  The ministry of fundraising.  To some, this news may feel like a throwback to the colonial missionary support paradigm.  But I like to think of it as support a person rather than a project – an inspired individual, if you will.

Expecting the Unexpected

In a way, a fundraiser never knows for sure which one of numerous contacts in the “proposals pipeline” is going to be approved.  So although you are doing this continuously, year in and year out, you never know what to expect!  But nevertheless you have expectations!

As C4L’s cash flow drooped in late 2011, I wondered what would happen.  It was nerve-racking.  We came right to the edge of insolvency.  Then the awaited unexpected happened, in the last week of December.  God is good, all the time!  This week there have been two promising signs.  First, ACEK school renewed its boarding of learners on campus for 2012.  We knew they were looking at their options, so we didn’t know what to expect.  Second, ABSA Foundation very suddenly requested a major proposal within 24 hours – because they discovered some residual funding that was unspent in 2011.  Another submission deadline on January 31st – a lot of ministry work to do!