More about Soul Khaya

Ages ago a few friends and strangers, outcasts and insiders, intellectuals and hopeful nobodies, rich and poor, men and women saw a glimpse of a new way of life in a Jewish Rebel Rabbi called Jesus Ben Josef, or JC for short. After his death, whenever they got together they felt a powerful new presence of their old friend in and amongst them. As individuals they felt as if they got a new change at doing life even though their history told otherwise. They believed that through the death of their friend and this new presence that they feel whenever they get together, they are being made new.

One of them coined a term “Neo Adam” (check out the writings of Paul in the NT) and developed a whole new theology just to get to terms with what it means to live as human being who got a second change.

As a group of friends, whenever they were together (two or more), their old Friend would show up, sometimes as part of the conversation, sometimes as a stranger along the way, but most of the time while they were eating. The more they got together the more they started to believe that whatever was happening to them should be like butter, it must be spread. And so they went out, telling stories, sharing meals, mending broken bodies, minds and souls, changing lives, creating hope. As more and more people joined and changed, they got the feeling that they can change the world.

And they did.

Some called this movement Church, some called it Christianity, but at the start it was just known as The Way.

More and more followers of Jesus are starting to reclaim that first “label”, because somewhere between The Way and The Church we've lost our first love for the Rebel Rabbi and his invitation to be like him. Recently a few friends and myself stumbled upon the term: "Soul Khaya" (in the Zulu language khaya means home) and something inside us kicked like the first kick of an unborn baby. It's as if our imaginations about a new way of being "church" got wings and took flight. Ever since we've been dreaming about being a "Soul Khaya". We hope that Soul Khaya will be about being a Way again, about the “getting together of friends and strangers” in the hope that our Old Friend will show up.

Soul Khaya and friends

There is a new yet ancient way of being that’s breaking through the horizon. All over the globe a new Christianity is being born, a movement away from doctrines and dogma towards a life of habits and regulas, from religion to relations, from joining an institutional church to following Jesus in community with other hopeful believers.

Together with a few friends, my wife and I are feeling the first kicks of this unborn hope. We call it Soul Khaya.

We long to live in real community with one another, to share our stories, our fears, our hopes, our prayers, our stuff, our homes and all of our lives with friends and strangers.
We hope to be the change we long to see.
We try to walk in the deep and dangerous footprints of Jesus.
We invite strange people into our journey.
We hope to get invited, because we are the strangers.
We look at our own lives and discover our own strangeness.
We practise the art of getting lost and being found.
On Fridays we share a traditional South-African meal in a local township eatery.
We long to break out of our middle class way of living in the suburbs and we battle with the temptation of being safe and comfy.
Once a month we get together and allow our faith and doubt to rub off on each other.

The last few months I have met more and more people that are witnessing the movement of the Spirit in similar ways like Soul Khaya. My friend Tom Smit, the Soul Gardener from “Kleipot” has been part of something similar for six years now. On the other side of the globe Alan Hirsch and friends discovered that they are like a “small boat in a big sea”. The Ordinary Radicals like Shane Claiborne have found it to be “The Simple Way”. Recently I have made friends with 3rd year students at Tukkies in Pretoria who are reframing “church” and are about to be embark upon this strange yet exciting faith journey.

More about this journey as the week unfolds.

http://soulkhaya.blogspot.com/
http://www.thesimpleway.org/
http://www.soulgardeners.com/
http://www.claypot.co.za/
http://www.smallboatbigsea.org/

The death of a tree

A few months ago I wrote about a little “Karee Wilger” tree that was uprooted by a gardener who declared it dead. A friend brought it to me after he saw that there was still a little branch growing new leafs. We planted it and I did everything I could to help it survive the winter. At one stage it looked as if the little bugger was going to make it, but then the last revenge of winter’s icy frost gave the little tree its final blow. And so it died right before spring could breathe new energy and life into it.

It reminds of the life story of German theologian Dietrich Bonheoffer who fought hard and brave for the cause of Christ and then, right before the liberation of Europe and the fall of Hitler in 1945, he was executed.

Life has got a funny way of going in the other direction and reminding us that we humans are not as in control as we hope to be or think we are. Even for those travelling on the straight and narrow, life gives no guarantee.

An ancient philosopher, poet and writer struggled with the same thing. Good happens to bad people, bad happens to good people. The strong gets the same deck of cards as the weak.

In other words: Shit happens.

But then I stumbled upon a chapter in Brian McLaren’s book “Everything must change” called:
Hope happens.

Hope not shit. Hope from underneath the shit. Hope amongst all the shit. Hope in spite of shit. Hope against all shit. Hope because of shit.
The death of a tree leads to the decomposing of roots, leaves and branches, which in turn leads to new life. The death of a theologian by the hands of the enemy leads to the immortalising of his ideas, thoughts, truths and wisdom about how to become a follower of Jesus.

Only through death is resurrection possible.