Coming Together!

Where is the place and space for people to be people? In a world filled with orders of state, and social realities of race, class and gender, which results in a society of have and have nots - one has to wonder if there is a place and space where coming together can be realized without social dictatorship.
Bonheoffer would advocate that a place and space where social equality and fairness in engagement is possible. Bonheoffer would suggest that such a place and space is a dialogical place where the I and the other choose to move from their place of social comfort to a place social risk. The risk is stepping into a common place without a desire to control the other.
Over the next few days I will be working alongside Rev. Dr Curtiss DeYoung to propel a place and space where people can come together. This coming together will be injected by spells of keynotes, preaching, teaching and insights offered by Curtiss DeYoung, in various places and spaces across Johannesburg. It is an honour to work on propelling a project that will allow people to come together and address matters of inclusion, diversity, race, class and gender, leadership and organizational change etc.
Curtiss has just released his latest book entitled, “Coming together in the 21st century”, and whilst moving from one place to the next in the coming week, it is my hope and prayer that our project:”Coming together”, will inspire, lead and surprise people as they discover and arrive at insights that will aid a brighter future for South Africa and our global community.

Schedule of engagements and comings together:• On the Date: 23rd March 2010
Time: 10am – 11am (Coming together – a dialogue on reconciliation in the workplace)
Venue: Young and Able offices,
Office 160, Dunkeld West Centre - 281 Jan Smuts Ave, Cnr Bompas - Dunkeld - 2196
Host: Buhle Dlamini
Contact: info@youngable.com - Phone: 27 11 341 0190
• On the Date: 23rd March 2010
Time: 6:30pm – 8:00pm (Coming together in Alex – a service and preach)
Venue: Stand No 2561 – Laduma Street, Extension 7 Far Eastbank, Alexandra Township.
Host: Pastor Charles Mokoena
Contact: 084 423 7735
Email: efm2030@live.co.za
• On the Date: 24th March 2010
Time: 9am – 11am (Coming together in an age of diversity)
Venue: Liberty Church, Discovery campus, 51 Celeste Crescent, Discovery
Cost: FREE, coffee & muffins will be served
RSVP to ed@libertychurch.co.za ASAP
• On the Date: 25th March 2010
Time: 10 am – 11:30 am (Coming together in the 21st century: “Woman in ministry” {keynote, followed by discussion and dialogue, q & a})
Venue: Church of the Nazarene, Penguin Street, Extension 1 , Lenasia
Host: Pastor Russel Abrahams
Contact: 011 852 5219
• On the Date: 26th March 2010
Time: 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm (Coming together in the 21st century: “Non- racialism as an ideology, a consciousness and way of life for the future” {keynote, followed by discussion and dialogue, q & a})
Venue: 57 Twin Centre, ANC Lenasia
Host: Mickey Padiachee
Contact: 011 854 2745, mickeypadaiachee@yahoo.com
• On the Date: 28th March 2010
Time: 9am – 11am
Venue: Jeshua, Reformed Church in Africa, 613 Greenwich Street, Lenasia South,
Contact: Rev. Seth Naicker 079 482 7445
It is wonderful to see these wonderful opportunities come together. It is my honour to facilitate and realize this moment, when my mentor, friend and Doctor Father of Reconciliation studies and ministry will speak from various spaces and places including the pulpit at the local church community that I am serving. Let’s come together in the 21st century!
Rev. Seth Naicker

Power of the Powerless! by Seth Naicker

In times of great chaos and stress, people need voices of reason and inspiration. Minister Vernon Johns was, is and will forever be one such prophetic voice and stalwart. Johns preached fiery and passionate messages from the pulpit of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama from 1947 to 1952. He was Dr. King's predecessor as pastor, and a mentor of people like Ralph Abernathy, Wyatt Walker, and many others in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

“The road to freedom”, is a movie that documents the life, work and ministry of Minister Vernon Johns, and in many ways the beginnings of the civil rights movement in the U.S.A. Before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Minister Malcolm X came Minister Vernon Johns, who preached in unconventional yet passionate and practical ways. One Sunday morning Minister Johns stood up at the pulpit and reached down to fresh vegetables he farmed in his garden. Minister Johns encouraged his African American congregation to break free from the power of the social reality of a socially constructed racist society. Such freedom was possible if people became producers and refused to exist solely as consumers.

The advice of Minister Vernon Johns must be revisited as a source of strength and a strategic vice to reclaiming a quality of life existence in the midst of tough global economic times. Having people connect with their abilities to produce and initiate is a worthy task. The dominant culture of consumerism has the detrimental result of draining people and communities of their resilience and struggle for political and economic freedom. However the notion of becoming a producer could equally be demeaning to the soul of a person, a nation and a world. Producer-ism must be liberated and redeemed from the hands, strategies and venomous vexes of free trade and capitalism, which seeks to further disenfranchise the already disenfranchised.

The wisdom of Minister Johns is immersed in a notion of consciousness and pedagogy that speaks from, with and in struggle. The producer-ism that Minister Johns encouraged was not to aid the creation of another status quo. Instead it was for people to rise in their consciousness and take a hold of their worth. People were to be liberated from the vicious cycle of systemic oppression, their personal –communal - mental -physical oppression, for the purposes of producing a community of equity, fairness and justice.

In my local community Lenasia, Lenasia South and the broader community of southern townships of Johannesburg- South Africa, townships like Soweto, Eldorado Park, Ennerdale and Orange Farm, there are people living in dire strait circumstances. Right here in the Twin Cities, my community and home away from home, there are people who are equally trapped in troublesome economic times, and house foreclosures. As I walked through the streets of Frog Town in Saint Paul Minnesota, I saw several houses with these bold bright yellow notices stuck on the doors. People have been displaced from their homes and are clearly feeling the pinch, pain and disparity of tumultuous economic times.

The social reality of poverty and further complexity offered by a faltering economy has been prevalent in the U.S.A and the Globe long before the crash on Wall Street. Long before major insurance companies and fortune 500 companies started feeling the pressure of systems they are part of and systems they propel, economic pressure was the plight of people whom privileged people and power based systems would rather deny. There is a need therefore, for power structures and people who have power to invest their time and effort in bringing development and aid to people and communities steeped in globally trying times, and chaotic circumstances.

President Obama has had to defend himself, as he grapples with and attempts to bring resolve to the maze of social factors facing the U.S.A. It may be politically nonstrategic for Obama to go about multiple projects which may result in the lack of targeted success. Being a successful leader is important, especially when success is concerned with pleasing systems of power and having the popular vote. But Obama may be on a mystical path of engagement that may not make sense or fit the arena of logical and strategic thinking. Obama may be about the work of being true to his consciousness, and mindset that has been informed from, with and in the context of struggle. Obama could choose to anchor his ideology, and continue his political leadership and theology in pedagogy of the disenfranchised and oppressed.

However, as much as I am hopeful of the Obama regime I am equally critical of power based systems and people who have the power to bring positive social change. For persons who have come into power have also been noted to fall into the trap of being co-opted into the power frameworks, this ultimately diminishes their advocacy and activism for positive social change.

It is therefore of vital importance for people to emancipate their minds, their social existence and humanity from an unhealthy dependency and consumerism mode. People and communities must come together and pool together their resources to ensure that more families are not dislocated from their homes. People must claim their humanity and get creative with that which they have. It may require planting vegetables instead of purchasing them at the store. It may require communal living instead of individualized existence.

According to Howard Thurman Jesus recognized with authentic realism that anyone who permits another to determine the quality of his or her inner life gives into the hands of the other the keys to his or her destiny. The hope of the poor and the disenfranchised is anchored in their ability to believe in their worth, and to live life in human dignity even though their economic standing is not sound. This hope is provided in the basic fact that Christianity was born in the mind of Jesus, a Jewish teacher and thinker as a technique of survival for the oppressed (Thurman, A Strange Freedom, 1998, pg. 143). Jesus motivated people to break through the psychological oppression and free their minds, to determine their own destiny. Impoverished communities must rise up in the midst of their poverty and draw strength from each other, without the dependence on investment hand-me-downs from power based political systems and haughty people.

It is therefore possible for me to acknowledge my struggles, my failures, and downfalls, but rise in the midst of my troublesome circumstances and social settings. It is therefore possible for me to live with hope and a spirit of empowerment, without the power of position and economic enfranchisement. In my weakness I am strong. In my struggle I am blessed. I can live a life of activism and advocacy challenging systemic injustices. I can mobilize positive social change, and refuse to sell out on my rooted values and core faith inspired ideals. I can act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with God, for there is power in collective, community consciousness and pedagogy of power of the powerless!