Hi there, my name is Brett “Fish” Anderson and I am a fellow blogger and follower of Jesus. I am writing this from day ‘lost count a week ago’ of the Homepocalypse.
Which for us [myself and my wife Val, who I affectionately refer to as tbV – the beautiful Val] has been a little bit longer than most. Val grew up in the Philippines and after the sad passing of her mom last year January, we were left with a little bit of money and decided to use it to go back and visit. Her family had left in 2003 because of a medical emergency and so it was quite a quick departure and she had wanted to show me the place where she grew up for the past ten years of our marriage.
So we went travelling with her dad for a month and then settled at a beautiful beach side B & B to spend a month writing. For me that was the book on ‘Fifty Ideas for white people asking ‘But what can I do?’ with regards to race’.
Having survived a volcano scare [about 60 km away] we headed home just as corona virus fever was hitting the ground running. Masks and heat checks in the airports and we made it safely back to South Africa at the end of Feb and settled into a largely self-isolation pattern a couple of weeks before lockdown.
Crisis of Faith
In the past six years, since returning from a three year trip to the USA, I have been deeply involved in race conversations in South Africa. The more I leaned into race and social justice issues, the more a lot of the modern church seemed to be moving away from me. I came back to South Africa convinced that Justice is an inseparable part of following Jesus. Yet, so much of the church seemed to think it was an added on extra. This was confusing for me.
I managed to eventually find a little Anglican church with a very diverse and inclusive congregation and fell in love with some of the new liturgy I was exposed to, the fact that we did communion up front every week and especially some incredible people of all races, ages and forms. And many who were deeply involved in activism and social justice.
By the time lockdown happened I was looking to continue with the disciplines I had fostered in the Philippines. One of those was a regular reading of the Bible. I decided to continue with Isaiah where I was busy reading and slowly made my way towards what has become a favourite passage of mine in this struggle:
The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners
[Isaiah 61.1-2]
Jesus is handed the scroll of Isaiah in the temple and in Luke 4 He reads this portion. Isaiah gives a prophecy. Jesus says, “This is my mission!” And we are meant to be the body of Christ saying and doing the things Jesus did when He was here. Joining those dots feels pretty easy.
A few years ago i wrote a book called ‘i, church’ where the main premise was asking the question: What if the church left the building? And now, all around the world in fact, in 2020, the church had physically left the building. And yet somehow people still found a way.
Within about a week the majority of people with access to computers and the internet had become experts on Zoom. People were holding online church services and small groups and offering teachings online for free [a group of friends and I did an N.T Wright course on Phlippians once a week].
But more exciting for me on that was seeing the church in action. Via the people. To be honest, I still haven’t heard too much about actual churches getting involved in aspects of social justice but hopefully that’s because they’ve just gotten on with it and done it. The ones I do know – like St Peters in Mowbray which turned their building into a micro site for ten formerly homeless men – have really impressed me.
There has been so much evidence of the church being the church in terms of people getting involved in Community Action Network [CAN] groups] or various feeding schemes [one of my best friends is working with the Siya Kolisi foundation to supply crazy amounts of food around the country] or one –on-one need meeting.
This is the kind of faith I get excited about. To be honest, the past six years have been quite hard on my faith in terms of how most people understand it. My dad is a pastor and I grew up in the church and fully embraced following Jesus and letting it affect every aspect of my life. And in terms of Jesus, not much has changed although much of the rest of what people see Christianity as has become a lot more blurry.
But Jesus gave us “Love your neighbour as yourself” [this alone is proof for me that you can’t separate Christianity and Justice] and “Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow Me.” And so while the things of church may grow strangely dim in some ways, I am pressing more into Jesus. Asking the Holy Spirit to lead and guide. How do we spend our money? Who do we support and help? How do we use our time?
The biggest question Val and I ask on a daily basis and which is the key foundation of our lives is ‘What can we do today that will see growth in the Kingdom of God?’
In my story-telling work with Heartlines [a faith and values-based NGO I work part-time for] and my volunteer work with BottomUp [an NGO that works with grassy park schools] we have moved online to keep the flames going.
My love for Jesus and the things of the Kingdom are as strong as they have ever been. My greatest desire is that when this time of craziness is over, the church that emerges will look a lot stronger and more effective than it did when it left the building. That we will never go back to the way things were before.
I hold as always to the words of Paul in his letter to the church in Rome: ‘Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.’
Hopefully this transformation continues on a daily basis and hopefully more and more people will hear the name of Jesus and see the works of the Kingdom as a result.
You can find Brett “Fish” Anderson at the following links:
@BrettFishA on the Twitterer and Instagram
https://www.facebook.com/brettfishanderson/
Blog: https://brettfish.co.za/
Pebblecrowns -A Journey with Jesus 