Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! The last two months have been a whirlwind, but we have loved seeing so many friends and family after a long absence. Please pray for us as we have a family wedding tomorrow and then make final preparations to return to South Africa next week!

Park Street Church in Boston produces an Advent devotional each year, and we both wrote for it this year. Even though Advent and Christmas have passed, we wanted to share them with you. Here is Andrew's piece on Gabriel's proclamation to Mary.

"Can we have your guitar?"

We made it! It was a very intense time, both physically (13 events in four days, plus 10+ hour travel in between) and in terms of ministry. Here is a post Andrew wrote for the official tour blog, which you can find at www.hillsong.co.za/about/africa-tour-blog. Feel free to check out some of the other stories there!

Over the course of the Hillsong Africa Worship Tour we had the privilege of visiting five different prisons. Whenever we finished our visit to a prison, this was inevitably the last question we would be asked. This is not significant in itself— prisoners often ask for gifts and favours, and it wasa beautiful guitar. What made the question striking was everything the prisoners were not asking.

Many of the prisons we visited did not provide beds or uniforms for their inmates. Some did not even have safe access to water. One facility was built in 1897, and it did not look like much had changed since then. I will always remember the menu taped to the main gate of one prison. If your family was willing to pay, you could get some actual food added to the small dish of maize-meal. Malnutrition and disease are commonplace, and downright starvation was a continuous lurking possibility. Why ask for a guitar?

(Afternoon Worship Festival in Livingstone, Zambia)

The inmates are intelligent enough to realize they would have more chance of getting some food or money from their visitors than their only musical instrument, but they didn’t care. In a bizarre way they were responding to a hunger that transcended even the most basic human needs. These prisoners did not have food, shelter or even physical safety, and yet all they asked for was music. As one old prisoner said to me, “music is the language of the soul.” Maybe they were so tired of scraping together an existence like animals, that they were desperate for a reminder that there was something more to life than mere survival.

If a prisoner is willing to overlook even basic necessities to nourish his soul, maybe I need to be assessing whether all the luxuries and entertainment in my life are worth the distraction...

(The crowd in Livingstone -- several thousand strong)

Prison Ministry and Missions

Everything comes full circle!

The Andrew Murray Centre began in the late '80s as a missions training program. Everything took a dramatic turn when the leadership decided to bring this training into an unlikely setting—prison. However, prison ministry was always a means to an end. The inmates we served were already leaders… it was just a question of whether they would be leaders for the church or leaders for the gang. Behind the scars and the tattoos, we saw a new generation of missionaries who could reach into dangerous subcultures where American missionaries would have no voice.

Now our mission’s heritage is combined with the prison ministry as never before. Anne and I need to be at the airport at 4:30 tomorrow morning to leave for a nine day tour of Zambia, Botswana and Zimbabwe. The trip is organized by Hillsong Church, and they will be performing huge worship concerts in four major cities.

The Andrew Murray Centre has been asked to coordinate a series of prison visits in each of these countries. We used to do missions trips before starting local work in prisons… now this same prison ministry is taking us international again!

Here is a rough itinerary:

- Livingstone, Zambia – Saturday October 8^th

- Francistown, Botswana – Tuesday October 11^th

-Bulawayo, Zimbabwe – Wednesday October 12^th

- Harare, Zimbabwe – Friday October 14^th

A special prayer request is the prison in Livingstone. Through an administrative mistake I was unable to obtain security clearance for the team. Short of a miracle, we will not be going in there.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of this journey is that I am carrying fifteen letters from South African prisoners. They are praying for this mission, and they wanted to encourage their brothers behind bars. I will share some of these letters with you in the coming weeks.

Thank you for praying with us!

Restorative Justice: How can this make sense...

This happened weeks ago, and I am still struggling to make sense of it. I asked for your prayers concerning a Restorative Justice program, and it is clear that you responded because it was one of the most intense weeks of my life.

I was a little disappointed at the beginning of the week, because most of the inmates who were attending the course were already believers. Sometimes "christian" inmates will be more excited about parading their knowledge of the Bible than about actually taking responsibility for what they have done. Heck... I guess it's kind of like church sometimes! I have heard men calmly walk away from shocking crimes because "God has forgiven me"

I could not have been more wrong. Usually the inmates I work with are incredibly guarded--almost paranoid--but these men let down their defenses and really took the discussion seriously. Restorative Justice challenges the men to understand the impact that their actions have had upon their families and communities, and these guys got it.

The highlight of the course was when one young man came up to me after a discussion: "Andrew... I feel sick. I feel like I could vomit in my spirit." He went on to explain that he was going to be released from prison in a matter of months. Unlike many of the men I serve, his family was actually looking forward to his return. He also had a young daughter that he could not stop talking about throughout the course.

His problem, was that he now believed he could not do it. In our conversation, he confessed to a murder he had committed on the outside that nobody had even charged him of. After sitting on our program, he realized that this woman's family was still hurting for the crime he had committed years ago, and they deserved answers that only he could give. He had to take responsibility, even if it meant an additional sentence.

I was shocked. Honestly I had to warn him to be careful what he shared with me, because once he started down this road it could have very serious consequences. This young man explained that he could never be an effective father to his daughter if he kept this secret.

I have never seen anything like it... It was living proof of the passage in Matthew 10 where Jesus states "those who lose their life for my sake will find it." It is a sacrifice that can only make sense under grace. This man understood that the most dangerous prisons are not built of concrete and razor wire, and he needed speak the truth before he could ever be free.

I don't know what you guys were praying for, but God was present in that prison hall in a way I have not experienced before. It was humbling to be a part of such intense healing.

I will soon be meeting with the Inspecting Judge of the Department of Correctional Services, and I would appreciate your prayers again as we take this case forward. This young prisoner has already ministered to me, and I will consider it an honor to walk with him as he takes responsibility for the past and claims whatever future God has in store.

Call for prayer

This will be an intense week…

Monday June 13^th begins our Restorative Justice program in Drakenstein Correctional Centre. We are going to be working with twenty-four juvenile (late teens, early twenties) prisoners. The goal of the program is to challenge these young men to take responsibility for what they have done, and begin the long journey of healing the shattered relationships in their lives. We will spend all day together for the next five days, and then everything comes to a head on Saturday when we bring their families into the prison.

(Andrew teaching a previous Restorative Justice class)

I have a dynamic team of twelve facilitators who will be supporting this project. While I will be doing much of the teaching, they have the more important job of running the small-group discussions at the tables. We are a diverse crew… American, Afrikaans, Scottish, Xhosa and even a German! We come from all different backgrounds ranging from Californian college students to South African ex-prisoners. Honestly, I feel God’s sense of humor in this! How is it that a random white American guy is supposed to reach into the lives of African prisoners? By any natural comparison, we come from different worlds that have nothing in common.

This is why you are so important! I do not want to fight my way through this week through my own charisma or intelligence (You can insert whatever joke you want here!). These young men have deeply alienated themselves from their families and from their society, and it will take a divine act to heal these relationships. Pray with us! I include a few prayer requests from my team so you get a sense for our hopes and fears.

-Pray this would not just be another program for the inmates. They need a heart transformation, not just a certificate!

-Pray for the inmates’ families – Saturday will be an intense experience for them, and we want them to be prepared spiritually and emotionally.

- Pray for concentration and focus for our students and volunteers. Prison is a very distracting place. It’s always noisy!

- Pray for clear communication with the authorities – prison is the ultimate bureaucracy.

-Pray for safety from ridicule and persecution for inmates once it is known that they have gone through this process. It’s difficult to leave the gangs, or even show evidence of a changed life.

-Pray for teachable spirits for both the facilitators and the inmates.

- Pray for unity among our team. This is often an area where we experience spiritual attack during significant times like this.

- Pray for smooth execution of all the logistics – venues, food, transportation, communication with families, etc.

- Pray that God’s justice would transcend cultural differences.

Thank you for your support! As the week progresses we will give you more information, but at the moment we go forward with confidence that can only come from an understanding of 1 John 5:5

“Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.”

An Easter reflection...from prison

I do not think I understood what Easter meant until I started working in prison. I was a nineteen-year-old kid when I began volunteering with the chaplain of a medium security prison in Massachusetts. As a naïve white teenager from a middle-class family, I was thrust into a world that I did not understand. I will always remember the day I was responsible for counseling sessions while the chaplain was away.

The prisoner who walked into the office invoked all of my Hollywood stereotypes. A huge black man with shaved head stood glaring at me. He was facing a long sentence and a restraining order that would keep him away from his children even after release. What could this puny white kid in a cheap tie know about his life and problems? It turns out the man was Muslim, so I did not even share the same faith. I shared literally nothing in common with this man, and yet he was looking to me for help. I needed the hope of Easter.

The absurdity of my cross-cultural ministry in prisons has made one thing clear: I think we need Easter because we do not really understand Christmas. The message of the holiday seems simple enough: God is born into our world. There are even songs that proclaim Emmanuel—God with us. However, we just do not want to believe it. How can the Lord of the Universe really understand what we are going through? Our lives are messy. If we are honest, we do not even want Him to get close. Rather keep Jesus far away in our post-card conception of Bethlehem. We confine the Savior of the World to a manger, and tie him down with “swaddling clothes” (Whatever those are!). “Emmanuel” may adorn our Christmas cards in fancy letters, but we have forgotten what it means in our lives.

We have not accepted Christmas, so in His mercy God presents Easter to drive the message home a second time. The message is the same—a loving God trying to convince us that He truly has been born into our broken lives. However, the sacrifice on the cross can no longer be confined to a manger. Crucifixion is hardly the stuff of holiday postcards! A loving God has chosen extreme suffering to prove that He really can relate to human brokenness.

Strangely enough, this Easter suffering is the source of our hope and the answer to the bitter, discouraged prisoner sitting in front of me. I had to admit that I had nothing in common with him. Indeed, it would be arrogance for me to even speak encouragement into his life. However, we share a Jesus who understands. Whether it is betrayal by friends, the prejudice of a community, the punishment of a father or even violent trauma—Jesus has served the sentence. This prisoner may come from a different life and a different faith, but because of Easter we could have a conversation.

Ten years later in the prisons of South Africa, the conversation remains the same. For whatever reason, the Lord has called me to be the Director of a prison ministry. We serve nine different Correctional Centres in the Western Cape, and I am continually thrust into cross-cultural ministry that confounds my experience and capability. Good thing Jesus is already there.

Happy Easter!