Southern Africa (Part II.I): June 2017

Constantia, South Africa

Saturday, 17 June 2017

In Cape Town, as I have found, you’re either an engineer or a minister. Most people to whom I am newly introduced either pastor an LCAG (Liesbeek Christian Action Group) congregation or have a science degree from the University of Cape Town. But I was still surprised to hear that Trevor, a member of Mowbray, once led the opposition group on electromagnetic surge research, making him an expert on Northern Lights. And I was also surprised when, following the benediction of last week’s service, I was informed that I had just led at least six ordained clergy in worship. But to this, as it has been said time and time again about my work here, Dave remarked that I am “just being thrown right into the deep end.”

I was the liturgist for my third Sunday at Mowbray. Responsibilities included welcoming the congregation, calling them into worship, leading the music, and offering prayers of adoration, thanksgiving, and repentance. As an Anglican, I read an ancient adulation from the Book of Common Prayer. As a Tennessean, I led in a folk fashion the hymns “Blessed Assurance,” “How Great the Father’s Love,” “Holy, Holy, Holy,” “Come Thou Fount,” and “Great is Thy Faithfulness.” As a Princetonian, I remained aware of the theological implications of the words I prayed from the pulpit.

In Cape Town, as I have found, ministry is a series of interruptions. As a maker of lists, I find this to be quite problematic, because I work best when everything is written down and scheduled for, and therefore out of mind. My stress is directly proportional to unchecked boxes. But ministry cannot be written into a list. It comes unexpectedly and with a freshness for which I cannot prepare. For this reason, with many others, ministry is hard. But just as grief accompanies love and pain accompanies beauty, joy is amongst the many rewards of ministry.

Joy serves as a ballast to stress. It frees me from the confines of my lists, albeit my apprehensions. By no means have I stopped my making of lists; stress is a permanent fixture in my very existence. But I’m learning how to adapt. Indeed, no one really cares to talk to those who seem to have it all put together. We can’t relate to perfection, so we get comfortable with our fallibility. It’s just the same with solitude: we work around the walls we refuse to break down. In that, I’m not so sure that communion is absolute—is real—unless we come into the presence of the Creator. Ministry is teaching me that it is okay to be fallible, to have walls, to be human. So, in that, I am fortunate.

In Cape Town, as I have found, ministry is ceaseless. The number of hours I work—from morning to night—expands with my responsibilities. In addition to creating content for a sermon, a bible study, a weekly devotional, and Sunday’s bulletin, I spent time this week speaking to the eleventh-grade class at Rhodes High School about 1 Tim 4, organizing leadership teams for Holiday Club, and attending an elder’s meeting, a session meeting, and an inter-denominational prayer meeting.

But through this busyness, I have found my place: I have become a regular to at least two coffee shops, where the baristas know my name and order (a tall soy latte); and I have memorized my way around the southern suburbs, where roads don’t have a pattern and drivers (apparently) don’t have blinkers. I have my coffee shop and my commute, and I am content.

In Cape Town, as I have found, it’s important to take a break from ministry. Early on my first Monday off, I took to the city centre, where, in apposite holidaymaker fashion, I indulged in a proper English breakfast at Clarke’s Tavern, browsed the tourist-trap stands along Long St and in Greenmarket Square, ambled about the Parliament Gardens, and had an overpriced cuppa at the overrated steampunk-themed Truth Roasting Company. To compliment the exhausted morning, a silent sun set as Trevor (see above) and I arrived at Graeme and Di’s (my next hosts) for an assuage evening highlighted by aperitifs of aged whiskey and talk of the Aurora Borealis.

Then on Saturday, after the morning worship practice and before the evening rains, two of last week’s movie-going friends, Daniel and Melvin, took me up to Rhodes Memorial, a romanesque shrine built into the side of Devil’s Peak. Completed in 1912, the memorial was built to honour Cecil John Rhodes, a late-nineteenth century Oxonian imperialist and the conqueror of Rhodesia (what is now Zambia and Zimbabwe). His memorial was built to overlook all of Africa, because Rhodes had sought to conquer the continent for Britain. Believing his Anglo-Saxon race to be “the first in the world,” Rhodes’ legacy is sullied by racist nationalism; the matter recently led university students to protest the monument and its campus counterpart, a Rhodesian statue. Daniel and Melvin exhibited for me the monument’s knifed information signs and the University of Cape Town’s blackened-by-fires central quad.

In Cape Town, as I have found, a life in ministry is a life in poetry. Both deal in revelations of human essence. But fate favours the poet, for she, at least, has a medium from which she can free the darkness of her heart; poems exchange sacrifice for liberation. And we read suffering poems because we, too, suffer and desperately grope for communion. Even, sometimes obviously, pastors suffer. But they mustn’t forget their charge to share a message of hope. As I understand them, sermons reveal that what we find attractive in Christ is a hope that suffers. Sermons reveal both sin and salvation. Light recognizes darkness more than darkness recognizes itself. But we cannot expect pastors or poets to bear the weight of another’s (our) sin. The messenger is not the message.

I brought my rain boots with me to South Africa as an embodiment of a life in ministry. The Western Cape was experiencing one the worst draughts of modernity. The dry earth creaked in want and with prayer of rainfall. With the reservoirs nearly run dry, we showered over buckets filled for withering plants. The sky was tinged orange, and air lingered, and dust seemed weightless. Suffering abound, and waning with water was hope. But months of prayer and the faith of packed rain boots were answered at the fall of night on Saturday, 3 June. Dave and Reneé brought me seaside, where we watched rings of pitter-patter swell and heard clouds drumming a loud, welcome cadence on the tin roof overhead.

In Cape Town, as I have found, all of this is ministry, because ministry is not just what we do but also who we are.