Tag: Vineyard

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Following Jesus to Valley Vineyard

This is a brief note to inform all our friends about new shifts and changes in our lives.

Just over four years ago I handed the leadership of Valley Vineyard to a younger leader, in order to base myself full time in our community (on the farm where Gill and I live). It was partly in response to the need to give vision, leadership and direction towards growth in our community. However, after a process of discussion in our community over the past four years, there was no consensus as to the key issues – including the way forward for the community. So I decided that I needed to lay down my leadership in the community.

This, among other things, led to a process of unbundling our community commitments, and legal, financial and other structures. The purpose was to free one another to make decisions for our lives without dependencies or vested interests. At the beginning of this year Gill and I felt under God – with the blessing of the community – that we should make ourselves available for a calling to pastor or plant a church once again. Continue reading Following Jesus to Valley Vineyard

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Story of the Pakistan Visa!

Late yesterday afternoon (Thursday 29 March 2012), after a long wait and “assertive” discussion with a consulate representative at the Embassy, I went home without a visa. Islamabad (capital of Pakistan) had not sent through approval to Pretoria Pakistan Embassy for our visa, despite our visa application being in the Embassy for four weeks ago, and despite the inviting pastor, Sarwar Masih in Lahore, going to their Ministry of Interior with letters and copies of passports, etc. It’s rather disappointing.

We were scheduled to fly today (Friday 30 May), but have now cancelled the ministry trip, despite Sarwar Masih having done posters and organised the whole pastor’s conference, etc. Our friend and Vineyard colleague from Norway, Odd-Ivar, who planned to join us as part of the team, will arrive in Lahore on tomorrow and will participate in the conference.

I found the Pakistan Embassy a shambles of disorganization and rudeness. I had been personally three times to the Embassy and made well over ten phone calls over four weeks. Yesterday they said my passport was locked in the office of the commissioner who had left the Embassy early and no one had keys to go in and get the passport. I waited for over an hour and talked to no fewer than three people, and then made a phone call to a Pakistan official, before a senior consular official came.

He explained that Islamabad had not yet sent a reply, so the visa was not approved in time for our trip – after having our passports and application for four weeks – have you ever heard of such a thing? I expressed my strong disagreement and dissatisfaction with their process, then simply insisted in getting our passports and begin our hour and half drive home – two hours in traffic! Anyway, after further insistence on my part they managed to get our passports and I came home.

Thanks for the prayers. I am relieved its all over, but sad that my son and I will miss our ministry trip to Pakistan. And I’m sorry for Sarwar and the pastors there, but I feel relief. God’s in charge and I believe he will work this for our good. Part of the good is that I have some uninterrupted time this coming week – when I was supposed to be in Pakistan – to work on my book “Doing Spirituality – Introducing Christian Spirituality as Discipleship to Jesus and his Kingdom”. I plan to write fourteen chapters and right now I am at the end of chapter six. I’m excited to have a week to write, it’s like heaven for me!! I always think of the athlete in the movie Chariots of Fire who, when he ran, put his head back and “felt the pleasure of God”. When have uninterrupted time to write I put my head down and I feel the pleasure of God – it’s one of the things I was made for!

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Report on Pastor’s & Leader’s Prayer Retreat

I was privileged to lead a pastors and leaders retreat from 25 to 27 January, 2012. My Vineyard colleagues in the NECSA region asked me to lead the retreat on “Entering the New Year – Praying the Psalms”. What an honor for me to do that! We had 32 people in attendance. See the photos of some of the heavy dudes who came!

I gave 5 meditation inputs with handouts for personal reflection, journalling and prayer. I dealt with issues like how we enter and plan the new year, how to deal with busyness and “the tyranny of the urgent”, and above all, how to make prayer a practical priority to keep our own hearts soft and fragrant as a garden for the Lord. We are first and foremost personal followers of Jesus, working on our own spiritual formation, as leaders of God’s people. Then our primary task as spiritual leaders is the spiritual formation of our people – by inducting and guiding them in the basic practices required for spiritual growth and health. That was the overall focus of the retreat.

We kept silence for the morning and afternoon sessions to best engage in our meditation times, and then the late afternoons and evenings were for relaxation, interaction, sharing and fun! The feedback from those who attended was good – God evidently met with many in meaningful and significant ways!

I am happy to post a disk of the 5 talks (in MP3 format) with the notes and meditation sheets, so that you can set aside time and do the retreat yourself where you are. The talks and notes are self-explanatory; they will guide you through the retreat step by step. All I ask is for you to pay my costs (the disk and postage, etc) by electronic transfer or direct bank deposit. If you email me I will give you all the details.

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New Book Release – Praying the Psalms

Praying the Psalms Volume One FlyerI’m so happy to say my new book has come from the publishers hot off the press!

Praying the Psalms is the first volume of a new series by Alexander Venter. Learning to Pray will enable you to not only practice daily prayer, but also to develop a life of prayer. It’s a personal prayer journal for spiritual growth. Designed for individuals and small groups, this twelve-week program imparts the tried and tested wisdom of the most ancient of prayer books: the Hebrew Psalter. The meditation exercises will uncover the rich treasures hidden in David’s prayers, making the psalms alive, relevant and personal. As you work the psalm-prayers they will work you, transforming you into a living prayer of relational intimacy with God.

“Learning to Pray is a thoughtful and practical aid to assist you to enter the rich and wonder-filled world of praying the Psalms. No practice contributes to the spiritual development of the disciple of Jesus more than praying the Psalms – a practice that was central in the life of our Lord and has strengthened God’s people throughout the centuries.”

Bert Waggoner, National Director of The Association of Vineyard Churches, USA.

“Attentive to the Holy Spirit, Venter invites us to learn, pray and live the Psalms in authentic, life-orienting ways. With care and kindness, we are guided into a life of listening, responsive prayer that shapes our liturgos, our embodied practices in conversation with God. Venter reminds us that praying and enacting the Psalms takes practice, and he provides practical help to do just this.”

Cherith Fee Nordling, Professor of Biblical Theology at Regent College, Canada.

“You will undoubtedly benefit enormously from these meditations on the Psalms. Use it on your own, or equally, use it in home groups – either way, I think you’ll find Alexander has given us a wonderful resource for spiritual growth that will enrich your daily interactions with Jesus.”

John Mumford, Leader of the Vineyard Churches in the United Kingdom

To get a copy you can visit the Kingdom Treasures shop at http://www.kingdomtreasures.co.za/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=146&category_id=31&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=1

Or you are welcome to contact me by email on

co********@al*************.com











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Durban Retreat Report

This is my very first blog post!! Can you believe it! Thanks to some friends who have tried really hard (over many years) helping this e-challenged pastor to start doing a blog! I have been in an e-fog, or so it seems, for a long, long time. Things are getting a little clearer now!

This first posting is a report on a trip last week to Durban (30 March to 3 April). I have sent this report to two email groups – to my ministry colleagues in the Vineyard, and to my community, family and friends (“prayer-partners” in the ministry that I do – often with my wife, Gill – on our trips to various places).

Gill and I were invited to lead a two-day silent retreat for Sam Kisten’s church (Chatsworth Vineyard). There were 23 people – 4 or 5 being from one or two other churches. It was held at the Marian Hill Retreat Center outside Pinetown, near Durban – a lovely place.

Marian Hill was started in the mid to late 1800s by an Austrian Catholic missionary-priest, as a mission to the Zulus. It evolved into a Trappist monastery – a silent order. It is now a sprawling development with many building, facilities and aspects of ministry, one of them being a large retreat center to serve the broader church. It is very well priced and well worth a visit for a personal or group retreat (I must learn to take some pics of these places so that I can include them here in my reports!!!)

It was a great honour and privilege for Gill and I to lead a silent retreat for a Vineyard church!! It was a first for all of the participants. We have different pictures/ideas that arise in our heads when we hear “silent retreat”.  Anyway, it was not as you may think. We took the theme of “Introduction to Christian Retreat” and built meditation exercises around the key aspects of any classic Christian retreat: Solitude and Silence, Rest and Renewal, Meditation and Prayer. The purpose was to introduce the participants to the experience (first and foremost) and the understanding of authentic Christian retreat, so that they can then continue a journey – now with a clear frame of reference – of taking periodic personal retreats. And some of the leaders who are given to the “inner work” of the soul, can also use this experience and these materials to begin introducing others to retreat.

Each session had a brief verbal input with some practical exercises (entering into silence) and a meditation handout-sheet, which the participants worked with for 1 to 3 hours. Then we had times of feedback and sharing what God was saying and doing with those who wanted to share. We ended on the Friday with worship and breaking of bread – it was pregnant with God’s presence – tears and “God-stuff” flowing freely!! In fact, almost every sharing time ended in tears for some! It was evident that God did a deep work of bringing people to stillness, of some healing, peace, rest, instruction, calling, guidance, etc – they all in their own way testified to this.  The beauty of this kind of experience is that people experience God for themselves as they work with the Word, with God in prayer, with their hearts and lives in the stillness of his presence.

On the Sunday I preached in the Chatsworth Vineyard. The worship was heavenly! It’s a healthy strong church. I felt God led me to preach on “A Call to Prayer – which is a call to the Desert, to Warfare, to Spiritual Growth”. I took a quote from Evagrios the Solitary (345-399 AD, a hermit in the Egyptian desert), who wrote 200 tacks on prayer. He began with, “First of all, pray for the gift of tears so that through sorrowing you may tame what is savage in your soul”. I find that profound, unnerving, terrorizingly true! I don’t know about you, but I know me, and there is a savage in me that needs to be tamed by God’s Spirit of Love. The word “sorrowing” is a favorite Greek word used by the Desert Fathers, penthos, which means a deep mourning for one’s true condition before God as a sinner, captured in “The Jesus Prayer” which they used incessantly: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Anyway, I spoke on Jesus’ baptism and his conferred identity from Father, “you are my Son, my Beloved”, which was immediately tested by the devil in the 40 days of fasting and prayer in the desert…. “if you are the Son of God, then….” When we truly begin to pray we enter a desert where demons manifest and test our identity as God’s beloved. This is how we learn to defeat evil by God’s Word and grow into our true identity as beloved children of the Father. I called people who wanted to respond by saying, “God, I want to get intentional about prayer in my life, and truly begin to seek your face”. Most of the church came up and knelt down, and many wept.

Pray for us, because Samuel kinda prophesied at the end of the retreat, and at his church on the Sunday, that God will use us to raise an army of people who know the spirituality of retreat & silence, of growth & character transformation. The whole area of Christian spirituality and spiritual growth has to be built into God’s people (especially the Vineyard!!) Here am I Lord, send me! So pray for us as we do more of this, and as I continue to write the book “Doing Spirituality”

And once again, this report is to say thanks for praying, because it makes all the difference – we cannot do this alone – we are an extension of you!