I am sure that after the announcement that the Wortelgat family camp was cancelled there was much gnashing of teeth and loud lamentations throughout the congregation. We were thus immeasurably privileged to have the camp's central attraction, Zimbabwean Phineas Dube, a stand-in minister at DPC for three months near the end of 1998, deliver an invigorating talk at the church on Saturday, 11th February. With his elegant shirt, sporting the intricate designs reminiscent of those worn by the great Madiba, and effortlessly charismatic manner Phineas set about weaving his message around one of the most pertinent issues facing Christians today, namely how to effectively serve Christ in the 21st Century.

The talk was divided into three sessions, with a break between each one. The first session took as its primary point the fact that the God of the Old Testament is a relational God. The audience was led through a whirlwind tour of different historical epochs and Phineas outlined the dominant cultural characteristics holding salient sway during the respective eras. After highlighting the sadly inescapable truth that the 20th Century introduced a dramatic discontinuity with earlier times, as widespread chaos, isolation, disastrous wars and ideological conflict engulfed the globe, we finally reached the troubled pivot around which we all currently revolve in the present age. According to Phineas we have entered a phase where Post-modernism is the prevailing cultural norm.

Some of Phineas' wide ranging wisdom dispensed during the talk:

Jesus came to make us uncomfortable when we stray into the darkness; Television does horrible things to men, women and children; We are into the business of the Lord; All relationships begin with a connection; When you begin to be seriously connected to God you produce things you couldn't have done on your own; His management technique and leadership ability were so effective that his clients gave their whole life to the business; He did not use people to make Himself successful He made them successful; There is not success without successor; Life is a series of being made, depending on who's doing the making; God is looking for good followers, so that He can make them into good people; Get out of one box and into another one so that you can be born again in the world of holiness; Wisdom is an ability to see what others cannot; You cannot be a Christian if you don't have proper eyes; It is the mind that creates a special form of procedure; Testimonies are of no use until they have the backing in your own life; Part of your spiritual responsibility is to remember where you came from; If you begin to act as how He requested you to do on earth, you become his missionary; Creation is God's marketing tool; Our bodies are an incredibly massive mystery

I hope that Phineas' eloquent incitement to live a life consistently committed to God will bloom forth in our congregation and take us to wondrously unchartered realms of deepened spirituality. With that in mind let us not fall prey, in the words of our minister Eddie Germiquet, to the "tyranny of urgent things", or, as the great American writer Jack Kerouac wrote nearly sixty years ago, let us not live "vigorously absent minded lives" and not be entranced by the "blinding light of acquisitive days".

Phineas Dube Biographical sketch

Phineas Dube was born in Zimbabwe and has been educated in both England and the United States. He completed his undergraduate degree at the London Bible College and later with London University. He completed a one year course with the BBC which dealt with how to communicate utilising television and radio. He completed post graduate study at Boston University and obtained his PhD at the International School of Theology in California.
He worked for World Vision in Kenya for three years and has been working full time for the Haggai Institute for eight years. The institute's primary function is to develop leaders and Phineas' work for this institute sees him travel to Hawaii and Singapore four times a year. From 1997 to the end of 1999 Phineas worked for African Enterprise in South Africa to facilitate a leadership project. He was also stand-in minister at DPC for three months towards the end of 1998. He has two children and one grandchild.

By Ryan Rutherford.