I referred to "bride price" in a recent letter to some friends. One of them asked me what this means and why I am against it.

The bride price practice in Africa is part of the socio-economics of Africa. It is a way of providing a sort of pension for parents. Young men and their families are expected to give cash and cows to the bride's family. A price that is negotiated between the elders representing the two families. The price is determined by future bride's father and uncles. Where this practice causes problems is when young men or their families cannot pay the bride price, but they go ahead and live together

The families would cut them off the young man if he got married without paying the bride price. However, it is common for a man to live with the woman he plans to marry some day without getting married while he tries to save or find a way to pay the bride price, and of course the couple normally have several children as well.Many of the men leave the woman they are living with if they prefer another woman or move back home to the tribal area. There is flexibility on the part of the family and tribal elders to accept their sons and daughters living together, but there is no tolerance for them to get officially married until the bride price is paid.

This double standard has led to destruction in many people's lives. Sally and I are trying to understand how to honour African traditions and practices but to also work for transformation of those practices that are creating havoc in people's lives, especially innocent children.

Hello,

This is your invite to spend ten days with us in Cape Town! Ten days for Jesus! I'll be teaching almost every day on Making the Basics Beautiful!

If your between 18 and 30 years, want to do something special this holiday season, and are hungry to grow in your faith - apply now!

Yours,

Floyd McClung

What is Ten Days for Jesus?

It’s an annual event hosted by All Nations in and around Noordhoek near Cape Town, South Africa.

It’s your opportunity to be involved in reaching people in some of the local townships around the Cape Peninsula and showing them how much Jesus loves them.

We set aside ten whole days where we give our time and ourselves to love and serve others as a birthday gift to our King.

What better gift to give Him than our lives in serving the poor and those who don’t know him?

“ ... It is more blessed to give than to receive…” (Acts 20:35).

Join with us and many other enthusiastic followers of Jesus for this exciting short outreach, reaching out to people with God’s heart and love!

When Is Ten Days for Jesus 2009?

The outreach will run from the afternoon of Thursday 10th December through Sunday 20th December, 2009.

Cost of Ten Days for Jesus 2009?

It will cost R1,700 for the ten day period.

This will cover your accommodation, 3 meals a day and transport once you arrive at Africa House. Transportation from the airport or bus station is R100 extra.

Ten Days For Jesus 2009 Program

Our theme for 2009 is ‘Back to Basics’. We want to go back to the basics and remind ourselves of how Jesus shared the gospel by serving people with love.

We are excited about what God is going to be doing!

Ten Days has always been a blast and this year will be no exception. Join us !

What Should I Do Now?

We only have room for a limited number of people so if you want to join us, apply now.

Contact us for an application form below at one of the contact addreses below.

Return it immediately to Pat Fourie at the All Nations office.

By fax using this number: +27-21-785-7201

By e-mail attachment to: info@all-nations.co.za

One of the team will be in touch to let you know if we still have space for you.

If we do, we will send you bank details for payment.

We look forward to hearing from you shortly!

The Ten Days for Jesus Team

Hi, As a proud father and mother, we have to tell you about our daughter and son-in-law :) being featured on the NBC Evening News in the United States. Lionel and Misha started an organization called "Giving Anonymously." It was featured as one of the news items on the NBC evening news with Brian Williams, Sun. eve., in the segment called "Making a Difference." It was filmed last week, and shown last night. Click here if you would like to see the clip.

God has blessed what they have been doing. Lionel, our son-in-law, was recently mentioned in a New York Times article, and they were interviewed for NPR (national public radio) recently too. In the year or so that the program has been running, about $200,000 has been given thru it. We pray that this media attention will prompt more giving. We thought you would like to share our joy and pride!

Kind regards,

Floyd and Sally McClung

This article is from the July, 2009 edition of Today magazine in South Africa:

What is the biggest thing you have learned at CPx Raymond? “That we are human BEings and not human doings! So often we feel pressurised to do this or do that and fill in a tick box list! But God has called us to BE; it is in our relationships that we find meaning and fulfilment. CPx has taught me the importance of people before process.”

I am in Noordhoek to meet Floyd McClung, well known author, speaker,evangelist and visionary. While I learn more about what makes Floyd tick, over 45 students are gathered in the next room,having come in for the six-month Church Planting Experience training (CPx) at All Nations.

To read the rest of the article click here to download or open the PDF file.

These first believers were in such a condition that their homes were holy places. I beg you to notice this, that they were breaking bread from house to house, and did eat their food with gladness and singleness of heart. They did not think that religion was meant only for Sundays, and for what men now-a-days call the ‘House of God’. Their own houses were houses of God, and their own meals were mixed and mingled with the Lord’s Supper. They elevated their meals into diets for worship. They so consecrated everything with prayer and praise that all around them was holiness unto the Lord. I wish our houses were thus dedicated to the Lord, so that we worshipped God all the day long, and made our dwellings temples for the living God. Does God need a ’special house’? He who made the heavens and the earth, does he dwell in temples made with hands? What crass ignorance is this! No house beneath the sky is more holy than the place where a Christian lives, and eats, and drinks, and sleeps, and praises the Lord in all that he does. There is no worship more heavenly than that which is presented by holy families, devoted to his fear. To sacrifice home worship to public worship is a most evil course of action. Morning and evening devotion in a cottage is infinitely more pleasing in the sight of God than all the cathedral pomp which delights the carnal eye and ear. Every truly Christian household is a church, and as such it is competent for the discharge of any function of divine worship, whatever it may be. Are we not all priests? Why do we need to call in others to make devotion a performance? Let every man be a priest in his own house. Are you not all kings if you love the Lord? Then make your houses palaces of joy and temples of holiness. One reason why the early church had such a blessing was because her members had such homes. When we are like them we shall have “added to the church daily of the saved.”

Thank you to Aaron Marshall for finding this.

Hello,

I wanted to drop you a short note to share the main thing on my heart right now. It comes out of our struggle to be a loving community. We are learning to reach across the barriers that naturally separate us: race, age, gender, poverty/affluence, nationality...

The racial and poverty barriers are the hardest ones for some members of our community to cross over, I know it is a challenge to me. It is easy enough to share the gospel, but to share our homes, our lives, our time and friendship with each other is another matter.

This has led me to reflect on the relationship between humility and community and gospel intentionality. Africa cannot and will not truly experience the love of God without people reaching out across the barriers that divide them, should I say, the barriers that divide us.

Rather than try and write all my thoughts here, I am attaching my teaching notes for this morning's CPx class; CPx is our leadership school for church planters.

I pray for you as you seek to find a loving community to be part of, and I hope it is a community of people who are learning to build deep friendships with each other and those who don't yet know Jesus.

Yours,

Floyd

Read the Notes here.

Hello,

I am burdened for those people in the world who have never heard the name of Jesus one time. They are gathered around the globe in their own language/cultural groups, what we call tribes or peoples.

An unreached people group is different than an unevangelized people group in that:

- an unreached people group does not have a sufficient number of churches and believers to evangelize the remainder of their own people group; they lack the strength of numbers or resources to be able to share Jesus with all the other members of their people group. often it is because of persecution, fear, lack of discipleship and terrain (mountains or jungles or deserts separate them from others of their group).

- an enevangelized PG is one where no one among the people group who speaks their language has heard the gospel. a least evangelized PG means very few individual people have heard the gospel in that people group, usually less than 1%.

In light of the above, imagine this: more than 90% of the churches resources world-wide goes to work with the already reached and already evangelized people groups of the world. That means we are pouring huge amounts of money and effort and people into helping those who have already heard the gospel. We are giving time and energy to help people learn about such good things as inner healing, how to do inductive bible study, good parenting skills, Sunday school, men's ministries, etc., etc., while over one third of the global family, approximately 3.3 billion people, have never heard the name of Jesus one time in their life, and never will unless someone learns their language, and then braces extreme weather and living conditions to go to them with the good news of Jesus.

On top of that, those who are unreached and unevangelized are the poorest of the poor. They die because of lack of water or water borne diseases. In some people groups over 65% of the children die before the age of 5.

So, in my mind their is a place for local churches and ministries and organizations and networks to declare that we must all work energetically to change that 90% to 50% of how our resources are spent. It will take a massive mind-set change, and a new level of courage and suffering. There there are reasons why the unreached are unreached and the poorest of the poor are poor: they are in the hard places. All the easy places have been taken.

There are about 5875 distinct unreached and totally unevangelized tribes and peoples in the world. We know where they are, who they are and what languages they speak; so it is a matter of focus and dedication, not ignorance, to reach them. It will mean tremendous focus, shall I say, passionate focus, or, extreme focus. While local churches continue to be preoccupied with self-preservation and church growth where they are, running bigger and better programs to attract more and more already evangelized people, we will never reach the unreached and respond to the poor of the earth.

Some people want to argue about the best way to do church, the right form of church government, how to run the programs of the church, etc. I have no interest in such discussions. Maybe I did when I was young and argumentative. No more. I want to see one thing while I still have breath: people who have never heard His name hear their is a God who made them and has not forgotten them.

it will take extreme intense severe radical relentless unyielding fierce FOCUS to share the love of Jesus with people who have never heard his name. My plea is for those people.

With gratitude to Jesus,

Floyd McClung