Too often we have portrayed the good news of Christmas in ways that only dimly reflect that first Christmas story. The sanitised and spiritualised Christmas story we portray is often rather foreign to the cast of that first Christmas story – the unwed teenage mother, shamed and shunned by her family, the conflicted righteous carpenter betrayed by his fiance, the disreputable outsiders with a reputation for violence and theft, the pagan astrologers the brutal power-hungry despot, the fearsome heavenly host and the child-king born in poverty at the centre of it all. That first Christmas story was anything but good news to the powerful, well-fed and respectable. It was the shout of liberation for the oppressed, comfort for the mourning, and inclusion for the shamed and outcast.
What if we need to #changethenarrative this Christmas of not only how we remember that first Christmas but quite possibly even how we celebrate this Christmas? Join us for a three-part series as we Re-tell the Christmas Story.
Part 1: The Kingdom Breaks In:
Join us for part one of Re-telling the Christmas Story as we take another look at that first Christmas story of the in-breaking kingdom of justice, shalom, and hope.
When: Monday 8 November
Date: 19:30 – 21:00
Cost: R50 (free tickets available on request for those who need them – contact admin@isiphambano.com)
Part 2: Disrupting the Powerful:
The issue of power and the abuse of power by pastors and church leaders is front and centre for the church right now. One after another well known and powerful Christian leaders are being discredited and fired for various forms of spiritual abuse and misuse of power. The Christmas story invites us into a very different story of the king who exchanges his power for obscurity, exile, and shame. Where songs are sung of rulers being brought down and the hungry being filled.
Join us for a discussion about the abuse of power and the subversive weakness of the gospel
When: Monday 22 November
Date: 19:30 – 21:00
Cost: R50 (free tickets available on request for those who need them – contact admin@isiphambano.com)
