DRC Presbytery Task group for "Fresh Expressions of Church" and involvement

I attended my first Presbytery meeting in South-Africa. The Presbytery talked about the recent General Synod meeting where a mission identity were decided to be a value for the DRC. "Dutch Reformed Church".
The presbytery talked about "Fresh expressions" of MSM and evaluated that we need to do something like that in Brackenfell. They elected representatives from the four congregations and asked this task group to start a Fresh Expression in Brackenfell. I were asked to help in this initiative.
After two meetings we start to form ideas on how this approach can help the community of Brackenfell. I am the only one in the group that did the training.
I still do not know how this initiative will develope, but I am enthusiastically part of it. I firmly believe that it is a step in the right direction.

New expressions of Church and involvement

"New expressions of Church" is an initiative of MSM (Mission shaped Ministries) from the UK. 

It is an initiative that created 80% of new growth of churches in the UK. The basis of this movement is missional. The church as it exists today, do not manage to get people back to the pews. Even if the church do their work, which they did up to now, very well, they have the potential to reach only a very small portion of the population. Most of the population will not sit in a pew again. Something else is necessary. In Brackenfell we know we have about 300 000 people and in all the christian churches together, there is a membership of about 12 000. Most people are not negative towards christianity, but will not sit on pews on Sundays.

New expressions of Church is giving the church training, not to get people in the Church building, but to go out and reach the people that will not come. It is possible to create an expression of church in the community that looks and functions differently, without giving away the biblical principles of being church. 

MSM worked out a course of 24 modules on subjects like: Prayer, Sacrements, Discipleship, Small groups, etc. I participated in them and found them very useful. I believe that this course will help many churches in South-Africa also. The DRC already included this course on the training of new Reverents. 

Read more about MSM at: http://www.missionshapedministry.org/

I were asked by the MSM South-African group to be part of in their planning and training group for 2014 and also present some of the modules. I believe that I can play a roll in a process to adapt this training for the South-African situation. I believe that this training will help many churches in South-Africa.
This year more than 50 leaders were trained and next year it looks as if more people will be trained.

Pomfret

 After 18 hours drive, I arrive in the much hotter and dryer Pomfret. It is a small town that were founded around a asbestos mine and was firstly built as an minetown with hospital, clubhouse, many residential homes and services. It is situated in the North-West Province near the border of Botswana. The government were forced to help them with free electricity and water for a few days in the week.

After the closure of the mines, the military took it over and build it out with more houses. Early in the 90’s the government used the base to locate the people from 32 bataljon here. They are Portuguese speaking people from Angola who could not be relocated in their own country because of the political situation.

Pomfret is situated within a farm community and because of the climate; farms are big and stretched out. Because of the problem of language and perceptions, the farmers did not employ them. There are no work opportunities and most of them live from disability and other governmental grants. Some of them were displaced to Mafekeng but all of them did not go. Some of the local Shwana speaking people stay in some of the houses. If I remember correctly, there are about 4000 people in the town from which 80% are Angolese and the rest Shwana speaking. Exept for the free electricity and water, there are nearly no services and the sentiment is that the government do not want them there and gave the opportunity to be placed in Mafikeng. There are a school in town from grade one to twelve. There are also 7 denominations in town and they know that they are losing the fight against social degeneration.

Other initiatives are the ECO organization that started a home for orphans where they look after about 14 children. Through them they started an initiative of cultivating vegetables in tunnels, with water from a borehole. This initiative needs still leadership development. They also run more than one feeding house to combat malnutrition in the area. One of their main aims is to expose children to God’s love, Biblical stories and the gospel, using the children themselves in this initiative. There are local women that are involved in preparing the food.

There are also an elderly couple that started with basic theological training using the Nehemiah course and are involved in pre-school training for children. They are supported by a DRC congregation from Bloemfontein and other supporters that visit them for outreaches.

There are also a lady that help with medical support by opening a clinic for treating people and do basic training.

There are not much of maintenance of houses and buildings like the hospital and clubhouse is falling apart. The police destroyed some of the houses in a effort to prevent people from staying there. The community is a problem for the government and the future of this little town and its people is looking bleak. People talk with sentiments about their family in Angola but cannot go back to Angola.

WHAT TO DO

I think that with some help the town can be helped. One of the needs is to have skills training with things like welding, putting up fences and other skills to serve the farms around there. Also training in own production through farming activities like planting and breeding animals.

The biggest need I think, is to work with worldview. If there are no hope for future and the understanding of our responsibility and ownership of own situation, many a project will not be successful. I think of getting involved in supporting the different churches to work together and give Biblical Worldview training and help to start practical consequences of this understanding of reality. There are a few partners that are positive about this and I believe have the potential of being part of a partnership that work with this approach.

My prayer is to know if I need to get involved in visiting about two times a year for about 10 days and facilitate biblical worldview discussions and practical consequences of this way of thinking.

With Annlin congregation in Mozambique (Mocuba and arround)

I arrived in Mocuba before them and could receive the team there. They are mostly from Annlin DRC congregation from Pretoria, but also some others who joined in.

We had a day of orientation that went very well and the attitude of the team became their great testimony. They decided to serve and learn while talking about christian practical issues. The team divided in two and I joined the one group going to Lugela. They played with the children, did skills with women braiding hair, sharing food and became really intimate. So much so that from both sides, greeting was with a bit of tears. With the leaders from the men women and youth, we talked about Stewardship. They shared with us a few stories through which God were experienced as real and part of their community. The story of Sara and here baby whose life's were saved not only by the previous intervention of the teams of South Africa but clearly because of the grace of God. The others story of a child with skin problems that were helped as well as the testimony of the team that were in the accident. They experienced this accident very emotionally up till today they share the loss with a lot of emotion. The big testimony is because the team did not stop to be involved in Mozambique, but is still visiting and still show love and service. These things opened the hearts of the community on a very special way. Every message is taken seriously. The translator also mentioned that it is the fist place where he see that the children did not take any of the coloring pencils or equipment for themselves. They brought back every pencil.

We applied stewardship on animals, nature, church and marriage. The discussions were very open and they were really exited to understand more of the way God intended life to be. God wants us to develop and wants the church to serve the community and bring truth and light to brokenness. God wants marriages to be honest, joyful, faithful and examples of how He loves the world. etc.

We went back to town for Sunday to wash clothes, church service in town and visiting the Bible school.

On Monday our group visited Mutucua, a new Prayer house in Maganja da Costa district. The road took us over a scary home made bridge deep into the bush. First we had to build relationships after the children fled at the sight of a white man approaching them. The work with youth changed the relationship totally. With the leaders we heard what make them happy and sad. Some of the challenges were the lack of funds for church premises and for building. With stewardship we focused on love as the basis of development. God's love for us reflected to other people. The understanding came that love, not power, humility not position, etc will bring people to the church. The pastor also asked us to talk about the understanding that there are a future. We asked: If we love the community and one another what will happen within a month. They guessed that there will be at least 2 more people in the church. What about 6 months, then a year, then 2 years and then 10 years. They believe that there will then be  many people in the prayer house. With so many people they will be able to buy the land and build the church? One of the consequences of love is development and that will happen with only the resources that God gave them. It depends on God and not on help from outside.

We again talked about marriages and some complained about lazy wives. At the end we agreed that to have a wife that will make you proud, we need to love and serve and that has a very good chance of developing your wife to be someone you are proud of. We also talked about faithfulness and other aspects of marriage relationships that are different than cultural thinking.

The Jesus film again was a hit.

The last day we spent at Magodane congregation. The program was delayed by rain. At the end our meetings there were accepted very well.

We went back to Mocuba and prepared for the next day to start our trip back. We had many experiences on the road, but it went very well. In Inhassoro we stayed for an extra day to talk about our vision for the future, our attitude in giving report to our congregations etc. It went well and we could sort out some practical things for the next outreach. We left there with some ideas to think about.

Bernadette drove down with me to Cape Town and it went well. We give her and her family in the hands of the Lord in the challenges facing them.

With Villiersdorp in Mozambique (Pemba)

The team were organized through the DRC church in VIlliersdorp, with members of other churches also involved. Some were families and we left with four cars.

Driving to Mozambique

On the first day 19th of June, we managed to reach Senekal in the Freestate. We were spoilt by the church people there. Then we continued east to enter Swaziland from the south. On our way we heard that the bridge over the Save river were closed because of political turmoil. So we decided to go through Zimbabwe. We took the road to the north and reached Loskopdam the evening where we camped. One of the team members left us there with a bad back pain. From there we reached the border where we encountered a few challenges. Firstly the Migration people wanted the birth certificates of the children and we did not have all of them. Firstly they did not want us to cross and that was very emotional. We pleaded and continued to explain and then they allowed them. Then we had to stand in the row for 5 hours to get customs clearing.

Pasted after hard work

After that one of the cars were registered on the farms name and they did not have the correct documents. They had to turn around go through all the red tape to get back to RSA. The rest of us continued till Lion and Elephant in Zimbabwe and reached there at midnight. We stayed over there and waited for the other car. At 12 they joined us with great joy. Then we continued and reached the mission station at Morgenster where we stayed from the night. From there it went well, but slow because of the situation of the road, until reaching Pemba. There the one car were fined for not having a chevron on the back. We did not want to pay a bribe and had to be escorted by the police through town to go and pay the fine. I believe that that was a good testimony, because bribes are the common thing. The police thought that these church people are very strange. I got Malaria and had it bad for a few days. Through the outreach I had to recover.

We reached our destination with Johan Dames and started the next day with building the little school and building relationships especially by playing with the children of this Muslim community. The foundation built for the schoo, was not level and we first had to level it and then I again learned a lot about building through the experts in the team. The team managed to build very good relationships and left a very positive image of christianity in the community. On top of that they did the floor with the walls and the pillars of the school by working hand in hand with the local community in a very positive way. From both sides we worked very hard and the community expressed their gratitude throughout the whole process.

We had nice seafood to eat

I left the team a few days early to join the team from Pretoria in Mocuba.

With Strand Congregation in Mozambique

Sunday School training outreach with Strand reformed Church

 

The first team was actually a very small team. In the last hours we heard that the material we wanted to use on the outreach did not arrive in Milange. Dirkie managed to get the material and we had to divide it between us for the flight to Malawi. We made the weight limit and me and Dirkie flew out to Malawi. Kobus and Nana met us on the airport and we stayed the first night with them. From there we hired the Prado from Milange and went drove to Mocuba with Benjamin, the leader of the youth group of the synod. We met up with another youth leader from Magodane congregation in Mocuba. The first day of training were postponed for a day because of communication problems. It was a group of maybe ten that came for the training and the two youth leaders who did the training, did very well. Me and Dirkie only helped with a few small things. I had to talk about our calling specifically for the youth. They used material for Sunday school and helped the local youth leaders to use it effectively as lessons for Sunday school. The focus is not on only understanding the messages of the Bible, but also to focus on the growth of a relationship with the Lord.

After the training we spent a few days in Mocuba visiting Lugela, Tacuane, Muraba and a new church near Muraba. We listened to trained youth leaders in giving the first lesson to the children and afterwards helped and encouraged them. Some of them surprised us with a lot of initiative and enthusiasm. Benjamin also brought the Jesus film and we showed it in all of these places.

I also had a good talk with the building committee that is responsible for the building of the church building in Mocuba. They are very inexperienced for a project like this, but in general did very well in managing the building. They build the walls up to window level. It is a good partnership where the local congregation is responsible for one part of the work and Strand congregation helps with the rest. It is a nice process that is not finishing a task but is developing people involved.

We also visited Magodane congregation where we also had a day of training whereafter we visited prayer houses to listen to the youth leaders in presenting their first classes. They were very excited and we can see that some of them will do good in creating a system of Sundayschool. Felizardo, the youth leader of Magodane did very well.

On our way back we went with a small bush road to the prayer house of Machina and the people there demonstrated a deep gratitude and enthusiasm. We really enjoyed it. The morning at 4 it started raining so we packed everything and left for Milange. The road was very wet, but we arrived in good time. On the way we shared with one another about the privilege of doing this work, because it also form our own lives in a powerful way.

Relativism and truth

The prophet Isaiah warns, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” (5:20)

Taking God out of creation creates a culture of death. Then there is no base for values and everything became relative. The consequence of relativism is death.

We need christians that will be able to live out a life of love in contrast to this relativistic culture.To live out the absolute truth of a good and a real God.