Posted on August 9, 2011 - by Stephen Murray

Planting, Training and Porterbrook

I drove through Ravensmead on the way to work a few mornings ago. It’s not my usual route but I had an early morning airport run and so the chance to drive through parts of the city that I normally don’t. You often hear people talk about places where there’s a church on every corner. Well that literally is the case here down the main road (Here are some street view shots if you don’t believe me: Church 1; Church 2; Church 3; and that’s just a sampling). And there are around another 75-115 neighborhoods like this in the city. Not all of them have a church on every corner, but many do.

You might question the need for church planting in a city like this – well I could spend all day giving you stats and other reasons (dying churches, no orthodoxy, etc.) why church planting in Cape Town is still crucial. And whilst I think new church planting strategies are completely necessary in our city  I also think (and was reminded by my drive through Ravensmead) that those strategies need a strong training component in them – especially one that extends over denominational and local church boundaries. Our church planting must bless the city (as the catch-phrase goes) but it must also bless existing churches – of which there are many.

One particular training approach that I’m very impressed with, and champing at the bit to use as soon as I can get a bunch of guys together, is Porterbrook Training. It’s developed by the same guys who brought us Total Church, Steve Timmis and Tim Chester, and it is a truly comprehensive, gospel-centered approach to local church training. If you are in Cape Town there are already a bunch of guys promoting Porterbrook and trying to arrange get togethers around the training material. If you want more information then check out the Porterbrook South Africa site. If we could see more and more existing churches getting a vision for this sort of training then I really think we could see significant things happen in our city as people come together around the gospel of Christ.