Archive for the ‘Cape Town’ Category

Posted on December 10, 2008 - by Stephen Murray

Church Planting Foundations Conference

Here’s a line up of the speakers for the Cape Town leg of Acts 29’s Church Planting Foundations Conference (2-4 Feb 2009):

Mike Gunn:
Mike Gunn is the pastor of Harambee Church in Renton, Washington. Mike helped plant Mars Hill Church in Seattle and now currently serves as the director of Church Planting Internationally for the Acts 29 Network.

Dave Fandey:
Dave Fandey is the pastor of a growing new church called, The Fields, which he planted in 2003. Dave wears many hats as he sits on the international board for Acts 29 as well serves as an adjunct lecturer at Biola University teaching New Testament and Leadership.

Al Barth:
Al Barth oversees and encourages church planting and church planting movements in Europe and Africa on behalf of Redeemer Presbyterian’s Church Planting Center. Al is a seasoned church planter with a particular passion for church planting movements in the major cities of the world.

JD Senkbile:
JD Senkbile has recently moved to Cape Town to oversee the Acts 29 Network in Africa. Before moving to Cape Town JD was involved with justice and mercy ministry at an Acts 29 affiliated church in Omaha, Nebraska.

Sam Groves:
Sam Groves is the pastor of Church on the Ridge in Pietermaritzburg, a young growing church which he planted with two other couples just over three years ago. He has a passion for church planting and cultivating communities of gospel-centered disciples.

Siegfired Ngubane:
Siegfried Ngubane serves both as a lecturer at George Whitefield College and as pastor of Mandela Park Community Church. In the past few years Siegfried has overseen a number of church planting initiatives in township areas in and around Cape Town.

Dave West:
Dave West is the senior pastor of Melville Union Church in Johannesburg which he and his wife planted. The church is heavily involved both in ministries to students as well as ministries to street children and HIV/Aids orphans.

Send me an email (stephenjmurray@yahoo.com) if you’re interested in attending.

Posted on October 4, 2008 - by Stephen Murray

Where we’re Planting

Some of you from the other side of the Atlantic have asked me where exactly we’re doing our church plant next year. Well here are some pics of the areas of Green Point and Sea Point which are the two suburbs of Cape Town, South Africa in which we’ll be starting the work. They’re both on the Atlantic seaboard of Cape Town, right next to the central business district – in fact Green Point kind of just fades into the CBD.

Here’s a shot of both suburbs – Sea Point is the larger suburb on the right and Green Point is central – the CBD is in the background around the corner of Signal Hill which is the middle of pic. Table Mountain is in the background and the new soccer staduim and the fields around it (which are presently being transformed into sports complexes and other things) is in the foreground, the Waterfront is bottom left:

Here’s a close up of Green Point where you can see the construction underway (they’re quite a bit further ahead now) and Signal Hill in the background – Lion’s Head is the little peak behind Signal Hill which is above Sea Point (far right). The CBD is just out of picture to the left:

Here’s a shot of Sea Point from somewhere up on Lion’s Head. Sea Point is the most densely populated suburb in Cape Town along with the Townships:

And of course there’s also the world famous V & A Waterfront, one of our top tourist destinations, that lies at the base of Green Point – you can see the edge of the CBD on the left:

So that’s where we’re planting – possibly the most cosmopolitan and diverse area in Cape Town and maybe even South Africa. We will have our work cut out for us. Pray for us, or maybe if you’re able to, join us.

Posted on August 27, 2008 - by Stephen Murray

Church Plant Diary #2 – Prayer

Our first port of call in this plant has been to pray. Now this might sound obvious but its super easy to leave out. Like most Christians I really struggle with disciplined prayer – I have my good weeks and I have my bad weeks. But in reality I’m kidding myself about the entire venture if I’m not going to regularly get down on my knees and plead with God that he would be pleased to plant a church in Cape Town.

Jacques, my co-planter, got us all together just over two weeks ago for our first corporate prayer meeting. There were only 9 of us but it was the most exciting time we’ve had together around this plant so far. We’ve now committed to getting this group of people, and others who’d like to join, to pray corporately twice a month from now until January when both Jacques and I will start full-time on the plant. If you’d like to pray with us then here are some of the things you can pray for:

• Jacques and his wife Lindy are heading over to Redeemer Church Planting Center next month for a 6 week training intensive – pray that this would be an amazingly fruitful time for them.

• We’ve had a number of people mention interest in the plant to us – pray that God would start to firm up this interest so that they’ll commit full-time to the plant next year.

• Robin and I don’t currently live in the same suburb that we’re planning to plant in – pray that until we can find accommodation in Green Point or Sea Point we would make time just to explore and hang out in the area more, meeting people.

• Pray for Holy Trinity, Gardens and St Stephen’s, Claremont, our two sending churches that God would use this church plant to mature and grow their congregations in godliness and gospel-centered thinking and living.

• Most of all pray that God would, through this plant, seek to glorify himself as his Son is proclaimed in Cape Town transforming the lives of broken and lost people.

Posted on August 26, 2008 - by Stephen Murray

Church Plant Diary #1

Since the cat is out the bag I thought I’d start slowly blogging through the church planting experience I’m about to embark upon. This gives you a way to keep up to date with what we’re doing and a forum to give some critical feedback. To be honest the more I think about church planting the more I realize that I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing. Sure I’ve read some books and talked to some peeps – but let’s be honest Cape Town City presents a conundrum of challenges and opportunities in its radical diversity and its going to need serious prayer and real hard work to see something start emerging here.

To date God has been very good to us in laying the groundwork in so many different ways through the people he’s brought into our lives and the way everything, so far, has just effortlessly fallen into place. My guess is that its probably not always going to be that way and we’ll need to have a long term view of the work we’re doing to keep going. So welcome to my church plant diary and feel free to make comments along the way as a group of us take on the city of Cape Town with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Posted on August 15, 2008 - by Stephen Murray

Letting the Cat out the Bag…

I can finally tell everyone the news!!!

Some of you will be aware of this news already, some of you won’t, but today it all became official and so now I can post about it on my blog. We are joining and helping to head up a church plant in Cape Town City! As many of you know I’ve been completing my post-graduate studies at George Whitefield College this year with a view to going out to be involved in some sort of church planting ministry in the future. Initially Robin and I thought we were going to head back to Durban and be involved in some work there, but since January this year I’ve been in conversation with some people from our denomination about a church plant in the Sea Point and Greenpoint suburbs of Cape Town. Altough we’ve been fairly certain for the last 3 months that it was going to happen we had to wait for denominational approval. Well today we got it. Robin and I attended a selction conference where prospective ordinands are placed in various ministries throughout the country and there we met with some of the bishops of CESA and lecturers from GWC. They gave us the great news that they’re all keen on the idea of the plant and are happy with our involvement in it from January 2009 onwards! So we’re extremely excited about what God is going to do in this city through us.

I’ll be joining with a friend by the name of Jacques Erasmus to plant this church. Jacques has been working in the area with a ministry called Straatwerk (Street Work) for the last few years ministering to homeless folk, prostitutes, the homosexual community,  refugees and the night-clubbing crowd. He’s an amazingly gifted gospel worker with a huge heart for the unconverted – especially the marginalized in society. Together, with a small core team, we’re going to be launching an all out offensive on Cape Town come January. Please hold us up in prayer as we attempt this. Pray that God would be pleased to grow his church in these difficult places.

I’ll be updating you with news as we go along and give you more details to the plant as we flesh it out. Peace.

Posted on August 10, 2008 - by Stephen Murray

Paul Tripp in Cape Town

This evening we had Paul Tripp with us at St Stephen’s. He gave an exceptionally helpful talk on relationships, conflict and the heart issue of idolatry. He’ll be in Cape Town until the 17th of August I suggest you try and catch him at one of his sessions:

Mon 11th Aug 2008
14h00 – Biblical counselling & identity
15h30 – Biblical counselling & the use of Scripture
19h00—Counselling & the Bible as a story – The genius of how the Word transforms the Heart
Venue: Jubilee Community Church 21 Nelson Road
Observatory

Tue 12 Aug 10h00 Cape Town Baptist Seminary: Getting to the heart of conflict

13h00-14h00 City Partnership: Meeting held at Capetonian Hotel Foreshore Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands

19h00 Durbanville Community Church: Chesterhouse School, Mosselbankrivier Road, D’Urbanvale, Durbanville Getting to the Heart of Parenting 2 sessions & Q&A

Wed 13 Aug 12h15 Goodwood Baptist Church: Pastor & Christian Workers lunch. Counseling and the Bible as Story

19h00 Christ Church Somerset West: Corner of Old Stellenbosch and Helderberg College Roads Getting to the Heart of Parenting (2 sessions)

Thu 14 Aug 09h50 Bible Institute Kalk Bay: Main Road Kalk Bay

13h00-14h00 City Partnership: Meeting held at Vineyard Hotel Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands

19h00 Common Ground Church: Milner Road; Rondebosch Marriage, Family & Friendship

Fri 15 Aug 11h00 Christ Church Hermanus: Jose Burman Ave, Hermanus Pastor’s Meeting: “Too Many Unproductive People” & “Biblical Counseling and the Use of Scripture”

18h30 Christ Church Hermanus: Held in Municipal Auditorium, Hermanus Getting to the Heart of Parenting

Sat 16 Aug 10h00 Monte Vista Presbyterian Church Age of Opportunity (3 sessions)

19h00 Living Hope Bible Church: 5 Fir Grove Way; Bergvliet Getting to the Heart of Conflict

Sun 17 Aug 09h45 St Matthews Church CESA: Jannsens Ave Table View Relationships: A Mess Worth Making

Sun 17 Aug 19h00 Meadowridge Baptist Church: 136 Ladies Mile Rd; Meadowridge Relationships: A Mess Worth Making

For more details check out the CBD website.

Posted on June 17, 2008 - by Stephen Murray

Healthy Critique

Some of the heat that has been directed my way due to my post about Hillsong Cape Town has disturbed me somewhat at the ability (or lack thereof) of Christians to critique and ask hard questions of themselves. I understand that when one is part of something that you believe in you’ll defend it tooth and nail – but shouldn’t Christians be slightly different? After all we should be fighting tooth and nail for one central issue and that is the Gospel of Jesus Christ and its centrality to life and practice. For everything else shouldn’t we be prepared to critique and be open to critique?

In the last two years of blogging I’ve followed a lot of different types of Christian blogs and if truth be told I’ve learned an absolute ton from Christian traditions other than my own. I’ve learned things from (wait for it…) Roman Catholicism, the Emerging Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, Neo-Monasticism, Pentecostalism and even stuck in the mud Reformed folks. By reading widely and interacting with the different expressions of faith I’ve been able to critique my own expression and refine it in order to be more faithful in following Christ. Going back and forth between the scriptures and these various traditions has been a thoroughly fruitful exercise. And so I think that when we become unable to critique we lose much and are worse off for it. We also might be (and I say this tentatively) exposing the idols in our life and practice when we discover areas that we are unable to critique (i.e. what do I value above the gospel?).

Posted on May 4, 2008 - by Stephen Murray

Too Old for Passion

The Passion band are coming to Cape Town in August. Yup, Chris Tomlin and David Crowder are going to be here, but I’m too old to attend! The Facebook group says its only for people between 18 and 25! What the…? How does that work?

Posted on April 4, 2008 - by Stephen Murray

Working with the Homeless in Cape Town

My fiancee works for an organisation called U-Turn who work to uplift homeless people in the area of Claremont in Cape Town. They’ve just got their new website up and running and its worth a look.

The reason I mention it here is due to the current difficulties our organisation is facing. Up until now the municipality has allowed us to lease a building in central Claremont which has operated as a second-phase shelter for the upliftment of homeless men and as a base of operations for all the other work that goes on with the first-phase homeless folk who are still on the street. Unfortunately the municipality requires us to move because they will be demolishing the building in order to build a new road through the area. We have known about the move for a few months now and the municipality has promised us an alternative venue also in central Claremont. However things have come to a head and we’ve been asked to vacate the building within two weeks. Unfortunately the alternative venue is nowhere near ready for our second-phase residents to move into (it completely lacks proper ablution facilities). The costs of making the new venue ready for residents and fully operable are quite significant.

Now I don’t normally do this on my blog but I thought it would be worth putting out there (especially for my US and UK readers who’s Dollars and Pounds go a lot further than our South African Rand):

Would you consider partnering with this ministry in some form? There are suggestions on the website as to how you can contribute to the ministry and help us in this time of need. Thank you for your consideration and please be in prayer for U-Turn over the coming months of transition.

Posted on January 15, 2008 - by Stephen Murray

iPod therefore I Am

George Whitefield College is running its annual ‘Summer School of Biblical Christianity’ from 23 Jan to 1 Feb 2008 at their campus in Muizenberg, Cape Town. They’re offering courses on Biblical Theology, Church Response to Contemporary Issues, New Testament Greek, Old Testament Hebrew, Advanced Exegesis and Post-Graduate Research. I’ll be attending the Post-Graduate Research course.

What was really interesting to me is that Mark Norman will be down from Pretoria to teach 6 sessions on understanding postmodernism entitled ‘iPod therefore I Am‘. Here’s his schedule:

Part 1: Understanding Postmodernism – The differences between ‘Premodern’, ‘Modern’ and ‘Postmodern’ societies.

Part 2: Postmodernism and the Problem of Truth – A Christian critique of postmodern views of knowledge and truth.

Part 3: Postmodernism, Terrorism and Fundamentalism – The new global war and what it means for the church.

Part 4: Postmodernism and African Thought – How post-colonial African thought relates to postmodernism and its relevance for the church.

Part 5: Postmodernism and the Use of Language – A study of postmodern approaches to language, with special relevance to Jacques Derrida.

Part 6: Postmodernism and the Stories We Live In – Are you living in the Christian story?

Mark’s talks will take place in the mornings of each day prior to the other Summer School classes.

For more information contact GWC  (021) 788-1652

Or see the college website.