Conference 2026 Recordings

The 2026 annual conference was hosted by Hillcrest Baptist Church in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Below are the recordings from the various sessions at the conference.

What does it mean for the church to be a “foretaste of heaven”? Preaching from Ephesians 2:19–22, Newton Chilingulo unpacks how Christ has turned former strangers into fellow citizens and family members of the household of God.

Drawing on his own experience as a Malawian immigrant in South Africa, Newton shows how the gospel does something no legal status or club membership can: It makes former enemies—Jew and Gentile—into one family, built on Christ the cornerstone, joined together into a temple, and made into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

In this message:

• Why “home” is more than a building—and why every earthly home is only a shadow of our true home with God.
• The four pictures Paul gives us in Ephesians 2:19–22: one household, one foundation, one temple, one dwelling.
• Why citizenship isn’t the highest privilege—family is.
• The cornerstone principle: why decoration can never fix a crooked foundation.
• Why the church should manifest visible evidence that God lives among his people.
• A call for churches across nations to cooperate rather than compete, as a genuine foretaste of Revelation 7:9.

Preaching from Hebrews 12:5–11, Billy-Joe Zwart makes the case that one of the clearest proofs of God’s fatherly love is not that he shields us from pain, but that he lovingly disciplines us through hardship for our good. Using the lesser to greater argument from Hebrews—if earthly fathers discipline their children well, how much more does our heavenly Father?—Billy draws out practical implications for Christian fathers seeking to lead their homes like the Father leads his children.

In this message:

• Why our trials are not random but come to us through the loving, sovereign hand of a Father, not merely “allowed” but ordained for good.
• The difference between a God who plans the surgery and a God who only repairs after the accident (a memorable line from John Piper).
• Why discipline is proof of sonship, not evidence of rejection.
• Four marks of the Father’s discipline: its source is love; its aim is the heart; its vision is belonging and mission; and its reward is a harvest of righteousness.
• A pointed critique of “gentle parenting” culture and the modern aversion to allowing children to face hardship.
• Practical counsel for fathers: intentionality, consistency, grace, and modelling repentance in front of their children.

In this breakout session, Chris Mnguni tackles one of the most contested cultural practices in the African church: lobola (bride price/dowry). Engaging critically with a book on the subject, Mguni works through three questions: Is there a biblical foundation for lobola? Is there anything good about it? Should Christians pay or receive it? He argues throughout for careful distinction between what Scripture describes and what it prescribes.

Walking through the Old Testament narratives most often cited in support of lobola (Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel, Shechem and Dinah, David and Saul’s daughter), Chris shows that none of them function as a command or pattern for Christians to follow. Several, in fact, involve manipulation, greed, or worse. He concludes that lobola is a cultural practice, not a biblical mandate, and argues it belongs in the category of Christian liberty (Romans 14): Christians may pay or receive it, or decline to, without sinning either way—provided the real issue being guarded is sexual purity and honouring parents, not superstition or fear of ancestral disapproval.

In this message:

• Why Genesis narratives about “bride gifts” are descriptive, not prescriptive.
• A close look at Jacob and Laban—and why Laban’s conduct is presented as an example of greed, not a model for lobola negotiations.
• Seven “good” arguments for lobola addressed one by one and why each falls short as a biblical requirement.
• Why the practice varies so wildly by culture and clan that it cannot be treated as a fixed biblical standard.
• A personal story of officiating a wedding and discovering that “giving away” the bride belonged to the groom, not the two families, per Genesis 2:24.
• Extended Q&A: pastoral counsel for couples whose families are withholding permission to marry over unpaid lobola, including cases of years-long delays.

In this breakout session, Charles Woodrow tackles the growing trend—even inside the church—of delayed marriage, prolonged singleness, and rising cohabitation rates. Opening with sobering statistics (marriage rates and median marriage age have shifted dramatically since the 1950s–70s, while cohabitation has overtaken marriage), Woodrow argues that Scripture expects most men and women to aim for marriage and children, and identifies four cultural “isms”—feminism, selfism, materialism, and atheism—along with four prevalent sins eroding the biblical family.

Working through Genesis 1–2, Malachi 2, Psalm 127–128, Proverbs 31, and Matthew 19, Charles builds a positive vision of marriage, children as blessing rather than burden, and the distinct callings of husbands and wives, before turning to pastoral counsel on when delaying marriage is wise (spiritual, financial, or circumstantial immaturity) versus simply fear or self-indulgence. He closes the session with an extended, often personal Q&A on pre-marital counselling, singleness for the sake of the kingdom, and how pastors should navigate hard cases.

In this message:

• Marriage and divorce statistics tracing the decline of marriage since the 1900s.
• Four “isms” destroying the family—feminism, selfism, materialism, atheism—and four prevalent sins: adultery, pornography, sexual dysphoria, abortion.
• Why the family is the foundational human institution, prior to church and government.
• Malachi 2’s warning against treacherously abandoning “the wife of your youth,” and why God says he hates divorce.
• The poetic pictures of husband, wife, and children in Psalm 127–128 and Proverbs 31.
• Jesus’ teaching on eunuchs “for the kingdom’s sake” (Matthew 19) as the one legitimate reason for lifelong singleness
• Legitimate reasons to delay marriage (spiritual immaturity, financial dependence, lack of a suitable spouse) versus illegitimate delay driven by fear or perfectionism.
• Q&A on counselling mismatched couples, physical attraction, working wives, and personal stories from the speaker’s own nine years of enforced singleness as a military surgeon.

Preaching from Ephesians 6:1–4, Paul Schlelein lays out a Christ-centred vision for raising children in a culture where the family is under sustained attack. Opening with the sobering example of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (a celebrated “expert” on education who abandoned all five of his own children), Paul navigates three movements within the text: the recipient of Paul’s command (fathers, primarily), the rebuke (don’t provoke your children to anger), and the requirement (bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord).

He works through ten concrete ways parents provoke their children to wrath—favouritism, harshness, condescension, being overbearing, busyness, inconsistency, being unreasonable, humiliation, scolding, and pampering—before turning to practical, positive strategies: catechising, Scripture memorisation, evangelising your children, daily family worship, earnest conversation, and modelling a godly life.

In this message:

• Why “fathers” (not just “parents”) carry the primary responsibility in Ephesians 6:4 and Colossians 3:21.
• Sobering statistics on fatherlessness in South Africa and its generational effects.
• Ten specific ways parents provoke children to anger, each illustrated from biblical examples (Absalom and David, Saul and Jonathan, David and Adonijah).
• Why “the opposite of bad parenting is not no parenting, but godly parenting.”
• The difference between “bring them up,” “discipline,” and “instruction” in the text.
• Practical tools: catechisms, paying children to memorise Scripture, daily family worship, and encouraging hard questions at the dinner table.
• A moving story of missionary Alexander Duff’s son, who resented his father’s ministry-driven absence—a caution against busyness that embitters children.

Drawing on real (anonymised) pastoral counselling scenarios, Chris Woolley uses Jesus’ handling of the Pharisees’ divorce question in Matthew 19:1–12 as a template for navigating genuinely murky ethical dilemmas in marriage and family, where Scripture doesn’t offer a simple rule to apply.

Situating the passage within Matthew’s larger narrative (Jesus’ journey to the cross following Peter’s confession in chapter 16), Chris argues that these dilemmas are not obstacles to discipleship but the very means by which God tests and refines our allegiance to Christ. He draws out four principles from how Jesus handled the Pharisees’ trap—refusing to get pulled into legal loophole-hunting, pointing people back to God’s original design, attending to heart struggles rather than surface complaints, and redirecting the whole question to covenant faithfulness before God—before closing with a vulnerable personal story about a costly ministry decision in his own marriage.

In this message:

• Four real-world pastoral counselling scenarios that frame the muddy waters of marriage ethics.
• Why Matthew 19 (on divorce) is really a passage about discipleship and the way of the cross.
• Rabbi Shammai vs. Rabbi Hillel: the first-century debate Jesus was drawn into—and how he reframed it entirely.
• Four principles for navigating ethical grey areas: avoid loophole-hunting, return to God’s original design, listen for the heart behind the question, and reframe the issue as covenant faithfulness to God.
• Why some situations call for firm “thus says the Lord” answers, while others call for personal conviction reached before God rather than a rule imposed on everyone.
• A moving account of counselling a Christian woman fighting a custody battle, told by her shepherd that something matters more than winning.
• Chris’s own story: resigning his job for ministry, discovering his wife was pregnant a week later, and wrestling with what he and his wife believed about marriage roles and provision.

Opening with the story of the Battle of Hastings, where the English lost not because their shield wall failed, but because they abandoned it, lured out by a feigned retreat, Matt Floreen warns that Christian counsellors are tempted to abandon proven biblical truths for the promise of worldly innovations when facing the hardest marriage counselling cases. Working through James 4, he lays out three essential Christian truths about relationship problems that must never be traded away, however messy the situation.

Matt shows that conflicts between people flow from conflicts within people (the heart problem), that those conflicts ultimately expose spiritual unfaithfulness to God rather than mere relational incompatibility (the worship problem), and that the only real remedy is God’s abundant grace, appropriated through a six-step pattern of humility drawn from James 4:7–10. Along the way, he critiques popular but unbiblical counselling frameworks and closes with a striking claim: No algorithm or chatbot can ever truly counsel, because counselling requires a person who has themselves tasted God’s grace.

In this session:

• Why abandoning proven means for the promise of “something more” is catastrophic.
• Truth 1: The heart problem—James 4:1–3 traces marital conflict to sinful desires within, not circumstances or communication skills.
• Three categories of disordered desire: unfulfilled, unrequested, and unacceptable desires, with practical counselling homework to help counsellees see their own heart idols.
• Truth 2: The worship problem—How horizontal conflict between spouses exposes vertical unfaithfulness to God (James 4:4–5), echoing Hosea 11.
• Truth 3: The gospel solution—Six steps of humility in James 4:7–10: submitting, resisting, drawing near, cleansing, mourning, and expecting God’s exaltation.
• Why the biblical diagnosis of marriage problems is more painful than the world’s, but the biblical solution is far more glorious.
• A pointed critique of “flow-chart” counselling and a case for why AI can never replace human counsellors shaped by grace.

In this breakout session, Tim Cantrell makes a passionate biblical and practical case for recovering family worship: the daily habit of a father leading his household in reading Scripture, praying and singing together. Tim traces how a once-common household practice has all but disappeared, even in devout homes, and argues that its recovery could be transformative both for individual families and the wider church.

Structured around a “why, how, why” outline, Tim first grounds family worship in the biblical case for fatherly headship and representation (Genesis 18; Joshua 24; Deuteronomy 6). He then moves to practical counsel—six qualities of good family worship (simple, flexible, compulsory, consistent, participatory, empowered)—before closing with six concrete benefits, including family harmony, increased Bible knowledge, and modelling prayer. A lively audience discussion covers thorny edge cases: teaching unconverted children to pray; navigating disagreements between fathers and church elders; and how much latitude churches should give families on matters of Christian liberty.

In this session:

• The biblical case for fatherly headship as the foundation for family worship (Genesis 18; Joshua 24; 1 Timothy 4–5).
• A striking (informal) study: schooling type made almost no difference to students’ spiritual health, but whether their father led family worship was up to a hundred times more predictive.
• Six qualities of healthy family worship: simple, flexible, compulsory, consistent, participatory, empowered.
• Six practical benefits: harmony, Bible knowledge, modelling prayer, empathy in trials, and more.
• Extended Q&A: teaching pre-conversion children to pray without creating “Pharisees”; navigating disagreements between fathers and church elders; and how much liberty churches should extend on courtship and other wisdom issues.

Working from Ephesians 5 and Mark 7, Sybrand de Swardt lays out a detailed, pastoral framework for counselling couples through adultery: deliberately rejecting “restoration” language in favour of rebuilding, since simply putting a broken marriage back together the way it was clearly wasn’t working. He distinguishes between the secondary reasons people typically offer for adultery (unsatisfactory sex, lack of accountability, family history, societal breakdown) and the primary, heart-level cause Scripture identifies, and argues that counselling which only addresses the secondary reasons is doomed to fail.

Sybrand then walks through a detailed process for rebuilding: evangelising where needed; grounding change in the security of the believer’s identity in Christ; and a structured approach to confession, ending third-party relationships, and evaluating true repentance. He closes with an extended and often gripping Q&A covering hard pastoral cases: safety concerns when confronting a third party; children conceived through an affair; and spouses convinced of adultery without a confession.

In this session:

• Why Sybrand rejects “restoration” language for “rebuilding.”
• Secondary vs. primary reasons for adultery: why blaming circumstances, spouses, or upbringing stalls real counselling.
• Jesus’ heart-focused ministry in Mark 7 and what the Bible actually means by “the heart” (thoughts, feelings, desires, motives).
• Why lasting change requires regeneration, not mere behaviour modification.
• The “seven As” of biblical confession, and a cautionary story about confession sought for emotional relief rather than repentance.
• Six common excuses for not ending a third-party relationship, and why they signal a lack of real intent to reconcile.
• Louis Berkhof’s three components of true repentance: knowledge, emotion (godly sorrow vs. sorrow over consequences), and deliberate turning.
• Extended Q&A: safety planning when ending dangerous third-party relationships; navigating children born from an affair; and counselling a spouse who is convinced of infidelity without a confession.

In this closing session, Conrad Mbewe preaches on the husband’s role from Ephesians 5:25–33, opening with an extended and illuminating cultural detour on what “household” meant in the biblical world—far wider than the Western nuclear family, encompassing extended relatives, servants and long-term visitors, much as it still does in many African households today. Conrad argues this matters because Paul places the husband–wife relationship at the very top of the household, meaning that everyone within a home—children, employees, guests—is watching how a husband loves his wife, and drawing conclusions about the gospel from what they see.

He then unpacks two statements Paul makes about husbandly love: that husbands are to love as Christ loved the church (sacrificially, purposefully, and with a glorious goal in view), and that husbands are to love their wives as their own bodies, nourishing and cherishing them just as no one hates or neglects their own flesh. Conrad closes with a searching challenge—that many households reveal their true priorities are property, business, or even children, while the wife is treated as “just another business”—and calls husbands who recognise themselves in that description to the cross for cleansing.

In this message:

• A cultural note on biblical “households” as extended, multi-generational, and inclusive of servants—and how that still resonates in many African contexts today.
• Why placing husband and wife at the head of household relationships matters for how everyone in the home understands marriage.
• The Puritans’ role in restoring a high, biblical view of marriage after a pre-Reformation view that saw marriage as spiritually inferior to celibacy.
• Three dimensions of Christlike love: sacrificial (Christ giving himself up), purposeful (sanctifying and cleansing the church through the Word), and goal-oriented (presenting the church in splendour).
• The “marriage triangle” illustration: as husband and wife each draw closer to God, they draw closer to each other.
• Loving your wife “as your own body,” rooted in Genesis 2’s “bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh.”
• A pointed challenge: Do the people around your household—children, employees, guests—see your wife treated as the household’s greatest treasure, or as an afterthought behind money, property, and business?