It is a great privilege for Heritage Baptist to be the newest member of Sola 5. We are a church plant in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg, an area that we believe is of critical importance if we want to see the gospel reach and change the movers and shakers of today and the leaders of tomorrow. We are a church plant of three churches: Brackenhurst Baptist Church, Antioch Bible Church and Constantia Park Baptist Church. In February 2014 we will celebrate our second anniversary as a constituted church.
Our vision is to reach the cultural melting pot that is Johannesburg through Christ-centred preaching and holistic ministry. We are seeking to build a fellowship that faithfully represents the demographics of Johannesburg in every way, culturally, socio-economically and multi-generationally. One of our focuses is upon the two massive universities on our doorstep: The University of Johannesburg and the University of the Witwatersrand. To this end we run Christianity Explored courses and give topical Bible studies which the Lord has used to save students and add to our number.
A somewhat unique but incredibly blessed aspect of Heritage Baptist is the fact that there are two pastors, myself (Michael Rogers) and Tyrell Haag. This has been a tremendous boon, especially during seasons of trial and attack. It has also enabled us to do more for God’s kingdom. We take Matthew 28:18–20 seriously hence we spend much of our time meeting with those in our flock and discipling them. (We use the BBC discipleship course with some adjustments.)
By God’s grace our greatest physical need at the moment is for a larger venue in which to meet on the Lord’s Day. Please pray much for this as well as for the conversion of many. We do rejoice in the work that the Lord is doing. We recently baptised three young ladies and we are formally discipling thirteen people with another six waiting, but we long to see the glory of the Lord cover Johannesburg as the waters cover the sea.
One of the highlights is that we are starting to see people buy into the vision of Heritage Baptist. Individuals and families are opening up their homes and living sacrificially. Evangelistic and social outreaches are happening organically. All of which bodes well for the new year in which we look forward to see how the Lord is going to make his name great!
