Greetings in the mighty name of our Lord and Saviour.
December was a month of rest and taking a break from a lot of ministry work. A lot of ministry activities at church were closed for the holidays which gave my wife and I enough time to travel and be with our families. Most of the church members were also away on holiday, so Sunday attendance dropped to about ten people. It is in times like these that you appreciate afresh the gift that the church family is—especially when you have to work on the sound and preach.
Here is what is on my heart as we look forward to ministry this year.
The Great Need for Bible Preaching Churches in Rustenburg
Rustenburg is a town with a population of about 500,000 people. The surprising thing about this place is that there are no other Bible-preaching churches that we know of. Lately, Central Baptist Church Rustenburg has been receiving quite a few young people from the nearby townships and villages. What we hear from these young people is that there are no Bible-preaching churches that they know of where they are.
In 2018, we had Lorato visiting our church after he visited our website. Lorato is a math and science teacher in Northam, a small mining town about 80km away from Rustenburg. He started to attend our church regularly travelling from Northam to Rustenburg every Sunday without fail. Amazingly, he didn’t have a car of his own and taking a taxi in the morning would mean waiting several hours before it left Northam coming to Rustenburg—so he hiked every Sunday to and fro. After a couple of months of regularly attending our church, I sat down with him and advised him to find a teaching job in Rustenburg so that he can be closer to the church. He started the process of looking for a teaching position and by the grace of the Lord he found it and will be teaching at the new school when the school reopens.
Inasmuch as I am excited about such stories, I am also grieved that Rustenburg has no Bible-preaching churches we know of. There is an endless number of African Traditional Religions, word of faith, and Charismatic churches being planted everywhere. To make matters worse, we have found it very hard to reach out to colleges and schools near us. I suspect that they have been disappointed by the trickery of these churches that they see every pastor as a trickster.
With these challenges before us we are prayerfully looking to God to be able to reach out to nearby schools and colleges, and to come alongside pastors we have built relationships with to train leaders and to provide good resources as far as we can.
Pray for Rustenburg
- Pray for God to open doors for church planters to consider Rustenburg as a place to plant Bible-preaching churches.
- Pray that God will open a door for us to reach out to nearby schools and colleges.
- Pray that our relationships some of the pastors in the North West Province will be fruitful and will result in healthy Bible-centred churches.