Ministry Update: Reformed Community Church (Belville South, South Africa) (March 2025)

Beloved, the cosmos, the universe, and every living thing owes its origin and its continued existence to the one we call Jesus Christ, our Lord. In him all things hold together and it is he who upholds the universe by the word of his power.

We exist and continue to exist, moment by moment, day by day for him!

Yes, he has endowed every one of us with certain gifts and limitations; privileges and challenges; opportunities and disappointments; strengths and weaknesses so that in everything he might be preeminent.

Beloved, I’m convinced that the more we behold him, the less it will become about us. The more we behold him, the more we will trust his sovereign hand moving us providentially where he wants us to be.

And where he wants you to be is not where you think will be the best use of your gifts and abilities. No! It’s where his glory will outshine any confidence you had in yourself! That’s what we read in John 17:24: “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory.”

Why? So that in everything he might be preeminent!

The apostle Paul says, “But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us” (2 Corinthians 4:7).

Somebody once said it so beautifully: “What God wants in our lives is more of his Son.” That is so true, but is it true of us? Is what we chase after, strive for, pursue, crave and desire? More of Christ?

Beloved, we need to behold him! We need to take a hard look at Christ until all we see is him and no longer us.

You need to behold the one who holds your existence—your today, and your tomorrow—the one who determines the outcome of every decision, the one who holds and determines your destiny. You must behold him! The desire of the Son is that you and I may see his glory! “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory” (John 17:24).

There cannot be a greater desire than this coming from the heart of our Lord for us. This is his best for us!

There cannot be a greater purpose for humanity than this. It’s in beholding his glory that we become like him—and what God wants in our lives is more of his Son!

Beloved, you cannot have a greater desire than this! This is where contentment lives, this is the address of joy and satisfaction. This pleases the Father, and that should be your ambition (2 Corinthians 5:9).

Time goes by so quickly! This is one of those clichés that will never grow old.

Last month, Tyran turned 23. Nathan turned 18 on 7 March. Next month Devin turns 25 and Chané will be 34 in July. Noah will be 7 in May. So, yes, time goes by so quickly!

Noah started Grade 1 and considers himself to be a big boy now. He’s almost ready to buy us a new house. He recently told his mother that he wants to buy us a house with twenty bedrooms so that there will be enough space for all the people who visit and who sleep over at our place. (This kind of reminds me of the van den Heuvels—you know who you are). Noah can be quite the entertainer and he loves to meet new people.

Chané continues to grow in the Lord and has genuine love for the word of God. It has been a tremendous blessing and encouragement to my soul to see her sit with her Bible in the mornings and evenings. May the Lord save the rest of our kids, soon.

As most of you would know, February is our month of corporate evangelism. It is the one month in the year where our whole church goes out in our community to share the good news of King Jesus’ rule and reign and his offer of salvation to all who would surrender and bow the knee to him as Lord.

This year marks fourteen years of faithful corporate evangelism as a church to our community. The Lord has been gracious in giving us boldness to proclaim Christ clearly and to call everyone to repentance and faith in Jesus.

We had a wonderful time sharing Jesus. It’s just such a blessing to see the church eager to engage our community with the gospel. I am so grateful to Greg Gilbert for his book What is the Gospel? It has been such a tremendous blessing to our church. We use it to train our members on how to share the gospel. “God, Man, Christ, Response” has become our mantra, and has proven to be a Holy Spirit inspired tool in the hands of our members.

There are so many stories I can tell of first hand encounters, not to mention those from our members. I’ll share one encounter that made an impression on me.

I shared the Gospel with a fifty-year-old man called Sakkie. He told us he tried following the Lord, went to church and did the whole Christian thing, but then there was a guy that he wanted to kill so badly that he decided to leave all these Christian things in order to get that guy. I’ve heard people leave the Lord because they did not want to give up their life of fornication and drugs, but never because they wanted to kill someone! Please pray for Sakkie. He seems to have really heard the gospel for the first time.

It was exciting to have Noah with us as we shared the gospel with people from our community. He was really affected by the need of different people, but especially by Cedric. Cedric is a homeless guy. He’s very friendly and always has a smile, but he does not know Jesus.

We shared the gospel with him but by then Noah had already ran out of tracts and was very upset that he could not give Cedric “the paper with Jesus’ words on it.” Thanks be to God that we saw Cedric again the next day and Noah ran to give him a “paper with Jesus’ words on it.” That evening, as I prayed with him, Noah’s prayer was: “Thank you, Lord, that we could give people the paper that Daddy gave us to give about Jesus. Please keep them Lord and let them call on your name. In Jesus’ name, amen.”

May the Lord save my little boy at a young age and send him out with the gospel where Christ is not known!

For the past thirteen years of going out as a church during our Month of Corporate evangelism, the community has always enjoyed some peace from the blatant violence that our community is known for. This year marked the first year when violence broke out while we were busy evangelising in the streets.

Our second week of street evangelism was done in what is known in our community as Hell’s Kitchen. We always make sure that we are visible with the gospel in this place. This is the most notorious area in our community.

While our church members were sharing the gospel with anyone who would listen, one kid called out to my wife and some of the other members of our church to not come close to the corner of the street because they were shooting there. My wife asked the child why he was on the street corner amidst the gunfire. He told them because they know him, but they do not know them and will not be careful when shooting in their direction.

This is the state of our community. Many “innocent” bystanders have been wounded, and some have died for simply being in the way of a stray bullet. That same week, the first day of the outreach, a woman was stabbed in her head while having her baby in her arms. She ran into a house and left the baby there and came back out to fight further with her boyfriend. The violence does not stop until the Lord saves them. Pray that the Lord will save many through our evangelistic efforts. We proclaim him!

On Tuesday, 11 March, Theo and I buried Abbie, a man who was a ruthless killer known for his disregard for life. He was well known and respected even amongst rival gangs as a man of blood. He had many enemies and had escaped many assassination attempts on his life, but God showed him mercy.

The many years of drug addiction finally caught up with him and his vital organs were busy failing. He was a very sick man.

The day when his family thought he was dying, one of the members of our church called brother Theo to come pray for him. Theo was busy conducting a funeral in the same street, but because the undertakers brought the wrong body to the family’s house, he had time to go to Abbie to share the gospel with him and to pray for him.

He challenged Abbie with the gospel and told him to call on the Lord to save him. The ambulance finally came and rushed him to the hospital. I was in the street at the time while people were complaining about the undertaker who brought the wrong body for viewing. It was during this time that Theo told me that he did not think Abbie would make it.

The next day, Abbie was home sitting up straight and eating. Theo again challenged him with the gospel and prayed with him. The following week, Abbie was a new man. He called all his family and friends together—gang members and drug addicts—and told them that Jesus had saved him and that he was ready to go to him. He challenged them to turn from this wicked world and to ask God to save them.

When I went to see him, he was up, although still weak. He told me that he was so sorry that he wasted forty years of his life doing wicked things and living for the devil. I told him that if he took that forty years of a wasted and wicked life and put it on a scale, and on the other side of the scale he put the life that Jesus had redeemed with his own blood, it would outweigh that forty years of wickedness because Jesus took it all on himself and paid the penalty for it. This was such an encouraging time.

The next Sunday, he was in church with his son. This would be the first and last time we would see him in church. After this, he became weak and bedridden again. God saved this man from a wicked, violent life like he did so many of us. He was snatched from the fire just in the nick of time. Hallelujah!

We had the privilege to conduct the funeral and to preach the gospel clearly to a church filled with gang members, drug addicts and dealers, and lost family and friends. What a privilege God has created through the death of Abbie. “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints” (Psalm 116:15). Please pray for his family that his testimony might lead many to repentance.

Mary (not her real name) is a homeless drug addict whom Charlene has befriended and has been sharing the gospel with for several years. When on drugs, she seems possessed and out of her mind. She usually comes to us to take a shower and a meal, and my wife takes the opportunity to share Christ with her. My wife really cares about this lady, even though she has stolen so much from us to support her drug habit. She has huge respect for my wife but has always rejected her invitation to go with us to church.

Two weeks ago, she accepted the invitation and was actually in church with us. After church, she came home with us for lunch and stayed the entire day at our house to listen to a bunch of Christians discuss the sermon. She even gave some feedback on the sermon. This was such a huge blessing and a great injection of hope for the salvation of her soul. Please be praying for her.

We have been privileged to conduct a pastors’ conference in Newcastle (South Africa) for the past four years. It has been our joy to see the impact that the exposition of God’s word had on these pastors of whom the majority are from Zionist and Pentecostal churches. We have a testimony of a Zionist pastor who got saved the second time he attended the conference, and who testified at our previous conference that he stepped down from the pastorate when he discovered that he did not meet the biblical qualifications of an elder. We had women pastors confess that they have been convicted that they should not hold to the office of an elder and are seeking for wisdom, since the church has no men who can or who want to lead. Every year, the number of pastors attending is growing. We have been asked to have the same conference in the heart of the Zionist movement.

We will have our first conference in December this year. Please pray that many will come to the truth and break free from ancestral worship.

The Omelos were one of our first answers to prayer when we started praying that God would send us strong Reformed believers to join our little church plant of around eight people. By 2014, the church plant had died with everyone leaving the church except for one lady, who is still with us today. We decided to move to a new venue and to start over. Our prayer was that the Lord would send us Reformed believers who would help us grow an active Reformed community of believers in a place where the gospel has been corrupted. The Omelos were the first family the Lord sent in. They came in with strong Reformed convictions and were looking for a church where they would be useful—and how useful they were! The were part of the first official membership of the church in March 2017 when we all covenanted to become members of this local church and were part of the twelve members who chose its elders and deacons. Cebo Omelo was one of the first deacons of our church and he served the church well during his time.

The Omelos were involved in almost every ministry activity and were faithful when it came to Sunday services, Bible study, prayer meetings, Grace Groups, evangelism, etc. They loved this church and were committed to serving its members. They could be stubborn and strong-willed at times, but always open to correction and reproof. They stand as a good example of how covenanted church membership looks.

Our church will miss them. I will miss them!

By God’s providence, Cebo got a huge work opportunity in Turkey. The move will also benefit his wife’s business. This will have a huge impact on their family when it comes to the kids. Thankfully, we were able to connect them with a Reformed church there connected to the 9Marks Network. Please keep them in your prayers as they navigate the challenges and opportunities that comes with such a huge change.

We are always excited to introduce new members to our church family. It always comes as almost a surprise to the church when we bring new members to our church members’ meeting to be voted in, since they have been with us for more than a year already, and have been part of the life of the church. We are grateful that we can covenant with this brother and sister and receive them into our church family.

We make it a duty during our Sunday service to call those who had birthdays to the front so we can thank the Lord and pray for them.

I’ve heard people say that they don’t enjoy celebrating their birthdays because it’s not as important as their new birth. But without a birthday there cannot be a rebirth! You need to be born first, before you can be born again. I think that’s just logic.

There are several reasons we believe that celebrating a birthday is important.

That’s why we wish you a happy birthday!

There are just so many reasons I can add for why we should celebrate birthdays, but I think seven is a good number to stop at.

We’ve adopted Brackenhurst Baptist Church’s rendition of a birthday song: “Happy birthday to you. Only one will not do. Take Christ as your Saviour, and then you’ll have two.”

Here are some ways in which you can pray for us as a church.

Thanks for taking the time to prayerfully read through this newsletter.

We continue to be amazed at the Lord’s provision of us through your prayers and support.

Regards,

Mario Maneville