Thoughts from HartbeesportAnton van Zyl : South Africa [04.08]
Anton got in touch with us when planning a visit to the UK. Intrigued by his mention of starting an emerging church we asked if he'd like to share some of the story with us - these are his thoughts:
We are busy forming a new faith community. We are not just planting a new church.
By new faith community, I mean we must try to question every tradition that is part of our christian doings. Is the things we do realy Christian things or are they church stuff? Are we inspired by the doings of Christ, or are we motivated by the good things of our church? At the Hartbeespoort Kuierkerk (no translation) we ask God to give us knew teachings that are true to the teachings of Jesus Christ. We want to embrace the diversity that God ceated. We believe in the relevance of Christianity to todays world and problems.
We are very community orientated and want to make a difference in our area: we are cleaning up some garbage in our streets because of the municipalities lack there off. We also are very involved in helping our police services, because crime is also a community problem. Our core focus is to serve, teach and help outsiders. We mainly work with the un-churched. We want to work with the people that are not attending church services.
We do our gatherings at any venue which is accesible. We believe that people should be able to partake at any time in our talks or gatherings. Our main method of doing church is the community of the holy (koinonia). This action leads to knowing each other and out of the knowing can follow acceptance and sharing. This can make us subservient to the kongdom of God. We ponder around the metaphor of the body of Christ: if we Christians are saving the world, people will see that Christ is the saviour. If we are not busy saving the world today ... what must the world think?
We want to partake is the mission of God: for He so loved the world ...
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