Pretoria, Sunday August 2nd, 2009
It is 10:45pm on Sunday and I am dog-tired as I write this account. My laptop containing my presentations has crashed and will be out of commission for the remainder of the trip. One of our teammates, Dr. Richard Tompkins has become ill, and I have been feeling ill. Despite these setbacks, I am thrilled at the events that unfolded today.
Tembisa is an all-black neighborhood in the suburbs, consisting of hundreds of tin-shack houses and some cinder-block structures, and is home to hundreds of South Africans and also to refugees from Zimbabwe. In short, it is a slum where some of the poorest of the poor live. The area is considered dangerous for white people and foreigners. By “dangerous” I mean that if you are white and get lost in Tembisa, you could get murdered due to the simmering racial tensions that are left-over from the apartheid days. Just last year in Tembisa, several Zimbabwean refugees were murdered by xenophobic South African black mobs, a case of Africans killing Africans. So you don’t go to Tembisa unless you really know what you are doing.
At the invitation of a Church of God in Christ (COGIC) congregation in Tembisa, T.E.A.M. sent 4 members, myself included to minister at the church today. One of us spoke to the youth while I and another member did a Question/Answer session. Here is a sampling of some of the questions we fielded:
- Who was Cain’s wife ?
- Do Christians have to keep the Old Testament Commandments ?
- What is the relationship between the accounts of Gen 1:27 and Gen 2:6 ?
- How do we know the New Testament is Reliable ?
- Moses forbade contact with the dead. How is it that Saul was able to contact Samuel after Samuel’s death ?
- Isn’t the idea of the Trinity a contradiction ?
- Where can I learn about apologetics?
Needless to say, an hour was inadequate to answer these completely, and service started at 10:30am. The “Church building” was a rectangular tent structure on a concrete floor, and the temperature was in the 40s. Everyone was dressed for winter, with hats and overcoats throughout the service. The Africans worshipped in a vigorous uninhibited fashion, with passion and loudness and John Njoroge of RZIM preached on being Agents of Blessing, from Genesis 17. After the sermon, T.E.A.M. members served communion to the congregation.
After church was over, we were treated to some tea and cakes, and were overwhelmed by the love and hospitality of these precious saints of God whose joy in the Lord abounded despite the abject poverty. It became clear to us that the Lord was beginning a relationship with this church for His purposes. We ended staying there until past 3pm, answering questions from a variety of people in 1-on-1 private sessions. One of the men who spoke with me peppered me with questions on the historical reliability of the New Testament, while another TEAM member spent quite sometime talking about the Trinity and about how to answer Moslems.
It was glorious to see the hunger for truth in the hearts of the Tembisa Christians – they were passionate not just about their worship of God, but also about seeking and knowing the truth. They may have learned answers to some questions from us, but I suspect that when we left after 6 hours with them, we had learned much more from them than they had learned from us.
