Missions Report for Support Offices Issued

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Mike Odell

2005 has been a very busy year for our missions department.  We have a number of missions on the go which have kept everybody extremely busy.  April saw the mission to Franschhoek which was a relatively small but diverse community.  The mission endeavoured to reach both the extremely wealthy and the extremely poor.  One encouraging outcome of the mission has been an ongoing relationship with the disadvantaged communities. Mbulelo Hina has been running community development workshops post-mission in an effort to help these communities to gain new skills and also help with uplifting their communities.

This was followed by a mission to a single church celebrating it’s centenary in Milnerton, Cape Town.  This mission also targeted all sectors of the community in that particular Anglican parish..

The next mission on the calendar is the University of the Western Cape and the Cape Peninsular University of Technology.  This is a wonderful opportunity to do a mission.  Between the two universities there are in the region of some 23,000 students.  Of course, University Campuses are difficult institutions to evangelise, but Greg, Songe and Tineyi have been doing a great job with the preparations for that mission. 

Top Level Encounter Mission to Leadership in Randburg/Sandton and the Northern Suburbs of Johannesburg has had to be postponed.  Johannesburg is a huge, diverse city and the business community is extremely busy.  We have had a number of visits to Johannesburg and the steering committee have really been struggling with getting a solid core together that can work on this mission.  While there has been a lot of enthusiasm for it, very few people have come forward to actually do some work.  In view of the slow progress, it was felt that more time was needed to really do a good job in setting up this mission, and so they have decided to postpone it to early 2006, probably March.  There was a thought to try and do the mission in November, but the committee after much discussion felt that November was not a good month in Johannesburg and so the decision was taken to hold the mission in early 2006.  This is not all bad news, as at last things are really beginning to come together and a number of other organisations and Christian networks within the Johannesburg area are wanting to come on board.  This area of Johannesburg is the financial hub of South Africa and even Africa, and as such, there are strongholds that we are having to deal with.  Your prayers for this initiative would be appreciated.

Soweto: the proposed Pan African mission to Soweto has been coming along nicely.  Songe, Chris and I have done a number of visits to Soweto meeting with Church Leaders and pastors and other key leaders in the community.  In the African context it is absolutely vital to do the relationship building pre the missions set up phase if you want all stakeholders to participate in the mission.  The interest and level of commitment from the pastors has been very encouraging and I think this is going to be a really good mission that will have a lasting impact on Soweto.

Antananarivo Madagascar.  This mission is a Pan African mission scheduled for the beginning of October and the Pan African team which are largely based here in South Africa have been hard at work on it.  We anticipate some of the AE SA evangelists being part of the missions team for this mission. 

Our thanks to the Support Offices who have been raising funds for National and Pan African missions.  We do appreciate your efforts and hard work and sacrifice.