“MOTHER,” YOU ARE GROWING OLD!

I HAVE A DREAM!

The Kimberley Church is considered to be the “mother church” of all the work in South Africa. It was with the diamond mine compounds at Kimberley that the first evangelists started preaching and teaching. As the miners went to Kimberley on contracts for a certain period of time, they came from all over southern Africa, then the men who had become Christians scattered again back to their homes carrying the good news of Jesus back to their families. By the time we arrived in Kimberley the original building there was already very old. It has since been replaced, but very much the same size as it was originally. It is still probably the largest church building the mission has in the country.

It has long been the custom to conduct a general conference assembly by invitaton meeting some where in South Africa for preaching, teaching, fellowship and a certain amount of planning and business. As time passed, the church has grown much larger. When I was printing the church supplies, there was pretty much a standing order for ten thousand baptismal certificates and an equal number of other printed documents. That figure may have changed more recently, but naturally as the church grew, so also did the conference grow. Most ministries followed a circuit system with a central building and the minister’s home was located centrally, with numerous “house churches,” and perhaps some having small buildings, dotting an area spanning, sometimes, many miles around. Towns are often vary far apart.

More recently Easter gatherings, a minister’s and family assemblies, and youth camps have all been added. The result is that often the local church is not adequate to provide space for these meetings let alone house and feed the visitors for several days.

Some years ago one of our missionary brothers bought a large tent and since then, with variations, the committee uses the minister’s home for their meetings, the women use either the tent or the churchhouse, the men use the other, and the back room of the church is used to store the food supplies. The food is prepared in iron pots over an open fire, either in the open or under a tarpolion fr shade. Joint preaching services will be conducted in the largest space available or a nearby church may hire their larger building out for that purpose. The actual serving of meals is nearly always done in the church house itself. As you can see this is a difficult arrangement.



A few years ago, they learned of a camp site for Christians near Barkley West. The story is that a farmer there discovered a diamond pipe on his property and became very wealthy. As he was a Christian, he decided to build a Christian campsite beside the mine and Deo Gloria Camp was established. He felt he needed to share his wealth with others. There are are now two camp sites. These were built during apartheid years so he built one for Europeans (whites), and the other for people of darker color. I have only been to Deo-Gloria, but it is a wonderful facility. It has lawns beside the now closed mine, now a very deep lake, with a large central hall, a modern kitchen with a walk-in cold-room, electric lights, class rooms, instructor’s cabins, dormitories for both men and women as well as showers and toilets for each. There is also a pool, though it has not been available at any time I have been there. Both the longer sides of the building have covered porches and wide sliding glass doors to allow cross-ventilation. Unfortunately it is not large enough for our conference gatherings, but it does suggest a possible solution, were there more sleeping quarters available.

As it can easily be a two day drive for the most distant people to reach a major meeting, and since there is also an Aids problem in Africa with thousands of orphan and abandoned children, and there are many widows and elderly pensioned ministers, there really needs to be something like Deo-Gloria for them. It would need to be located central to the nation, with permanent housing for the widows, orphans, and staff, and visitors, and it needs to be accessable by bus and train, preferrably. The same facility could be used as as a rest and recovery home, where missionaries could build their own cottages if they chose to go there regulaly. Everyone could be fed from the kitchen in the dining space, worship services could use the chapel, and it would be available for short-term missionaries to stay and participate in the Lord’s work in Africa. All these needs could use the one property and care for it. Local churches could still have their own area meetings being less demanding of space.