For the past ten months, Michele, a number of East Mountain staff and residents, and I have been working with Trinity Church-MP. In case you missed our earlier letter update, Trinity Church is a very small church in a township that is known for having a high number of gangs, gang violence, and drug use – mostly tik ((crystal) meth). For the most part, we have not encountered this violence first-hand, but continue to work with the residents who live with these factors everyday. A little over ten months ago, as our work with East Mountain began to take shape, Michele and I were assigned to work with Trinity Ch. Our assignment started with a simple question: how can we help support and partner with your church? Their answer was equally as simple, yet incredibly daunting for us: evangelism. When we entered the picture with Trinity, there was almost no evangelism occurring and the church seemed to be stagnating or thinning out. Michele and I were tasked with coordinating and initiating new evangelism efforts under the lead pastor in order to equip the church with spreading the Gospel through the neighborhood.

What has now occurred over the past ten months takes on three different basic looks. Each of these evangelism outreach opportunities happens at various times through the year.

Coffee With God
Oftentimes we offer free coffee and ask those waiting in line if we could spend some time reading a small Bible study with them. During our conversations, we also ask the pre-caffeinated if we could pray with them or visit their homes during an upcoming week to continue to study the Bible and pray together. I would never have guessed this would have been as well received as it has been. While there is no requirement to read the Bible study in order to get the free coffee, we found that most people willingly accepted and engaged with us in some follow-up questions.

As a side note, this is where trusting in the local cultural knowledge has come in handy. When we were first discussing ideas for evangelism opportunities, this was one of the ideas that was mentioned by several South African staff members of the church. My initial thought was that this was doomed to fail. Instead of speaking out of that instinct, though, Michele and I listened and trusted that they knew what would work best in their neighborhood and culture. We agreed to help with anything they needed. To our surprise, these evenings of Coffee With God have been extremely effective in sharing the Gospel and seeing lives touched in the neighborhood.

Street Evangelism
When it got too hot for coffee, we decided to just hit the streets and talk to anyone we encountered. This has been the most successful in reaching a wider part of the surrounding neighborhood. It has also worked incredibly well with reaching out to the youth and watching two of East Mountain’s resident interns, Nimo and Denver, shine in their interacting with the teenagers in the community.

Home Visits
We were doing a few home visits when we started the Coffee With God evangelism, but it was more of a rarity than a common occurrence. One of the church members recommended that we try doing more home visits, explaining that the coloured* culture appreciates home visits and it would be well received. We took his advice and began incorporating more home visits into our outreach events schedule. I think this is where we have seen the most impact with bringing people into the church. I have seen something powerful in taking the time to visit people in their homes to talk, read the Bible and pray. A simple act that has been culturally relevant and significant.

Please Pray With Us
Please pray with Michele and me that we and the rest of East Mountain continue to walk in humility, openly and willingly listening to those who know their culture and home the best. Please pray that we continue to support these efforts with the end goal of helping these activities to become self-sustaining, where equipped members of the church lead this without our presence and involvement. Please pray for the people in the neighborhoods around Trinity and that God will call them to respond to the message of the Good News and will be a part of this small church community, growing in their faith.

*The term “coloured” is an official designation for one of the people groups in South Africa. It is also the people group Michele and I mostly work with as part of our assignment with East Mountain.