CASE STUDY: UBUNYE CHURCH AND COMMUNITY MINISTRIES

Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

by Dan and Kathleen Sheffield

This article was originally published in Serving With the Urban Poor, edited by T. Yamamori, B. Myers, and K. Luscombe. Monrovia, CA: MARC Publications, 1998.

INTRODUCTION

Zanele (not her real name) came to The Haven following a phone call from Lifeline. Lifeline is a 24-hour crisis phone line in Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Zanele, a school teacher, had been beaten by her husband of two years (a teacher as well), and was in need of emergency accommodation for herself and her one-year-old son. The Haven is a crisis shelter for victims of domestic violence, operated under the auspices of Ubunye Free Methodist Church. Zanele was welcomed into the shelter by Letty Mayephu, the house mother; a member and Sunday School teacher at Ubunye Church. Haven staff aided Zanele in obtaining counselling with a professional social worker at another NGO in the city; she was assisted with obtaining an interdict against her husband from the magistrate's court; a police escort was arranged to pick up belongings from her home; a phone call was made to a senior police superintendent to have the investigating officer on the assault case changed -- he was a personal friend of the abusing husband!

During this period Zanele was invited to accompany the house mother and her family to worship services at Ubunye Church. Letty Mayephu and her husband Joel, a ministerial student, are real evangelists at heart with a deep compassion for the people they are working with. Zanele was from a Presbyterian background, but felt comfortable worshipping at Ubunye Church, a multicultural congregation, because denominationalism was not overly emphasized at Ubunye.

After six weeks in the shelter, Zanele had come to a number of conclusions about her future direction. She had begun divorce proceedings against her husband, and she was looking for alternative accommodation. Through her connection with Ubunye Church she became aware of the low-income social housing complex that is operating as Ubunye Cooperative Housing. She eventually applied for a room in this complex of over 50 rooms of varying sizes. Zanele perceived it as a safe place for a woman and child in the urban context, and it was affordable for her as a single parent. It also meant staying in fellowship with the people who had ministered to her through The Haven and Ubunye Church.

DEVELOPMENT OF MINISTRY

Community Description

The Free Methodist Church started ministry in Pietermaritzburg in 1991. This city of over 500 000, located 45 minutes by car inland from Durban, was seen as a strategic starting point for a new development in this denomination's program in South Africa--urban, multi-cultural congregations. A small nucleus was formed and began meeting in a particular section of the city centre.

This geographical neighbourhood has continued to be the focus of attention, although people from all over the city now attend church services. Until 1992 this area was regarded as a white enclave in racially divided South Africa. However, with the discarding of the Group Areas Act, the neighbourhood has almost completely become a multicultural community with now only 4-5 years experience of relating together.

The neighbourhood is a residential area with tree-lined streets and many single-story, turn-of-the-century homes. There are a few low-rise apartment buildings. The area is bounded by small retail stores on the south side, light industry and auto repair shops on the north, offices on the east, and park land on the west. Two traffic corridors cross the area; there are two taxi/microbus hubs within the area. Informal drinking establishments (shebeens) are dotted throughout. The neighbourhood is less than four-tenths of a square mile in size with over 6,000 residents.

The community is primarily made up of singles and single-parent families, with some whole family units as well. The average age is probably under 35. There is no primary school in the area, although there are several secondary-level tutoring schools and adult-education centers. Most households function at a subsistence level, economically; most adults have limited educational background. While ethnically diverse – 40 percent Zulu-speaking blacks, 10 percent “coloured” or mixed race people, 15 percent Indian, 5 percent Africans from other areas/countries and 30 percent low-income whites – most share common aspirations of seeking employment and trying to better their circumstances. Almost all the blacks have come from rural areas into the city centre, although some have just moved in from the peri-urban townships on the periphery of the city proper.

Identifying Needs

In 1994, Dan and Kathleen Sheffield joined Ubunye Church to develop this work further. At the time, ministry goals essentially involved growing a multicultural congregation to a size that could support a full-time pastor and provide for a worship centre that could seat 150-200 people. As we began walking the streets of the community, however, we realized very quickly that other churches in the area were not ministering to the new residents. Although there are at least 10-15 churches within a ten-minute walk, they are still serving "white" congregations who now drive in from the suburbs. Thus there was a necessity for a congregation to be deeply rooted in the affairs of the community.

Together with the other leadership of the congregation (three whites and four blacks – all community residents), we began analyzing and discussing the issues in the community that were of significant concern to the majority of residents. Issues were brought forward to the larger congregations for discussion and interaction. Four issues kept rising to the surface: housing, employment, women's safety, and civil cooperation.

During this period of analysis and reflection, the congregation was growing through a consistent, multicultural worship service that appealed to a broad spectrum of the community. Most attenders were competent in English, although at least seven languages are represented in the congregation. Being multicultural, the service also appealed to residents from other African countries.

In April of 1995, the leadership initiated a pilot housing project. A house beside the building where the congregation meets had been a matter of prayer for several months. About 20-25 people resided in this conventional 3-bedroom, European style house; renting individual rooms. An informal drinking establishment was located in the backyard. Electricity had been shut off for several months; water was restricted to a trickle. Finally city officials ordered the place to be shut down; all residents were evicted. We went to the owner, a Muslim investor, to inquire about managing the place for him. We spent one month cleaning the house and property, painting and repairing. The first residents were a single mother with three boys who had been attending our church for quite a while. Other residents were admitted through referrals. Our goals were to keep the rents affordable rather than exploitive, the house hygienic, and that no violence would be tolerated.

Another ministry stream being pursued was the issue of women's rights and safety; the new frontier for the humanizing of South African society. Rape and domestic violence are endemic in the country. Only now are adequate laws being put in place to protect women, but police and court systems still are inadequately trained to understand the issues at stake. One congregation member is a family and marriage counselor with a non-government organization that is reaching out to combat some of these basic issues. Kathleen became involved with this group in the development of a support group program for victims of domestic violence. Dan is now a board member for this NGO. Ubunye Church’s work with this group made the congregation increasingly aware of the need for emergency accommodation for domestic violence victims and their children. In this city of 500 000, there was not one women's shelter.

As the congregation grew, we needed a larger space for worship. We also sensed a need for further involvement in the provision of housing. And the need for a women's shelter was weighing on us. We began looking for an existing facility that would allow us to combine all of those concerns. In 1996, following the establishment of a trust, we purchased a building that had been a residential hotel, right in the heart of the community we were ministering in. We began renting out the sixty rooms in the complex, we renovated and opened the women's shelter in early 1997, and we are making plans for the conversion of one section for a worship centre/pre-school facility.

Ministry Goals

The goals for this church and its ministry have been built primarily around the need to establish a credible witness for the gospel. The gospel has been disparaged because of the overwhelming "Christian" participation in maintaining the apartheid system. We want our growth to come from community-based people seeing a consistent witness to Christ, who is concerned about every aspect of their lives. This is a challenge in a city that is church-saturated and where evangelism is primarily slick advertising and flashy programs, and where faith and the rest of life are often disconnected.

Ubunye Cooperative Housing was established as a not-for-profit company, a separate body from the church. Its purpose is to aid in responding to the needs of urban dwellers and their families who are functioning at the subsistence level. At this point in history, those concerns that we are addressing are primarily around housing and women's safety. Those needs will probably change. For instance, another concern that we are becoming aware of is the need for affordable and safe childcare.

The themes found in Isaiah 58:6-12 serve as a guide. Identifying injustices, acts of oppression, and provision of basic human needs form a basis for actions that build a credible reputation in the community. Developing a sense of neighbourhood and basic civil co-operation is being tackled through establishing relationships in the community, networking with service providers, and providing centres of stability, such as the housing complex and women's shelter.

            Stated more succinctly, our goals are:

1. to develop a multicultural, worshipping congregation of earnest Christians and God-seekers.

2. to grow this congregation through Christian presence and ministry that is rooted in the community.

3. to develop and administer social ministries that correspond to the relevant needs of the community.

4. to aid in developing a sense of neighbourhood in our geographical home.

DESCRIPTION OF MINISTRY

Ubunye Free Methodist Church presently has attendance between 50-60 persons for Sunday morning worship. Our converted carpenter's workshop that serves as worship centre only holds 70 people. It is located in the backyard of the pastor's home, and therefore not highly visible from the street. About one third of our people are members of the Free Methodist Church, but all hold their membership in other local churches elsewhere in South Africa -- or other parts of the world. The rest of the congregation are consists of persons with some Christian background but who belong to other denominations. Many believe they should retain the membership they have in their home churches in the rural areas. However in the urban context they have not found the "white" congregations of their denomination to be an accepting environment.

People in the congregation come from varied backgrounds; bible college lecturers, nurses, teachers, social service professionals in NGOs, tertiary-level students (university, technical college, bible college), tradespeople, street hawkers, and domestic workers. About one third of the congregation are children and teens, and at least 80% of the congregation is within walking distance of the worship centre.

The primary "church" gathering is the Sunday morning worship service. At least one and a half hours long, this service is lead by a multi-cultural worship team. While most of the service is in English, as the unifying language, Zulu is also used in singing and in presenting the message (when deemed necessary). Once a month, communion is served and the service is followed by a communal meal and congregational social interaction. An age-level children's program is offered in the second half of the service up to age 12.

In Sunday worship services we attempt to engage with the realities of peoples’ experience as they live in the city. Time is given for sharing comments about the joys, struggles and concerns of peoples’ lives. Mutual prayer draws people into their priestly role in one another’s lives. Multi-generational interaction and participation make this an experience in worship rather than just a service. Sermons are developed that address concrete issues while providing solid, biblica teaching. Tea is served after the service, facilitating social interaction.

Weekday evenings are generally considered unsafe for people to be on the streets; it is dark by 7pm and street lighting is generally unacceptable. Many people work long, exhausting hours before coming home to cook and spend a few moments with their children. Therefore any prayer/study groups are limited to a few close neighbours meeting together, informally. Thus the primary focus of "church life" is the worship service, along with individual and corporate participation in the community, upon which the church leadership place a high premium.

We have attempted to focus our people, time and finances on a limited number of church activities, so that we do these well, rather than attempting to do many things poorly. Our corporate worship is seen as a symbol of Christ’s presence in the community, which has a redemptive function in and of itself. This Christian worship then becomes a spiritual protest against the forces of evil that overshadow the community.

Ubunye Cooperative Housing presently rents out over 65 rooms to low-income families, from two separate facilities in the community. The first project begun in 1995 is still operational, with very little turnover in residents. The second project, of a much larger nature, is the primary focus of our Coop Housing staff. Dan continues to serve as a volunteer Managing Director until financial and infrastructure stability is achieved. One full-time Maintenance Supervisor, a long-time participant in our church, lives in the complex and carries on most of the day to day running of the complex. There is one half-time cleaning person under his supervision.

This complex presently houses more than 200 persons. A resident's association has been democratically elected and meets regularly with Coop Housing staff. The primary purpose is for dissemination of information, raising issues of concern to all residents, and as a grievance structure. Our bias in terms of criteria for allocation of rooms is in favour of female-headed households. Women and children tend to be the most vulnerable group in the community. They often have the lowest-paying jobs, are exploited unfairly and are most susceptible to violence.

The Haven, our emergency shelter for women and children affected by domestic violence, has been operational for one year. We work with a broad network of social service providers, including NGOs, government departments and the police. Kathleen is the volunteer co-ordinator of services at the shelter. A church member serves as the full-time house manager and lives in a self-contained flat adjoining to the shelter. Over the past year, an average of eight women and children per month have occupied the shelter. This ministry is completely funded through grants and donations from various bodies. When the housing complex is financially secured, rental income from rooms will provide a subsistence budget for the women's shelter thus promoting in-house sustainability for this program.

RESULTS

After only 3-4 years of focused ministry it may be a little early for any significant results to be substantiated. We feel that we are still in the foundation laying stage. At the same time there have been indicators that keep us encouraged.

Ubunye Church is building a reputation in the local geographical community and in the wider context of the city. Within the section of the city we call "home," the church and the housing project are becoming known for trying something tangible. People are inquisitive, wondering how genuine we are. "Why are you staying here, when everyone else is leaving?" There is almost a kind of begrudging respect. There is also high demand for a room in our complex because of affordability and safety; word has gotten around.

In the wider context, local government, social service providers, police, and development NGOs are keeping tabs on where we are going. A local government official tasked with developing policy on social housing for the city, visits our complex because "you are the only ones doing anything!" A development NGO asks us to submit a case study of our project for inclusion in a national government policy paper on social housing.

Results can be seen in the steady growth of the congregation, which has seen a growth rate of 20 percent in the last two years. Community contacts are the primary means of drawing new people into our fellowship. The connection with the people living in the housing complex brought an almost automatic attendance boost as people came to investigate the owners of the building. Ministry in the women's shelter has not had as significant an impact because many women go back to their own communities after a stay in the shelter.

We can also see results in the lives of people touched by the church and its ministries. One young man, surviving in the underclass, trying to improve his education, was introduced to Christ by one of our congregation. At 26 he completed his high school education; two years later he has been accepted into university bridging courses. He now has a job that provides a living wage with which he supports family members back in the rural area. He has grown and matured in Christ, giving testimony to the changes in his life.

PROCESS OF COMING TO CHRIST

The process of coming to faith in Christ, in our understanding, can be related loosely to Engel's evangelism scale. There is, first of all, the need for a credible "messenger"  who is accepted by the target audience. We believe this "messenger" is both the individuals who make up our congregation, as well as the collective presence of our church's ministry in the community. Both our individual and corporate characters are relevant.

The next step is a kind of "flag-raising"; identifying ourselves as Christians in appropriate contexts. Once again this is true for both individual believers as well as our community ministries.

One day while in the room of one our housing complex residents collecting rent, Dan was asked by a visiting friend: "Have you got any rooms available now?" His answer of "no" precipitated a discussion about the atmosphere and sense of security in our building, about the church's concerns and goals in providing this place, and "are you the church that has that program for kids during the summer?" We covered two or three gospel communication steps in the process of introducing both the guest and the resident to the purposes behind the housing complex.

Following on credible presence and Christian identification, is the need for gospel communication. We do this both through personal conversations as well as through the public meetings of the church fellowship. After conversion there is the ongoing process of Christian growth and transformation that is aided by personal and group contexts for study and integration. We also identify those who are prepared for more focused discipling. Then we have come full circle as we consciously draw these ones into the process of providing credible witness through their involvement with the community ministries.

In our congregation we have persons at all stages on this continuum. Because we have a number of participants who are either students or lecturers at a local seminary, we have a high degree of Christian maturity often uncommon in young churches. Many of these, however, have a strong vertical faith maturity but are weak in their integration of faith and deeds. Our church then becomes a kind of modeling studio as students do their required field education through our ministries. Many of these students will go on to pastor Free Methodist churches in other centres throughout the country.

We also have seekers who have a lot of personal issues to get through before they will ever come to conversion. One area resident, a middle-aged, single woman, brought her dog with her into the service on her first Sunday in attendance. We managed until half-way through the service the dog began wandering around, frightening the children especially. When asked to remove the dog, she said he had a need to worship God too! When asked to remove the dog, its master stormed off. The next week, to our astonishment, she was back, minus the dog, and has been with us for over a year and a half. She may or may not have crossed the threshold of conversion, but she has come a long way through loving acceptance, discovery bible studies, and concerned prayer -- from across the spectrum of our congregation. There are other similar stories.

EVALUATION

Why congregational development first?

One question raised regarding this case study is the model we adopted by starting with a worshipping community that moved toward community ministries, rather than starting with a community organizing model that moved toward conversions and congregational development. Two factors influenced our approach: one is theological, and the other is practical. We have to be honest in stating that perhaps the practical reason carried more weight.

A denominationally initiated assignment, the task given to the original nucleus and then to the Sheffield was to plant a church in Pietermaritzburg. Inherent in that assignment was the commitment of resources and personnel for a limited time. If a viable congregation (that is, self-propagating and self-supporting) did not develop within a certain period (4 years), the denomination would withdraw personnel and resources. A congregation that could engage with the community needed to be established.

Theologically, there is the egg and chicken debate. Which comes first, a worshipping community or community organizing? Our group felt the need to develop a worshipping community that would support our involvement with the community and its concerns.

Why multicultural?

Ubunye Free Methodist Church chose to adopt a multicultural model, consciously rejecting a homogeneous approach, for several reasons. First, the South African context, in which legally sanctioned separation of peoples has profoundly affected the nature of the church in this country, needs to have some models of how to be church differently. A multicultural church is an anomaly in the evangelical community; it becomes a symbol, a kind of firstfruit, and a prod to the wider evangelical community.

Second, the multi-ethnic nature of the geographical area in which the congregation was started was a consciously chosen target for such a model. In essence, given the desire to plant a multicultural congregation, an appropriate community was chosen as the target. Most South African cities are still functionally operated under apartheid-era urban planning models, with various suburbs dominated by one racial group. Only city centers have undergone massive social change, taking local council city planners offguard. While high ethnic consciousness is usually antithetical to developing multicultural churches, the level of interrelatedness in this particular community suggest many people with a willingness to forgo such a perspective for the sake of economic improvement and social mobility. Many Africans in this community are actively engaged in educational upgrading or are working in English-language-based, intercultural workplaces. Almost all children and youth attend English-language, interacultural schools.

Finally, the church’s original nucleus was multicultural in makeup. The church’s present leadership represents two racial groups, four languages and five cultural groupings. Leadership decisions are made by consultation, identifying areas of commonality and cultural divergence. There is a conscious desire to bring various cultural distinctives into the church’s public gatherings in an affirming manner. We believe this approach is drawing persons of like mind into our fellowship. A homogeneous approach would likely provide for explosive growth given the lack of such churches (other than white) in the community, but we have chosen the idealistic high ground.

Why the concern for women?

In reading the case study the reader will note that the church operates a women’s shelter and has a bias toward women with children in our rental allocation policy. A black woman is a member of our six-person church board.

A first response is that women form a large visible presence in our community, but they do not command the level of public power and access to services that their numbers should dictate. Women in South Africa represent the new face of gender-apartheid.

Second, the Free Methodist Church, as an evangelical body, has ordained women for almost a century. This says several things: that our denomination has a long tradition of recognizing the role of women in the life of the church, that we have an undergirding theology regarding the equality of women, and that we have been willing to take a divergent position from most evangelical denominations. Our congregation has five ordained ministers, including one black woman, and seven ministerial candidates, including three women. This number of persons, at this level of denominational rootedness, keeps our view of women at a conscious level.

Third, we have women in leadership in the congregation who continually bring us to the issues at stake.

How can a small church have such a large impact?

From the beginning Ubunye Church has not set itself to replicate the traditional gamut of church-based ministries that most churches view as necessary. The vision has always been to find way to have the most impact in our community so we may create opportunities to lift up the name of Christ. We have focused our time, energy and resources on areas we identified would allow us to have maximum impact in the community. We do not have a traditional approach to children’s ministries or to adult discipleship, so traditional levels of energies and resources are not expended in these areas.

Another factor has been our choice to network with the community’s existing bodies so we do not replicate services and to seek advice so we can do our niche ministries better. One example is our relationships with an emergency hotline service and a family counseling agency regarding our work with the women’s shelter. We don’t have to market our services to the community at large, just to the social service agencies who are on the front line with women. We only provide the accommodation which these agencies want for their clients, and we send them back to the counseling agencies for personal and group contexts for dealing with domestic violence issues. With the housing project we have interacted closely with a social housing-development organization. This organization has sponsored us to national conferences on housing management and aided us in securing government funding to pay off our loan and significantly develop the housing property.

One issue we must address is that the present pastor’s salary is not paid for by the congregation but from outside sources. The congregation must develop to a size that can fund not only the ministries budget, as it does presently, but also pastor’s salary package.

What has been the role of the pastor/church planter?

Dan and Kathleen Sheffield have sought to play a vision-casting and facilitation role in developing this congregation and its community ministries. Dan’s ecclesiology and sense of the worshipping community as Christian presence in the wider community, and Kathleen’s studies in sociology and human geography, have played a key role in casting vision of the possibilities to both the leadership and the congregation.

For the first six months of their ministry with Ubunye, the Sheffields pursued a listening, learning, consulting, information-gathering approach. They lived in the community and interacted with the residents, struggled with access to education for their children, bought household goods in the community-based shops, and visited in the homes of church attenders. Information and ideas were exchanged in weekly meetings with the church leadership team. Ideas that gained acceptance with the group were brought to the larger fellowship about once a month. The first concern to be worked through this process was the basis for functioning multiculturally and the pragmatic issues of style, language, and common symbols and rituals. The church’s name, Ubunye, came out of this process. The next major issue was the need for safe, affordable housing.

As ministry possibilities were identified, the next step was to discover those in the congregation with a burden and gifts for the different ministries. A process of spiritual gift identification was introduced; as individuals and groups of persons came to the forefront, skill-capacity was developed by networking with existing bodies in the city. Ministry plans and procedures were developed in a consultative manner among church leaders and ministry group leaders. Dan served as teacher/discipler where needed and also as facilitator for most of the discussions.

Dan Sheffield continues to function as pastor and vision-caster for the church and its ministries. He serves as the housing program’s coordinator, working with a management team and staff. Kathleen Sheffield serves as coordinator of the women’s shelter program. The listening, learning and consulting continues.

WHERE ARE WE GOING?

The next phase is clearly leadership development. As Canadians, the Sheffield do not intend to have a long-term involvement with the church. They would like to see leadership developed for the church, the housing program and the women’s shelter in the next two to three years. That leadership may come from within the existing fellowship or through an internship process with people presently not involved in the church’s ministry.

Church members believe we are engaged in a process, but we have not arrived. We are still establishing our base of ministry. While we have built many relationships there is still a need to go deeper into the existing community, particularly identifying more of the local social role players. While our ministry centre, housing complex and the women's shelter, now have a profile in the community, there is a need for our worship centre and its educational opportunities to have a higher profile. This will only happen through a move to a more prominent position in the neighbourhood.

Ultimately, we want to have more of a role in bringing stability to the community. We believe this will happen as we continue to extend our presence in the community.

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POST SCRIPT

Almost two years after this case study was written, in December 1999, Dan and Kathleen Sheffield returned to Canada. In the interim, a functioning Board of Directors was organized for both Ubunye Cooperative Housing and The Haven. Operational management for both ministries was hired, some from within the Ubunye Church community and some from outside. A black South African pastor, a former school teacher and recent graduate of a university-level seminary, was appointed to lead Ubunye Church. During his studies the pastor had served his field education internship in the church -- including one year with Dan.

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