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| St Augustine's Sarafina, Ikageng |
I was met today by Revd Edward Sithole, the Dean of Matlosane Cathedral. (Or “The Cathedral Church of the Resurrection, Ikageng” to give its full title).
He showed me the Cathedral and introduced me to some of the other staff in his team.
Ikageng is a township outside Pochefstroom, in Matlosane, and as far as anyone knows it is the only Cathedral which is situated in a township. The Dean is aware & proud of this, and we agreed that it made a good statement to the people of the township.
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| Dean Edward & Father Wilson |
Before being shown the Cathedral itself though, I was taken to a relatively new church in the area of Sarafina within Ikageng. This was effectively a “church plant” of the Cathedral. The term used here is an “outstation”- a community of Christians who meet for prayer and worship in some suitable building led by members of the Anglican Church. This had been the case in Sarafina for some years, and in 2005 the new church building was completed. Now the members of the “outstation” have a church – St Augistine’s Sarafina. Father Wilson is their priest and he is just settling into the role, having been there around 1 month. There is still some work to do on the fabric of the church, but I was impressed by the mission minded approach which the cathedral staff and congregation have shown.
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| Ikageng Cathedral Outbuilding |
Next on the buildings list, was not the Cathedral itself… but it’s out-building… a bit like a barn… but useful for Sunday School and also for the volunteer carers who meet there regularly before visiting folks in need in the community. They have also started up a Friday night “soup kitchen” for anyone in the community in need of food. There are plans to expand this to other days of the week too.
On the way to the Cathedral itself, we stopped in at the church office and Dean Edward showed me one of the pledge cards used by congregation members for giving. There was a place to write how much you were pledging, but then there were sections where a giver could allocate their giving to go to either church contribution (like parish share), social responsibility (eg funding the soup kitchen) and building maintainence. I surprised when Edward told me that he had introduced this system recently… I asked, “Did the church contribution go down when people could choose to allocate their gift to social responsibility?” He smiled, “No, it went up!”
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| Ikageng Cathedral |
I was impressed by this imaginative, risky and yet faith filled approach to handling and encouraging giving. I can’t help wondering how it might work in the Church of England… are we up for the faith/risk element in this?
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| Inside Ikageng Cathedral |
It seemed that I was seeing (without meeting any of its members) the evidence of a church which was seeking to be a community which was seeking to transform the community in which it was set. There is still much to do, as a conversation over lunch with Edward and his churchwarden (Peter) revealed. Ikageng is large community, (500,000+) in quite a small area. But this did not seem to daunt any of the people I met. They seem to be doing what they can... which is a good start.
Not all of these ideas and approaches can be overlaid dreictly on to our different settings in the UK. But some of them might be a surprisingly good fit, and they are worth prayerfully thinking about.
As I pondered the day, sitting back in Promosa township, I heard sounds that I had not come across since my own childhood. Children playing in the street, skipping, running or making music with a makeshift drum. South Africa’s problems are well noted, and they are big and real. But community is alive and well here in the townships, despite the problems. And the church is right here in the mix. It doesn’t have to be a Cathedral to do all the work being done in Ikageng … any church with people committed to the Lord Jesus might do these things in its local community. Any church can do it… But will ours be one that does? That is a searching question!
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