…I’ve found myself in a church league soccer game, running up and down the field, attempting to keep up with 21 other players who are all significantly more athletic than me. As I fail miserably at playing midfield, trip and fall at least twice, and stop more times than I can count to catch my breath. At the same time, it’s somehow a lot of fun.
As I’m futilely chasing the ball around, I hear the Muslim call to prayer in the distance. At this point I’ve been in South Africa for about two weeks and I’ve walked past the mosque multiple times, but it still strikes me as new and unfamiliar. To the locals, it’s just part of the ambient soundscape. I also catch a glimpse of the Hindu temple in the distance, another familiar site to anyone living nearby. In that moment, it hits me like a ton of bricks (or possibly like the opposing midfielder I crashed into earlier in the game): I’m in a very, very different world from the one I was used to. As the classic movie puts it, “I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” (Actually I’m from New York, but you get it).
South Africa: where the social structure still reeks of Apartheid, the whole country is segmented by race, and where three religions converge on a small soccer field in the suburbs. This is where I began the World Race.
They told us not to have expectations, so I tried not to. And before I knew it our first month of ministry was officially underway. If there’s one thing I did think about the Race before actually leaving, it was that you did one “type” of ministry per month. 10 times out on 11 (see what I did there?), that’s not actually the case. Usually ministry looks like any mixture of things that your host is involved in somehow, and South Africa was no different.
Our first venture was a Vacation Bible School, or “Holiday Club,” as they called it there. Actually we did three different clubs at three different churches – two ran concurrently for three days, and one was an all-day Saturday event. The latter was a collaborative effort between my team and the church, but when it came to the first two, they pretty much handed us the reins – curriculum and activities were completely up to us. We led songs, we taught new games, and we shared stories from the New Testament in the hopes that these kids would walk away with a better understanding of who Jesus was.
If there was one aspect of world religions that genuinely surprised me, it was that Hindus, Buddhists, and members of various tribal religions aren’t opposed to Jesus. In the words of an elementary school boy playing soccer with us, “I’m Hindu, but I believe in all gods.” In this sense, being a Christian is a little harder to explain, and entirely foreign concept to someone in a polytheistic, highly spiritual culture.
Besides the holiday clubs, we also made our rounds to various youth groups and church congregations, sometimes preaching, usually sharing a testimony or two, and almost always performing some kind of “song item,” that was on a moment’s notice at least once. We became part of the church family and the actual family of our hosts, attending more braais (basically a barbecue) than I can count – let me tell you something, South Africa knows how to grill.
Although each day looked different for the most part, Saturday mornings were always the same. We would get up at six in the morning, put on a few layers of clothes (because July in South Africa is the middle of winter), and pile into a van en route to the church. We formed an assembly line to make literally 700 sandwiches, and then jumped back into the van to distribute these sandwiches at two locations: Cornubia, a low-income housing development, and Durban beach.
There’s this one section of the beachfront where the homeless camp out – from my observations, people leave them alone as long as they stay in that part of it. We parked the van, handed out sandwiches and hot tea, and tried to bless these people who are largely ignored by most of society. I’m still figuring out what I think about handouts and the enabling cycle, but I don’t feel too bad about meeting an immediate need of this population. (Although a woman did come up to us at one point berating us for what we were doing). On the last Saturday, once all of the food was distributed, we spread out in pairs to talk to some of them. After an awkward attempt of conversation with two guys who didn’t speak any English, my teammate Kyle and I met David and Perry. Perry didn’t have much to say – he was suffering from some sort of respiratory ailment and plagued with a nasty cough. David, who had cared for his friend and taken him to the hospital the day before, was happy to talk to us. He told us about his childhood, how his family had come to South Africa from Europe, and his current life in Durban. Upon mention of his now ex-wife, he told us this “Don’t give up the fight, because when you do, you don’t have a relationship anymore.” This man had so much to say and deep wisdom to offer, most people just pass him by.
South Africa laid the foundation for the rest of the Race and life beyond those eleven months. It’s where I first learned of the immense power of a story, and my view of evangelism was flipped upside down. Most importantly, month one showed me this: it’s really all about the people.
People like Annie, a social worker dedicated to fighting the sexual abuse problem in Durban. Like Alan, a former drug dealer who now devotes every second of his life to ministry in dangerous neighborhoods. Conrad, a boy in my Holiday Club group who was so curious about Jesus and why he came to earth. Pastor Julian, Michelle, and Christopher Pillay, our hosts who pretty much adopted us. Uncle Billy and Uncle Roy, who invited us over for braiis and sent us off to our next country with South Africa soccer jerseys. Kerry, Monique, and Shanice, who accepted the four girls on the team as sisters right from the start. I could go on for a long time.
It’s all about the people.
