South Africa: A Country in Need of a New Culture

Voxtropolis
IMN Global Network
IMN Field Operative
Hermann and Adel Du Plessis
Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa

It has been fourteen years since the bells of freedom rang in our country. With the passing of a decade and one half, the euphoria of a new beginning is being forgotten by all the challenges we face in South Africa. Adel, my wife, and I have been involved in church planting in impoverished squatter camps (what we call them) as well as in leadership development over the last twelve years.

Adel and Niza in Los Angeles

Until about four years ago, I served as a full time ministry worker employed by a church. Our responsibility was to reach out to the blacks, help them with resources, so that they could grow and develop as impoverished communities. As a Mega-Church it was our “responsibility” to have welfare projects. But this was still the old colonial style of missionary work, even though our country had politically changed.

About four years ago I got into contact with the IMN through Mosaic LA and in May 2005 my wife and I met with Alex and some of his crew! At that time God had been prompting us to leave the church and engage the world by working in the corporate environment. We had ideas of helping different cultures to engage with each other, but we were not certain exactly what to do. We knew that the current way of doing ministry was irrelevant and that a new way of thinking was needed. Through our discussions with Alex and his crew in LA, we realized that it is our job to create a new culture in our small, but diverse country.

Hermann and Adel with IMN alumni John Caterson and Octavio Martinez in LA

Since then we were involved in many projects, some more successful than others, but there has been fruit. We try and open our house to all cultures and invite people from different cultures to have dinner at our house. We founded a leadership school where rich, poor, white and black share their struggles as leaders. We present diversity workshops to corporate staffs and have trips on which the rich enter the squatter camps around Johannesburg.

We find the IMN conversation very stimulating and thought provoking. It makes us feel that we are a part of something bigger and we hope to make it to a conference soon, to meet with more of the IMN people. Since leaving the safe waters of full time church staff, we have been challenged in ways that we could never imagine. But we have found some friends on our journey as we work to build the culture of God’s Kingdom in our country. Thanks to Alex and his crew for inviting us to be a part of the IMN.

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