The Ntinga Family
Musa Ntinga is the the head pastor for Christ Central Soweto in Soweto, South Africa. We are honored to partner with him and the church community beginning in 2018.
Gospel In Life
I think that one of the greatest privileges of being a Christian is that one has a personal relationship with God. God loves me so much that he made the first move and intervened in my life through his Son Jesus Christ so that I can call him father. Salvation means more to me than just living a good life or being part of a church, it means that I fellowship with Jesus as I read his word and pray to him constantly. Like all relationships we often can take things for granted which is why repentance and forgiveness go hand in hand with our fellowship in the Holy Spirit. It is also why we have fellow brothers and sisters in Christ who remind us of the grace we have in Christ.
Gospel In Family
Being involved in a church plant has forced my family and I to be more deliberate in cultivating our relationships. Before beginning this walk towards a plant we had more time to ourselves and even though one had responsibilities in the church, the buck did not stop with us, we were less overwhelmed by the sense of responsibility. But now we have toddler in the house (our son) and more to do with the launch team. This easily eats into our family time and we allow it to because we justify it as God's work. What we realized is that a healthy family is one of the best gifts we can give to our launch team because it models to them what serving looks like, serving that doesn't neglect the family but it also means that the pastor has a more balanced life which translates in longevity in ministry. But it takes deliberate and disciplined hard work from my wife and I. It means sometimes saying no to the urgent so that whats important gets the necessary time and effort from us.
Greatest Impact
I have learned that my identity and my significance is not in being a planter but in being a child of God. There are times in this journey where you are so busy that you can think that you are the one who builds the church. God has been so kind in reminding me that he grows His church, and even though I do have a role to play in this I must not take the role that He plays in the church. This realization has forced me to go on my knees and pray to the Lord of the harvest to gather his people. It has helped me to realize that my involvement in the church plant flows my relationship I have with God and the privilege I have in partnering with him in this. This frees me to go all in serving God but also gives me security because my salvation does not depend on the survival of the church plant.
Church Mission
Know Christ:
We seek to love Christ as we learn through his word how much we are loved by him. We want to teach His word faithfully, expositing it, and grounding people in the truth of reformed theology as espoused in the scriptures. The word of God is our supreme authority on all matters and the means through which God has revealed himself to us in Christ, so we delight in him as we delight in his word.
Love Each Other:
We understand that God’s reconciling work through his Son Jesus Christ includes us reconciling to one another. So we will seek to love one another as we all grow in maturity in Christ. Loving one another is messy as repented sinners get transformed by the grace of God but we are committed to this for we know that the love of Christ compels us to love another.
Reach Soweto:
The love and grace of Christ leaves us deeply unsatisfied with people choosing the world over Him. We are concerned that without Christ many Sowetans will face a future of eternal judgement so we reach out to them with Christ as the only means to salvation. We will plead and challenge Sowetans to set apart Christ as Lord over Ancestors, Tradition, and Worldly success. But this won’t happen if we huddle up in our Christian groups expecting people to come to us, we must go to them and engage them as we share the transforming gospel of grace.
Church Vision
We named our plant Christ Central Soweto because we want to see Christ at the center of everything we do and to tell Soweto that he is enough, as the saying goes “Christ + nothing = everything ”. As a launch team we are young and so feel specially placed to reach out to young adults and young families of Soweto with this simple moto: KNOW CHRIST - LOVE EACH OTHER - REACH SOWETO.
Our vision is not only to plant one church but to be a catalyst for church planting in Soweto. Our vision in this regard is to see 1% of Sowetans (13000 people) reached with the gospel, planting 29 churches in the 29 townships of Soweto.
If you would like to reach out to Musa, you can visit the church's website at www.christcentralsoweto.co.za