New Planter Spotlight: Musa Ntinga

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.

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If you would like to reach out to Musa, you can visit the church's website at  www.christcentralsoweto.co.za

Spotlight: Nicolas Kyalongalilwa & Lephare-Bukavu, Bukavu

We are honored to support Nicolas and Lephare-Bukavu in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Please keep Nicolas in your prayers.

Nicolas and his wife, Rachel, have been married for five years. They have two children, Benaiah (not pictured) and Ronnelle.

What is the name of your church and roughly how many attendees do you currently have?

Our Church is called Lephare Bukavu (le phare is a translation of lighthouse in French). We have two services: French and English. The French service meets in the mornings and averages 100 people (70 adults and 30 children) while the English service meets in the evening averaging 30 adults. We have 14 mid-week bible study groups (ten in French and four in English). We are planning, God willing, to plant a second church in our city by the second half of 2018.

Where are you originally from and where is your current church located?

Our church is located in the city of Bukavu, eastern of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). I was born and grew up in that city. I then went to do my university studies in South Africa (Johannesburg) where I spent ten years before coming back to Bukavu again.

Tell us the story of how God called you to plant churches and why you chose the current location for your church plant.

I became a Christian when I was in South Africa. I had the privilege and grace to come to Christ through the student ministry of a Bible-Gospel-centered church.  Over time it became clear to me and to the leadership of the church that God had gifted me to lead his people and had put in my heart a great concern for my people.

What is the spiritual temperature in your community/country? How does this reflect your church’s mission and focus?

My community is very religious. Most people claim to be Christians but have not been encouraged and challenged to be disciples of Jesus. Over 60% of those who claim to be Christians are Catholics. Less than 5% of the Christian group is evangelical.

Tell us one of the most difficult situations you have faced during your years as a church planter. How did God work through that particular situation?

There has been many difficulties along the way, but God has been good to us. One of the hard one has been the lack of stable and suitable venue we could rent for our meetings. In October 2016 we were evicted without notice from the venue we were renting because of some ownership conflict within the family of the people we were renting from. We were without a venue for over four months. Then God provided for us a better venue, bigger and at a more affordable price than the one we had lost. That was again a sign to all of us of God’s had and favor upon his work.

How are you seeing God work?

We are seeing God’s hand in ways words cannot easily explain. People join our church (or small group) and are radically transformed by the Gospel as it is preached and lived out in the community. Patient is one of those stories that remind us again of the power and beauty of the Gospel. Patient was a young man full of guilt and uncertainty. He was never sure if he was right with God. He would have periods in his life where he will try to be good and do church then he would go through a season of total rebellion followed by a season of guilt and remorse over his actions and choices. He was angry and bitter with God over how his dad had left the home and gone to marry elsewhere. By God’s providence Patient found his way into our community. He heard the Gospel and trusted in Jesus. He has been with us for over 18 months now, growing and finding peace, joy and security in Jesus.

Please list any prayer requests we can share with our SRC family.

• Me, Rachel, Benaiah and Ronnelle that we may be able to do effectively the work God has called us to do in Bukavu.
• For our small groups to be “harbors” of light within their neighborhood and shine the “light of the knowledge of Christ”. Please pray for their leaders. I have started meeting with them (a total of 24) as well as some potential small group leader on Wednesday evening for training. We hope to start six new small groups by the end of the year and some of these leaders will be leading them.
• That God will help us make and strengthen disciples of Jesus in our midst. We plan to do more training of leaders with the aim of doubling our small groups’ numbers.
• For our work in local universities, that God will use these groups to bring many to a personal knowledge of Jesus.
• For our country and region; we are in a turbulent period, the rest of 2017 seems very obscure to most of us. Please pray that things did not get to a civil war scenario. Please pray that peace will continue to prevail and that the political landscape will be clearer each day.
• That God may continue to give us-as church- opportunities daily to reach out to people and to talk about Jesus.
• For finances to be able to sustain the growth that we see actually in our midst and particularly as we ready ourselves for the new church plant in 2018.
• That God shall send the right people to join the new church and He will use them to grow His work in Bukavu.

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If you would like to reach out to Nicolas, you can visit the church's website at http://lepharebukavu.org/.

What's been happening at Hope City Presbyterian in Cape Town, South Africa

It's been a while since we updated you with news from our little community. A lot has happened in the last few months. By God's grace we're now in the second year of our plant (in 2 months time we'll celebrate a year of Sunday worship services). At the start of this year we really felt we needed to focus on the basics of the Christian faith. 2013 had been a good year for us and our basic structures were all up and running but we felt we were lacking in doing some of the basics well. So we made two commitments to each other in January, and asked God for his help in these:

1) That we would cultivate deep spirituality both individually and corporately. We got together and prayed for God to meet with us in a special way, filling us with his love and assurance. Without the life-blood, which is the love of the Father, we cannot hope to plant this church and so cultivating a robust and deep spirituality had to be a number one priority in 2014. This means increased focus on prayer, corporate worship, and the practice of spiritual disciplines - both communally and as individuals.

2) That we would cultivate meaningful relationship both inside and outside of our church. God's love needs to spread - that's simply the very nature of his love. And the way he has consistently spread his love is through relationships - people sharing their lives with each other while keeping the gospel at the center. We knew we couldn't hope to plant this church if we were not cultivating these relationships with people in our church and with people who are not yet part of our church. We ask for God's help in this great task and privilege.

So far the year has been exciting as we've committed to these two things. New people have joined us, for which we praise God, and our church has been growing in depth and in opportunities to serve our city. The Lord has brought interesting and diverse people to us and is teaching us how to be community to each other in all the ups and downs of life. He's also opened doors for us to serve the community (see the picture of the the team serving at the Arise Family Day). 

Hope City

I prayed earnestly at the beginning of this year that God would expand our relational base - to date he has been very faithful in answering that prayer. God is definitely at work, and for this we are deeply grateful.

Please uphold the following things in prayer with us:

• Continued growth both numerically and in terms of the depth of gospel understanding in our group.
• That God would honour our commitments to cultivate deep spirituality and meaningful relationships.
• Please pray for us as we think about how best to serve families with children. To date we haven't developed this area of the church and so we're looking to expand here and serve people in this life stage.
• Pray for God's spiritual protection over our community. I seem to be having way more pastoral meetings this year than last. I have no doubt that Satan would like to disrupt the work here so please pray for God's strength in the hard times.

Thank you again for this partnership in the gospel. 

God's Richest Blessings,

Stephan and Robin Murray (and the rest of the Hope City Crew!)