Throughout the Cape Flats southeast of central Cape Town, need is visible everywhere you look. According to one international security correspondent, the Flats make up one of South Africa’s deadliest regions. The communities were originally engineered under apartheid to segregate non-white, non-black populations and still bear the scars of poverty, violence, and the long shadow of oppression. This broken landscape has become fertile ground for prosperity preachers who feed on fragile hopes and offer empty promises. Beneath the surface of poverty and crime lies a deeper crisis: a famine of the Word, answered only by faithful, Christ-centered preaching.
Over the past decade, a small but growing number of pastors have committed themselves to preaching the gospel with clarity and conviction in these communities. Their goal was clear: to preach the Word of God faithfully. They longed to see the true gospel proclaimed to communities hungry for hope.
Several participants from the recent 2 Timothy workshop are already leading groups within their own churches.
They began preaching directly through books of the Bible, an unfamiliar approach in churches across the Flats. Many churchgoers didn’t understand preaching drawn directly from the text, and one pastor’s church began to dwindle. But over time, the steady exposition of Scripture began to bear fruit. God began to transform peoples’ lives through his Word, and the church slowly began to grow.
Our partners in Cape Town have a vision for faithful preaching beyond their own pulpits. Recognizing the need for faithful workers across the Cape Flats, they are laboring to equip others. A new WordPartners’ Core Training has launched in Cape Town. In the most recent workshop, 25 participants walked through the book of 2 Timothy using our Dig & Discover Principles. These men are committed to handling God’s Word with accuracy and conviction across the Cape Flats and beyond.
As Jeff Gage, WordPartners Regional Director for Africa, puts it, “This training goes down into the church and out into the world.”
Through the workshops, local church leaders have grown in their ability to identify the main idea and transformational intent of a passage, enabling them to preach in a way that reflects God’s purposes for his people. One pastor explained the impact the workshop has already had on his preaching, “It was critical [to help me] understand what the author intended, what God himself intends.” Our partners are hungry to grow, and their growing congregations are eager to learn.
This is the fruit of multiplication. We’re not just training pastors. We’re equipping them to teach others. Several participants from the recent 2 Timothy workshop are already leading groups within their own churches. Others are preparing to plant churches in communities where no faithful church yet exists. As Jeff Gage, WordPartners Regional Director for Africa, puts it, “This training goes down into the church and out into the world.”
Across communities marked by poverty and shaped by the empty promises of prosperity preaching, WordPartners is patiently equipping local church leaders to preach God’s Word. Through our Christ-centered, expositional workshops, pastors in Cape Town aren’t just learning principles. They’re learning to trust God’s Word, live according to it, and extend its hope in places history tried to forget in the margins.
Because our training philosophy is rooted in locals training locals, this isn’t short-term ministry from the outside. It’s a long-term commitment to local leaders and local churches, shining the light of the true gospel into the fog of prosperity preaching.
The spread of God’s Word across the Cape Flats is just one way God is using WordPartners in his mission to fill the earth with the knowledge of his glory like the waters cover the sea (see Habakkuk 2:14 and Isaiah 11:9). We are equipping pastors around the world to preach Christ-centered, expositional sermons. And they are multiplying that training by equipping people in their churches to study the Bible with the same principles used in our workshops. We invite you to join this global mission of equipping leaders to bring gospel light into places of deep need. Will you stand with us? Don’t wait. Give today to make an eternal impact.
