SACLA reaching out to those in need
BY Rebecca Swanepoel

Registration started off fairly smoothly today, with people arriving in drips and drabs to confirm their registration for SACLA 2003. This soon changed when a bus load of people arrived with no prior registration, no accommodation and no transport. The Anglican Bishop from Port Elizabeth, the Right Revd Bethlehem Nopece, said, “Everyone is worthy of coming to SACLA. We don’t want to turn anyone away because SACLA is going to uplift this nation, and we need all leaders to be a part of this experience.”

This unexpected extra load of unregistered delegates greatly delayed the registration process. As a result, they were interviewed and asked to fill out a registration form and were given the option of donating whatever amount they could, or of making a donation after SACLA over a period of twelve months. This might be difficult, as many are unemployed and do not have any money.

Despite this situation, and the fact that SACLA has experienced a shortfall of R2.6 million, Bishop Bethlehem remains confident. “We are moving by faith and trusting that the Lord will provide,” he said. Dr. Michael Cassidy said, “We can get money, but we can’t fix wounded and disillusioned hearts if we send them away. We want the whole church here, not just the rich section.”

Mark Manley, South African team leader of African Enterprise, went on radio to appeal to the public to reach out and offer their homes to delegates who have no accommodation. SACLA council has also appealed to all of us to reach out to those in need by sharing our food or by giving up our lunch for a day.

There are just over three thousand confirmed registered delegates, but thousands more are expected to arrive shortly. These delegates are from all over the globe, including Cape Town, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Australia and New Zealand, just to name a few.

Registration officials worked hard to register over 4000 delegates yesterday

PHOTOGRAPH: TOBIE SMUTS

Encouraging Interactive Media at SACLA

SACLA is the most representative meeting of church leaders in the history of South Africa. Christians who cannot be present at SACLA can still influence the direction of this meeting through SACLA’s interactive website, and through a short message service (sms). SACLA II is encouraging all Christians across South Africa to also spend time on the website, which will be updated daily with all the events, speakers and aims of each of the twelve tracks. There is an email address provided for those who prefer to send emails, of comments and ideas, at feedback@ae.org.za.

Dave Hotchkiss, radio coordinator, has said that SABC will be broadcasting interviews of various speakers and delegates, to keep the public aware of the continuation of the conference and get their feedback, through the available media. With so many Christians in the real South Africa, SACLA would like them all to be part of an effort, “to utilize modern communications” and be an integral part in SACLA II.

Exhibitions

The SACLA council has made available exhibition stands where delegates can gather and look at the various things on offer. The exhibition stands will be set up at the bottom of Hall J and will open when there are no plenaries or tracks taking place. Neville Smith, the coordinator of the stands, said that there are approximately 60 exhibitors who will be displaying information about their entity and promoting their organization. Among the many exhibitors are, Year of Your Life, ESSA, TWR and Willow Creek. Impact Christian Books, Scripture Union and SACLA are the three major exhibitors who are allowed to have goods purchased at their stand. Tapes and CD’s of the day’s plenaries and tracks will be available for sale.

Uganda First Lady Arrives for SACLA
BY Sandile waka Zamisa

Uganda’s First Lady, Ms Janet Museveni, arrived in South Africa on Sunday evening for the SACLA conference, where she will deliver a keynote speech this evening.

Ms Museveni is an international speaker and Christian leader and is expected to give a challenge to South African church leaders and the government on HIV/AIDS. Her involvement in social and political issues in Uganda has paved the way for the decrease in HIV infection rates in Uganda. HIV infections in Uganda went down from 35% to 10%, and it is believed that she had a great influence on this dramatic decrease.

Upon her arrival at the Johannesburg International Airport, Ms Museveni highlighted some of the subjects she will be tackling in her speech. She mentioned HIV, poverty and malaria as challenges facing the continent. Concerning HIV and AIDS, she said that she will share the experience of fighting AIDS in Uganda for the past 17 years with church leaders here. Responding to whether she will give any suggestions on how to minimise the infection rate, she said, “HIV/AIDS is a global challenge. I can’t say that I can bring any answers, but we can share knowledge and experience.”

Museveni is convinced that the idea of SACLA to mobilise Christians from diverse cultures and denominations and bring them together in prayer can bring solutions to the challenges facing the continent.

Referring to key principles that have been used in Uganda to reduce AIDS figures, she said, “Uganda was honest enough to discuss openly the HIV/AIDS issue right from the beginning, from the early 80’s, when other countries were skeptical about discussing the issue. It galvanized support for the people who are infected and educated people about protection.” She said that the Uganda government, together with communities and churches, were brave enough to take the challenge and talk about the scourge of AIDS openly.

History of SACLA
BY Linda Martindale

Even though we still have a long way to go, a look at the history of the SACLA conference itself shouts how far we have already come. The very fact that South Africans of all races, can meet in Pretoria, stay in the same residences, and rent out the show grounds without having to put pressure on the national government for permission, is testimony to the dramatic transformation that has already taken place in our land.

The genealogy of SACLA is momentous and moving. Many South African leaders, including Dr. Michael Cassidy and his AE team, recognised the need for the Body of Christ to engage in meaningful dialogue in the early seventies. Mission ’70, a disappointing and challenging outreach into Johannesburg, had highlighted the need for the church to come together as one – crossing racial and denominational barriers. So began the journey that would begin the process of reconciliation that is one of the better strokes on the canvas of our history.

The first South African Congress on Mission and Evangelism was set to be held in Durban in March 1973. A logistical nightmare from beginning to end, the first hurdle was the venue – there were no venues that could host inter-racial meetings, accommodation seemed impossible with hotel after hotel refusing to host black delegates. Overseas speakers, including Billy Graham and Michael Green, were not granted access into South Africa, and to say it seemed like an impossible mission, would be an understatement. Cassidy wrote to a member of the US team during this time: “No one must withdraw or waver at this stage. We have our hands on one of history’s levers and we have no intention of letting go. Nor must anyone else. South Africa could be at a crossroads and with faith, courage and an iron will, we could under God, press the country down the road to life rather than destruction.”

The leaders turned to God in prayer and the promise reverberated: “NO weapon formed against you shall prosper and you shall confute every tongue that rises against you in judgement.” The Prime Minister was pressurised until eventually the resistance crumbled. ‘African Harvest’, the book documenting the history of Africa Enterprise and Michael Cassidy, says of this process: “Slowly all government resistance and red tape stretched and finally broke. Written permission was given for non-racial accommodation in a Durban hotel, permission given for inter-racial bussing, and all overseas speakers were finally allowed into South Africa. After months of grief, the leaders spent the first morning of the congress in a state of delighted disbelief and thankfulness to God that is really was happening around them.”

Whilst there was still a long way to go, black and white Christians were interacting on levels that they had not done before. As African Harvest reported “At first there was no real dialogue, just intersecting monologues” but it was the beginning of the moving of the church toward taking the first steps toward reflecting their true identity. A news reporter at the time wrote “This conference is taking the South African church by the shoulders and shaking it into the future.” These were some of the seeds of struggle sown before SACLA 1 emerged from the bloodstained and divided soil of South Africa in 1979.

A conference held in then Rhodesia, the Rhodesian Congress in 1976, was the next gathering of this kind and the Africa Enterprise team were key to this meeting that set the stage for the Pan-African Christian Leadership Assembly later that year. PACLA was hosted in Nairobi and brought nearly 800 people from 49 of the 51 African countries together in an unprecedented union of Christian leaders. The South African delegates, representing a country in the height of its apartheid oppression, were not welcomed by the conference in its entirety. Tension mounted and the situation had the potential to be explosive – not just with the other African delegates, but within the South African contingent itself. A white delegate remembers: “Even as the jumbo jet took off from Johannesburg, some of the young black participants began to notice the presence of a number of Afrikaner dominees on board the aircraft. The erstwhile suspicions ever present in all cross-racial South African contact asserted themselves.” They were concerned that the guys were BOSS (Bureau of State Security) personnel. All the ingredients for a disastrous assembly were there.

The conference was rattled and so were the South African team. It was a challenge to get the team to gather in the same room, but John Wilson of AE Uganda, managed to persuade them to sit and talk for a couple of hours. Prominent Afrikaner, Professor Dawid Bosch, was scheduled to speak and other delegates challenged this until he began his address on The Recovery of Christian Community in Africa. He admitted his own failings and many in the auditorium were moved to tears by his humility and honesty, many seeing their own areas of alienation in their churches, cities, countries. Bosch’s personal struggle and testimony opened people’s hearts and minds to the dilemma of the nation and its inhabitants on all sides of the colour and political bars. Cassidy describes this moment in Together in One Place: “Almost choking with emotion, and struggling to hold back his tears, the professor reached out an unsteady hand to sip from the glass of water. The atmosphere was charged. The sense of the Spirit’s presence, overwhelming. Conviction, brokenness and the spirit of repentance swept across the auditorium. Everywhere people were struggling with their emotions. … PACLA was now at Calvary. All were at the foot of the cross because here was a man at the foot of the cross. Healing and reconciliation were happening.”

The journey to enlightenment was taken a step further, and people pushed apart by a political system were taken a step closer towards one another. The question was how to remain together. Not organisationally, because that never interested the leaders, but spiritually, functionally, relationally. It was the PACLA spirit, not the PACLA organisation, that they were concerned to perpetuate. A similar assembly in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe in 1978 drew 600 delegates from 53 denominations together, as they met in a time of war in the land.

Stirred by what God had begun in Nairobi and Zimbabwe, Dawid Bosch encouraged AE to begin the planning of a South African Christian Leaders Assembly. The time was right – the stage had been set. People were asking ‘If it could happen in Nairobi, why not here?’ As with the very first conference in Durban, great opposition was the order of the day.

In 1979 SACLA brought a diverse mass of over 6000 South African Christian leaders from every racial background and most denominations, together in a dramatic way. Welcomed and challenged by then Bishop Desmond Tutu, who delivered a speech on reconciliation, the delegates became a part of history as the conference began on 5th July 1979 in Pretoria. Families in Pretoria opened their homes to members of different races for the first time, friendships were forged, barriers broken down. SACLA gave many renewed hope for the country. The conference was described by one delegate as a ‘baptism into the unity of the Body of Christ.” And by a senior politician, the watershed the country had been waiting for.

‘African Harvest’ summed up the heart of the assembly with ‘It had become the symbol of hope to many and to many a challenge to trust God in looking at the future with his eyes, not man’s. The way forward was to be a way of faith, fellowship and obedience. SACLA had been a rebuke to negativism and an onslaught against the destructive attitudes in the church. It had shown the country in microcosm what it ought to be in macrocosm.’ Delegates went home from SACLA I with renewed vigour and vision for a non-racial country, where the church was leading the way.

Since SACLA I our country has undergone dramatic transformation. But it has been felt that since 1994 the church at large has become inward looking and more concerned with survival than with outreach – the fight was over, and some of the passion to work together had died along with the coming of our freedom and the miracle of 1994.

Now, 24 years later, SACLA II holds the hope and promise in the same way it did decades ago. If ever we needed hope – it is now. HIV/AIDS, crime, violence, poverty and unemployment, racism, sexism and crisis in the family, seven of the giants that have the potential to cripple our land, are issues that the church is to be addressing in a meaningful way. This is the heart of SACLA – to mobilise the church to be real Christians in the real South Africa, to discern and act together on what it means, according to the scriptures, to be witnesses to Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord in our country today.

Annemie Bosch, widow of David Bosch spoke with passion and honesty at the inaugural memorial lecture in honour of her husband. Speakers at the lecture honoured the memory of an extraordinary academic missionary and reconciler. David Bosch was instrumental in bringing SACLA 1979 together and it was fitting that at the time of SACLA II the issues that were close to his heart are being highlighted.

PHOTOGRAPH: JOHN ROBINSON

Excitement mounts at SACLA launch

The ambiance was convivial, with boundless faith, unity in Christ and imminent hope for reconciliation in an interview conducted with SACLA delegates.

Sydney Ntuli, a spiritual leader from Mamelodi, felt the conference necessary to discuss bringing about a ‘church of morals’.

Quentin Ellis from Cape Town, aspires to empower himself on how to improve youth ministry at the conference.

Annemarie Bosch, widow of the esteemed Dr. David Bosch said, “Since the first SACLA, we always thought we should have had a second one. We should never have stopped. SACLA should have continued as an organization. She hopes that SACLA 2 will galvanize the process of vanquishing the problems facing the country.

Rebecca Porteors, a former US citizen, hopes the discussions will empower Christians with solutions to issues pertaining to Education, Business and the Family unit.

Husband and wife team, Smangele and Simon Zoldo from Kwazulu-Natal, who are employed in the Agricultural and Education sectors, feels that the conference will play an integral role in the socio-economic growth of the country. He would like to learn new techniques on how to empower unemployed people within the Agricultural sector.

PHOTOGRAPHER: CHAD BARTLETT

An eager team of SACLA volunteers

PHOTOGRAPH: TOBIE SMUTS

Faith Against the Odds
BY ANDREW ALEXANDER

On Monday afternoon the SACLA organisers were simply out of time according to Mark Manley, National Team leader of African Enterprise, as a number of difficulties threatened the smooth running of the conference. However, the organisers remain positive that these impediments will not disrupt what they believe is God’s message for this generation of church leaders.

Due to the number of high-profile speakers scheduled to address the conference, the police have been particularly intent on ensuring maximum security. As a result, the many hours put in over the weekend by SACLA volunteers may have been largely wasted after security officials told the organisers to reorganise much of the seating arrangements. SACLA was in consultation with the police late Monday afternoon in an attempt to avert what will certainly be a massive human effort, at a time when it is least needed. However, it appears that the security officials will not compromise, and that the thousands of chairs and tables set out during the course of the weekend will have to be re-laid.

In the area of finance, a great blessing has nevertheless brought problems of its own. With the expected arrival of up to 1000 delegates who had not been previously accounted for, the resultant expense has enlarged SACLA’s already existing shortfall. In an attempt to cooperate for the shortfall Graham Power, the leader of the Community Transformation track, has organised for a voluntary pledge to be conducted on Tuesday evening. Delegates can make a once-off donation, or can pledge to contribute every month for one year. “We cannot allow finances to shift our focus. We want to focus on the tracks and on the plenaries; most of all, we want to see the Spirit move”, said Power. Such words are an encouraging reminder that despite the trials, the SACLA organisers are faithful that God is still in control and will see His will done.

Stop! Look! Listen!

A Warm Welcome to SACLA II!