Name: Standard Bank
Branch No. 025009
Account No. 072-970-839
Tel: Rev. Sandile +27 82 687 7135
Email: themessagechurch@gmail.com
Office Address:
18 Main Road, Rosebank 7700 Cape Town
God originally created mankind to be worshippers of Him, serving in the Garden Temple as kingly priests, filling the earth with His presence as we reflected Him into creation and representing creation in our praise of Him. However, at the fall we turned from worship of God and became worshippers of creation, with all its enslaving and destructive consequences. However, God did not give up on His temple project, and so ultimately in Christ, the Cornerstone of the New Temple, God redeems us to be the Kingdom of Priests, that is the True Worshippers He intended for us to be. And eventually the whole of creation will be a New Temple as God dwells amongst us as our God and we live as His people. As such we live now as worshippers of the Triune God, communing with Him, guarding His temple, gathering stones and serving Him in all of life.
Being worshippers of God shapes us individually and corporately as a church in a number of ways:
Firstly, we know that our hearts are prone to idolatry, that is wanting, pursuing, trusting and taking refuge in created things, rather than in God. Given that we’ve been renewed to worship God, we seek to live a lifestyle of constant repentance, meaning that we are always seeking to turn away from the idols are hearts are drawn to, and renewing our faith in and commitment to God. Given the deceitfulness of sin, we are open to both being helped and graciously helping others to do so regularly. This is always the reason why we together confess our sins every Sunday.
Secondly, we are committed to worshipping together as a community. History ends with all God’s people gathered together around the throne worshipping Him. So our Sunday gatherings are meant to be a foretaste and expression of that heavenly gathering.
Thirdly, it shapes how we worship as a church. We worship in response to who God is and what He has done. And so in our gatherings we try and reflect through our focus on God and in our responding to Him in praise, confession, prayer and attentive listening and obedience.
“Image of God” is not only temple language, but family language as well. A son bears the image and likeness of his father. Humanity was created to be part of God’s family, bearing His family likeness. God is in his very essence love (cf. 1 John 4:8). For all eternity Father, Son and Holy Spirit have been in a perfect love relationship. And we are created to share in that love. Sadly, in rebelling against God we became lovers of self, and so enemies of God and haters of one another. Incredibly though, God in Christ has reconciled us to Himself and us to one another. Further, He has given us new birth into His divine eternal, triune family of love. We now have God as our Father, Jesus, the Son, as our Brother and the Holy Spirit as our indwelling Comforter. The result is that now we start to take on the family likeness. Love becomes the primary characteristic of our relationship with one another. This love transcends age, stage, gender, colour, tribe and class and is expressed in our daily lives as we do life together. It is maintained through cultivating our relationship with our heavenly Father.
We try to give expression to our being family in a number of ways:
Because love (and hence relationships) is at the heart of church life, we are not satisfied with simply gathering on a Sunday together. On Sundays we have limited time and thus cannot develop the sort of relationships that being family requires. So we aim to have everyone participating in what we call Gospel Communities (GCs).
GCs are not meant to be a fancy word for a small group. They are the primary way in which we live out our family identity. A GC consists of a group of people, often a fairly diverse group of people, who seek to do life as family. So they meet, not just weekly for Bible study, but over meals, and around other social events. In our GCs people get to know each other’s stories and they practically demonstrate love for one another. Being in close proximity to each other means that sin will often hamper relationships and so they learn to bear with one another, forgive one another and carry each other’s burdens.
Flowing from that, given the consumeristic nature of the world in which we live, and our tendency to bring the consumer mind set into the church (i.e. we go to the church that meets our spiritual needs, and when it fails to do so, or upsets us in some way, we just move on to the next church). We as The Message church are constantly working to resist that tendency. Instead we call people to commit to being part of the church, and not simply to leave when things become frustrating or uncomfortable. Rather should people feel God is calling them elsewhere, they are encouraged to talk it through with people in the church whom they trust.
Further, given the history of our country, we believe that both diversity and unity in that diversity is crucial for God’s people. We don’t want to be a church where only one people group feels comfortable and the rest have to adapt. Rather there is a sense that we will all feel uncomfortable in one way or another. But in that uncomfortableness we are committed to listening to one another, sharing stories, sharing leadership and maintaining the unity we have in Christ.
Lastly because we are family, and we believe children form part of the family, we are committed to including them in church life, whether it be in GC life where appropriate, or in our Sunday services.
The word “mission” comes from the Latin word “missio” which means “to send”. Just as God sent Jesus into the world to save the world, Jesus has now sent us into the world (cf. John 20:21) in the power of His Holy Spirit to be His witnesses. God has given us the ministry of reconciliation, which we fulfil by exhorting people to be reconciled to God (Cf. 2 Corinthians 5:16-21). So where we live, work and play, we’ve been sent there by Jesus as his ambassadors to call people into relationship with Him. We do this in dependence on Him as it is His mission and He is the one who opens people’s eyes spiritually so that they can see the glory of God in Christ through the Gospel.
Understanding ourselves as being missionaries shapes what we do in a number of ways:
We come out of a context where the way to reach people was to invite them to church. This is called the “Attractional Church Model”. While this still works for a few people, more and more unbelievers are not interested in going to a church service. However, if we understand our missionary identity properly, the Biblical pattern seems to be more that we will go to where people are and build relationships with them there, rather than simply expecting them to come to our service. So while we want to make our services as outsider friendly as possible, we place a greater emphasis on every member seeking to reach the people God has placed in their lives.
One of the ways we are trying to reach people are through our GCs. Working together with other Christians in an intentional way can be a huge help in reaching unbelievers, compared to trying to do it all on my own. In addition to that, according to Jesus one of the key authenticating characters of the Gospel is the love Christians have for one another. So working as a community together means our unbelieving friends get to see and experience the love Christians have for one another.
While we are all called to be missionaries where we are, we also recognize that the Gospel needs to go to all nations and contexts. We want to keep mission, both local and international on the radar. So we also support missionaries financially, as well as highlight countries that are in need of the Gospel during our Sunday services.
As creatures of the sovereign creator God, we were created to fulfil His purposes. As we did this, we would enjoy His peace and blessing. However, Adam and Eve chose to rebel against Him, seeking to take matters into their own hands. The irony and sadness is that instead of gaining greater freedom, they became slaves to sin. Mercifully Jesus transferred us into a new kingdom where we now live under His rule as His servants. Thankfully His rule is not oppressive, for He Himself is the Servant King, and He came not to be served but to serve us and ransom us (Mark 10:45). So in His Kingdom we have been set free to serve Him, one another and the world.
As a church we want to be intentional, particularly given our culture where everything is “laid on for us” to live out our servant identity. We do this as follows:
We don’t just expect the staff to be serving. Rather we are committed to developing an every member ministry where everyone is using their gifts to serve the community.
To develop the habit of serving, our GCs all take turns in serving at a Sunday service, through setting up, welcoming, serving tea and packing away.
We are committed to giving generously, aware that we are stewards (servants) of the material blessings and resources God has given us. We thus encourage everyone to commit to giving to the church on a monthly basis (preferably by EFT) as well as develop a posture of generosity to those in need.
We encourage everyone to think how they serve both God and people in the context of the roles and jobs they have, especially given that Jesus rules over every area of life. We aim to help people understand that our vocations are valuable and a means of serving God and people.
We encourage people to start initiatives that do good and serve the greater society and we support them financially or otherwise where we can.
To be a disciple is to be a learner. It involves listening and learning from someone to become like them. God created us to listen and learn from Him. In doing so humanity would flourish and enjoy life. Unfortunately, our forefathers rebelled against God, listening instead to the serpent. So we became followers of the devil and the world under his control (cf. Ephesians 2:1-3). Instead of being shaped by the truth of God’s Word, we learnt the ways of the devil and the world. Jesus, having being appointed as the One with ultimate authority in both heaven and earth, and as the One who Himself is Truth, has now called us by grace to become His followers. He calls us to come learn from and listen to Him in order that again we may truly live. In learning from Him, we are to become like Him, being obedient to the Father in everything.
Being disciples of Jesus shapes us at The Message in a number of ways:
The way that Jesus calls us, teaches us, shapes us and rules over us is through His Word, the Bible, made alive in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. (cf. Colossians 2:6-7). The Bible is therefore central to our private and corporate life. Privately, we seek to develop a habit of regularly studying the Bible for ourselves. Corporately, it means that we are committed to expository preaching, wanting the Bible to set the agenda for us as a church. We also want to be in the Bible in our GCs and DNA groups.
The goal of learning from Jesus in the Bible is not simply so that we can grow in knowledge. Jesus wants obedience from us, and indeed, commands us to teach others to obey everything He taught. Thus living as a disciple is a very practical thing, requiring very practical skills. As with other practical skills, we learn best on the job, being shown by others what the skills look like in practice and then being “coached” as we develop the skills ourselves. For this reason we are committed to a life-on-life form of discipleship, where we are in each other’s lives and learning from one another. We do this in two ways:
