This morning at 7 a.m., we are driving to the Soweto township to share the word at the 9 a.m. service at Grace Bible Church, pastored by Mosa Sono. The Soweto township’s scarred past comes into focus as the city appears just off the freeway. I think of the fires that burned here one month after my high school graduation in 1976, as the “Soweto Uprising” made headlines across the world. Some of the current images from Egypt’s protests hearken back to those days, when students refused to abide by the government mandate that they be taught in Afrikaans rather than English.
Soweto today has many of the vestiges of its segregated, oppressed past, but there are a number positive signs: a new University of Johannesburg Soweto branch campus, a number of stunning shopping malls, and even a soccer stadium used for the recent World Cup on the outskirts.
We see Grace Bible Church looming on our left, and watch streams of people winding their ways through the streets to attend the 9 a.m. service. More than 3,000 congregants wait outside as the early service erupts in a closing song of worship, and Karen, John and I know that we are in for a life-long blessing. After greeting the charismatic Pastor Mosa Sono—who wowed audiences across the world when he spoke at the Willow Creek Leadership Conference in Chicago this year—we are escorted into the service and join in the roof-raising joyful sound of legions of worshippers lift the name of Jesus in Zulu and English. When I walked up on the platform and shared from Matthew 7:24 and encouraged them about examining our “foundations,” I was humbled and moved by the sight of this sea of bodies listening intently to this stranger from the U.S. At one moment, I paused and just listened: the stillness spoke to me of a people hungry for God, disciplined in spirit, worshiping in unity—a formidable congregation.
Soweto today has many of the vestiges of its segregated, oppressed past, but there are a number positive signs: a new University of Johannesburg Soweto branch campus, a number of stunning shopping malls, and even a soccer stadium used for the recent World Cup on the outskirts.
We see Grace Bible Church looming on our left, and watch streams of people winding their ways through the streets to attend the 9 a.m. service. More than 3,000 congregants wait outside as the early service erupts in a closing song of worship, and Karen, John and I know that we are in for a life-long blessing. After greeting the charismatic Pastor Mosa Sono—who wowed audiences across the world when he spoke at the Willow Creek Leadership Conference in Chicago this year—we are escorted into the service and join in the roof-raising joyful sound of legions of worshippers lift the name of Jesus in Zulu and English. When I walked up on the platform and shared from Matthew 7:24 and encouraged them about examining our “foundations,” I was humbled and moved by the sight of this sea of bodies listening intently to this stranger from the U.S. At one moment, I paused and just listened: the stillness spoke to me of a people hungry for God, disciplined in spirit, worshiping in unity—a formidable congregation.
A tour of Soweto—which included a stop at the “Nelson Mandela House”—brought the afternoon to a close: how privileged we feel.
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