Grant Retief has been working as a pastor and church planter in Durban, South Africa, for the past 12 years. In this interview, he talks with Paul Grimmond about the enormous social issues in South Africa, and what it means to hang on to the gospel and serve people there.
It starts with trying to read the microwave instructions on the back of the packet in the kitchen, and having to move into some better light. Then you notice you're habitually setting the zoom in Microsoft Word to 200 per cent. The crunch comes when it starts to affect the
Have you ever felt powerless? Have you ever felt weak in the presence of others? Do you feel overwhelmed by the non-Christian world around you? Do you feel that your testimony to Christ is too weak and feeble to mention, and that the criticisms of Christianity are too loud, vocal
A friend of mine meets women from her church on a regular basis to catch up and pray. But she reads the Bible with them only occasionally when certain issues come up. It’s not because she isn’t committed to teaching the Bible; on the contrary, she is a women’s pastor
It is almost a given today that history is oppressive. That is why there has been so much hoo-ha about how it has been taught over the last 30 years. Everybody wants their say: if you’re a woman, you need a woman’s history; if you’re gay, you need a queer
Russell de Vries has known Jesus all his life. He grew up having been taught the gospel by his parents, and remembers car conversations about the sermon and Bible during the trip home from church each Sunday. The Bible was an integral part of church and home life. Yet in
The Lord Jesus took hold of my life in 1983 when I was in my final year at school. I had been inoculated against the gospel through repeated small doses of school chapel over the previous ten years, and the message I’d heard had led me to believe that God
The Ministry Training Strategy has been around now in some form or another for 30 years. (We put on the first ministry apprentices at the University of New South Wales in 1979.) Today (as there always have been), there are questions about the value of doing a ministry apprenticeship. Is
There were only three of us in Bible study group the other morning, and the other two guys were both in sales—one in property and one in software. We were talking about how to encourage other people with the message of the Bible (whether Christian or non-Christian), about why we
This half-term, my wife, Kirsten, and I (with our son Joshua happily in tow) were able to enjoy a fantastic break in Brittany with some good friends. Brittany is a lovely part of France, and we were with great company, enjoying great food and great weather. We had a fantastic