It’s summertime here in Cape Town, South Africa, and the year is off to a cracking start! On February 7th, we hosted 80 pastors from the community of Phillipi for a Pastors’ Breakfast, Open Day, and Commencement Service at the Hope Africa Collective campus. The gathering is a monthly church leadership renewal event hosted by HAC. The vision is to be a place of community for local pastors to come and receive encouragement, prayer, and support for their lives and ministries.

The day began in typical African style—warm and sunny, with pastors arriving smartly dressed and wearing excited smiles. The sunshine seemed to inspire the colourful, patterned suits and incredible traditional garments, and added a warmth to the beautiful harmonies as voices lifted to the Lord in celebratory singing and earnest prayers.

Pastor Mike shared a devotion from Hebrews 4:14-16, a very special passage to us because it is one we are using to cast vision for 2019. Pastor Mpendulo facilitated the proceedings and welcomed Terry Hilliard (our Founder and Managing Director), who shared the vision and welcomed the growing crowd. Mrs Xhasa, from the Department of Community Safety, took to the stage and shared some of the important work that provincial government is doing to keep communities safe and walked us through the some of the legal processes churches can follow to make appeals to local government.

Next up, Pastor Leberegang spoke passionately about our plans and passion for discipling young people in our ongoing monthly meetings tailored just for them. He spoke about our curriculum topics, like servant-hearted leadership, and got really excited about how these young people are being equipped to pour the skills they’ve developed back into their local churches. Pastor Gqadu followed with some developments to our offering of church seminars, which we run in collaboration with 3 local churches. There are three branches of training that Pastor Gqadu and his team have zoomed in on: Biblical training, leadership development, and disciple making — how exciting is that?!

We broke bread together, just like Jesus and his disciples. It was a joy to share a meal prepared by Pastor Platti, and cool juices eased the climbing temperatures.

The morning wrapped up when we commissioned the new Bible College students (all 22 of them!) for this semester and we closed in prayer. Bishop Mpolo shared a moving benediction with our guests and even though the event formally closed, we know that the seeds of hope planted will yield good fruit in the year ahead.

We’re excited that this is how we have started the year at Hope Africa Collective, and fully trust God to multiply the efforts of our human hands into Kingdom-shaking change, development, and hope in this community.