The interviews with the ministers generated a good deal of ecclesiology. Although the interview schedule was not designed to directly probe ecclesiology, the conversations on evangelism and conversion generated much insight into how the ministers think about the churches they are tasked with leading.
Three Methodist Churches
I have constantly struggled with confirmation bias in this study, with the temptation to mine the data to establish my opinions which have developed over a lifetime of involvement with these churches. But one thing that seems indisputable is the “cultural trinity” of the Methodist churches in Cape Town. The ministers often use this as a category of discernment. As noted above in [1.1], the Methodist churches exist in these culturally-bonded forms in many of the different urban contexts of Cape Town. The first of the triad is those Methodist Churches that consist mostly of recently rural congregants, the Xhosa language amaWesile congregations. These tend to present as churches that form a bulwark of tradition against the eroding influences of the city, which are mostly read as drugs, gangsterism, and a party-lifestyle [MX003:
1219;
FE004: 3531; ME005: 0620; FA011: 2815]. They have a vigorous inflow of people whose rural roots are Methodist [ME005 0903]143. These churches are characterised
142 For instance, the opposition Democratic Alliance has developed an easy domination of the Cape
Town Metropole – an embarrassment in many ways to the reigning ANC party which was the leading force in the liberation from apartheid.
143 This is not to say that Xhosa culture and language churches are necessarily churches amongst the
by a strong adherence to formal liturgies144. People recite and sing a slightly modified
version of the 18th century Anglican liturgy. They also sing a small selection of translated Wesley hymns, with a few indigenous contributions145. ME005 says what any Methodist
minister or preacher knows – in these communities “…you can do anything you like so long as you follow the order of morning prayer. When you’ve finished that you can preach for a week, have group work, or you can do drama, but you must follow the liturgy. You’ve got to have siyakudumisa: the te deum must happen” [ME005: 1611]. Methodism here has the structures of Methodism from the 18th century still apparently in place – plus extra layers dating to the missionary era in South Africa. The authority-lines of minister to local preacher to society steward to class leader to member-in-good-standing are still robustly intact. In addition there are the uniformed societies – the Local Preachers’ Association, the men’s and women’s Manyanos, as well as a formal choir. The church has a very hierarchical, tribally structured social pattern, expressed through the membership of these uniformed societies and a strong maintenance of the class-system146 as the base level of church discipline and
control [ME005: 2207]. Their process of encapsulation of converts is in reasonable working order – a clear path opens up before one if one is converted. The pathway to honour is clearly demarcated, and at all points one has clearly delineated social roles. However, I think it might be a mistake to assume that the situation is simple. Many who call themselves members of these Methodist Churches seem to be finding that the force of urban life has placed them in a place where they need more dignity-affirmation of identity – a place to be counted as equals in a globalising world147. The children of rural migrants to the city, and
poor people in general, are typically educated in the cities in order to adapt to global, urban, culture as quickly as possible. They now find themselves in a world where the cultural certainties of their parents and grandparents are eroding [see 3.2.1 above][FA011: 4303].
leave his Xhosa-culture congregation is that they buy houses and want to worship closer to where they live and work – a quintessentially yuppie concern [MX008: 0708]. But the majority of Methodist Xhosa churches do indeed exist amongst the poor [ME005 1414].
144 It needs to be remarked that the liturgical observances of the amaXhosa are nothing like the
typically weak and attenuated liturgical observances found, for instance, in a white-majority high Anglican or Catholic church, where muttering and whispering are the characteristic mode of
expression amongst the congregation. Liturgical Methodism amongst the amaXhosa is a full-voiced, unapologetic, and physically energetic affair.
145 One notable Xhosa-written hymn is Ntsikana’s Great hymn (MCSA, 1926, p. #20), one of the
earliest examples of mission-independent Christian hymnody (Hodgson, 1997, p. 72).
146 Ironically enough the “class system”, originally intended by Wesley as a voluntary and egalitarian
group existing for the free association of self-aware sinners [4.2.4], has become the expression of the entry level “social class” for new members.
147 The reference is to sociological analysis of virtue as being dependant on either “honour” or
“dignity”, where in honour-based societies one has virtue due to one’s social status, and in dignity- based societies one has virtue due to one’s personal worth (cf. Campbell & Manning, 2016, p. 719), [cf. 5.3.2]
The second triad of the Methodist Church in Cape Town is that of the urbanised poor and working classes – urban people with historic roots in the city, speaking Afrikaans, mostly, who often find themselves locked into the crime-ridden communities of the Cape Flats, with relatively small prospects of working their way out into the economic freedoms of the middle class148. These are traditionally urban peoples for the most part, tracing their presence back
to the founding of Cape Town in the 1650s. However, some of these churches do have large populations of recently urbanised – and hence more post-rural than historically urban - people from Namaqualand. In these churches the hierarchy works itself out along the line of Minister to Society Steward to Local Preacher to Congregant. These churches have a stronger “evangelistic rhetoric” [MA002: 4037; FA011: 0249, etc.], but are nevertheless only breaking even in terms of numbers [FA011: 3233], with a strong exodus of their young people to the gang and drug culture on the one hand [MX03: 1219;4902; MZ009: 0734], and alternative urban lifestyles on the other [FA011: 3432, MX003: 1404; 1930]. But ministers working in this context seem to depend on a relatively high returnee rate of people in their middle to older years [FA011: 3432; MX003: 1049, 1219; 1404149; MZ009: 1433]. These
churches are also characterised by strong group cohesion (although factionalism is an issue that challenges their integrity [FA011: 5339; MX003: 1830]). The formal catechetical/
encapsulation program seems to be very problematic in these churches, which is in turn demonstrated by a generally stagnant growth profile [MX003: 1049; MZ009:1342150]. As far
as I have seen, the class-system with its rules (e.g. about needing to attend class-meetings and pay one’s “penny” otherwise face banning from taking communion [cf. MX003: 4431]) has been abandoned. They are still singing the Wesley hymns with fervour – although typically their repertoire is much reduced.
And the third of the triad is the ailing, white, English-speaking part of the Methodist Church that is rapidly aging and declining in numbers [MA002: 0739; ME005: 0747; ME012:
0818151]. These churches seem to share the same problem of failed confirmation with all the
148 Many of these people come from formerly prosperous families and are in well paid jobs or running
businesses of their own. But for many so-called coloured Methodists the realities of life are harsh [FA011: 12003].
149 MX003 indicates that there is an expectation that the youth will mostly take an extended sabbatical
or rumspringa from the Methodist church after confirmation: “People will often say, “No …. there’s a drop, but they are going to come back, you know, they want to explore” [MX003: 1404].
150 MZ009 here is careful to explain how an apparent drop in numbers is not actually a drop in
membership – just that many people are on a lifelong journey that takes them away from and then back towards church membership.
151 ME001 completely sidesteps the question of increase/decrease in church numbers – ME001:
0948. One suspects that the church is not growing numerically, but would need further data to settle the matter. FE004 is in a situation where the numbers have been dramatically cut over the disastrous tenure of the church’s two previous ministers [FE004: 1219]. ME007 claims that numbers are stable, whilst at the same time explaining how numbers have fallen – an interesting approach to answering the question [ME007: 0527].
other Methodist communities [MA002: 4202; FE004: 4512],
sharing a heartache over
wayward children who seem alienated from the life of Christ
[ME007: 2200]. Thehierarchy runs from Minister to Society stewards to Congregants, with the Local Preachers considered as a sort of parachurch group. Clerical dress is de-emphasised; the atmosphere is often studiedly informal and congregants are often not dressed to show status [FE004 recoils at the suggestion that she might have worn her dog-collar to a church fete [FE004: 4209]. Class-meetings in the Wesleyan style are unheard of; although a small percentage of the congregation in many churches meets informally in small groups with other church members once a week on a week night. Instead of reliance on the baptism-confirmation process to facilitate discipleship, a great deal of emphasis seems to be given to the need to establish these small groups for intimate fellowship as part of an effective discipleship process152. Membership of small groups is entirely voluntary (and not universal) [ME001:
0133; MA002: 0928; 4738; FE006:0220; ME007: 4026; ME012: 0547; 0649; 0802; 4856]. But although these churches are apparently trying their utmost to use the best available theory of discipleship, they seem, nonetheless, to be moving along a similar path of decay to the general trajectory of the affluent formal protestant churches of the North-Atlantic rim countries (cf. Chaves & Eagle, 2015, p. 3).
Bible-Narrative Roots of the Methodist Church in Cape Town
The rather abbreviated ethnographic approach I have taken can only produce a snapshot of the data available. But with regard to the Bible my questionnaire was specifically aimed, in part, at uncovering how the Logos informed the logos of the ministers: “what do you teach with regard to evangelism?” was the headline for question 5, with a follow up question on “What do you preach?” Similarly, question 8 specifically asked about “…the most important issues involved in conversion”. And I believe that these questions did unlock important attitudes to evangelism and conversion, and did show how the thinking of the ministers was shaped by Scripture. I have tabulated the direct references to Scripture below.
Table 2 Bible References in interviews
Interview Reference (A list of numbers refers to the incidences of that concept in the interviews in numerical order)
Subject 5+60+19+7+7+7+13+2+11+66+19=216(90+60+66) God 2+14+14+7+3+6+5+8+0+56+12=127(71+56) Jesus 0+0+20+0+6+13+2+18+1+2+17=59 Christ 2+0+5+0+0+0+0+0+0+21+5=33 Holy Spirit FE004: 0530 Metanoia
152 ME001, ME005, FE006, ME007 and ME012 – all of them ministers at English-speaking, formerly
white Methodist churches – make no reference at all to confirmation classes as having a role in conversion. Perhaps they have conceded that the institution no longer fulfils its catechetical intention?
FA011: 11850 God walked with Adam and Eve
ME001: 3217 Sabbath keeping
FA011: 11330 Ark of the presence
FA011: 12901 Such a time as this
MA002: 3749 Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly
0+5+0+0+0+0+1+0+2+1+0=9 Justice
MX003: 5238; ME005 2716; 3032; MX008: 2441; MZ009: 3413; FA011: 5122;
Holiness (social holiness)
ME001: 2810; MA002: 3025 Holiness (Scriptural holiness
ME005: 0457 Gospel of John
ME001: 0133; FE006: 1019; ME012: 4335; FE004: 0800; the Kingdom of God
MX003: 3840 God so loved the world
ME005: 0620 Christ the only way
FA011: 5831 Pearls and pigs
FA011: 2815
6+0+0+2+2+1+0+0+0+12+10=33
Saved
FA011: 2815 Born again
0+0+1+0+0+0+0+0+0+6+0=7 Born again
ME005: 1640 Love your neighbour
ME012: 4652 Woman taken in adultery
FE006: 1318 Sermon on Peter
MA002: 3505 If you love me obey my commands
FE004: 0438 Convicting people of sin
MA002: 2633 Washing feet
MX003: 3605; FA011: 11213 The cross/death of Jesus
FE006: 2124; Easter – Jesus is alive/resurrection
FE006:2124; 3356 FA011: 0904; 11149; Jesus is alive and present MX002: 0452;0530; MX003: 0648; ME005 3032; 3323; FE006:2550;
ME007: 0424; MX008: 1106; MZ009: 3521; FA011: 2502; ME012: 0407 Experiencing Jesus MX008: 2743; MX003: 4542 Matthew 28 ME005: 1640; MX008: 1106; FA011: 5018; MX003: 4323; MX008: 1203; MA002: 4900; FA011: 12901 Make disciples
ME005: 3235; FA011: 11850; ME012: 3952 You shall be my witnesses
ME012: 4500 Damascus Road
ME001:0515 New creation
MA002: 0550; ME012: 2550 Gifts of the Spirit
ME005: 0643 Confess your sins
ME001: 2237; ME012 Fruit of the Spirit
MA002: 3233 Priesthood of all believers
MA002: 4235 Paul: I give my life every day over to
him
ME007: 4026 Awakened to God’s word
FA011: 11507 I planted, Apollos watered
ME012: 3350 Led by the Spirit
7+12+16+7+3+8+6+1+5+37+16=122 Love
0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0=0 Compassion
10+2+2+1+4+2+1+5+2+3+18=50 Faith
0+0+0+4+5+1+1+2+5+4+4=26 Sin/sinned/sinner/sinful
0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+1+0=1 Evil
2+1+0+1+0+0+2+0+0+7+0=13 Bad
16+1+12+5+2(not good)+2+3+3+10(1xnot good)+2=55 Good
0+0+0+1+2+0+2+0+0+3+1=9 Wrong 1(1)+2+1+3+0+1+3+1+2+4+1=19 Right 0+1+0+0+1+0+1+0+0+4+0=7 0+0+1+0+0+0+3+0+0+8+0=12 True Truth/truthful 0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+3=3 Guilt/guilty
FE004: 0438; ME005 2805; ME007: 3845; MX008: 2131; ME012: 2429
0+0+0+2+1+0+1+2+0+0+1=7
Forgive/Forgiven/Forgiveness
ME005: 2136; 3650; FA011: 3644; ME012: 2140; 2550; 4535 Hell
0 Judgement (of God), God as Judge
ME007: 5036; MZ009: 4810; FA011: 12901 Judgemental MX003: 5153; MZ009: 4022; FA011: 11330 Prevenient grace
12+0+6+7+1+0+0+0+2+1+1=30 Transform, Transforming,
Transformation, transformational… 4+13+14+12+19+6+14+19+10+10+6=12 Convert, converting, conversion,
converted
0+0+0+0+0+0+1+2+1+4+0=8 Lord and Saviour
ME001(4); MA002(2); MX003(2); MX008(2); FA011(3) Word ME001(2); MX003(3); ME005(2); FE006(1); MZ009(1); FA011(9);
ME012(1)
Bible
ME001(3); MA002(1); MX003(3); ME005(1); FA011(3); Scripture ME001(2); MA002(5); FE004(1); ME005(6); ME007(3); MX008(2);
MZ009(2); FA011(2)
Gospel
14+20+37+21+41+17+18+29+13+23+23=256 Evangelise, evangelism,
evangelisation, evangelistic, evangelist FE004: 2042; ME005: 0530; ME005 1754; FA011: 2343; 2939;
5606; ME012: 2740
Relationship with Christ
MA001(3); Experience
3+10+8+4+9+3+4+8+10+11+11=81 Members, membership
The ministers generally seem to show a high regard for the Bible as normative for Christian life – MA002 considers that his very identity as a Christian is constituted by “Scriptural holiness”, Wesley’s characteristic description of the principle153: “Wesley lived by God’s
Word, scriptural holiness. And that need to be our identity” [MA002: 3025]. ME007 describes conversion as “awakening to God’s Word” [ME007: 4026]. FA011 has an almost
fundamentalist veneration of the Bible as written by God himself – although she is in many
respects an outrider in terms of hermeneutics [FA011:11718]154. Methodist ministers are
demonstrably not proof-texters, but their reflections do seem to be full of theological
reflection on the biblically-normed essentials of a faithful Christian life. They all seem to have a tacit respect for the Bible, and although they had relatively little to offer by way of specific Scriptural referencing for the issues of conversion and evangelism155, they showed a
generally unquestioning intention of basing their ministries on the precepts of the Bible. Even ME001, who is so provocatively avant garde in his opinions, nevertheless leads people in Bible studies, because of a desire that people be “…exposed to the Word, the written Word” [ME001: 0632].
Several of the ministers agreed that the “Kingdom of God” was the main hermeneutical key for understanding our times and the purpose of the church [MX001: 0133; FE006: 1019; ME012: 4335; MA002: 5003; FE004: 0800]. There were two main ways the ministers seemed to approach this. One was that God is at work in the world, and we must follow in his footsteps, discovering what he is doing and then celebrating and participating in it [ME001: 0133-0510 (an exposition of evangelism as “discovery of the hidden Kingdom”); MA002: 0550 (an exposition of the Missio Dei as discovery of God’s purposes); ME012: 4335 (where the Kingdom is viewed as something people have simply to be persuaded to realise is all around them already)]. What this seemed to mean in the ministers’ minds was that it was not incumbent on leadership to plan methodically for the sake of the Kingdom. This Hermeneutic of the Surprising Kingdom [ (Illich, 1974, p. 7) cited in (Bosch, 1979, p. 59)] showed up in various ways. For ME005, the benchmark conversion story was of a woman who came looking for a Gospel of John because of some mysterious inner prompting to seek the way of Christ [ME005: 0457]. FE004 recounts the story of a surprise transfer of allegiance of one family to the church due to the unexpected influence of a community fete [4209]. MX003 cites the arbitrary attendance of outsiders at home visits, whom he then invites to share in the Lord’s Table celebration [0353]. ME001 revels in stories of things that happen unexpectedly in the immediate geographic locality around the church – “…you’ve got to get the community around your church, and not having this sort of shit of people coming in from suburbia or whatever [1436] – even if for him evangelism consists of people doing yoga or practicing music or running a social media course in the church building. The idea seems
154 FE004 and ME007 were the two ministers who used the fewest of the Word/Bible/Scripture/Gospel
words, but I would not say that this means that they are not working from a broadly evangelical stance. FE004 exhibits a capacity for nuanced hermeneutics in her exegesis of “metanoia” [0438- 0702]. Given her extreme reluctance to speak in conventional categories – she says “… you take a risk coming to me because I am not going to give you traditional, down the line answers” [1035], I suspect it might be a mistake to read her “word count” as a disavowal of the Bible.
155 Only one minister referenced the “flagship” conversion story of the New Testament, Paul’s
Damascus road experience [Acts 9:1-19 - ME012: 4500]. Acts1:8 was the only other citation of the Book of Acts [ME005: 3235; FA011: 11850; ME012: 3952] – it did not seem that the book of Acts influenced their thinking heavily when thinking about evangelism.
to be that the Kingdom of God is a mysterious entity or force that plays out in the world with no particular reference to the church.
The other approach to understanding the Kingdom was the apparently contradictory idea that the Kingdom of God is something that Christians are called to “build” or “actualise” in the world [One minister equates evangelism with an active “building the Kingdom” [FE006:1019]. Another, wishing to avoid using the word “evangelism”, prefers to think of people coming to “bring about the Kingdom of God on earth” [FE004: 0743]. This seems to be the “minority view; and it appears to see the duty of the church as the establishment of a sphere of Christian influence in society through its existence and activities. I would need much more specific conversations to disentangle the significance of these issues to the ministers and in the light of the issues of evangelism and conversion, and I will return to this issue again in chapter four, as I try and establish my grounded theory.
Another strong strand of biblical reference amongst the ministers appears to be that discipleship is (notionally) the main mode of existence and growth of the church [ME005: 1640; MX008: 1106; FA011: 5018; MX003: 4323; MX008: 1203; MA002: 4900; FA011: 12901; MX008: 2743; MX003: 4542]. The ministers seemed uninterested in talking about evangelism as persuasion to consider faith; they wanted to discuss the task of
evangelisation, which I have defined as “facilitating the growth of Christians with reference to the norms and values of the Gospel” [2.4.9]. Very few of them had anything to say directly about persuading people to consider converting to the Christian faith, other than as a negative assessment of manipulative and counterproductively offensive techniques. They seemed to regard evangelism as an embarrassing relic from a former era of the church, misapplied to a new cultural context for which it was irrelevant or worse [see below 5.2.1]. It appears, then, that the proper domain for the minister is considered to be as a discipler of disciples, empowering and enabling ordinary members to grow in their faith. As part of that