The powerful sign of our oneness

We have come to the province of KwaZulu-Natal, in South Africa, for greater or lesser parts of five of the past six years, since we first arrived in early 2000 to serve a two-year term as long-term volunteers through Global Ministries.  During our times here, we have come to know a number of the people and churches of our partner denomination in this part of the world, the United Congregational Church of Southern Africa.  The UCCSA is a denomination formed in 1967, at the height of Apartheid in South Africa, which united different strands of the Congregational tradition in five countries of southern Africa, with Disciples churches in the area joining a few years later.  In KZN, the denomination includes historically colored and white settler churches from the English Congregational tradition, and historically black churches whose origins reach back to the American Board’s Zulu Mission starting in the 1840’s.  The incredible vitality and diversity of the UCCSA is a constant wonder to us, and was highlighted for us during the first several weeks of our current visit.

We have come to the province of KwaZulu-Natal, in South Africa, for greater or lesser parts of five of the past six years, since we first arrived in early 2000 to serve a two-year term as long-term volunteers through Global Ministries.  During our times here, we have come to know a number of the people and churches of our partner denomination in this part of the world, the United Congregational Church of Southern Africa.  The UCCSA is a denomination formed in 1967, at the height of Apartheid in South Africa, which united different strands of the Congregational tradition in five countries of southern Africa, with Disciples churches in the area joining a few years later.  In KZN, the denomination includes historically colored and white settler churches from the English Congregational tradition, and historically black churches whose origins reach back to the American Board’s Zulu Mission starting in the 1840’s.  The incredible vitality and diversity of the UCCSA is a constant wonder to us, and was highlighted for us during the first several weeks of our current visit.

Since our arrival in Durban, we have worshipped with Rev. Pietersen and the people of the Woodlands United Congregational Church, located in an originally colored township near the inland capital of Pietermaritzburg; with Rev. Overall and the members of the New Forest Congregational Church, a smaller church in an originally white housing area in the southern inner suburbs of Durban; and with Rev. Dludla, the acting minister, and the folk at Imfume Congregational Church, one of the original American Board’s Zulu mission churches in a rural area a distance down the coast south of the city.  The faces in the pews of the two suburban churches reflect the growing diversity of their areas, as the housing patterns in this country begin to shift and intermingle with the passage of years since the time of the Group Areas Act; the rural church retains much more the sense of its Zulu origins, and will, even though the main road outside the door is being paved for the first time.  We have also joined in worship at the Berea Congregational Church, a British settlers’ church in origin, located in the city, where it was a joy to see and hear Rev. Thompson recite the names of their new confirmands, a rainbow collection of young people with faces and names as diverse as this vibrant and growing church, which now draws its members from across the range of this multicultural hub.

One thing, especially, unites these different worship experiences in our minds — at Woodlands, at Berea, and at Imfume, we have joined in that most central celebration and sign of our oneness as followers of Christ, the sacrament of Holy Communion.  We recall that during the second year of our first service here, we were visited by Rev. John Lombard, the pastor of our home church, Trinitarian Congregational Church in Concord, Mass.  We’ve heard John comment, several times since, that it had not been the experiences of the nature (from the beauty of the land to the amazing animals) or even the endless fascination of the people and their lives, that had most struck him when he was here.  It was the time he shared communion with one of the churches here — it was Berea, as we recall — that had been the most powerful moment; it had made him first truly sense the power of the universality of that statement of common faith and purpose.  He’d understood that point before, of course, but to be 8000 miles from home, on a strange continent and in a reversed season of the year, and to be joining in that sacrament with people just first met, and yet to feel so totally at home and at the same time connected with those who, back in Concord and all across the world, were sharing in the same statement through the sacrament, was a supremely fulfilling moment in the visit here.

And as we’ve sat and received the bread cubes and little cups of red liquid in the one place, and taken communion wafers and sipped from the common cup with the deacons at another, and heard that the bread and the cup were the symbols of the Lord’s sacrifice for us, the lessons of that grace have poured out to us.  We are one with the people of faith in this place, through that sacrifice and grace.  Your friends in the churches here, when they join in the feast which Christ prescribed for us, are with you, and you with them.  It has been a blessing to us, as it was to John, to begin to feel, truly, this basic, and simple, truth and fact of our lives as churches.  We knew it, in our minds, of course, long before coming here, but we have begun to understand it in our hearts.

Ruthann and Jan Tore Hall

Jan Tore and Ruthann Hall serve as short-term volunteers with the United Congregational Church of Southern Africa.  They continue their work of local church connections initiative between individual churches of the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ and the Kwa Zulu Natal region of the United Congregational Church of Southern Africa.