The group of CWM members with Rev. Stephen Pedro (far right), Rev. Babalwa Sifuba (front centre) and Prop. Don-Marco Jonaan (at the back with spectacles)
“I am so excited about what I’ve learned these past days about the contextual reading of the Bible, I can’t wait to tell my fellow church council members and my Christian Women’s Ministry (CWM) members about this. Bible reading and application will never be the same for me,” one representative of the Presbytery of Graaff Reinet exclaimed after a recent Contextual Bible Reading (CBR) workshop that was presented at Cradock.
Congregational Witness reached out to 18 Christian Women’s Ministry (https://cape.urcsa.net/cwm-christian-women-ministry/) leaders of ten presbyteries in the Eastern Cape of URCSA Cape Regional Synod, from 19 to 21 October to introduce CBR to them.
The workshop is part of the roll-out of CBR to the 29 presbyteries of URCSA Cape with a special focus on the women and youth of the church and community.
FLTR: Prop. Don-Marco Jonaan, Rev. Babalwa Sifuba and Rev. Stephen Pedro
The facilitators were Rev. Babalwa Sifuba and Proponent Don-Marco Jonaan. The manager of Witness Ministry and of the CBR project, Rev. Stephen Pedro, also joined the workshop to convey words of support and encouragement. A great blessing was the encouraging words of Rev. T. Irion from URCSA Emmanuel-Cradock who also joined the workshop.
During the three day course the group of leaders also did a CBR about gender-based exclusion and compiled an action plan as to what the leadership of URCSA can do to address this challenge within the church structures and in society in general.
The women were very excited about CBR, and the plan is that they will take CBR to their respective presbyteries so that we can introduce and empower the women leaders on presbyterial and congregational level as well with this empowering missional tool to build leadership capacity, especially on congregational level.
Contact Rev. Stephen Pedro at stephen@kaapkerk.co.za for more information.