Missional Leadership Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

In the first chapter, the authors focus on the lack of consistency on the notion of obedience during the constituting synod of URCSA in April 1994, as on the issue of unity, justice and reconciliation. Therefore, the authors argue that what was evident in the lives and ministry of these members was their willingness to be obedient and pursue unity, justice and reconciliation.
In chapters two to six, the authors focus on one of the moderature members of the constituting moderature (1994) in each of the four chapters and in the following order: Rev. Nick Apollis (Moderator), Rev. Leonardo Appies (Scriba Synodii), Rev. Sam Buti (Assessor) and Rev. JD Buys (Actuarius). The content of these chapters focuses on each member’ missional role, through discussing their agency, their context analysis, their theological interpretive lens(es) of church and society, as well as the particular strategies that they employed to enact transformation. The authors focused on the primary sources – addresses, sermons, papers delivered from these members – to understand their contributions made to the church and society. The authors also focused on secondary sources, written and presented by their colleagues, congregants and acquaintances, that provided perspectives on their missional role in church and society. Through the two-pronged data collection process (primary and secondary), the authors were able to construct the missional character of these members.
The authors’ focus in the seventh chapter is a comprehensive bird’s-eye view of the four moderature members’ contributions and personalities and how their actions, addresses and analyses of the context contributed to their obedience to facilitate transformation. Nonetheless, the 1994 founding synod was the start of a new journey within URCSA. The church was in its ‘baby shoes’ and was already at the brink of a schism but was able to keep the ‘ship’ afloat. Therefore, this chapter focuses on the congruence of their actions, behaviour, choices made, but also the management of their differences and how their unique contributions would assist the positive outcome and, eventually, beyond its 25-year celebration in 2019.
4. Academic Contribution
This book makes a contribution in two fields or disciplines within theology. It makes a missiological contribution, which lies in the aspect that with this book it has been shown that the four moderature members’ spirituality was grounded in the everyday realities, and their rootedness in the political, economic struggle of the majority of the people in South Africa. They were able to transform the church through imagining the church beyond its racial divisions (URCSA), and their active role in encouraging members of two black churches to promote greater unification (with DRC) and facilitate the restructuring of their denomination but also the South African society. The book shows how these members brought the members in the church as well as society to a different understanding of church in society. It further shows that a ‘broken’ and wounded church can become God’s agent for reconciliation, unity and justice in the world.
The book also makes a contribution to the discipline of South African Reformed church history. There are several previous academic contributions that come to mind. An important book in this regard is the project between scholars of the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) and the Uniting Reformed Church (URCSA) who documented various perspectives of the Reformed churches’ history between the period 1960-1990 in the publication Reformed Churches in South Africa and the Struggle for Justice (2013), edited by the late Mary-Anne Plaatjies-van Huffel and Robert R Vosloo. This excellent work captures the memories and the history for the said period. However, excellent as it might be, these moderature members whom the authors undertook to study do not feature prominently in terms of their actions, sacrifices, and intentional contributions to serve the church and society at large. Moreover, this book will also document beyond the demarcated scope (1990) of the edited volume, and build on the future of the reformed history specifically related to the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa (URCSA).