Articles

Welcome to St Peter’s

Evangelical Lutheran Pastoral Redemptive Community Fellowship – Pretoria and Centurion

Pastoral Redemptive Communities

An Evangelical Lutheran Pastoral Redemptive Communities Fellowship in Pretoria and Centurion

Who or what are we?

We are an Evangelical Lutheran Congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in South Africa (N-T) and belong to its Northern Circuit.

We are situated in the heart (inner city) of the capital city of South Africa and therefore have a very special calling from God.

In the beginning of the year 2001 a few members of our congregation came together over a couple of weeks with the task of discovering God’s purpose for us as a body of Christ in a postmodern, global, urban South African context.

Our calling from God is no different to the calling or the commissioning of all believers and is taken from Matthew 28:18-20:
And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

We are also guided by the greatest commandment (Matthew 22:37-39):
And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.   This is the great and first commandment.   And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself.

With this word God calls us as congregation, but he has called us together in a very special place with very specific challenges here in St. Peter’s, Pretoria.

Our emblem tries to depict our purpose. We are called to reach out and serve each other through the guidance of Christ crucified.

The keys of St. Peter symbolize for us the eternal Word of God (sola Scriptura) which proclaims Christ (solus Christus) crucified who calls us to faith (sola Fide) and to new birth through grace (sola Gratia), thus unlocking the city of God that is hidden yet present in our city of Pretoria, there where the followers of Christ are obedient to His call. The keys tell the story of our Lutheran heritage.

How?

Alter we had discovered God's purpose for us in our unique context we needed to ask ourselves how we are going to realize this purpose.

The city we are living in is faced with numerous challenges. We read about these challenges in the newspapers, we hear about them at work and we see them as we walk/drive through the city streets. We are very often overwhelmed by these challenges, because the problems seem too big and too numerous.

The question we need to ask ourselves is: "Have these challenges anything to do with the church?”

I believe that it has everything to do with the church, if we believe the following:

• that the church is the bearer of the story of Christ who was born, suffered and crucified, descended into hell and on the third day rose again from the dead;
• that Christ was crucified because of sin;
• and if we understand sin in all its forms oi brokenness and evil which holds the world captive in systems which lead to separation between creation and God and eventually ends in death.

Then the church has a vital role to play in facing the challenges of our city, because the church as the body of Christ holds the key to liberation from sin and the systems of death. When Jesus died on the cross he took all the sin and brokenness upon himself. It is here, at the cross, that our story as church begins, because it is the centre of our Christian faith.

We invite you, member of the body of Christ in St. Peter’s, to join this journey of redemption as we journey with the city from brokenness to healing.

Our Challenges:

1. We are an inner city Congregation facing all the inner city challenges oi multiculturalism, diversity, pluralism, poverty, homelessness unemployment refugees. HIV/AlDS etc.
2. We are an English speaking Lutheran congregation, which began about 30 years ago catering for English speaking Lutherans living throughout the city. Later, with the transformation of our country, many new members were added to our family who were Lutherans coming from all over our country and finding work here in me city, as well as Lutherans coming from all over the world. English became our language of love and unity which united us into the one body of Christ  
3. We are a congregation in the capital of South Africa thus a prophetic ministry has been placed on our shoulders.
4. We are not only a congregation in an urban context out also in a postmodern global context.