JAY AND LAURA STOMS
BUILDING AND EQUIPPING THE CHURCH IN Stellenbosch, SOUTH AFRICA
Sharing the gospel, providing community, and building up the effectiveness of the church.
South Africa’s culture is one of the most diverse in the world, but cross cultural relationships are not common in any sphere of public life, including colleges and universities as well as houses of worship.
Stellenbosch University (SU) is home to an academic community of 29,000 students, including 4,000 foreign students from 100 countries. These international students will be the future leaders in their respective countries, and many have overcome great obstacles to pursue their degrees. They experience the stress of rigorous study and the isolation that comes from lack of community.
Goal: We seek to connect students with the local church, with one another and with Christ
1) Connect to the local church and one another (Community through Hospitality)
We seek to connect students to the local church, Christ Church Stellenbosch where I serve on the pastoral staff. It has been a great joy to open our home to these international students, to engage with them, hear their stories and share with them the good news of the gospel. These students are far away from home and they value the chance to experience local hospitality. Relationships are built over shared meals, friendships are formed, and the gospel is shared. We then invite these students to Christ Church Stellenbosch.
2) We share God’s Story through story telling (International Story Group)
Those coming from traditional cultures, even the highly educated, learn their identity, history and values through stories. This approach of absorbing and processing new information through stories is hard wired in traditional cultures, and this fundamental communication device has been overlooked by many non-African organizations. This is an insight that we gained during our 15 years of ministry in Malawi and South Africa.
God gave us a book of stories but if we give these students bits and pieces of the gospel striped from its story, the grand narrative of God’s work in this world will not speak to their heart language.
The International Story Group meets weekly on the campus of the University of Stellenbosch and has students from a dozen different countries and four different continents. This glorious microcosm of the multi-ethnic kingdom reflects the missionary heart of God. We teach Kingdom Biblical theology using the Bible’s own stories and the methodology is easily reproducible. Presenting the gospel in the context of the over-arching Biblical story enables students to discover Biblical truth and discern God’s will through creative question asking and facilitated group discussion.
In order to communicate the truths of the God’s work in this world, I created a video library of many of the great stories of the Bible. These videos serve two purposes – they communicate the story of the gospel, and they serve as teaching examples for students as they learn to be presenters.