Gateway News volunteer reporter Neziswa Kanju talks to author and global mentor to mothers Jennny Carstens about recovering God’s original design for mothers in a broken world that rejects His order
In a world that is increasingly anti children and anti marriage, where women are told: “Prioritise you,” “Choose you,” “Focus on your career,” “You don’t need a man,“ the agenda of the enemy is clear. It is to cause division in marriages and to destroy families.
Divorce and abortion are no longer frowned upon but celebrated. More and more married couples are choosing to be childless as they buy into the narrative that children are a burden and a hindrance to an ambitious woman. Couples divorce within the first few years as they cannot handle the weight of expectations and confusion about what marriage should look like. Homemakers are seen as failures and are mocked for their choices.
It is in this social climate, this obvious war on God’s agenda, that Jenny and Cassie Carstens have chosen to provide an alternative — the original blueprint of how God intended for man and woman to live.
The Bible is very clear that a husband is the head of his wife and of his household and that the wife should submit to her husband. The Word of God instructs husbands to love their wives and for children to obey their parents. This is Kingdom order. Confusion and disorder results when we move away from God’s laws and ways. One look at the destruction and the chaos that exist in our world and it is evident that the we need family structures that bring order and direction.
Cassie founded the The World Needs a Father (TWNAF) movement as an answer to the confusion plaguing the global village. As the ministry grew and more men were waking up to who God has called them to be, it became apparent that their wives needed to be part of the movement as well. Husbands shared how they wished that their wives had access to the TWNAF material and training.
In 2015 Jenny joined TWNAF where she developed “The Mother Design” curriculum. “The Lord said I must create material and trainings for mothers as well. That is how the Mother Design was birthed. I travelled worldwide teaching in different countries, the Mother Design, to many many women.”
Today, she mentors mothers across the globe to align with God’s design for motherhood, serving alongside Cassie in the movement, which now has trainers in over 100 countries — helping families everywhere reflect Heaven’s design for life on earth. The Mother Design training usually runs concurrently with TWNAF Master Mentor training, but separate training is regularly held in countries with an active Mother Design network.
Jenny’s path of transformation by Jesus
Jenny’s path is a testament to the transforming power of Jesus Christ. She grew up in a secular home although her parents always sent their children to Sunday schools. She says: “They made sure that we would to go to Sunday school because they thought that was a good and right thing to do and a good thing for us, But they never attended church themselves.”
Here work through TWNAF is a realisation of what she has long believed would be her life’s work. Shortly after her radical conversion at a coffee bar meeting in Cape Town she felt a strong call to missions. “I did nursing with the idea that perhaps I could use this nursing as a way to do my mission work.”
“Soon after, in my first year, I met my husband and he was studying to be a pastor and I knew that I should put my missions work on hold. Once my children were grown and didn’t need me so much anymore, I was given the opportunity to start an NGO in the township where I lived out and practiced my missions calling.”
With over five decades in ministry and 41 years dedicated to marriage enrichment, Jenny has walked alongside countless families seeking restoration. Her years as a registered nurse at Stellenbosch Hospice — caring for terminally ill cancer and HIV/AIDS patients — deepened her compassion for the hurting and inspired her to establish Kuyasa, a ministry serving marginalised children in local townships and impacting more than 1 500 individuals weekly. Jenny led the organisation for 15 years.
Just as she was finalising her departure from Kuyasa, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. The daunting treatments that lay ahead required her to resign from all her work. “In the quiet, uncertain season that followed, I wondered what my future held. Was I retired? Or did God have another platform for me?”
A ‘divine summons’ to write Unleashing Heaven
At a public prayer meeting in Namibia, Cassie told the gathering that God has told him to help Jenny write her book. Jenny relates: “In an instant, every eye in the room turned to a very surprised me. The call was public, unequivocal, and deeply personal.
“For years, my husband had gently suggested that I should write a book for mothers, but I had always found a reason to put it aside. This time was different. This was not a suggestion — it was a divine summons to share the lessons God had painstakingly taught me through decades of joy, heartbreak, and ministry — lessons not just about motherhood, but about what it truly means to partner with God to bring the reality of His Kingdom into our homes.” Last year she published Unleashing Heaven as an extension of TWNAF.
Unleashing Heaven opens up a practical journey for married and solo mothers to find hope and harmony in a broken world. Motherhood was never meant to be lived in isolation or confusion. Yet, in today’s world of constant change and uncertainty, many mothers find themselves weary, anxious, and longing for direction. Unleashing Heaven invites the reader on a transformative journey — one that restores hope, renews identity, and brings harmony to the heart and home. Within its pages is practical wisdom for parenting, healing from emotional wounds, strengthening of a marriage, and aligning ones life with God’s beautiful design for womanhood and motherhood.
Jenny shares that as she began to write, God brought defining moments of her life to the surface, revealing them not just as memories, but as the foundational pillars of her book’s message.
She says” “The heartbreaking loss of our first two babies — one at 41 days old, from heart defects, the second stillborn — carved a deep understanding of the preciousness of life into my soul and forever defined the sacred privilege of motherhood for our three children who followed.
“Years later, welcoming our 15-year-old daughter Abongile into our family taught us so much about the wonder of adoption and the transformative power of unconditional love and security — a living picture of how God welcomes us into His family.
“I also saw with new clarity the impact of my own mother’s story. At 67 (I was then 45), she shared her lifelong secret of having given birth to twins as an unwed 19-year-old. Her struggles, her shame, and the heartache of giving them up for adoption, gave me a profound compassion for the plight of desperate mothers everywhere. And today, as a grandmother to children ranging from 16 years to three months, I am kept grounded in the real-world challenges of modern parenting.”
In Unleashing Heaven she outlines the role of a mother in shaping the next generation and cultivating an atmosphere for her family that brings Heaven to her home. This is about living out God’s design of Kingdom order for the family with the husband as head of the home. Jenny say in many homes wives assume this headship role. She says wives should take a step back and let their husbands fulfil their godly mandate as leaders of their families.
Growing up Jenny faced her own challenges at home. She longed for a closer bond with her mother, who she subsequently realised was plagued by her own fears and anxieties. Jenny vowed to have a different relationship with her own children.
Although she had committed to mother differently and have more connection with her children, she found herself struggling to connect with people in her life — particularly her husband. This disconnectedness with Cassie made it more difficult to have a close bond with her children.
“Because I never got a deep emotional connection from my mother I struggled to make natural connections. That was also a great need with my husband — desiring a deeper connection. If you don’t have that deep connection with your husband it’s difficult to transfer that to your children as well. So, that was something that I always worked on and knew that because it was never demonstrated to me it was a struggle.”
Jenny says that the Lord has redeemed the area of connection with her husband and now she enjoys a closer bond with her daughters and son. God has added to their family by blessing them with three sons-in-law and a daughter-in-law, all of whom she is close to.
She says: “Looking back, I can really say I have a special connection with my daughters, with my son, with my sons-in-law and my new-daughter-in law — super connection that I could be the mother that I had always wanted to be. That was the one thing growing up — that was a desire and great need. My mother loved us, she worked hard, she did everything that a mother must do but that deep personal connection was not there, which I always wanted.”
As we will be celebrating mothers all over the world this weekend let us reflect on what it is to be a mother and a wife in God’s kingdom and how we can bring Heaven into our homes. There is an African saying: It takes a village to raise a child. May the Church take up this cause, to be fathers and mothers to young people that God brings into our spheres of influence.
If we do not look out for our youth, let us not be surprised at the consequences and the continuation of lawlessness in our world. As another African proverb warns: The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel it’s warmth!
TWNAF equips the village to carry out the mission of raising young men and women in a Kingdom culture and atmosphere that brings Heaven into homes. The vision of TWNAF is counter-cultural and cannot be accomplished by the men alone. At the core of the mission is to provide tools to help mothers and wives understand the unique keys they hold to build strong marriages and a firm, loving foundation for the family.
Shalom!
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