The Moreletapark Congregation in Pretoria East is hosting a special national summit on February 25 and 26 to openly discuss controversial cultural and spiritual issues that are troubling Dutch Reformed Church communities in South Africa.
The summit is part of a journey that began last year when the large and well-known congregation considered breaking ties with the DRC because of differences over their stance on homosexual clergy and same-sex unions. After several meetings with DRC leaders last year the megachurch decided to remain part of the denomination, for now.
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Subsequently, the leaders of Moreletapark decided to organise a special summit to discuss some of the contentious issues with the broader DRC leadership community. According to notice published by Moraletpark about the summit, it perceives that the voice of the majority of members of the DRC is being silenced by a minority group that wants to drive a new, socially-acceptable, liberal agenda.
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The megachurch declared a month of prayer in late January and urged their members to pray for the special summit, listing a number of prayer points on their website. “Pray for the Holy Spirit to be present at the meeting and for church leaders that are filled with the Holy Spirit to set the tone for the meeting,” are some of the prayer points. “Pray for wisdom, discernment and that the Word of God will not be watered down.”
Pieter Breytenbach, chief operation officer of Moreleta Park congregation says the summit is of “utmost importance” as many church leaders within the denomination have pressing questions about the liberal agenda that is being pushed and how this affects the church. “We want to know what the implications of this new doctrine will be and how the church will move forward in this regard.”
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He says that decisions made during the summit will hopefully give church leaders that have another viewpoint a chance to openly discuss it. He urges all church leaders that are worried about the new liberal theology in churches to attend.
Some of the issues that will be discussed are:
– why the liberal agenda is pushed so strongly on various forums,
– why the Bible gets watered down to fit the narrative of the liberal agenda,
– the relevance of the Bible in these times and how the interpretation of it will affect the theology that is taught, and the confusion this new agenda will cause among Bible-believing Christians attending the church.
Tickets to the event are available at iTickets. For more information about the event e-mail: beraad@moreleta.co.za
I pray earnestly that the Moreleta NGK Summit will provide a strong lever to bring Christians mesmerised by the relativistic liberal agenda back to a strong allegiance to Jesus Christ, and His Word which will never pass away. This is a veyr important event. I hope Gateway News will give the outcome wide publicity.
And this was Paul’s prayer,
“…that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you maybe able to discern what is best and maybe pure and blameless until the Day of Messiah, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus our Messiah- to the glory and praise of God” Philippians 1:9
I think the biggest problem the church faces right now is interpretation of scripture. Having chatted to some, theologians hold the theory that the word homosexual does not appear in original texts which rules out many of the clobber texts used to justify (or not) the LGBTIQ people out there. We cannot deny that they exist. The question is do we exclude or include. Do we have terms and conditions on our welcome mat or are ALL truly welcome at the feet of Jesus. At least the DRC is wiling to engage in healthy dialog . That is the main issue at hand right now – interpretation.
and some good old common sense
I am praying that God will break through, and that the effect will flow over into other denominations of the Christian Church.
I have from the beginning said that this agenda has been forced on the majority of leadership in the DRC. In three years I have, through my work, met with about 400 ministers all over SA (which included other denominations). As far as the DRC is concerned, most ministers did not support the leadership’s stance. The method of choosing representation to the General Synod played a major role in these leaders’ voices not to be heard.
The DRC should take serious note, and this conference, that the problem they are facing stems from a flawed hermeneutics affecting their soteriology. As such the stance of the DRC as it stands today, is nothing less than blasphemous, as it negates the all sufficient work of Christ, Who, through His death, redeemed mankind from all sin.