METHODIST CHURCH OF SA
Churches in Alberton

All are invited to join us for this special time of worship & fellowship! There is also an Infant’s Chapel specifically for moms and dads with babies in arms. Methodism was introduced to South Africa by British soldiers stationed at the Cape, and the first missionary was appointed in response to an appeal from their leader, Sergeant John Kendrick. Before long he left Cape Town and settled among a group of Namaqua people at Lily Fountain in the Kamiesberg, about five hundred kilometres to the north. Societies were also established at Stellenbosch, Robertson and throughout the Cape Peninsula. In 1834, William Boyce published his Xhosa grammar in which he explained the so-called euphonic concord which was critical to the understanding of the language. Pamla served for over forty years as an evangelist, a circuit superintendent and a member of Conference and is rightly regarded as the father of the African ministry. Later in the century, African and European causes were established in many of the small towns in the Free State, but the most significant work was on the Diamond Fields at Kimberley where the presence of labourers from all over Southern Africa provided a unique opportunity for evangelism. The mission to Natal was launched in 1842 when James Archbell arrived in Durban with a British force which had been sent to counter the Voortrekkers who had set up the Republic of Natalia. In the African work the most significant contribution was made by the Rev James Allison who resigned from the mission only three years after he arrived in Natal. Allison was an outstanding missionary who had begun his ministry in the Orange Free State and was sent by his colleagues to establish a mission in Swaziland. They settled at Indaleni, south of Pietermaritzburg, where he began industrial training and was winning converts from the surrounding tribes. In 1867 a number of them bought land at Driefontein, north-west of Ladysmith, and began a ministry of lay evangelism which opened the way for expansion into northern Natal. A few years later Allison’s protégés were the prime movers in the formation of Nzondelelo, an African Home Mission Society, which continues to support evangelists across Kwazulu-Natal to the present day. Several of them were received into the ministry during the visit of the Rev John Kilner in Natal was the springboard from which Methodism entered the Transvaal. To the north of Pretoria, Watkins penetrated into modern Zimbabwe which soon became an independent district, and south of the Limpopo missions were developed in the Waterberg, Soutpansberg and Sekhukuniland. The Church faced a major crisis as apartheid was implemented. Africans were not allowed to own land in the old Transvaal Republic and the missionaries had bought several farms to be used as mission settlements. This led to the formation of the Transvaal District, the acceptance of seventy five candidates for the African ministry and the decision to form a South African Conference. The grant from the British Church was reduced progressively and early in the Twentieth Century the South African Conference was the only church, other than the Dutch Reformed Church, to receive no financial aid from overseas. This placed severe constraints upon its missionary work, especially in times of commercial depression, but disaster was averted by the faithful giving of African members who supported their own ministers, and the generosity of better-off European donors. Between 1923 and 1928 two missionaries were stationed at Bukoba on the western shore of Lake Victoria, but the cost of this mission was greater than the available resources and the work was handed over to the German society which had operated there before the war. Similar institutions were established at Clarkebury (where Mandela had his primary education), and on other stations in the Transkei, Natal and the Orange Free State.