It began when I received a phone call from a colleague of mine. It was 1979 in Cape Town. I was pastoring an Assembly of God Church in Constantia. Derek Morphew said, ‘I’ve got this guy from the States, Lonnie Frisbee. He will be coming to the pastors’ meeting this morning and is free to speak at your Church at a mid-week meeting. I really recommend him. How about it?’ (As pastors, how often are our lives and our Churches changed by such a phone call or such an invitation?) I had never heard of this man but I trusted Derek, so I cautiously agreed and hastily ‘created’ a mid-week meeting, inviting those whom I could-a smallish group turned up.

Without returning to the states, the team, now numbering about 30, then travelled to South Africa for meetings in Johannesburg that were attended by 300 pastors during the day and over 2,000 people in open meetings at night. The news of what had happened in the Anglican churches in England had already travelled to South Africa, and there were many Anglicans there.

Inherent in understanding the relationship between the kingdom and the church is an understanding of the Christian life. This is the area where the theology of the kingdom affects us all personally and where our understanding or lack of understanding will have a profound effect on the everyday Christian experience. Many pastoral and counselling problems are the result of a distortion of the kingdom or an ignorance of the kingdom.

By Samuel Kisten

March 25, 1953 was the day I was born. My Hindu parents were first generation South African born East Indians, and I was their first child. Two sisters before me had died early in infancy. My mother, a devout Hindu, was now very concerned about my future.