Dear Sisters and Brothers,

Welcome to our new and improved website!  It is my hope that you enjoy the site and will visit it regularly.  I am sure that this website will continue to grow and improve with time.  We regard this as a very important communication tool as well as an instrument for mission.

This is my first letter to you as General Secretary through this medium.  There will be many more to come in the coming months.  It is my hope that our conversations will develop and help us to grow together as we explore our faith together.  There are many challenges that face the world today and we as the church cannot continue to be silent whilst others determine the flow of things.  The website is one way, as the United Congregational Church of Southern Africa, we wish to facilitate ‘humanising conversations’.  We hope to create other communication avenues to enable us to talk with each other and therefore walk together.  One other thing we will be doing soon will be to re-launch the Congregational Chronicle, which is the UCCSA magazine.

It is our responsibility to keep this website exciting, informative and interesting.  Miss Kim Harris and Mr. Malusi Makalima will help us manage and update the website.  So it is our duty to supply them with information, news and interesting items.  We want to hear about the events and programmes taking place in your church, region or Synod so that we can paste them up on this site.

You will also note that this site has the UCCSA diary pasted on it.  This is to keep you informed of upcoming events so that you can be part of the life and witness of your church.  We have also put on the diary in here so as to encourage you to pray for the upcoming events.  There will in fact be a lot of denominational activities arranged to fulfil the UCCSA Vision Plan dubbed ‘In Christ there is a Future!’

Let me say a little more about the Vision Plan.  There has been concern over the past few years, that as the UCCSA we do not seem to be driven or even have a particular focus in what we do.  So at the beginning of this year we began a Visioning Process which involved commissioning a Bible Study process, consultations with different committees and bodies within the UCCSA.  The Visioning Process culminated in a Vision Workshop at The Kuruman Moffat Mission in August at which we develop the Vision Plan for the next three years.  This was very exciting, promising and fulfilling.  To see the church being of one mind, at prayer and together hopeful about her future was such a wonderful experience!  For a moment we put aside our usual bickering and scepticism and dreamt together of a future where Christ reigns in all creation.

The UCCSA Vision Plan therefore points the way of great things ahead for us as a Church.  I believe there are greater days ahead of us than there are behind.  I encourage you to study the vision plan and see how it can be popularised, translated into local situations as well as made into an exciting project of the Holy Spirit.

Ka lorato le ditumediso!

Moiseraele Prince Dibeela