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Christian Employee Network

Used by Permission from the July/August 2004 issue of "Decision" magazine

No Longer Separate

by Kristen M. Burke

The doors hadn't opened yet, but a line was already forming outside the doors to the theater in a small South African town where Eric Eachus and some friends were showing "Mr. Texas," a World Wide Pictures, Inc. (WWP) film. It was the early 1960s, and although the apartheid government limited foreign influences, that didn't lessen South Africans' interest in films from the United States.

Apartheid (which means "separateness" in Afrikaans) dominated nearly every aspect of life in South Africa. The political system, first employed in the late 1940s, was based on the claim that complete separation was the only way to achieve peace between races. Black, white, "coloured" (those whose ancestry is some combination of black, white and Asian) and Indian people were forced to live in separate communities, attend separate schools, eat in separate restaurants and shop in separate stores.

The apartheid government also strictly controlled foreign visitors, including well-known evangelists like Billy Graham, who refused to preach at segregated meetings.

Although Billy Graham couldn't preach in South Africa, Eachus -- a second-generation Christian and a businessman -- was taking every opportunity to help the Gospel spread across his country.

For several years Eachus showed WWP films in movie halls, in town squares and at fairs. His young sons passed out handbills, inviting passersby to the showings. At the end of each film, Eachus gave an invitation to receive Christ.

"We took the films out long before Billy Graham came," Eachus said. "When he came in 1973 [for the South African Congress on Mission and Evangelism and two evangelistic rallies, which were the largest multi-racial gatherings in the nation's history], he already was known to the people."

In the following 40 years, God used the faithfulness of people like Eachus to spread the Gospel and to help South Africa move peacefully toward democracy. Eachus' own sons followed in his footsteps, serving with various Christian ministries in Cape Town and all over South Africa.

Come Together
When apartheid ended, Christians looked for ways to unify the Church and to proclaim the Gospel to a hurting country. They realized that they needed to come together and work to meet the spiritual and physical needs of South Africa.

Near Africa's southernmost point, in the seaside city of Cape Town, God moved His people to prayer and action.

Christians in Cape Town invited Franklin Graham to hold a Festival there in 1997. The Festival drew nearly 115,000 people, and more than 7,000 came forward at the invitation. But that was just the beginning.

As churches came together for the Cape Town Festival, they found that their shared commitment to the Gospel of Jesus Christ was more important than their denominational differences. This created an environment that fostered new ministries to meet the needs of the community.

"The Festival hasn't ended," said Stafford Peterson, overseer of the Full Gospel Church of God in Cape Town. "It's not something that happened in 1997 and ended in 1997. People are still talking about it."

Peterson served on the committee for the Cape Town Festival and other BGEA projects. Through his church he started a home for HIV/AIDS orphans. At the Cape Town Festival and the accompanying BGEA School of Evangelism, Peterson said, pastors and laypeople prayed together and saw what God would do when they forgot their stereotypes and lifted up Jesus Christ.

Eachus' son John runs the family linen company with his two brothers. But he also managed the stadium arrangements for the Festival and is part of a 20 million-strong prayer movement called "Transformation," which began in 2001 in Cape Town and has spread to each country in Africa. The Festival, John Eachus believes, was the start of a spiritual movement in Cape Town.

"There were more people praying together," John Eachus said. "Since then the churches have really come together. Different groups have met together to make a plan for the city and get the churches involved."

"All the great corporate prayer events happening in this city right now were birthed at the Festival," Peterson said, "because we prayed together, and got rid of our stereotypes and denominations and backgrounds. It gave rise to all of the other major events that took place in the city subsequent to the Festival."

But even before the 1997 Festival, the Christian community in Cape Town was working together to proclaim Christ.

Just a Pastor's Wife?
In 1993 Pastor John Thomas' church, King of Kings Center, applied for a radio license. They wanted a one-time license to broadcast for a few hours during a special event at the church. But for some reason they were granted a full-time license.

This caught the church by surprise, but they jumped at the opportunity to start a Christian radio station. Thomas asked church members to commit to helping with on-air presenting, administration and sound engineering. About 80 people applied to help, but no one knew how to create -- or run -- a radio station.

One Sunday afternoon, Thomas and his church elders were sorting through a pile of volunteer applications and other administrative papers. Thomas' wife, Avril, brought them some tea.

"If there's anything I can do," she said, "just let me know, because I'm sort of free."

As she remembers it, the men looked up, handed her 250 pieces of paper and asked her to sort them out, tell the volunteers what to do and organize the training.

"I started off as the waitress, and I ended up coordinating the station," she joked. "Up until this stage, I was just a pastor's wife with two little children. We had no money, so we couldn't employ anybody, and because I had the most time, I ended up getting involved, eventually becoming general manager. It was a God thing."

By Sept. 1, 1993, the newly-formed Cape Community FM (CCFM) station was on the air 19 hours a day -- even though it was staffed entirely with volunteers, most of whom had only two-and-a-half hours of training.

From the start, CCFM's phones were overwhelmed with calls from hurting and needy people. CCFM recruited more volunteers to answer phones and to pray with callers touched by the Gospel message.

As the station grew and the church recognized Cape Town's need for the Gospel, it was obvious that it would take more than one church to staff the station.

CCFM turned to other churches in Cape Town. They recruited and trained phone workers, on-air presenters, sound technicians and office staff from Cape Town's Christian community.

"We have 226 volunteers from all race groups, from all denominations, representing 69 different churches," Avril Thomas said. "It's been so wonderful to discover that we are Christians across the color, culture and denomination lines. We are presenting Jesus Christ. We say that if you're committed to that vision, you can join us -- we will find a place for you."

CCFM made inroads into the community, and the church and the CCFM staff noticed other community needs. Another project was born: the Living Hope Community Center. The center, which opened in 1999, runs a soup kitchen and offers basic job training and healthcare support to homeless and/or drug-addicted people, many of whom suffer from HIV/AIDS or tuberculosis. The center also offers programs for HIV/AIDS patients and evangelistic after-school programs for children that also teach hygiene and abstinence.

Today CCFM is a 24-hour-a-day station. It broadcasts an adapted form of "The Hour of Decision" called "Time to Decide," as well as other evangelistic and Christian growth programs. Volunteer "prayer friends" answer the prayer-line phones, using "The Billy Graham Christian Worker's Handbook" to address issues from salvation to divorce, drug abuse and suicide. Hundreds call for prayer each month, and dozens of people pray to receive Jesus Christ as Savior, just as they did at the movie theater about 40 years ago.

A Late Night
Eric Eachus still remembers the night that hundreds lined up outside the theater. He and his friends opened the doors, and the 500-600 seat theater filled quickly. More people waited outside. They showed the film, gave an invitation and emptied the theater. The next group filed in and they repeated the process. More people waited outside. They showed the film again. It was 1 a.m. before he left the theater.

Over the years, he saw lasting results from such efforts.

"We used to take these films and go around the country to these little towns," Eachus said. "We would show it night after night. Even today people in all these different towns say 'I was saved when you showed those pictures here.'"

And God is still calling South Africans like Eachus to action and working powerfully through His people as they do whatever they can to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

�2004 Billy Graham Evangelistic Association

Kristen M. Burke
Kristen M. Burke is an assistant editor at "Decision" magazine.