Celebrating and Sharing Gods Embracing Love in the world
Our Core Valyes
CARING
Being pastoral to each other
Companions in Christ
CONNECTING
Honor diversity
Integrated worship and fellowship
Community partnerships
CREATING OPPORTUNITIES
Spaces for spiritual growth
Our Story
The story of the Calvary Methodist Church begins with a vision and listening.
The story of the Calvary Methodist Church begins with a vision and a listening. In the late 1990s the Methodist Church leadership, based in Halfway House realised that the area around Richard’s Drive where the church was based, was getting industrialised and that there was a need to plant the church in a place that was growing and where the residents were.
It was on the first Sunday of Advent in December 1999, when, led by the children carrying a cross, the people called Methodist in Midrand walked across to the other side of the highway from Halfway House, where the quaint little church was, to carve a new beginning in the fast sprouting suburb of Vorna Valley.
The journey across to Vorna Valley took a break under the bridge under the highway, where the congregation stopped to have communion to break with the past, but to also gather strength for the rest of the journey.
The first service was held in a half-finished sanctuary. On the day Calvary Methodist Church was born founded on the belief in God revealed in Jesus Christ. The significance of the movement into the new church in spite of the church not being finished was to mark the fact that the church should move in accordance with God’s calendar, not the world’s calendar.
The Architecture of the Church:
The architecture of the church precinct is premised on the ideal and Christ’s embrace of all. The vision of Calvary is “Celebrating and Sharing God’s Embracing Love in the World”. The architecture of the church seeks to portray this embrace.
The sanctuary’s windows not only enable light to come in, but the windows enable the congregation to see the pain of the world during worship. It is to this world that we are sent to minister. We are welcomed into the sanctuary to breathe in so that we can go into the world and serve and minister as we breathe out. Throughout the service the congregation is to recognise the fact that “the world is our parish.”
At the door of the sanctuary a memorial tablet with these words from Ephesians 2:19 – 22
19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens] but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, 21 in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. 22 In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by] the Spirit.
This sets out the mission of the church to not only be the embodiment of indiscriminate welcome, but to ensure that those who have been welcomed continue to embrace the call to welcome others. Everyone is welcome at Calvary. And everyone means everyone.
At the head of the church is the unusual cross. This is the theology of the cross:
The cross is shaped to express God’s loving embrace of the world in the death of Jesus Christ. The left arm is raised higher and extends further than the right arm because it is the extension of the heart, reminding us that Jesus’s heart was given in obedience to God in his work of boundless loving. The left arm is also the arm of the outcast reminding us that Jesus came to raise the lowly and the poor. The shortened arm symbolises the powerful who are humbled and brought lower as prophesied by Mary in Luke 1: 51-53. In our land, for so long defined and wounded by exclusion and separation, the Embracing Cross of Christ is a sign of hope and healing. May God strengthen us to be a people of welcoming and healing embrace.
The church was named Calvary Methodist because it was discovered that there is a rock on the right of the building. It is upon this rock that a ten meter cross has been planted. The cross can be seen from a distance and sets the church as a place of hope that beckons to those who need a sanctuary – a place to rest and to recharge.
The chairs in the church are simple and practical. The idea was always that those who come to worship are not there to be comfortable, but they are called to comfort others. They come but for a moment to hear the calling upon their lives and then to go and live out that calling in the world. The church avoids the idea of “reserved” seating based on status or gender or movement – anyone can sit anywhere. No one is a stranger, and no one is above or below. All are children of God.
The road from the gate to the church building is untarred. This is to remind those entering the premises of the church that we are called to move slowly and gently. It is also a reminder that Calvary exists in a country where millions live and walk on dusty roads which are not tarred.
Ministers in chronological order:
- Alan Storey
- Alan Storey/Siviwe Waqu
- Brenda Timmer/Siviwe Waqu/Yvonne Ghavalas
- Siviwe Waqu/Yvonne Ghavalas/Pamela Mbombela
- Siviwe Waqu/Thembeka Cira/Yvonne Ghavalas
- Siviwe Waqu/Thembeka Cira
- Akhona Gxamza/Thembeka Cira
- Akhona Gxamza/Lieketseng Majela
“Weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning.”
Akhona Gxamza
Pastor`s Word
Dear friends,
It has been a while since I have checked in or shared with you. Like many of us, I have been immersed in the mess of grief and pain that has engulfed our community and the world. So many in our community and people known to me have lost loved ones. This pandemic is unrelenting, coming to us in waves of suffering and death. It steals our joy and keeps us in a place of fear. I don’t know when it will all end. Like sea waves, just as we think we have seen the worst, another wave rises in the horizon and threatens to engulf us.
