Who We Are
El Shaddai is a Hebrew name for God, which can be translated as “God Almighty” or “the all-sufficient God”. It expresses an important part of our understanding of the God we worship and whose Kingdom purposes we’re committed to.
Our journey together as a “local church” started in November 1993, led by Ken & Ann Turner. We’re in Durbanville - a suburb in the northern reaches of the city of Cape Town.
What are our shared vision & values?
We have a clear picture of the dynamics of church life
The “arrowhead” metaphor below expresses simply how we see all of the activities & ministries that make up our church life fit & work together to develop three important discipleship characteristics in us:
1. Family, relationships, community & accountability
2. Army, training, teaching, celebration, refreshing, belonging to the whole
3. Apostolic Mission, cutting, impacting, forward-thrusting into the world together to make a Kingdom difference
We have a clear mandate
We believe that God has planted us here in Durbanville for a purpose and that He wants us to be a part of re-establishing His redemptive purposes for our geographical area.
(Click here to download a document we put together in February 2008 which expresses in detail what we believe to be our place and role as a local church specifically in relation to Durbanville.)
In essence, the 3 “keys” of our mandate which identify what happens at El Shaddai Christian Church are:
• Refresh & Restore: people come in and are refreshed and restored by community, worship and preaching.
• Equip: people are equipped to be disciples with a Kingdom outlook
• Send Out: people are sent out with no less a calling than to help bring about a Kingdom of God revolution on earth!
We work out this mandate or purpose in the following ways:
We have a clear mission (assignment, task, job)
… for people to be Born Again, full of the Holy Spirit & energetic disciples of Jesus Christ who impact society with the Kingdom (rule) of God. The disciples we’re called to raise should have the characteristics and value-system reflected in Acts 2:42-47.
We have a clear vision (inheritance, the land we are called to take)
1. To be a New Testament cell-based church that grows by renewing & restoring people, equipping leaders, planting or multiplying cells and sending people out to transform their workplaces, the community & nations with the Gospel of the Kingdom.
2. To be a base church that facilitates and supplies Kingdom work beyond ourselves.
3. To plant self governing, self propagating cell churches anywhere in the world as the Lord directs & thus spreading the Gospel to the ends of the earth.
We have some essential core values
… which are fixed beliefs and convictions that we will not compromise. They are principles that define us, unify us and underpin the ways we work out our Godly mandate, mission & vision. These qualities will ensure that we prevail as a church across generations. So, we seek to make this list basic to your life and the life of this church:
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1. Prayer 2. Praise & worship 3. Signs & wonders 4. Anointed teaching 5. Servanthood 6. Community 7. Giving |
8. Individual Calling 9. Personal Maturity 10. Reaching Out 11. Marriage 12. Family 13. Local Church 14. Team Ministry |
15. Evangelism 16. Authority 17. Sending Church 18. Resource Church 19. Wider body of Christ 20. Apostolic leadership 21. Fathering |
Click here to download a full and proper explanation of each of these important values.
So how practically does all of this get expressed?
We “do church” at 3 levels:
1.
In its simplest form, “church” happens in groups of 2’s and 3’s – whether discipling each other regularly with the basics of Kingdom “DNA”, or fathering and mentoring each other at an individual level. We also believe that small groups of believers reaching out in relational ways to their family, friends and colleagues is the most effective form of evangelism.
2.
However, the full, rich and effective life of a church community cannot be lived out only in disconnected groups of 2 or 3 individuals. Therefore ESCC at its core is built around cells – groups of usually about 8 to 12 people who meet together regularly and function as a spiritual family to each other.
3.
That’s not all though! For church to be an effective “army” also, we need to combine the giftings and resources of all our cells. We can do more together than we can do apart. That is why we meet corporately (on Sundays and at other times) for regular worship and 5-fold ministry equipping for our Kingdom calling as a church and as individuals. Corporately we are also able to spearhead and resource various outward-focused ministries.
This is practically how we believe can help establish God’s Kingdom on earth and be a part of impacting all the domains of life.