The effectiveness of Sesheke Church’s transformational task : a practical theological perspective

Abstract

This research examines the effectiveness of the Sesheke Church’s transformational task from the inception of the task in 2007. Throughout the study the researcher seeks to answer the following questions: (1) what is the current church praxis in Sesheke area with regard to transformation as illustrated through a descriptive empirical investigation?, (2) what is the contribution of existing research to our understanding of the Sesheke Church’s transformational task, according to the interpretive task?, (3) what principles from Scripture can be normative guidelines to the church’s transformational task?, and (4) which guidelines through critical reflection of the pragmatic task will address the effectiveness of the church’s transformational task? In order to answer the foregoing questions, Osmer’s (2008) four tasks of practical theological interpretation have been employed. These are descriptive-empirical, interpretive, normative, and pragmatic tasks. The outcome of the descriptive-empirical task is that the Sesheke Church failed at its task and participants in the interviews gave several reasons for the failure. There were some transformational attempts by the church, but they could not be described as sufficient to transform the local community. The interpretive task shows, inter alia, that community transformation requires holistic deep change and the impetus for the change must come predominantly from within the local community itself. The hermeneutic research was done from a Reformational perspective whereby the Bible is believed to be inspired by the Holy Spirit according to 2 Timothy 3:16, and, therefore, accepted as the authoritative Word of God (De Klerk & De Wet, 2013:300; De Klerk & Van Rensburg, 2005:3). Therefore, the Sesheke Church should also understand, from Scripture, principles that can be normative guidelines to the transformational task. In the final pragmatic task the researcher proposed practical guidelines which were derived through critical reflection of the research findings. These guidelines address the effectiveness of the Sesheke Church’s transformational task. The researcher believes that the study will contribute to the discourse of practical theology with regard to church and community transformation from the unique context of the Sesheke Church and the effectiveness of their transformational task. Burns and Grove (2009:29) observe that by understanding the meaning of a phenomenon in its context, it becomes easier to understand phenomena in other similar contexts.