About…

‘Two roads diverged in a wood, And I – I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference…’ (Robert Frost)

My name is Erroll, a proud South African, living in Port Elizabeth (Nelson Mandela Metro), happily married to Melanie, we have three married children and six grandsons (one more and we can field our own 7-a-side rugby team). I trained and worked as a chemical engineer, then attended a Theological College for four years to qualify for the pastorate, graduating with a BTh Hons. With my wife, a nursing sister by profession, we pastored five denominational churches over thirty eight years, including a ‘cell church.’ Sixteen years ago the Lord sovereignly engineered our exit from the institutional church and we started to facilitate organic house churches in our area – this has been the most satisfying, joyful time of our lives, following Jesus on ‘the road less traveled.’ To help clarify my understanding of the Church in the Bible and contemporary society, I completed a Master’s in Ecclesiology on ‘the re-incarnation of the Church in the twenty first century.’ Since then I have tried to keep up to date on all things theological and missiological. I am grateful also for the privilege of traveling quite widely and in so-doing observe the ‘Church’ first-hand on all the continents, save Antarctica. I hadn’t visited Oceania, but we were able to visit our kidz and grand-kidz in New Zealand (via Australia) for 6 weeks just before the Covid outbreak, so can cross off that part of the globe as well. Nice!

From my youth God gave me a missional heart, so today we facilitate organic house churches within our culture and cross-culturally. In ministry we reach out, in small ways, to the poor and young who make up approximately 80% of the world’s population. We network with a few other organic groups in our metro. I relate to traditional churches via friendships at two Ministers’ Fraternals in our city. I also have the privilege of walking a road with a few people in a mentoring relationship. Recently I have been asked to organize a monthly prayer gathering in our Metro, focusing on China, which I’ve been blessed to visit twice.

We are extremely grateful that our children and their families all follow Jesus as Lord  –  here in Port Elizabeth, Cape Town and Wellington New Zealand.

I’m essentially a ragamuffin believer apprenticed to and in love with JESUS. It’s primarily a life to be lived in him, as he lives in us. And of course all is of grace.

[As a matter of interest, in July of 2021 house church expert Wolfgang Simson indicated that there are currently at least 22.6 million house churches (house-based kingdom communities) worldwide with a total of approx. 300 million members. ‘They are, considering all internal and contextual factors, by far the most viral, adaptable and multipliable segment of Christ-followers globally. If their number continues to grow at a very realistic rate of 20% per year, they will reach a membership of more than 4 billion people within the next 30 years (Jesus tarrying) while most traditional systems are in overall decline.’ ]