Mennonite Weekly Review

PHILIPSTOWN, South Africa — Sunlight streamed through gaping holes in the plastered bricks of Grace Community Church, haloing a black man with a wheelbarrow and a white woman with a shovel cleaning up debris from dismantled walls.

North American Mennonites and people from Philipstown, South Africa, work together to dismantle racism and build relationships as they renovate Grace Community Church. — Photo by Tim Lapp/MMN

The two came from communities separated by oceans — physical and political — to build the household of God, literally and spiritually.

Sixteen North Americans joined workers from Philipstown Oct. 7-19 to renovate the Grace Community Church building, one of the oldest structures in this town of 3,000 whose economy has plummeted after post-apartheid white flight to urban centers.

Neighbors of all colors stopped to gawk at blacks and whites shoulder-to-shoulder stripping walls, putting up ceilings, installing electricity and painting the sanctuary.

Aubrey Badula, foreman of the church’s building project, said: “Having our kin from North America with us was a huge value to our town that is still struggling to get out of apartheid. Our congregation and the townspeople can’t stop talking about it.”

However, the real work of dismantling dividing walls and building up God’s household is taking place as those who worked and worshiped together resume their daily lives.

Mennonites from Indiana and Oregon returned to their home congregations with new understandings about secularism, materialism and relationships. Philipstown South Africans are experiencing new ways of integrating across racial divides.

Phil Lindell Detweiler, who serves with Mennonite Mission Network in South Africa, helped coordinate the cross-cultural encounter in Philipstown.

“The members of the building team probably can’t begin to imagine how revolutionary it was for people of color to have white people live with them and treat them as equals,” Lindell Detweiler said.

“Just like the piano that plays constantly at Grace Community Church, laying a background for all that happens in worship, so race is that backdrop to all that we experienced in Philipstown.”