A LETTER TO THE CHURCH, FROM CONCERNED CHRISTIANS
(Accompanying the document “Urgent Plea to the Leadership of Kwasizabantu Mission”)
South Africa, 19 February 2000
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ
This is an open letter to inform and alert the wider Body of Christ in South Africa and abroad as to some of the unbiblical and controversial aspects of the Kwasizabantu Mission (KSB) in KwaZulu/Natal.
It is also a plea to the leadership of KSB to please listen, repent and change.
It comes from a wide group of spiritual leaders from various churches, inside and outside of South Africa, who are concerned about the Mission and concerned about the Christian Church at large.
It also comes on behalf of a significant number of sincere and committed Christians who have left KSB and/or have been excommunicated.
The reason we send this letter to you, who are a part of the Church in South Africa, and abroad, is motivated by our understanding of the Matthew 18 exhortation to “tell it to the church.” When attempts to reason and reconcile with an erring brother have failed, Jesus instructs us to inform the whole church.
This is the final measure to get through to a brother to encourage him to receive and respond to correction.
Since KSB began some thirty years ago, many Christians have joined it as laity and others as co-workers, only to have discovered attitudes, trends, teaching and policies at the Mission which are unbiblical and essentially sectarian in nature.
Efforts for internal reform have been systematically rejected and people who raised questions, have been rejected and shunned.
In 1977 the international leadership of YWAM were brought in as neutral and unbiased mediators, in a desperate attempt to bring correction and reconciliation in the Mission. Nothing changed, and in fact, negative tendencies became more harsh and extreme.
Simultaneously, the Mission leadership succeeded in developing a highly insulating veil of secrecy to evade questioning and critique by the Christian community with which it desired to be in good standing.
Since then, there have been many individual and small group efforts, from within and from outside KSB, aimed at reform of unscriptural policies which have typically stemmed from the KSB leadership’s secret and clandestine activities and excessive authoritarianism.
In the Body of Christ, there is a natural inflowing and outflowing of people among groups and denominations. Kwa Sizabantu is not unique in this regard. While this is true, this letter is intended to communicate the gravity of specific problems which have led to peculiar crises surrounding the Mission. This relates to issues pertaining to hundreds of people in South Africa and internationally, who have left the Mission in the past few years.
We come to you, brothers and sisters, because those who have left have also experienced persecution by the Mission after their departure. The specific policies of the KSB leadership, which are aimed at persecution of those who have broken with it, are also sadly linked to a complex public relations campaign which functions to attract naive people to alliance with its organization which claims to be experiencing unbroken revival for the last thirty years. This claim is central to the Mission’s belief system.
We would like to invite you to pray for discernment and to look at some evidence based on personal testimonies which, we hope, will shed more light on the inner-workings and tragic manifestations of Kwasizabantu Mission, as addressed in the attached “Urgent Plea to the Leadership of Kwasizabantu Mission.”
We would like to invite you now, to participate with us in our efforts to reach out to the Mission, to intercede in prayer for the leadership there, and to help us, as God would lead, to extend a hand of sympathy and support for the innocent people who have been victimized by a spiritual system which we have witnessed to have become an abusive system.
Spiritually abusive systems have been described as traps which are easy to enter because of their exterior spiritual attractiveness, but are simultaneously difficult to escape from. Please pray with us that the leadership of Kwasizabantu will take heed to the cries of those who have come to them to experience revival, but have experienced inconsistencies and deviation from Scripture and Christ’s love. This has tragically often lead to peoples’ trust and first love for Jesus being shipwrecked as well as negative spiritual trauma.
Please pray with us for those who are persecuted and afflicted by the Mission, so that error can be repented of, persecution stopped, and that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Name above all names, may not be sullied or defamed through continued error.
THE COMMITTEE REPRESENTING CONCERNED CHRISTIANS
(This document and attachments can also be viewed on the web at www.ksb-alert.com)