The River of Life Church congregation is living up to its theme of transformation this year, going fully multi-media in its services. Parishioners even send in prayer requests by SMS and Facebook.
The River of Life Church congregation is living up to its theme of transformation this year, going fully multi-media in its services. Parishioners even send in prayer requests by SMS and Facebook.
River of Life is a charismatic church on Hill Street headed by a man known as Pastor John and Executive Pastor Debbie Sloane. They started the journey with this branch of the Assembly of God denomination 15 years ago, when they moved to Grahamstown.
Over the years the church has continued to grow. Its awareness of modern technology and use of media such as Facebook, SMSing prayer requests and the focus on graphically enhanced church news bulletins, are what keeps the church real and relevant to hundreds of members, mostly Rhodes University students.
However, it still manages to stay multi-generational in its focus and provides fun-filled activities with different ministries such as Rivers Kidz and active Life/Connect Groups for young people.
Pastor John sat down with Grocott's Mail recently to explain what makes the church work. He said it was their lively praise and worship, exhilarating music and powerful communication of God’s word that “gets the church going wild”.
Leigh Smit leads the highly creative multimedia ministry of the church and is essentially focused on enhancing the church’s up-to-date, modern image.
“The importance of having a good worship team is ensuring good music and a powerful service filled with energy, life and fun, Smit said.
They even invite the congregation to send in prayer requests to the church via SMS and Facebook. Requests are received daily and are immediately circulated among members of the congregation.
This is yet another way it tries to integrate the family within the River of Life Church through the use of social media. Then, during Sunday services, recipients often testify to their belief that the prayers were answered.
The multimedia team is energetic and creative, designing River News, ministry promotions, and graphic slide shows during services as well as the multimedia presentations for the different ministry teams.
The Church’s focus on keeping in touch with technological features can be linked to what draws more and more Rhodes University students to River of Life every Sunday morning and evening.
However, Debbie also successfully runs good, old-fashioned courses on beading and cooking, as well as a service to provide domestic workers for the community.
“The church is in transition and the next generation is to be inspired, John said. I always think about how the future generation will run the church in coming years.
The combination of vision and energy in the couple clearly show why this church is bursting at the seams.
