WeeklySA_AdminREVIVAL: At its 65th anniversary, the historic Soweto congregation celebrated a legacy of faith and resistance — and confronted the materialism threatening the Church’s prophetic mission…
By Ido Lekota
When Soweto’s Dube Methodist Church celebrated its 65th anniversary recently, it marked far more than the passage of time. The Jubilee became a living parable of joy and conviction — a reminder that faith can be both celebration and struggle. Both fragrance and fire.
The air was alive with song, laughter and prayer as congregants gave thanks for a legacy reaching back to the years when churches offered sanctuary from apartheid’s brutality. Yet beneath the jubilation lay a deeper purpose: this was also a revival, a recommitment to Methodism as a torch of justice in the continuing pursuit of a South Africa grounded in equality and faith in a just God.
The story of Methodism in South Africa is inseparable from the country’s liberation history. In 1912, the South African Native National Congress — later renamed the African National Congress — was founded at the Waaihoek Wesleyan Church in Bloemfontein. The setting carried profound symbolism. The church offered a trusted gathering place imbued with moral authority at a time when black political organisation was constrained by an oppressive state.
We must not shout about being born again, but allow those who interact with us to see by our deeds that we are indeed of God…
By meeting in a Methodist sanctuary, the founders affirmed that liberation was not only a political undertaking but also a moral and spiritual one: a struggle rooted in the belief that every person bears the image of God. Leaders such as John Langalibalele Dube, Pixley ka Isaka Seme, Sol Plaatje and Walter Rubusana carried that conviction into public life. Their faith was not ornamental; it nourished their leadership.
To serve God, they believed, was to serve the oppressed, while the Church was called to spread the fragrance of justice across a land scarred by inequality.
As apartheid tightened its grip, the Church’s witness deepened. Chief Albert Luthuli, a devout Methodist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, embodied servant leadership anchored in faith and moral courage. During those dark years, churches were not simply places of worship. They became fortresses of hope, beacons of justice and living testimony to a God of liberation.
It is against this background that the 65th Jubilee of Dube Methodist Church must be understood. Performers raised their voices and congregants danced in the aisles, but the celebration also confronted the challenges facing the Church today.
Guest speakers warned that creeping materialism was weakening its prophetic voice. Prosperity preaching and status-driven divisions risk turning the sanctuary into a marketplace of ambition instead of a home of service.
Young people, once drawn to the Church as a refuge, can feel alienated when they are measured by possessions rather than embraced through faith. An institution that nurtured resilience under oppression now faces the urgent task of renewing its mission of service to all.
Lay preacher Dr Noxolo Grootboom said the Church must again become a sanctuary for people in need and a place where love for one’s neighbour is made visible.
“Today, people are Christians only when they are in church, but outside they do not know or care whether their neighbour went to bed hungry,” she said. “We go to church for selfish reasons, waiting for God to bless us with material things, and then claim those things as a reward for being true believers. We flaunt those blessings without sharing with those in need — yet sharing is a basic tenet of Christianity.”
For Grootboom, the Jubilee offered an opportunity to honour the Church’s founding figures, including Jacob and Violet Godide and Simon and Ida Batana, who opened their homes for worship.
It also recalled the contribution of clergy including the Reverend John S Molope, founding superintendent the Reverend John Wallace, the Reverend EE Mahabane and the Reverend Levy Masombuka.
Through the Methodist commitment to social justice, these pioneers helped build the social capital Dube needed. As co-guest speaker the Reverend Sethunya Motlhodi explained, Dube was created by the apartheid government as a “black middle-class enclave”.
But the Methodist Church could not remain true to its calling without responding to poverty and need in the surrounding community. Its leaders therefore set out deliberately to build solidarity and a more equitable community life.
That spirit drew prominent residents into the Church’s life, among them Dr Nthato Motlana, Dr Sam Motsuenyane, Llewelyn Mehlomakhulu, and Ofentse and Hlehle Mosaka.
Motlhodi described the Jubilee as a revival. The congregation’s strength, the minister said, lay not in worldly status but in its God-given ability to become “the fragrance of God” — living witnesses to justice, humility and love.
Congregants were urged not to become “peddlers of a religion” that presents material possessions as the reward for faith.
“We should become the fragrance of God, which, like an expensive perfume, cannot be smelled by the wearer but by those who interact with them,” Motlhodi said.
“We must not shout about being born again, but allow those who interact with us to see by our deeds that we are indeed of God.”
That image gave the celebration its clearest message. The spirit of Methodism — with its emphasis on holiness, service and community — was rekindled as a torch that can still guide South Africa towards equality.
The Jubilee called the Church to return to Wesleyan holiness, restore the sanctuary as a home for young people, rebuild its prophetic witness and invest anew in community upliftment.
Its mission, the gathering suggested, is not nostalgia but renewal: to stand again with the marginalised, speak truth to power and embody the fragrance of a just God in a fractured society.
The continuity is striking. In 1912, a Methodist sanctuary hosted the founding of the liberation movement that became the ANC, grounding political struggle in moral conviction. During the 1970s and 1980s, churches offered sanctuary and prophetic resistance in the face of brutal repression. In the 1990s, they helped shape reconciliation and nation-building.
Today, the Church confronts a different but no less serious challenge: reclaiming moral authority in a democracy disfigured by inequality, corruption and social fragmentation.
History, the Jubilee reminded congregants, is not a museum piece but a mission. The Church must choose anew whether it will accommodate power or stand with the marginalised. To be “One and Undivided” is more than a slogan; it is a call to embody God’s justice in every generation.
The 65th Jubilee of Dube Methodist Church was therefore both celebration and critique, memory and mission. It affirmed that the Church played a foundational role in liberation — and that its future relevance depends on reviving servant leadership.
The joy of the occasion was not escapism but renewal: a declaration that faith still matters, that Methodism still carries a torch and that believers can still become the fragrance of justice in a wounded land.
In the songs, prayers and testimonies were echoes of John Dube, Sol Plaatje, Albert Luthuli and countless others who believed that serving God meant serving the oppressed.
The Jubilee brought that legacy to life again, reminding the Church that its mission is unfinished — and that its fragrance must once more fill South Africa with hope.
Ido Lekota is a veteran journalist and political commentator
