David had a slingshot. Moses had a staff. We have a run-down old Bible college and a story twenty-five years in the making.
David had a slingshot. Moses had a staff. The disciples had their nets. Most times, we don’t get to choose what’s placed in our hands, we just get to choose what to do with it next.
As we prepare to launch Nova Church in Cape Town on Sunday, 6 September, I’ve found myself reflecting on what God has put in our hands, and perhaps more than anything, on the strange, beautiful, decades in the making choreography of our story. The highlights, the lowlights, and all the mysterious moments in between.
When I look back now, I can see that God was doing something long before we had any idea what it was… making all things new, even when (especially when) we couldn’t perceive it.
Strange Dreams in a Far-Off Land
More than thirty years ago, on opposite sides of the country and in completely different chapters of our lives, Terran and I were finding God in very different ways. His journey was radical, sudden and born out of tragedy. Mine was quieter, slower and softer. But both were holy, and both left us ruined in the best possible way.
Twenty-five years ago, we were both at a church conference in Bloemfontein, where we felt freshly commissioned to spend our lives sharing the good news that had completely upended our own.
We barely knew each other, but while we were there, I had a strange dream… Terran was standing at the front of a crowded chapel, waiting for a bride who never arrived. He was weeping, and in the dream, I confidently walked up from the crowd and held him.
I told nobody about it. I was nineteen and had no idea what to make of such a strange dream about a guy I hardly knew.
Two years later, I walked down an aisle of beach sand towards that same weeping man. Completely in love and surrounded by people we loved, we both wept tears of joy. I tucked that strange dream away, fairly certain I’d simply eaten too much pizza the night before.
Seventeen years ago, with our firstborn on my hip and at the tail end of a whirlwind trip through America, we wandered into a church that felt like home. As the congregation sang Oh How He Loves Us, we both started weeping, freshly undone by the love of God and freshly broken for those who spend their whole lives not knowing that this love exists.
“I can see this kind of church in Constantia,” I whispered.
“I’ve been thinking exactly the same thing,” Terran replied.
Within a year, we’d put our hands up to plant a congregation in the Constantiaberg valley, and what followed was one of the happiest, fullest seasons of our lives. Beautiful people, beautiful friendships and beautiful babies. Our second-born, Fynn, arrived within weeks of us launching, and Ivy came shortly after we planted a second congregation over the mountain in the South Peninsula.
Life was full, but it was fruitful. We never anticipated that God might have other seasons up his sleeve!
Breaking and Rebuilding
Pity the vine that doesn’t understand pruning.
For a while, it felt as though everything we touched flourished. People were finding Jesus, the churches were growing, and our family was growing just as quickly, with five wonderful children arriving in six impossibly short years. Life was amazing!
And then it wasn’t.
What followed is difficult to describe unless you’ve lived through it. The things that had always worked no longer worked. Our best strategies, efforts, die-hard optimism, desperate prayers and white knuckled grit just couldn’t untangle the complexities we found ourselves in.
There is a particular kind of sorrow that comes when you are doing everything you know to do, holding on with both hands, and yet everything still seems to be coming apart at the seams.
With a baby on each hip and three little ones besides, I watched my unstoppable husband stop. Not gracefully. More like a high-speed car hitting a brick wall.
Nobody was the villain. Nobody had failed us. God was simply bringing us to our knees.
Terran wept, and I held him, just as I had in that strange dream from over a decade earlier.
Suffering has a way of stripping away our certainties about who we are and where we belong. While we still loved the community we’d spent almost twenty years in, we felt God calling us out. Like an eagle that makes its nest uncomfortable so that its young will learn to fly, we stumbled out of the only nest we’d ever really known.
And then we free fell, just as the pandemic arrived.
Our personal apocalypse coincided with the world’s. We found ourselves in a half-renovated house, sleeping on a sea of mattresses, carrying far more questions than answers.
At that point, we were uncertain about almost everything. Except one thing: we would never, ever, ever lead a church again.
We hadn’t lost our faith. We hadn’t lost our love for Jesus. We hadn’t even lost our love for His Bride. We’d just lost our confidence in being anywhere near the bridal party!
And yet, even in that wilderness, God carried us. Through miraculous provision, unexpected opportunities and beautiful friendships. He looked after us so tenderly and faithfully.
Needing to lean on Him for one’s daily bread isn’t a posture I naturally relish, but it became a sweet balm for a weary, prone-to-self-reliance soul like mine. To know that in the worst of storms, when we have nothing to offer, we are held, and that He is always enough.
Dreaming Again
Then, in the middle of 2021, someone else had a dream.
Jess dreamt that we would lead the church they were leading, but leaving soon. We laughed and explained why we were most definitely not the people they were looking for.
But a few months later, we found ourselves falling in love with this beautiful, barefoot, slightly messy haired community of worshippers. A group that looked, in many ways, as unravelled as we felt!
Terran agreed to help temporarily. Just six months, just until they found a new leader.
Six months turned into four sweet, redemptive years.
Not because we were building something impressive, but because God was rebuilding us. Gently and patiently, restoring what we thought had been irreparably broken and healing what had been bruised. And as He restored us, the community grew too.
Once again, we wondered if this might be our forever home.
Then came another dream, this time about labour and a baby that needed to be born. By this point, I had learned to pay attention to the dreams that felt like more than dreams. I knew this one was a warning: don’t ignore the contractions. Stand with your man. Push when it’s time.
And suddenly, we realised we were expecting twins again. Not literally, but a new church community, and a new family of churches.
The contractions came quickly. Within months, our leadership team had reached the same conclusion: what God was doing wasn’t dividing His Church. He was multiplying it.
Six months later, after a thoughtful and measured process, it was time to hand over this beautiful church family we loved and birth two new babies.
Miracles on Miracles
We had never felt more certain, despite so much uncertainty.
God was calling us to step out of the boat and follow Him into deeper waters, but we had almost no idea where He was leading us, how it would work or who would come.
In late October 2025, we were joyfully prayed out of the church we had grown to love fiercely. We left leaping, not weeping, into the unknown.
Certain of only one thing: God was with us, just as surely as He would remain with the church we were leaving.
We named this new church Nova, a burst of new life and light, a new star.
Where would we meet? We had no idea. Observatory? Newlands? Muizenberg?
Through no clever planning on our part, and a collection of prayers prayed through our sweet community group, God tipped the first domino.
And then, boy did they fall!
Within days, a series of events unfolded that ultimately led to the most remarkable piece of land in Constantia being purchased for Nova, paid in full and already zoned for church.
It’s an old Bible college. Run down, but rich in legacy and possibility.
We would have started Nova anywhere God opened a door for us. But as it turns out, this property sits right next to a suburb called Nova Constantia.
The timing, provision, name… you just can’t make this stuff up!
Even now, it’s difficult to overstate how many things had to align for this miracle to happen. The timing, the people, the conversations that had to happen when they did.
It feels like a centuries in the making constellation – aligning for such a time as this.
Domino after domino after domino fell.
And Suddenly, Here We Are.
Back where our story began all those decades ago…
Twenty-three years after first seeing my future husband weeping for this bride that was never his in a strange dream, 17 years after weeping together in a church in Atlanta, and 8 years after leaving this beautiful valley broken and battle worn, God was sending us back to her. After all the joy, heartbreak, harvests and hard pruning seasons, we’re back where it all started.
Still carrying the same message.
Still believing the same truth.
Still longing to tell the world: Oh, how He loves you!
Like David’s slingshot, and Moses’ staff: we see this beautiful piece of land as a tool. A thing entrusted into our hands for a season. To steward well: for the good of all people, to the glory of God, who is the bridegroom, returning soon for His bride.
This is our story so far. We sense it’s just getting started. Feel free to follow along on our journey, and join us in person from September. If you’re new to the area, or not currently in a church family, what if God has set all of this up – all of the dominoes, decades in the making – just for you?
