Honey from the Rock: Principles of integral mission learnt from beekeeping development in the uMfolozi area of South Africa

Abstract

In many parts of South Africa, mission work is being done in communities living in desperate poverty. There is a great need for integral mission, bringing word and deed together in the proclamation of the gospel to equip Christians to have hope and engage in the fullness of community life to become responsible Christian stewards in the midst of a broken world. This article evaluates a relatively successful poverty alleviation project as an example of an integral mission project that the researcher initiated in 2016 in Northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. In order to analyse the context, measure, manage and share the progress of the project, an app called ‘The Impact app’ was developed and used to collect data. The empirical research in this article comes from data collected over a period of four years primarily from this app and other sources. The main system structure that the researcher used for this integral project is called ‘Franchising as Mission’. It takes the best attributes of primary and secondary coops yet, enables governance and a fair share in the value chain. Poverty alleviation and gospel proclamation have been integrated in the whole project. Therefore, this entire project was regarded as Evangelical Christian Integral Mission as described in the Lausanne Covenant and elaborated on by Melba Padilla Maggay. It is these three core attributes that have led to a 92% higher uptake to that envisaged (Figure 14). This article hopes to point out what integral mission looks like in practice.