At The Warehouse, we long to see a world marked by God’s peace and justice, a world which embodies goodness between all things, a world where there is restoration of all that has been broken. Yet it doesn’t take too much work to recognise that we are a long way away from this world. The present realities of injustice and inequality have their roots in centuries of domination and oppression; thus true healing will take intentionality and endurance. There are no quick fixes. And so the invitation is to build for the next 100 years – for a time that none of us will live to see.
What does this mean for our work? While part of our work is responding to short-term crises, for the remainder of it, a 100-year vision invites us to slow down, to understand some of the roots that are producing the symptoms that we are seeing, and to embark on the deep work of both addressing those roots and planting different seeds whose fruit will be the expression of the peace and justice of God in the world.
Recognising that at least part of the root system that we want to address has to do with inadequate or even problematic theologies, we work to nurture theologies that foster peace and liberation in young and upcoming leaders in churches. Spaces in which we do this include St John’s Leadership Academy, Volmoed Youth Leadership Training Programme, YWAM, Leadership in Urban Transformation, Ekasi Theologies, amongst others.
Our history and its legacies of spatial, economic and racial injustice mean that trauma – often continuous and intergenerational – runs deep in our country and its people, with significant implications for the sustainability of work towards collective healing and wholeness. Part of our work speaks to this, addressing issues of sustainability for pastors and their ministries in low economically-resourced areas, as well as running workshops equipping people to deal with grief, loss and continuous trauma, to ensure that their work and ministries operate with a trauma-informed lens.
We are convinced that churches are of central importance in this work of furthering the peace and justice of God. In light of this, we work with local congregations through various kinds of facilitated processes, supporting them in developing theologies that liberate and lead to practical action towards transformation in their contexts.
Systems of injustice and oppression have been in place for centuries. It is for this very reason that our work must be positioned for the long-term.
This is the vision we invite you to invest in…
