“Bibles Will Always Be Needed”

Gospel Preaching Made Easier Through Bible Distribution

Preaching the gospel can be hard. But it’s even harder without access to the Bible.

Theodore Robertson and Mario Maneville faithfully serve their church and community in one of the most broken and dangerous neighborhoods of Cape Town. They and their church seek to faithfully serve the gospel where the light of Christ is desperately needed, but that effort is made more difficult by the lack of Bibles accessible to their church.

By God’s grace, Crossway has provided Theodore and Mario’s church with Bibles for their congregation and community through the One Million Bibles Initiative. Recently we talked with Mario and Theodore and asked them to share about the challenges their community faces and how gospel light is permeating that darkness.

What are some of the challenges you face as a community?

Theodore: Our community is infested with gangs and poverty, and we have a huge number of people who are unemployed. I think most of the youth, the teenagers in our community, are on crystal meth and other drugs. And there are a lot of teenage pregnancies that occur in our community, largely because there aren’t positive role models for these kids. I think our youths and teenagers ultimately are exposed to these things just to make a living for themselves.

Personally, I also grew up in this community of Bellville South and I began to roam the streets at the young age of nine. I started doing drugs then and at the age of 12 I got involved in a gang. By the age of 14 all of that landed me in prison. That was my life and all that I knew. Even though I grew up in a Christian family, I wandered off into my own way, in and out of prison, doing drugs, leading gangs, and all the while hearing a sort of gospel preached by street preachers in Bellville South. This is a common thing in our community, to see people gather to hear someone talk about God but not really acknowledging their need for salvation.

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How have you seen local preachers and teachers address these challenges?

Mario: I remember one guy who was preaching, and he would ask the question, “What is the gospel?” Those listening knew the answer from others who had come before him: “It is good news.” But then he would ask, “What is good news to a poor person?” He taught that the poor person can be rich. Or, “What is good news to an unemployed guy?” It’s that he can be employed. “What is good news to a sick person?” It’s that he can be healed. But of course, we know that the reality is that Jesus Christ saved us from our sins and offers us a relationship with God. That was completely missed when this guy preached. Repentance was completely out of the picture. It was all about God giving us our best life now and giving us what we want. With this view, God becomes a servant to us for what we desire. If we do some good stuff and live a good life, he’ll give us everything we want.

So you don’t get a clear gospel being presented in our communities. Most of the churches around here make much of the words that come from the pastor. There are loads of pastors who want to be like apostles and prophets. Everybody wants to prophesy and give you a word from the Lord, but nobody’s opening up the Bible. That’s the problem that we have today. And because the Bible is treated like that, it is not seen as something precious.

How has your church responded to these challenges?

Theodore: We are the only Reformed church in this community, and I think we are very visible to the people living here. We’ve made efforts to reach out through street preaching and personal evangelism. One of our key ministries is doing funerals for those in this community. We also provide a kids program that’s offered five days a week for young people in the community. At the other end of the age spectrum we have an elderly program which happens on Tuesdays. Everything about these programs is gospel driven—they all get to spend time sitting under the preaching of God’s Word. Additionally, on Fridays I’ve started an addiction support group.

I think these activities are impacting our community because there are a lot of members in our church that come from backgrounds of gangsterism, drugs, prostitution, and there are even some of them that came from Islam. And I think we as a church are known in this community as people who stand on the Word of God and that the Word is the highest authority. They know that we are a sound doctrine church, a Christ-centered church, and we love the Word of God. Everything that we do in church is based on the Word of God, so I think and hope that is how people know us in the community.

How has receiving study Bibles through the One Million Bibles Initiative supported both your church and your community?

Mario: We have groups both for the church and the community in the middle of the week where we take a deeper look at the text from the sermon that was preached on Sunday. We ask worldview questions and questions that were not answered in the preaching. These study Bibles help with those kinds of gatherings. We’ve seen our church grow tremendously when it comes to them now having access to a study Bible.

These Bibles have also been a blessing to the pastors in nearby churches who we’ve given them to. Many of them don’t have a theological education so they know nothing about expository preaching. Nobody has taught them how to exegete the text, but now they’ve got these study notes that tell them about the text and it gives them a more structured and accurate way to preach from the Bible.

Theodore: Our people, because they now have their own Bibles—and they are good study Bibles—I think they love the Word. I think people receiving a Bible in our context, the same context where we grew up, are so grateful because there are people that, when we have given the Bibles out, this is the first time in their lives they are receiving a Bible. They’re so grateful to now be able to hold up a Bible and say, “This is my Bible.”

During the distribution, we made sure that all the members of our church received a Bible first. But there were extra Bibles after that distribution that we could give to others in the community who are not members of our church. And when we gave them the Bibles we told them we were going to hold them accountable. For example, we are starting to read through the Gospel of John and are regularly coming together to meet and talk about what we have read and what we understand from it.

Could you speak to the remaining need for Bibles in your community and throughout South Africa?

Mario: Bibles will always be needed. Always. Yes, there’s technology, which is a good thing, but in our region, I think a physical Bible with pages in it is so needed. It’s easier to sell technology because it’s something that you can use for anything, including reading the Bible, but it has lots of distractions. Having a Bible in your house, it’s not just that the Bible is there, but it’s an offer of hope.

God uses his Word and he speaks to people through it and he saves them. So the work that you are doing, this missional work of spreading the Word of God, it’s Habakkuk 2:14 lived out: “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” And that’s what we do when we distribute Bibles because God uses it for his glory. And when they open the Bible, what do they read? They are reading the knowledge of the glory of the Lord.

Theodore and Mario’s church is one of many that has received ESV Bibles through the One Million Bibles Initiative. By God’s grace, donors to Crossway have made it possible for those who may have never had a Bible of their own to receive one for the first time!

Join us as we seek to finish this initiative by December 31, 2024, by completing the support needed to distribute one million Bibles to believers in need around the world. A gift of $40 will support the printing and distribution of 10 Bibles. Would you consider joining us today in an effort to provide Bibles to those in need so that pastors like Theodore and Mario would be able to provide Bibles to everyone in their congregations?