Our morning congregation in Durbanville recently had the incredible joy of welcoming Pro Deo Church into the family! We asked Milo Bridgens, who led the Pro Deo congregation, to share how he felt led to take this leap of faith, and Kevin Samuel, who leads our morning congregation meeting in Durbanville, to share a glimpse into this beautiful journey.
“Five years ago our family moved to Cape Town to plant a church. We started with a handful of people in our house and moved to a hotel conference room in less than a year. Fast forward to the COVID season, and our story changes a little. God added to our church family and we also made a few new friends on the way. One of them was another church called Pro Deo. When everyone was able to meet after COVID, our church merged with Pro Deo, and the couple that led the church felt that they needed to hand Pro Deo over to my wife and I as they felt God calling them to lead a church in Canada.
We encountered a lot of ups and downs, mostly with trying to find a venue to host Sunday services. You name it, we tried it. When we finally settled in a venue and thought things would be good, we began to feel that something was missing.
We needed something more, something that would bring new life and shift the trajectory of the church. We needed an apostolic voice into the church.
What we didn’t know was that God had already started setting things up before we started the plant 5 years ago. From the time we started looking for a house to stay in, we encountered people with a genuine love for all people. This was strange. They were way too friendly and way too real and man, did they love Jesus. We became friends with these people, and at our lowest point in our 5 years here, the Holy Spirit used ordinary saints from Joshua Generation Church (fondly called JoshGen) to come and pray for us and encourage us without us asking for it, or telling them what was going on.
I started meeting with Kevin Samuel, and it was unreal how easy it was to connect with him. He invited us to attend the Four12 leaders’ meeting in 2022.
During the worship time, I just stood still – crying nonstop. The chairs around me were empty because every leader was upfront worshipping with everything in them.
I had never experienced that in my life. It was so real, it broke me.
We felt that we needed to become a Four12 Church. We started chatting to our congregation, watching Four12 videos, and finding out all we could. We had elders and teams from Durbanville AM come and join our services, and no matter who came, they were all the same – nothing but love and a joy that seemed unreal. We wanted what they had.
At one of the elders meetings this year, we met Andrew Selley, who leads JoshGen and Four12. He walked straight up to us and started chatting to us until it was time for the meeting to start. My mind was blown! This led to several meet-ups with Andrew where we got to know each other more, and during one of these times, he invited us to become a part of JoshGen. At this point we felt God say “GO”, and that was the official start of our new journey.” – Milo Bridgens
As JoshGen, we are incredibly excited to welcome this vibrant church into our family.
Their passion for Jesus, love for people, and desire to grow has been a breath of fresh air!
They are a family full of enthusiasm and we’re looking forward to seeing how God will use them in the future.
We applaud Milo, their family, and each member for their radical obedience and step of faith. Each one from Pro Deo Church has been a joy to connect with, and we pray they will quickly be established into family, as I’m sure their contributions will add value to us and vice versa.” – Kevin Samuel
And so the adventure begins… ‘What’s in our fridge is yours, and what’s in your fridge is ours’!