Life with God for the sake of the World
We are Liam and Rachel Byrnes
Although we are originally from Scotland and Cornwall, for over a decade, we have lived in and loved South Africa.
We love people and try to contribute to God’s wholeness in their lives through mentorship, coaching, teaching and training.
We have provided leadership to missional communties, training schools and cross cultural teams.
We are gifted, broken, limited and loved.
The Stories we tell…
We all have stories, stories we tell and stories we believe, stories we live by. Underneath the impersonal veneer of facts and figures is a narrative thread that makes sense of the world around us.
While there are many stories in the world that are fabricated to sell, manipulate and twist, we believe beneath the surface of our lives and the life of this world is a truer story written by the great story teller, the one in whom all our stories come together. Where the pain and the gain of this life is gathered up into the one who famously said;
“I am the way and the truth and the life.”
A bit of our story…
“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”
We are not perfect. That’s a good place to start. It’s always tempting to write a hero story, but our story is much more complicated than that.
Although at risk of being a cliché, the bottom line is that we were lost and now are found and we can’t keep it to ourselves.
Our stories have been caught up in the much bigger story that God is writing across the timeline of human history.
A story that is full of the overflowing love of God for a lost and wayward world. A story of the inbreaking of reconciliation, renewal and reformation.
We are trying to play our small part in the inbreaking of God’s good kingdom.
Over a decade ago now, we hopefully, naively and adventurously discerned God calling us to move to South Africa to discover and participate in His unfolding rule and reign.
We ended up in the township of Masiphumelele, south of Cape Town, working with a Church Planting community called All Nations Southern Africa founded by Floyd and Sally McClung.
Over 10 years, as we tried to participate in what God as doing we were involved in infant abandonment intervention, youth mentorship, bible studies with non-believers, Alpha and Healing on the Streets. Eventually, we worked in All Nations overseeing the local outreach teams and a network of simple churches that had been planted across the south of Cape Town
“This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”
“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.
We have been privileged to see many lives made whole and healed. We’ve seen missional teams and leaders raised, sent nearby and to far off unreached peoples, we’ve encouraged them and they have flourished. But we’ve also experienced the pain of this world along side the privilege of seeing God’s Kingdom here.
We’ve watched as women we’ve helped rescue from domestic abuse enter another abusive relationship. We’ve seen young new believers collapse back into destructive lives of drug addiction and crime. We’ve seen local leaders we have loved turn their back on the way of Jesus and never return.
Despite the pain and brokeness woven into this world we have seen a deeper cord. An upswell of hope and life breaking in and brining reconciliation and renewal to the darkest of places.
While our ministry and leadership here in South Africa has been a privilege, we have always been aware that the goal was never for us to lead but to see others grow into disciples of Jesus that see God’s Kingdom come in every sphere of their life and work.
To that end, in the past few years we have focussed on the developing of leaders, both locally and others who work cross culturally just like we have done.
We have increasingly discovered that our passion is to see people grow into faith, wholeness and fruitfulness in their own context.
Practically this means much of our work is coaching and mentoring, teaching and training to see other leaders walk more deeply in their relationship with Jesus for the sake of the world around them as part of the team at the Centre for Christian Formation.
You can read more about what that looks like day to day here.
I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends… I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last…
