A Conversation with Alan Storey

Rev Alan Storey serves a multiracial congregation at Central Methodist Mission in Cape Town, South Africa. His experience during apartheid and in a post-apartheid society has shaped his social justice ministry. Alan is known within and beyond South Africa for his engaging manner of teaching and his gift for inviting others to dive more deeply into their spiritual lives. He offers space in which faith leaders may find personal renewal as well as insight for the practice of ministry. Alan has shared his experience and insights with groups across the world from Seattle to the Sudan.  Alan will be in Vancouver from July 5^th to July 8^th, 2010.

Lessons and perspectives from South Africa

Africa vibrates with worship that has unbelievable energy and colour. Its faith communities are entrenched in visible social action – both in ending apartheid and challenging ongoing systemic injustice and in meeting dramatic levels of need on the ground. Like Vancouver in its experience of the 2010 Olympics, South Africa is currently dealing with the impacts of hosting the 2010 Soccer World Cup. Alan offers us an opportunity to see ourselves through a different lens – to experience new comforts and challenges in our own work and in our own city.

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Alan is an ordained minister of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa and is presently ministering at the Central Methodist Mission (CMM) in Cape Town.  Before recently moving to CMM, Alan was serving at Calvary Methodist Church, Midrand, situated halfway between Pretoria and Johannesburg for 11 years

Alan’s faithfulness to the peacemaking Christ was tested early in his life when he faced conscription into the apartheid regime’s military. After spending a year of discernment working as a labourer in Australia, he returned to South Africa, declaring he would never fight in the apartheid army – or any army. He was arrested and faced trial with a six-year prison sentence as the likely outcome. Alan’s trial was abandoned midway, and he became the last conscientious objector to be tried in apartheid South Africa.

During his theological training at Rhodes University, he was involved in the Gunfree South Africa Campaign that was launched at the time of transition to democracy, and is currently chairperson of Gunfree SA in the Western Cape. After University, Alan was sent to Welkom, which is known as a conservative mining town that lies in the very center of South Africa. It was here that Alan started the Banna Ba Modimo home for destitute children and the Banna Ba Modimo Clinic for people who are homeless. Alan received Rotary’s Paul Harris award as a result of this work.

Alan was ordained in 1996 and sent to a small exclusively white congregation in Midrand. He built a new church that embodied a rich diversity of peoples and that engaged deeply with dwellers in the informal settlements (shanty towns) in the area. Alan himself lived in one of these settlements for two years to identify more deeply with the people there. Calvary over the years has been instrumental in the establishment of 5 pre-schools and 1 Adult Education Center.

Alan has spearheaded the transformation of the Stipend Policy within the Methodist Church of Southern Africa over the past number of years, calling the Church to take seriously the Gospel imperatives of economic justice.

Alan specializes in facilitating Diversity Engagement Encounters, both within the Church and within other business and education institutions – healing the divisions that still divide us.  He teaches widely throughout Southern Africa and abroad.  Alan has an Honours Degree in Theology and a Masters in Philosophy (Applied Ethics in Economics).