February 11, 1999 - Rev. Dr. Peter Storey at STH

On February 11, the Rev. Dr. Peter Storey will speak in Dr. Dana Robert's class at 10:30am in Room 113.  Later that day, Dr. Storey will preach at the Preaching Forum in Marsh Chapel, at 1:00pm.

Peter Storey is the seventh Methodist minister in a family that arrived in South Africa in 1820.  he schooled in Cape Town, spent some time in the South African Navy, and then trained for the Methodist ministry at Rhodes University.

After pastoring churches in Cape Town, and a period as a chaplain to Robben Island prison, where he ministered to Nelson Mandela, he spent two years on the staff of the Central Methodist Mission in Sydney, Australia, as Director of the world's first Life Line Centre, a telephone-based crisis intervention and counseling ministry.

Returning to District Six, a 'coloured' community in Cape Town whose people faced forced removal under apartheid law, he was prominent in the fight against these removals, at the same time launching a number of ministries including The Carpenter's House, Cape Town's first non-racial community centre; Gateway, a preschool headstart program; and The Christian Leadership Centre, which provided residential training for potential labour leaders in the coloured community.  He also launched South Africa's first Life Line Centre and facilitated nine other centres around South Africa.  He is now Patron of Life Line, South Africa.  At the same time, he founded Dimension, the national newspaper of the Methodist Church, which took an uncompromising anti-apartheid stance under his nine-year editorship.

He was appointed to Johannesburg's Central Methodist Church in 1976, the year of the Soweto uprising, and immediately questioned the all-white nature of the congregation.  The following years saw the loss of some 200 white members, but also the creation of the first fully integrated Methodist church in the land.  The Central Methodist Mission--as it became known--was a centre of protest action against apartheid, often being surrounded and sometimes invaded by government Security Forces.

The work of caring for the city grew with the establishment of The People Center, Johannesburg's first integrated restaurant, two Careways after-school centres, For Love of Children, a pre-school centre, and Cornerstone House, a block of flats for disability pensioners in the city.

During this period he became Vice President of the South African Council of Churches and was elected President of this body in 1981.  In this position, he and Bishop Desmond Tutu, who was then General Secretary, steered the SACC through its most controversial and embattled era of anti-apartheid action.  This included facing the notorious Eloff Commission of Inquiry in to the SACC.  His testimony to the Commission has bee published under the title Here We Stand.

In 1984 he was elected President of the Methodist Church and co-lead an ecumenical delegation to the United Nations and Europe to urge international pressure against the SA Government's force removal policy.  He then became Bishop of the Central District, including Johannesburg and Soweto.  he also headed up the Journey to the New Land transformation process, which has redesigned the Methodist Church for its mission in the new South Africa.

Committed to peacemaking, he co-chaired the Wits-Vaal Peace Secretariat, responsible for keeping the peace in the Johannesburg region in the run-up to the first democratic elections and is Patron of the Methodist Order of Peacemakers, which focuses on non-violence.  He was first chairperson of the Gunfree South Africa movement.  He was a member of President Mandela's Selection Committee for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

His international ministry has included frequent preaching and lecturing journeys to the United States, Europe, and Australia, and he has addressed many conference related to the situation in south Africa, and world peace.  He has received honorary Doctor of Divinity and Doctor of Law degrees.  Last May, he resigned from most of his positions to undertake an 18-month sabbatical in the United States.