What Sandton Gets Wrong About Christianity (And What It Gets Right)

Sandton is the wealthiest square mile in Africa. We say that not as a flex, but as context. It shapes what Christianity looks like in this part of Johannesburg, and it shapes some of it well and some of it badly.

Our Bible study has been running in Parkmore for ten years. We have watched the suburb change. We have watched our congregation change with it. We have learned a few things about the particular shape of faith in this part of Johannesburg that we did not learn in seminary, and that we want to put on the record.

What Sandton gets right about Christianity

Sandton Christians are serious about the Bible. The Wednesday evening works because the people who come to it actually read the passage before they show up. They bring good questions. They disagree well. They are willing to sit with a hard passage for five weeks without forcing a clean answer.

Sandton Christians are also serious about generosity. The reason the free Korean class has run every Sunday for years is that a small group of regulars in this community quietly covers the cost of the room, the materials, and the tea. None of them would call themselves wealthy. Several of them are. They give well.

Sandton Christians are also serious about excellence. The reason the sermons and the youth programme have a particular quality to them is that the people involved in them refuse to do anything halfway. That is a gift to the community.

What Sandton gets wrong about Christianity

Here is the honest part. Sandton Christianity has a few blind spots that are worth naming out loud.

The first is the belief that faith should always feel comfortable. If a sermon is hard, the congregation quietly leaves for a softer one across town. If a Bible study asks an awkward question, half the room finds a reason to skip the following week. Comfort has become a spiritual value, and the Bible is not a comfortable book.

The second is the conflation of faith with personal success. There is a quiet narrative in some Sandton churches that if you are praying the right prayers and tithing the right amount, your business will succeed, your marriage will thrive, and your children will go to the right schools. The Bible does not promise any of that. It promises suffering, persecution, and a difficult path that requires you to give up everything. The prosperity narrative is not Christianity. It is American self-help with a Bible verse attached.

The third is the assumption that the Bible study is just for your nuclear family. Several of the people in our Wednesday group grew up in churches that taught them to keep their faith inside their home. The result is that their faith stayed small. The Bible is explicit that the community of faith is the entire household of God, not just the people you share a surname with.

What we are trying to build in the middle

The reason our Bible study works, we think, is that we have tried to sit in the middle of those two pictures. We take the Bible seriously. We take the generosity seriously. We also name the blind spots out loud, even when it is uncomfortable.

That is what Wednesday nights in Parkmore have become for us. A room where a Sandton professional and a Soweto retiree can read the same passage and argue about it for an hour, and both leave the conversation changed.

If you are looking for a Bible study in Sandton

You will find plenty of options. Most of them are good. We are not the only Bible study in Sandton, and we would never claim to be. What we offer is a particular shape: free, online on Wednesday evenings, in-person once a month on a Saturday in Parkmore, and small enough that the conversation is honest.

If that is the shape you have been looking for, call Mr. Sim on +27 77 487 1295 or Ms. Dora on +27 67 442 4461 any weekday. Tell us you would like the Wednesday link. We will see you on Wednesday at 7:30pm.