Manna and Mercy

ALAN STOREY

About Alan Storey

Website: A Slow Walk
Church Website: Central Methodist Mission, Cape Town

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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 moving to CMM, Alan was serving at Calvary Methodist Church, Midrand, situated halfway between Pretoria and Johannesburg for 11 years.

Alan’s commitment to the peacemaking Jesus 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 laborer 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 Gun Free South Africa Campaign that was launched at the time of transition to democracy, and is currently chairperson of Gun Free SA.  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 Ivory Park informal settlement (shanty town) 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 in Ivory Park. 

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.  He is also a founding member of Sacred Worth which is an organization working for the full inclusion of GLBIT people within the Church.

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.  Alan has served the Transnet Foundation as a Board member.  He teaches widely throughout Southern Africa and abroad (including the Sudan and USA).  Alan has an Honours Degree in Theology and a Masters in Philosophy (Applied Ethics in Economics).




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