As Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns begin to ease around the world, the church is in a unique position to spread hope to every community.

To help them, NAYBA has created an exciting new role, Global Replicate Catalyst. Madz Deyzel has been recruited to help churches with transformational projects replicate them.

Here, she explains what that means…

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

My name is Madz and I from Johannesburg, South Africa. I married to Dennis and we have two sons, Joshua, who is 8, and 7-year-old Levi. I am a registered pastoral counsellor, qualified hairdresser and used to pay drums professionally and surfed competitively. I have been in full-time church ministry for almost 17 years, 12 of which based at Grace Family Church, Durban, where I founded and established Grace Counselling. The ministry now has over 170 volunteer lay-counsellors serving the neighbourhoods of Durban in four locations.

What is your role in NAYBA?

My role in NAYBA is the Global Replicate Catalyst. My heart is to identify churches who have transformation projects that can be replicated. Alongside that, I want to help local churches transform their neighbourhoods by accurately identifying needs and finding best-practice projects suitable for their need.

This is a new role, what are you looking forward to?

Can you imagine if every church fully embraced the understanding that it exists for serving the neighbourhood around? This excites me! I have always loved the saying, “Go out and preach the gospel and if necessary use words.” I am so honoured to find myself in a role that intentionally seeks to activate the strategy that God revealed in Scripture: that we are one body, made up of many parts. Helping each part function accurately as Christ’s hands and feet here on this earth energises me.

What do you hope to achieve as Global Replicate Catalyst?

My hope is to grow greater awareness in churches globally of how “missional” serving our neighbourhoods can be. When we accurately serve the practical needs of those around us, we automatically become conduits for God’s Spirit of redemption and reconciliation.  

Why is Replication so important?

I have always said there are three types of people in this world: those who learn from their mistakes; those who learn from the mistake of others; and those who just don’t learn. To me, learning from others is wisdom. Wisdom is generated through applied truths. Replication is taking the wisdom gleaned from applied truths and multiplying it. Why re-invent the wheel, when you can spend your energy rather using the wheel to get moving? The harvest is ripe now, don’t waste unnecessary time trying to re-invent something new. Ecclesiastes 1:9 tells us there is “nothing” new under the sun.

What experience do you have in replication?

When I started Grace Counselling in 2007, Grace Family Church was one campus with two services. I realised quickly that being the only pastoral counsellor, it would not take long before the resource burns out due to the demand.

I needed to replicate myself, so I put together a pastoral care lay-counselling course and began training volunteers.

This opened the door to our capacity to serve the demand. I kept stats of who was requesting counselling: around 50% were members of Grace Family Church, 10% were unchurched and around 40% were from other churches.

So I thought, “Imagine if we replicate and empower others churches to also invest in their capacity to offer pastoral counselling!” The problem is that most church-employed pastoral counsellors are good at counselling, but not always good at training. This is when I realised the need to find ways to replicate what Grace Counselling was doing in order to empower other churches to do the same.

Over time I noticed the stats changing: around 50% of people coming to counselling were members of Grace, around 10% were from others churches and now around 40% were unchurched. Counselling became missional.

This excited me and became the driving catalyst behind eventually resigning from Grace Counselling and launching Edify – Building the Soul.

My vision is equipping the local church with counselling training resources for addressing mental health need in their communities. I have been running Edify for almost two years and have been empowering churches across South Africa with a septum of resources, from self care, community care and pastoral care. In total, 94 churches have invested in one or more levels of the training courses.

Imagine if every church invested in some level of tools for better addressing mental health needs what a difference we can make. Under the mental health umbrella, most people from first symptom to treatment wait 11 years before getting help. One of the reasons is because of those who should be getting help, only 1 in 10 can actually afford it. This is why ‘the local church’ needs to replicate this model and equip itself to become more effective in serving those with mental health needs.

What is your advice for churches looking to replicate?

Start today. Don’t wait. You can contact me for a conversation to help get you started on the most incredible journey of working along side Jesus.
He is the lamp unto our feet and the light unto our path. All He is calling us to do is be faithful to the step in front of you. If that step consists of making a call, then do it. As you do that He will illuminate the next step. I can testify to the most wild adventure this will take you on.