Alison Eloff has worked in ministry with women for 35 years in various capacities, including church planting, student ministry, curacy and ministry to women at St James Church in Cape Town. In this interview, Alison chats to Taryn about how God brought her to faith at the tender age of 11, when a friend persistently shared gospel tracts with her, despite Alison’s lack of interest or any kind of family interest in Christian things. She shares about working through coming from a broken home, why she chooses to minister to women, and much more. Alison’s years in ministry enables her to share much of her wisdom in clear and enlightening ways.

EPISODE NOTES:

Alison Eloff has worked in ministry with women for 35 years in various capacities, including church planting, student ministry, curacy and ministry to women at St James Church in Cape Town. In this interview, Alison chats to Taryn about how God brought her to faith at the tender age of 11, when a friend persistently shared gospel tracts with her, despite Alison’s lack of interest or any kind of family interest in Christian things. She shares about working through coming from a broken home, why she chooses to minister to women, and much more. Alison’s years in ministry enables her to share much of her wisdom in clear and enlightening ways.

***

Through the persistence of a friend, Alison eventually agreed to read the growing pile of gospel tracts she had shoved under bed. That decision opened her eyes to the gospel and brought Alison to a trusting faith in Jesus at the young age of 11. Since then, God has led her through a lifetime of serving Him in various ministry roles, including partnering with her husband Mervyn in ministry from Bible college and church planting in Cape Town, curacy at St Helen’s, London, to student and family ministry in Stellenbosch, theological training and student work at George Whitefield College in Muizenberg and then again to church ministry at St James Church, Kenilworth in Cape Town. Together, Alison and Mervyn are parents to their two, now adult, daughters. And while gardening and sewing are among her favourite activities, seeing the 'light go on' when women study the Bible has been among her favourite ministry experiences of the last 35 years in working with women. Alison says that she always finds the Lord to be the faithful rock He promises to be in His word and that she loves sharing this reality with women.

LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

St James Church Kenilworth

George Whitefield College

St Helen's, London

Christ Church, Stellenbosch

SHOW SNIPPETS:

“She said to me, do you know of the Jesus you are meant to be learning about at Sunday School? I had no idea what she was talking about. It was a totally foreign idea … then she started feeding me a series of booklets.”

“She gave me one a week and I dutifully took the booklet and stuck it in a tin under my bed. …  We eventually got to the end of the booklets and she asked me again “have you looked at the booklets”. I thought, the only way that I am going to get this woman off my back is if I actually read the booklets and then I can say in good conscience that I read them and give them back to her and that would then be the end of the story. And I read in them about the reality of the claims that God makes that he is actually King. He is the creator. He is the one who in authority. As an 11 year old, I have chose to live as though he has not existed and that in fact is treason and is deeply offensive to him and I need to do something about that and I thought, if he said it and he is God then I really am in big trouble if I don’t say something or do something about it.”

“I've got to make my peace with the fact that God will do what is right and He cares for them the way He cared for me and His plan for them may not have reached its completion yet.”

“Every place we have worked and lived we have just learned so much from the people we have been working with. And we keep learning. There is always more to learn.”

“Being in the ministry is an enormous privilege.”

“We are learning again that you’ve got to keep holding onto the basics.”

“Keeping the main thing the main thing is what we are learning again and again and again.” 

“We are learning how to do better, to be honest, and there are some real growing pains.”

“I think it all comes back to really embracing the reality:  if God is the creator and you look around the world at the extraordinary beauty and diversity - God got it right to have an extraordinary mix of everything … it’s beautiful and works so well.” 

“I think that as human beings if we keep acknowledging God as our creator - if we are in a relationship with Him - we shouldn’t be scared by other people’s diversity or their opinions. At the end of the day, we are all working on our relationship with Jesus and are we all doing what we can to be as fruitful as we can for Him … altogether that should be creating a beautiful thing for Jesus. Maybe it’s too simplistic but it is one of the best ways that I can make sense of what we need to do.”

“For me that has meant picking up all the balls that I used to hold (and doing things smarter in the Covid context).”

“It’s not even in the same room as my skill set, it’s in a whole other building!” 

“I think that is the privilege of being a part of God’s family - we do carry each other’s burdens.”

“I think we have not yet seen the kingdom stories that are going to come out of Covid.”

“We are both broken and sinful. The reality is our brokenness sometimes won’t be fixed. Ecclesiastes says that. So we limp along as broken people, but we are also sinful. God in his grace gives grace for one and deals with the sinfulness of the other.”

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.. The Lydia Project: Conversations with Christian Women is a podcast co-hosted by Tori Walker and Taryn Hayes. It features informal chats with Christian women around faith, life, ministry and the ways in which God is shaping their thinking and their lives. The views of TLP guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the hosts.