A car bumper sticker can change your life. Ask Matt Viljoen. Born in South Africa where he trained as a vet, Matt moved to Broadstairs in Kent with his wife and two young children in 1999. But on his way to work one morning, he saw a bumper sticker with the name and frequency of Christian radio station TWR.
Matt was intrigued. Having grown up regularly attending church, he and his wife had already committed themselves to that way of life, as ‘cultural Christians’. But shortly after they arrived in the UK, the Viljoens met another South African couple, one also a vet, who had come to faith in Christ. Their new friends led them to Christ.
The Viljoens had joined a thriving evangelical church and were growing in their faith, but Matt wanted to go deeper. Unaware that a Christian radio station even existed in Britain, he tuned in at his first opportunity, and heard teaching by Chuck Swindoll on ‘Insight for Living’. He was hooked instantly and his life began to change course. ‘I’m a positive kind of person, so listening, especially listening to the Swindoll sermons … I wanted to teach other people,’ he said. ‘So in the practice, in the consulting room, I would start evangelising people. … The consulting room was my training ground.’
Within three years he decided to switch from veterinary practice to preaching. He enrolled at The Master’s Seminary in Los Angeles, California. He then wanted to return to Europe and he had offers to teach at Bible schools in Berlin and in Zurich.
But 18 months before graduation, a seminary graduate who had returned to South Africa contacted him. He invited Viljoen to join him at his church with a three-year plan for planting a new church – with Matt leading it.
‘So we decided to come back to South Africa in 2007, and the church plant, supposedly a three-year project, started literally within three months,’ he said. The church, between Pretoria and Johannesburg, began small, with just 14 adults and 14 children. But 11 years later, God had grown it to the point that another could be planted. This was in Pretoria, because several people had been driving from there to the first church plant. Viljoen is pastor of the second church plant, called Pretoria Christian Congregation.
One reason he decided to go back was to counter the superficiality he saw in many of South Africa’s churches. But, clearly, some were as hungry for spiritual truth as he was back in England in 1999. Now people drive as far as 100 miles to attend Pretoria Christian Congregation.
Viljoen’s life hasn’t always gone in the direction he expected, but he is okay with that.
