On this episode of The Disciple-Making Parent, we hear an inspiring story of transformation and ministry in South Africa. We meet Tommie van der Walt, the executive director of Imprint Ministries, who shares his journey from being a rebellious prodigal to becoming a passionate minister. Through a powerful testimony involving a car accident and faithful friends, we learn how God’s grace and a praying mother’s persistence led to his dramatic conversion.
After his conversion, Tommie’s path led him from teaching English in Thailand to establishing Imprint Ministries, an organization dedicated to training pastors and providing affordable Christian resources across Africa. We also gain fascinating insights into the diverse landscape of South African churches, from traditional denominations to unique cultural expressions of faith.
The episode concludes with valuable wisdom on intentional discipleship and the importance of maintaining strong family connections within the church community.
Resources From This Podcast
Imprint
Ligonier
Desiring God
9Marks
Crossway
Sign up for our family discipleship email here
The Disciple-Making Parent Audioblog
Topics Covered In This Week’s Podcast
03:16 Introducing Tommie van der Waal
07:48 The Christian landscape of South Africa
10:19 How Tommie came to faith and ministry
19:51 Parenting practices worth imitating
22:21 How to learn more and support the ministry of Imprint
Episode Transcript
Chap: I’m Chap Bettis, and you’re listening to The Disciple-Making Parent, where we seek to equip parents and churches to pass the gospel to their children. As pastors and parents hoping to disciple our children, it’s easy to get focused on our own efforts. But in that equation, do we leave out someone- namely, God?
Hi, my name is Chap Bettis, and I’m the author of The Disciple-Making Parent. And in today’s podcast, and really the next two podcasts, I want to tell you two stories of God’s grace in another part of the world. I just recently returned from ministering in South Africa, and it was a privilege to equip parents and pastors in both Cape Town and Johannesburg. The trip was sponsored by Imprint, a ministry focused on equipping local pastors and printing good books for them. My host was the founder and executive director of Imprint, Tommie van der Walt. He asked me to be on his podcasts, and then I turned the tables and asked if I could interview him. And so you’re about to hear his encouraging story of how God rescued a rebel and prodigal and called him to ministry.
Tommie van der Walt is the Executive Director of Imprint Ministries. He’s also a pastor at Brackenhurst Baptist Church and married to Allie. They have three children and live in the Brackenhurst part of Johannesburg.
Before we start, I want to remind you of two other resources we have. I’m constantly amazed when I talk to people who say, “I love the podcast,” but they don’t know about these other two resources. So listen up, don’t zone out what I’m about to tell you. Number one, every Saturday, I send out a family discipleship email. It’s the main way to stay in touch with us, and it’s also a weekly prompt for you to think about family discipleship. And to encourage you to sign up at our website, we give away the audiobook of The Disciple-Making Parent absolutely free. So head on over to my website, thedisciplemakingparent.com and sign up on the pop-up for the weekly newsletter and you can get the audiobook for free as well. And that’s that offer’s available for your friends.
The second resource that I’m constantly amazed that people who love the podcast don’t know about: I have a second podcast. It’s called The Disciple-Making Parent Audioblog. So it’s the same name, The Disciple Making Parent, but then the word Audioblog. And in it, I read my old blog posts in audio format so that you can listen to them on the go. It’s for your convenience. And right now we have over 150 blog posts that I’m reading so that you can consume material as you go about life. So, in your favorite podcast provider, head on over to The Disciple Making-Parent audio blog. Okay? Did I break through the noise? There are two resources. One is the weekly email, and the other is the audio blog.
Well, with that in mind, let’s listen in on God’s amazing grace in rescuing a prodigal.
It’s a joy to talk with Tommie van der Walt, who is with me here, or I’m with him here in South Africa. He’s the director of Imprint ministries and also an elder here at Brackenhurst Baptist Church. And it’s been a joy. We’ve known each other, meeting a couple of times and then also via email, but it’s a joy to minister to him and his churches down here in South Africa. So, thanks for joining me.
Tommie van der Walt: It’s a pleasure. It’s good to be here.
Chap: Well, Tommie, as I’ve gotten to know you, let’s start sort of with where things are now. Tell us about the Imprint ministry, what you do and, and how you got there.
Tommie: So I was in corporate life, project management, and then joined the healthy church. I always had a heart for missions. And we were sent by our church to India to plant a church there. I got to India. I started training pastors with my own books. I didn’t have many, but I would give one book to one pastor, say, “Read the book, come and discuss it with me, and we’ll have some contact sessions, cohort learning, kind of teaching each other.” We planted a church. From that group, a guy joined me and planted a church.
It wasn’t too long then the Indian government kicked us out back to South Africa. I went to my fellow elders and I said, “What now?” I looked for church planting opportunities, revitalization, nothing came about. And probably for a month I prayed, fasted, I really was seeking the Lord’s advice. I didn’t want to go back to corporate and it just occurred to me one morning when I was praying, I was like, Hang on, I was discipling pastors, training them for the ministry with my own books. And during that time in India, I got befriended with Ligonier, Desiring God, 9Marks, Crossway . . .
So I had the relationships. When I came back this thought just hounded me: What if we expand it instead of using my own books? Because I’m a disciple at heart, I love training pastors and helping out, I love the church. Let me tap into my resources with these relationships, print books in South Africa for Africa. Because resources are unavailable and unaffordable, but we print to train. I don’t want to be a bookshop, I don’t want to be whatever, I want to train pastors.
Imprint was born out of that. And the Lord’s taken the ministry and we’ve just been growing year by year. This year, August would be seven years in the ministry for Imprint. It is a ministry of Brackenhurst Baptist Church. The Lord’s been using us to reach out to churches and train pastors, helping them understand, first of all, what the gospel is. Some of the pastors I work with are not saved. So we minister to them in the gospel, but then also leadership in Africa. There’s a very big misunderstanding of authoritative or authority.
Chap: Being authoritarian?
Tommie: Yeah. I mean, I’ve discipled a few pastors- one guy would literally call out a member that is in sin out of the group onto the stage, pull him over his lap and whip him. Give him a spanking. That’s church discipline in his eyes. The other guy would literally call someone up to the stage and dump ash on their heads and say, “Go sit in your shame.” So that’s the kind of pastors that I work with. Obviously, there are healthier ones as well that I minister to and help put membership processes into their churches. That’s kind of where the Lord has led us to and what we are ministering to. We are a training ministry, but we use resources to equip pastors.
Chap: Well, that leads into my question. You’ve traveled a lot, and I’m here because of one person who made the connection between us: Pastor Dan Crichton, who serves as a pastor in another church in Rhode Island. You’re familiar. So if you’re talking to American audiences, how would you describe the South African church? And I know that’s a big question. You’ve got different heritages there, but help us get familiar with the South African.
Tommie: So the South African churches. We’ve got mainline churches: Presbyterian, Anglican, Baptist, Dutch Reformed. We’ve got all of those, but then we also obviously have Pentecostal, prosperity gospel. Prosperity gospel is probably the biggest in Africa, as well as South Africa. So that’s one aspect to it.
Traditional mainline churches, other traditions, and old churches. And then we’ve got a massive movement called the Zionists. They’re actually classified under Baptist circles. But the Zionist church, basically is busy with syncretism. So they mix Christian beliefs with ancestral worship. Slaughtering of goats, bulls, chickens, consulting ancestors, black magic. One pastor that I’ve worked with has completely gone off the rails. He cut me off. He would preach the Bible. And then in the pulpit he would say, “If this does not work for you, please see me at my hut, and we’ll slaughter a chicken, and consult the ancestors.”
So you’ve got that group of churches which mixes the ancestral worship with the Christian faith, if you want to call it that way. They partake in the Lord’s Supper and baptism, but it’s more as rituals, staying safe, cleansing of sins, that kind of misunderstanding. And then also the ancestral stuff.
But then you get the normal Baptists, Anglican, those mainline churches, which is similar to in the States where same sex marriages, affirmation, that kind of thing is going on. So we’ve got everything.
Chap: Well, talk a little bit about your background. I think obviously, you know that The Disciple-Making Parent is to equip parents and pastors to pass the gospel to their kids. So tell us just a little bit about your story. I thought it was interesting.
Tommie: Thanks. So I grew up in a nominal Christian home. My parents would confess that they were believers, my mom is probably the godliest woman I know. I grew up in that home, dead, authoritarian, harsh. That’s the tribe I come from, the Afrikaans tribe. It’s just a suck it up, don’t cry, do what I say not what I do kind of mentality. So that’s how I grew up. We weren’t churched. Well, we would go to church if there’s a church in the area where we’d stay. I grew up that way and at about age 14 or 15 I completely turned my back on what I believed was Christianity. I basically led a life like the prodigal son.
So all your talks on the prodigal is basically where I was. I basically in my heart told God, not verbally, but I was like, I’m going to prove to you. I went into the world at a young age, ran away from home several times, and just got into the things of the world.
I always say that the Lord kept me alive to make me alive. I can remember we went through a stage, my friends and I, where we would get horribly drunk and just play Russian roulette. And so he literally kept me alive to make me alive. But my mom is a classic example of the quote- Charles Spurgeon said, “As long as there’s a praying mom, there’s always hope.” And I experienced that in my life. My mom always prayed for me and she would tell me that. But saying that, and that’s why I really related to your books, she was never, never harsh. She was never Bible-bashing, but I knew she was praying for me. I knew she loved me. I knew I could always go to her for advice or counsel. So that’s that side.
I ran away, I basically wrote them off completely and didn’t have communication with them. I went overseas, came back, and traveled. Long story short, I came back, we went out as friends one evening, and I can remember that that’s the first night we didn’t get drunk. There was one guy in our group, I believe he is a believer. But we had pizza and soft drinks. It was raining that night. We got into two cars, went down the road. And we went around a corner, and the friends in front of us drove through a massive concrete wall. We were first on the scene, and one of my friends got chucked out of the car, we thought he was dead. The other friend broke his femur with some part of the car. We tried to help him, the ambulance showed up. . .
Anyway, long story short, the guy that we thought was dead, he broke his back. They ended up in hospital and I felt really guilty for the accident, even though I wasn’t even in their car. I was about 20, 21, and felt guilty about the accident. After work, I would go visit them in the hospital.
The friend that broke his back, as I walk in, he’s like, “Hey dude, I can’t read. Can you please read the Bible to me?” And I would sigh. I was like, “Okay, fine.” And I’d read the Bible to him. He would confront me of my sin. I would throw the Bible on the floor and I was just like, “I’m out of here.” And I’d leave, go to the next friend’s room. And lo and behold, the nurses ministered. He got saved while he’s in the hospital. I go to his room because I’m angry with the other friend and he would tell me, “He won’t know, but the Lord saved me. He forgave all of my sins. He can do the same for you.” I’d get angry with him and leave the hospital. And next day at work, feel guilty about the accident. Go back to the hospital. Same thing goes on. And that went on for about five days.
And then the Lord really turned my heart and said, You need to go back to your family. And I phoned my boss and I was like, “Hey, I’m putting in holiday. I need to go back to my parents.” Phoned my mom and I said, “I’ve got a bunch of questions that you need to answer.” I went back to my parents and they led me to the Lord, answered the questions, and ever since then, I’ve been selling the Lord. And I can always remember telling my mom- it’s wicked- “When I make this decision, I want to do it for the right reasons. And I want to serve the Lord to the full, and I can’t do that.” Yeah, that’s my story. And I went into architecture project management and went into corporate.
Oh, before that, backtrack, I got saved. I actually moved back to my parents’. I resigned my job, moved back to my parents, and started studying TEFL- Teaching English as a Foreign Language. And when I graduated with that, it was a senior diploma or whatever, family friends of ours who were missionaries to Thailand were on furlough, so they visited. And I was like, “Oh, you won’t believe it, I’ve got to tell you.” I told him the story, and this guy just got a contract with a Thai police to teach him English. And he’s like, “Well, why don’t you come to Thailand? I’ll disciple you and you’ll help me teach the police English.” And a week later, got on the plane and I went to Thailand. He started discipling me. I came back just three weeks before that major tsunami hit Thailand. I started studying while I worked- I’ve always just studied while I work. I’ve never went full time. But anyway, I went into corporate. And that’s picking up where we started.
So whoever’s listening, uh, and you have a prodigal, just pray. Pray and keep the communication lines open. And like I told you on my podcast, that’s what struck me. It’s just, your love needs to outweigh your discipline. And you need to discipline. But discipling. It’s just the emotional relationships that you’ve been talking about that really struck home to me, because that’s what my parents were doing, and eventually my dad as well. But my mom was just praying, praying, praying, believing and not Bible-bashing out of pure desperation, but just having faith, praying, believing, and always being there, just showing love and not hiding truths from me. She would speak into my life, but in a winsome way, not in a judging way.
Chap: Well, you’re an elder here in a healthy church.
Tommie: Yeah.
Chap: And I know you’ve got three children. How old are they?
Tommie: Mm-hmm . So I’ve got a girl, she’s turning 13 this year. A boy, he turned 11 and another younger one that’s 10, so it’s three.
Chap: Okay. So thinking about what you’ve observed in this church. You’ve got healthy families and I know- it was you or Dan talking to me about how it’s so encouraging to see even three generations. What are some things that you’re trying to emulate that you see? Things that are just really good in this church, other families that I admire?
Tommie: I think again, the intentional discipleship, whether you’re homeschooled or going to public school or private school, it doesn’t matter. They’re not handing over their responsibility as parents to the church or the school, or putting their hope in homeschooling. That’s what we’ve seen with the faithful parents or the kids that are following in their grandparents’ footsteps. That’s exactly what we’re seeing is that it’s our responsibility to raise a godly seed. I need to disciple you. My hope is not in the Sunday school teacher. My hope is not in your school teacher. It’s my responsibility. That’s one.
Two they’re very intentional in exposing their children to the ministry of the church. They’ll be here for funerals, they’ll be here for baptisms, they’ll be here for the faithful members attending faithfully. You’ll sit under the preaching of the word. We expose you to the means of grace of children’s ministries and they’re very involved members of the church. I always say if you forsake the church, it’s not soon, then your whole family will fall apart. So expose them to the ministry of the church, and really help them to understand that that’s central. You have friends outside the church, your best friends are in the church, and it’s not dictating that way. It just happens naturally because you’re always with the people. So your best friend will be with you in Sunday school because we visit on Sundays and Saturdays and we’re just always in each other’s lives. So it’s the intentionality of a parent not handing over their responsibility and then the responsibility of showing the kids their meaningful membership. I think that those are maybe two of the bigger ones that are standing out for me.
Chap: That’s really good. At yesterday’s pastor conference, I met some Americans who’ve come over to help other churches. If people wanted to get in contact with you or find out more about your ministry or even just explore ministry here, how could they find out about you?
Tommie: Yeah, that’s a good question. So you can find out from me from our website, imprinton.org. There’s a few videos and stuff explaining what we do.
They can please pray for us in several ways. What I appreciate about the Americans that you met yesterday, they are here as a supporting role. It’s not that we don’t know anything. Let me go and teach. So people coming in don’t say, South Africans don’t know anything. Let’s come in and see. It’s actually, Hey, we’re here. How can we help? How can we support the ministries that’s already going on here? First of all, we appreciate that, but second of all, they are the most fruitful missionaries that I’ve seen in South Africa, where they come alongside. That’s just something that I grew a conviction of when I was in India as well. It’s let the locals, they understand the culture, the language, all of that. Let me rather come in as a supportive role. I did plant a church. I was the main pastor teacher for a while, but it was preaching for a month every week. Second month, Hey, why don’t you take one of the Bible studies now? So slowly handing over.
So yeah, I think those are the biggest ones. Obviously financial support. We have laborers, but the funding is always a thing. Pray. And nothing against South Africa, but right now the dollar buys a lot of rands.
Chap: Oh yeah. It’s been a quite inexpensive trip after I got over here with the plane.
Tommie: Yeah. The dollar goes far.
Chap: Well, I want to thank you. It’s been a joy to get to meet you and learn about the ministry here.
