Born in Gauteng into a non-Christian home. My late father Claude Lewis was a jockey and when I was 4 yrs old committed suicide after shooting my mother. I have no recollection of him at all. After my mother recovered out of a coma we then moved to Cape Town where my grandmother owned the catering contracts at the racecourses in the Cape and I grew up in this industry spending many hours in the kitchens. I attended a private Anglican Church school, St Georges Grammar School.

At school I was taken through confirmation classes and was “confirmed” in St Georges Cathedral in Cape Town. Having only had a single parent, my Mom, who was the breadwinner for our family – I was “compelled” to be part of the choir in the Cathedral so that we could receive a reduction in school fees.

I learnt to play the organ in the Cathedral, which later provided an income as the organist of the Sea Point Congregational Church after completing national service. It always amazed me that one could feel so “holy” during a Sunday worship service, partaking in the mass, singing glorious anthems to God and then go out and live like the devil Sunday to Sunday. Living in a boarding school taught me all the wrong things introducing me to pornography, drinking, smoking and many other vices of which I was always deeply ashamed but unable to stop. These vices were to follow me until the day of my salvation.

I matriculated in 1980, studied Law for 2 years and then opted out for National Service. I spent 2 yrs at Grahamstown 6SAI and after a 4 month border tour in Namibia I became “head chef” in Grahamstown catering for 3000 troops.

After National Service I started working at Standard Bank SA as a teller at the Longstreet Branch. 2 years later, I was offered the position at the Milnerton Race Course as Assistant Catering Manager. I spent 5 years there and completed a chef’s apprenticeship during the time I was the kitchen manager. This was a place where alcohol was freely available and which fed all the vices I mentioned earlier. Fortunately I was able to give up gambling rather quickly when I discovered that I was paying my entire salary back to the club each month in gambling – always looking for the “big one”

During this time I met Sue and we were married on 11th November 1989 in Sea Point Congregational Church. We were given no premarital counselling, and climbed aboard the marriage roller coaster and it is only by God’s grace and to His glory that today we are still married today.

I then left to become a manager of a bottle store (I tried to read the Bible through during this time – don’t know why, but I do know that it frustrated me no end.) After this I was offered the job as Head Chef at Aldo’s Italian restaurant in the VA Waterfront.

After 2 years at Aldo’s I was invited to become a joint venture partner with Nando’s and became a 24% shareholder of the Longstreet Branch. This was their 5th store in Cape Town at this stage in the history of Nando’s, and from day one proved to be one of the most successful stores they had. This helped feed my materialistic desires to be rich one day. We were able to tour the Far East during this time and waste plenty of money on “stuff”.

I immediately raced through to his house, contacting his brother and partner en route since they were close to his house and asked Dave to go and see what was happening. I arrived at the house to find the armed response coming out of the house. They told me no-one was there. I asked them to wait for me and I went into check the house. Everything was quiet – no wife – no dogs and Francois his brother phoned me on my cell whilst I was standing in the kitchen. I told him the house was empty and he suggested I go look along the beachfront to see if he was there. As I switched off the phone a voice in my head said, “He is in the garage” I turned to see a door leading from the kitchen into the garage and found Andre sitting in his car gassing himself. I pulled him out of the car, switched off the engine, ran around the house to open the garage doors and shouted to the armed response to call an ambulance. I dragged Andre out of the garage onto the driveway and began CPR. He soon began to respond.

At this moment I realised that none of what was happening was by chance – the phone call from Andre at the precise moment I came home (he has no recollection of phoning me), the voice that told me precisely where he was and him responding to my CPR.

I recognised myself as the biggest hypocrite in town – attending Church, playing the organ etc, yet doing many wicked things. The only problem was that no one had ever caught me. I believed in my heart that God would be absolutely justified in vaporising me off His planet into hell for all eternity. I had heard the Gospel in recent years from the minister but as yet had not responded . . . until now. I was totally convicted of the fact that I was a sinner standing before a Holy God, the Creator God of this Universe.

I would share the Gospel with any and everyone, but had little success at first. My friend Andre made a profession of faith some 13 months later, which proved to be false. (16 years later, just recently I shared the Gospel with him again and he genuinely accepted Christ into his life.) I told everyone I knew what had happened to me, but there were still issues or some vices that needed to be dealt with in my life. Two of my cousins were saved at this time and my wife Sue, who having been saved at 13yrs old but never discipled woke up to spiritual things.

The problem I found was that the minister of the Church I was in was not a teacher and He never challenged me or helped me to grow as a Christian. I attended a charismatic Church in the evenings and enrolled in their Bible school. Just before the first year was completed I was challenged by a friend to read a book The Serpent and the Cross – Alan Morrison and after reading 2 chapters on sorcery and seeing their false theology, I repented of ever having had anything to do with the charismatic movement and left immediately.

Our Church decided to do a missions trip to the Gilbert Islands –Republic of Kiribati (pronounced Kiribus) north east of Australia on the Equator. The minister had spent 4 years of his childhood growing up there and was concerned about their spiritual well-being. I suggested we go see what their needs were and so 7 of us went including my wife Sue and cousin Renate.

At that time we met a Brethren preacher Walter Boyd, who was selling good solid Christian books from his home. I believe God providentially used this man in my life to challenge me into studying His Word. Walter began giving me books – commentaries and I began reading them and then had a desire to teach whatever I was learning to others. After our month long trip to the Gilbert Islands I came back on fire for the Lord and was teaching the Bible study at the Congregational Church. They suggested studying Revelation and so Walter supplied me with 3 commentaries on Revelation and I began to study and teach. Coming to chapters 2-3 I saw the error in our Church (lady elder, infant baptism, pastors wife preaching occasionally, running church by the constitution rather than the Bible, constant interference from the minister’s parents, and a hodge podge of theology mixed in with humanistic philosophy). I challenged the minister (kindly) to bring the church in line with the Scriptures and was accused of trying to take over “his church”. I along with my family and 9 other elders and deacons left – not wanting to be found in such a compromising Church should the Lord have come back then.

Walter suggested that I go to Everglen Independent Baptist Church. It was there that I met Ps. Dave Rudolph and Ps. Marc Blackwell Snr who offered to train me for ministry. I began in 1999 and have completed a BTH and Honours degree. One day, when I’m big I might attempt a Master’s Degree.

One of the first courses that were being taught was Nouthetic Biblical Counselling and it was during this time as I interacted with the Word of God I found that my vices were addressed one by one and I was being counselled during this course. It was liberating – to say the least and I was set free by obedience to the Truth. Praise the Lord!

We were unable to have children and after 9 years of marriage Sue and I made application to adopt a child through a private social worker Zoe Cohen. She told us that we could wait from 2-7 years for a baby because of the abortion Laws of this country. She used to place 85 babies per annum but was down to 25 since abortion became legal. We went home to begin the long wait and exactly 9 months later by the Lord’s grace we adopted Amy from birth. She is now 15 years old. At 6 Amy made a profession of faith in the Lord after hearing a Gospel message at one of the winter camps by a young man David Spencer, but subsequently reaffirmed her salvation at 13. She was baptised by full emersion. She is homeschooled using Switched on Schoolhouse by AlphaOmega and is in Grade 10

In 2011 Sue’s mentally handicapped brother came to live with us. He was a “forceps birth” resulting in him becoming a left hemiplegic. He was staying in a special home but was asked to leave as they could no longer take care of him due to his aggressive and non compliant behaviour. We have tried many places but due to his age 49 yrs old and his aggressive behaviour at times we have resigned ourselves that it is the Lord’s will for us that he currently lives in our home. This has been a major adjustment for us and we have proved over and over gain that the Lord’s grace is sufficient to meet the challenges that having a mentally handicapped person in your home provides. He, the Lord is teaching us patience, humility, kindness, gentleness and total dependence upon Him.

During my training at Everglen Independent Baptist Church, Ps Marc Blackwell Snr a seasoned church planter approached us to mentor us as Church planters. We began a two year fulltime internship with him.

Ps Marc had started 2 Bible studies in Paarl and Malmesbury and I began helping out at these new Church plants. At the same time, 2004 we began planting a Church in Durbanville North, starting with a Bible study in our home.

During this time I sold my business and stepped out in faith to begin working as a faith missionary. Marc had established a Pastor’s Support Fund which continued for 2 years during the internship programme to financially support us as we started out in the ministry. After trying to sell my business myself, God had to teach me to trust in Him. After 10 months He sold the business, once I had surrendered my life totally to His control. The first year I used the profit of the business to support myself and then began on the Pastor’s support fund in 2005. This enabled me to be in the ministry fulltime since 2004. During my second year of internship we began raising support from Independent Bible Believing and Independent Baptist Churches in South Africa. We are now supported by local Churches and individuals in South Africa.

After praying for a new venue for two years, the Lord has blessed us in Durbanville at Faith Fellowship with a most beautiful building at the Durbanville Memorial Park, a private memorial park. We are currently ministering to about 50 people in Faith Fellowship. Many of these believers are new to the Faith and we are busy discipling them and helping them grow in their faith. A large percentage of the work is taken up with counselling people, trying to set them free from their vices as they seek to glorify God with their lives and live productively in their church and community and enable them to take opportunities for sharing the Gospel.

We currently have two outreaches into the community surrounding Faith Fellowship. The first is Villa Cortona retirement village. After preaching the Gospel there for some 2 years I was challenged to stop preaching the Gospel, give 10 minute devotional messages and that everyone was saved. I immediately resigned that ministry and we now only minister to the frail care centre once a week. The other outreach is into the Fisantekraal Township which lies behind the Durbanville Memorial Park. Our goal is to plant a church there and to train up faithful black men who know and understand the culture.

We plan to continue planting Bible believing churches in South Africa to the glory of God. We are committed to the local Church as the place where God is glorified, as laid out in the Scriptures in Ephesians.

We take a historical, grammatical and literal hermeneutic of the Scriptures and as a result are Dispensational. We believe in the imminent rapture of the Church and are pre tribulational and premilleniel.

We believe that Faith Fellowship Baptist Church will take between 10-15 years to be established. Our desire is to hand over this work one day a South African Pastor that we have trained for ministry and work alongside him in planting more churches from Faith Fellowship. We are currently training a number of faithful men and a couple towards this end.

I am also lecturing in CMI (Church Ministries Institute – a local church based programme for training men and women for ministry). I also have a desire to mentor future Church planters.

We are looking for other areas to plant Churches and I have a desire to see a Church planted in both Sea Point (Jewish area) and Melkbostrand (one of the fastest growing areas in the Western Cape) and Bloekombos as the Lord wills.