Frank Retief was newly married when he started the church of St. James, Kenilworth, Cape Town. The mother church had bought an old building in a rundown part of Cape Town that was ripe for development.
At the first meeting in 1968 just four children showed up. Now St. James's has an auditorium seating 1,500 people, but, more spectacularly, it has spawned 22 daughter and grand-daughter churches in the Cape region.
But this has been far from a cloning operation. The new churches have been planted in all kinds of areas: from up-market suburbs to black townships; from university towns to what used to be called coloured areas.
