Alan Burns is the chairman of the board for African Enterprise Canada. African Enterprise is a pan-African,

non-denominational mission organization founded by South African evangelist Michael Cassidy. Alan and his

wife Robin moved from Johannesburg to Toronto in 1985. They spent many years at Little Trinity in downtown

TAP: What was it like as an Anglican in South Africa during apartheid?

Alan Burns: Desmond Tutu was the Bishop of Johannesburg, and when it was indicated that he would become the Archbishop, many Anglicans said they would stop giving money to the Anglican Church, because of their racism... But there were people like Michael Cassidy [the founder of the mission organization African Enterprise] who were going around from city to city preaching the word of God – so it was also quite a joyous place to be.

TAP: What was the relationship like

between the Anglican Church and the

apartheid government?

Alan Burns: Archbishop Desmond Tutu believed in non-violence, so he would not have supported people being burned with tires around their necks, nor people being stoned. So, to that extent, the Anglican Church in South Africa was for peace, while the apartheid government was...into violence.

TAP: You have mentioned Desmond Tutu a couple of times here...Could you describe his influence on the South African Anglican Church?

Alan Burns: He is a charismatic gentleman, not big in stature. But he is someone who is very engaging, and when he gets up in the pulpit, he has a way of capturing your attention. He is really quite powerful. The apartheid governments under [Prime Ministers] P.W. Botha and F.W. De Klerk saw him as a man not to be messed with because, sooner or later, the press would ask him to say something about it. So there was a kind of reverent fear of him.

TAP: How evangelical is the Anglican Church in South Africa?

Alan Burns: That’s a question that I asked Michael Cassidy when I was in Pietermarizburg [location of African Enterprise’s headquarters in South Africa] in August 2006. I asked him where the Anglican primate stood on evangelism. He said “Allan, your guess is as good as mine” – indicating that he is walking a fairly careful path down the middle.

TAP: It is interesting how the Anglican Church in South Africa has a significant liberal wing to it. How does that liberalism play out amongst Anglicans in other parts of Africa?

Alan Burns: I think of the current chair of the board of African Enterprise Rev. Edward Muhima, the bishop of Uganda, as a reverent man – very orthodox and evangelical. The other bishop [that is on the board of African Enterprise] is the bishop of Rwanda [Rev. Emmanuel Koloni], who is also an evangelical...If you take, for example, Peter Akinola , the primate of Nigeria, he is so disenchanted by the Church of England that he has dropped any references to the Church of England in the Nigerian church’s constitution. I would say that the Anglican Church in Africa is well over eighty percent theologically conservative.

TAP: So Rev. Dr. Edward Muhima is very involved with African Enterprise?

Alan Burns: Yes--as the chair of the international partnership board. He is a very gracious man. He could talk to you at any level, whether you were an ordinary person in the street or an important cabinet minister.

TAP: Can you describe African Enterprise and your own experience with it?

Alan Burns: African Enterprise was started by three folk who were at Fuller Seminary in the early 1960’s. At the end of their time there, Michael Cassidy [who was born and raised in South Africa] asked the Lord what it was he wanted them to do. It came from a revelation that he was to go to Africa and preach to folk in both word and deed.  With two other guys, one of whom is Paul Virtue, the emeritus chair of African Enterprise in Canada, he went to Pietermarizburg. When I was at the University of Natal in Durban, there was a big poster that said “Jesus – Superstitious or Supernatural?” It was an advertisement for a presentation that Michael Cassidy was doing. That’s how I was introduced to African Enterprise, which today focuses on sub-Saharan Africa.

TAP: When you moved from South Africa to Canada, what differences did you notice in the church and the culture?

Alan Burns: We left in 1985 and arrived in Toronto. We sought out a church which was similar to the one [our minister] Peter Lee led, which was called St. Luke’s Orchard. The person we were referred to said that the only Anglican church near us was fairly liberal. We were there for a year. In the August of that year we attended a conference called Christ’s Scattered Flock. It was there we met Peter Moore, who was the rector at Little Trinity in downtown Toronto. We then joined that church and we felt like we were back at Peter Lee’s church, because here was a man who knew the gospel and preached the word of the Lord. At that time, we had a thirteen-year old son and a ten-year-old daughter. Because of the grounding they got at Little Trinity and at Pioneer Camps, they got to know the Lord. Our son, Jonathan, and daughter, Vanessa, married Christians and live Christian lives. So as two South Africans who arrived in 1985 in Canada, we praise God for

taking care of us.

We return to South Africa every year and thankfully most blacks now enjoy a higher standard of living than two decades ago. But sadly South Africa is just as secular and just as materialistic as Canada.

TAP: What African Enterprise projects are you excited about now?

Alan Burns: In Rwanda there is a big attempt to bring prostitutes off of the streets and help rehabilitate them, which African Enterprise is involved in strongly. [In other projects] AE is involved in bringing clean water to people. So it is not just preaching the gospel that they do. It is preaching in deed and action that they are trying to win over the people of Africa.

TAP: Is animism an ongoing issue in African cultures?

Alan Burns: Yes, witchcraft is.

TAP: The mission statement of African Enterprise is “evangelizing the cities of Africa through word and deed in co-operation with the church.” How important is the co-operation with the church?

Alan Burns: What African Enterprise does is encourage you to stay in whatever church you are in. If you are a Baptist, they would encourage you to stay there, or if you are an Anglican to stay in that church. They are also quick to point out to people any animism or form of worship that is not true to Jesus Christ, the living God.

Hugh Egerton works with special needs kids in Vancouver and is studying at Regent College. He served with African Enterprise in Soweto last summer and was given a Sotho name, Tshepo, which means hope.