The shots fired at the house were probably intended not to kill but to terrify, which they did. The first attempt to burn down the office came as a shock, the second as confirmation that their work was having an impact. The petrol bomb that hurtled through the window in broad daylight some weeks later burned the curtains and caused so much mess that work had to stop for the day. Since no one was injured in these attacks on Theo and Helen Kotze's home and on the Christian Institute office, in Cape Town in 1972, Helen's abiding memory of the petrol bombing was that ‘we had to buy lunch out. Tony Grogan the cartoonist came and we all had a lovely party to “celebrate”. We were really a community.’

That sense of community grew out of the Theo and Helen's efforts to bring people together across religious and racial divides to share and challenge their faith, through regular Agape meals and occasional subversive activities, such as preparing and distributing materials exposing state brutality and suppression.

The CFT network operated by undermining rather than confronting state security. Theo and Helen took on the role of organising programmes for grantees in the Western Cape:

The early 1970s were a time of spiralling confrontation with the state. In 1973 mass worker strikes marked the revival of labour militancy and the Athlone Rally – the largest political demonstration since Sharpeville – saw students win major concessions from the University of the Western Cape, including unconditional readmission and replacement of the white rector with a coloured rector. In 1974, members of the South African delegation to the All African Conference of Churches, including John Rees, General-Secretary of the South African Council of Churches, met representatives of the ANC in Lusaka.