Groote Kerk, Cape Town


The Groote Kerk is a Dutch Reformed church in Cape Town, South Africa. The church is South Africa's oldest place of Christian worship. The first church on this land was built in 1678. Willem Adriaan van der Stel laid the cornerstone for the church. It was replaced by the present building in 1841 built by Herman Schuette and the original tower was retained. The pulpit is the work of Anton Anreith and the carpenter Jacob Graaff, and was inaugurated on 29 November 1789. The Groote Kerk lays claim to housing South Africa's largest church organ, which was installed in 1954
WWW grootekerk.org.za

Background

At first the colonists, landing beginning in 1652 at the Cape of Good Hope, relied on a lay preacher named Willem Wylant. He regularly preached in the Fort, taught children, and evangelized to natives. The first communion was held on 12 May 1652 by a visiting pastor, the Rev. Johannes Backerus, while the first baptism was held on 24 August 1653. Other sieketroosters who served the community were Pieter van der Stael, Ernestus Back, and Jan Joris Graaf.

Early pastors

The small congregation longed for its own preacher, until the Lord's Seventeen of the Dutch East India Company in Amsterdam decided to send the first full-time pastor to the Cape. He was Joan van Arckel, who landed at Table Bay on 18 August 1665. During his tenure, he used a wooden church that was supplied in December of that same year with a stone gable and floor. In 1672, services began to be held in "De Kat", a section of the Castle of Good Hope, since the foundations of the first church building would not be laid until 1678. On 6 January 1704 the first stone church opened with a service by the Rev. Petrus Kalden. Construction cost £2,200.
The first Afrikaner pastor of the congregation was the Rev. Petrus van der Spuy. During the tenure of the Rev. Johannes Petrus Serrurier, the 1704 church was slated for expansion. This was completed at a cost of 4,000 and opened in 1781. The current pulpit, made from the best Indian wood at the cost of £708 by the sculptor Anton Anreith, was unveiled in November 1789. Later, the building was damaged, and the current Groote Kerk was opened in 1841.
One of the most famous pastors in the congregation's history was the Rev. Abraham Faure, who served the congregation from 1822 to 1867. He showed particular interest in education, and his efforts were instrumental to founding the first local Sunday school in 1844.
Another famous 19th-century pastor was Dr. William Robertson, who came here from Swellendam.

Large church, small congregation

Some of the neighborhoods got their own ministers and therefore separate congregations: Three Anchor Bay Reformed Church, Observatory Reformed Church, Woodstock Reformed Church, and Maitland Reformed Church, while the Table Mountain Reformed Church was spun off from the Tamboerskloof Reformed Church. As Afrikaners have left the area, the daughter congregations have tended to decline in number. Woodstock latter dissolved, and in 2007, Three Anchor Bay, Observatory, Maitland, and Tamboerskloof had only 659 members among all four congregations combined, down to 646 in 2008, compared to 1,816 for them plus Woodstock in 1985.
In 1952, celebrated as the congregation's tricentennial, there were more than 2,000 members served by three pastors in the mother church. In 1979, there were still 1,971 adult members, but by 1995 that number had shrunk to 1,403, and by 2009 it reached a mere 810. At the end of 2014 it had declined to 585.

List of ministers

  1. Joan van Arckel, 1665 - 12 January 1666
  2. Johannes de Vooght, 26 February to 23 November 1666
  3. Petrus Wachtendorp, November 1666 - 15 December 1667
  4. Adriaan de Vooght, 1667 - 1674
  5. Rudolpus Meerlandt, 1674 - 1675
  6. Petrus Hulsenaar, 1675 - 1677
  7. Johan Frederick Stumphius, May 1678
  8. Johannes Overney, 1678 - 1687
  9. Johannes van Andel, 1687 - 1689
  10. Leonardus Terwoldt, 1689 - 1695
  11. Engelbertus Franciscus le Boucq, 1707 - 1708
  12. Johannes Godefridus D'Ailly, 1708 - 1726
  13. Lambertus Slicher, 1723 - 1725
  14. Hendrik Beck, 1726 - 1731
  15. Franciscus le Seuer, 1729 - 1746
  16. Henricus Cock, 1732 - 1743
  17. Ruardus van Cloppenburgh, 1746 - 1748
  18. Petrus van der Spuy, 1746 - 1752
  19. Henricus Kronenburg, 1752 - 1779
  20. Gerhardus Croeser, 1754 - 1755
  21. Christiaan Benjamin Voltelen, 1755 - 1758
  22. Johannes Frederik Bode, 1758 - 1760
  23. Johannes Petrus Serrurier, 1760 - 1802
  24. Christiaan Fleck, 1781 - 1822
  25. Meent Borcherds, 1785 - 1786
  26. Helperus Ritzema van Lier, 1786 - 1793
  27. Abraham Kuys, 1794 - 1799
  28. Johan Heinrich von Manger, 1802 - 1839
  29. Johannes Christoffel Berrange, 1817 - 1827
  30. Dr. Abraham Faure, 1822 - 1867
  31. Johannes Spijker, 1834 - 1864
  32. Stephanus Petrus Heyns, 1839 - 17 September 1873
  33. Dr. Andrew Murray, 1864 - 1871
  34. Georg Stegmann jr., 1867 - 1880
  35. Dr., 1872 - 1879
  36. Gilles van de Wall, 1874 - 1875
  37. Anton Daniël Lückhoff, 1875 - 1886
  38. Dr. Johannes Jacobus Kotzé, 1880 - 1899
  39. Abraham Isaac Steytler, 1881 - 1915
  40. Christoffel Frederic Jacobus Muller, 1887 - 1890
  41. Adriaan Moorrees, 1892 - 1895
  42. Charles Morgan (South Africa), 1893 - 1896
  43. Francis Xavier Roome, 1895 - 1937
  44. Zacharia Johannes de Beer, 1895 - 1923
  45. Louis Hugo, 1897 - 1907
  46. Dr. Johannes Petrus van Heerden, 1899 - 1935
  47. Dr. Johannes du Plessis, 1899 - 1903
  48. Dr. Barend Johannes Haarhoff, 1905 - 1912
  49. Gerrit Johannes du Plessis, 1906 - 1912
  50. Johannes Stephanus Hauman, 1908 - 1918
  51. Daniel Gerhardus Malan, 1918 - 1921
  52. Pieter Basson Ackermann, 1918 - 1922
  53. Daniel Stephanus Burger Joubert, 1921 - 1925
  54. Willem Ferdinand Louw, 1922 - 1929
  55. Dr. Abraham van der Merwe, 1926 - 1966
  56. Jacobus Delarey Conradie, 1936 - 1967
  57. Pieter du Toit, 1938 - 1943
  58. Theunis Christoffel Botha Stofberg, 1940 – 1944
  59. Johannes Gerhardus Janse van Vuuren, 1945 - 1954, 7 December 1963 - 9 April 1986
  60. Willem Adolf Landman, 1958 - 29 January 1979
  61. Petrus Andries van Zyl, 1958 - 1960
  62. Johannes Mattheus Delport, 1960 - 1963
  63. Jacobus van der Westhuizen, 1968 - 1997
  64. Erasmus Adriaan van Niekerk, 1972 - 1975
  65. Abraham Johannes Prins, 1975 - 1981
  66. Petrus Johannes Botes, 26 April 1981 - 2009
  67. Gideon de Wit, 2003 - 2015
  68. Johan Taute van Rooyen, 2011 - 2018
  69. Riaan de Villiers, 2014–present
  70. Michiel Strauss, 2019–present