The Groote Kerk (

Afrikaans Afrikaans (, ) is a West Germanic language that evolved in the Dutch Cape Colony from the Dutch vernacular of Holland proper (i.e., the Hollandic dialect) used by Dutch, French, and German settlers and their enslaved people. Afrikaans gra ...

and

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

for "Great Church") is a

Dutch Reformed The Dutch Reformed Church (, abbreviated NHK) was the largest Christian denomination in the Netherlands from the onset of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century until 1930. It was the original denomination of the Dutch Royal Family an ...

church in

Cape Town Cape Town ( af, Kaapstad; , xh, iKapa) is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the legislative capital of the country, the oldest city in the country, and the second largest ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

. The church is South Africa's oldest place of Christian worship, built by Herman Schuette in 1841. The first church on this land was built in 1678.

Willem Adriaan van der Stel Willem () is a Dutch and West FrisianRienk de Haan, ''Fryske Foarnammen'', Leeuwarden, 2002 (Friese Pers Boekerij), , p. 158. masculine given name. The name is Germanic, and can be seen as the Dutch equivalent of the name William in English, Gui ...

laid the cornerstone for the church. It was replaced by the present building in 1841, but 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 organ, which was installed in 1954 and has 5917 pipes.

Background

At first the colonists, landing beginning in 1652 at the

Cape of Good Hope The Cape of Good Hope ( af, Kaap die Goeie Hoop ) ;''Kaap'' in isolation: pt, Cabo da Boa Esperança is a rocky headland on the Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula in South Africa. A common misconception is that the Cape of Good Hope is t ...

, relied on a lay preacher (''sieketrooster'', Dutch for "comforter of the ill") named Willem Wylant. He regularly preached in the

Fort A fortification is a military construction or building designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is also used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin ''fortis'' ("strong") and ''facere'' ...

, taught children, and evangelized to natives. The first communion was held on May 12, 1652, by a visiting pastor, the Rev. Johannes Backerus, while the first baptism was held on August 24, 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 The United East India Company ( nl, Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, the VOC) was a chartered company established on the 20th March 1602 by the States General of the Netherlands amalgamating existing companies into the first joint-stock ...

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...

decided to send the first full-time pastor to the Cape. He was Joan van Arckel, who landed at

Table Bay Table Bay (Afrikaans: ''Tafelbaai'') is a natural bay on the Atlantic Ocean overlooked by Cape Town (founded 1652 by Van Riebeeck) and is at the northern end of the Cape Peninsula, which stretches south to the Cape of Good Hope. It was named ...

on August 18, 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" (Afrikaans for "The Cat"), a section of the Castle of Good Hope, since the foundations of the first church building would not be laid until 1678. On January 6, 1704, the first stone church opened with a service by the Rev. Petrus Kalden. Construction cost £2,200. The first

Afrikaner Afrikaners () are a South African ethnic group descended from Free Burghers, predominantly Dutch settlers first arriving at the Cape of Good Hope in the 17th and 18th centuries.Entry: Cape Colony. ''Encyclopædia Britannica Volume 4 Part 2: ...

(i.e. local-born) pastor of the congregation was the Rev. Petrus van der Spuy (1746-1752). During the tenure of the Rev. Johannes Petrus Serrurier (1760-1802), 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 Anton Anreith (; June 11, 1754 – March 4, 1822) Ancestry24.com
was a sculptor and woodcarver ...

, 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 Abraham Faure (29 August 1795 – 28 March 1875) was a clergyman and author from Cape Colony, part of what later became South Africa. Church career Born in Stellenbosch, Faure was educated in both England and the Netherlands and, with a ...

, 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 (Scottish minister), who came here from

Swellendam Swellendam is the fifth oldest town in South Africa (after Cape Town, Stellenbosch, Simon's Town, and Paarl), a town with 17,537 inhabitants situated in the Western Cape province. The town has over 50 provincial heritage sites, most of them b ...

Large church, small congregation

Some of the neighborhoods got their own ministers and therefore separate congregations:

Three Anchor Bay Reformed Church 3 is a number, numeral, and glyph. 3, three, or III may also refer to: * AD 3, the third year of the AD era * 3 BC, the third year before the AD era * March, the third month Books * '' Three of Them'' (Russian: ', literally, "three"), a 190 ...

(in

Sea Point Sea Point (Afrikaans: ''Seepunt'') is one of Cape Town's most affluent and densely populated suburbs, situated between Signal Hill and the Atlantic Ocean, a few kilometres to the west of Cape Town's Central Business District (CBD). Moving from ...

), Observatory Reformed Church, Woodstock Reformed Church, and Maitland Reformed Church, while the Table Mountain Reformed Church was spun off from the Tamboerskloof Reformed Church (also called the New 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 (later, the foundation was more correctly rendered as 1665), 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

9-2-018-0106 Grootte Kerk Adderley street Cape Town (2)

# Joan van Arckel, 1665 - January 12, 1666 (died in office) # Johannes de Vooght, February 26 to November 23, 1666 # Petrus Wachtendorp, November 1666 - December 15, 1667 (died in office) # Adriaan de Vooght, 1667 - 1674 # Rudolpus Meerlandt, 1674 - 1675 # Petrus Hulsenaar, 1675 - 1677 # Johan Frederick Stumphius, May 1678 (not on the official church list) # Johannes Overney, 1678 - 1687 # Johannes van Andel, 1687 - 1689 (returned to

Batavia Batavia may refer to: Historical places * Batavia (region), a land inhabited by the Batavian people during the Roman Empire, today part of the Netherlands * Batavia, Dutch East Indies, present-day Jakarta, the former capital of the Dutch East In ...

) # Leonardus Terwoldt, 1689 - 1695 (returned to

# Hercules van Loon, 1695 - 1697 # Petrus Kalden, 1697 - 1708 (returned to

Holland Holland is a geographical regionG. Geerts & H. Heestermans, 1981, ''Groot Woordenboek der Nederlandse Taal. Deel I'', Van Dale Lexicografie, Utrecht, p 1105 and former province on the western coast of the Netherlands. From the 10th to the 16th c ...

) # Engelbertus Franciscus le Boucq, 1707 - 1708 (not on the official church list) # Johannes Godefridus D'Ailly, 1708 - 1726 # Lambertus Slicher, 1723 - 1725 # Hendrik Beck, 1726 - 1731 # Franciscus le Seuer, 1729 - 1746 # Henricus Cock, 1732 - 1743 # Ruardus van Cloppenburgh, 1746 - 1748 (returned to Holland, died in 1751) # Petrus van der Spuy, 1746 - 1752 (first South-African-born pastor) # Henricus Kronenburg, 1752 - 1779 (27 years; retired; died the latter year) # Gerhardus Croeser, 1754 - 1755 # Christiaan Benjamin Voltelen, 1755 - 1758 # Johannes Frederik Bode, 1758 - 1760 # Johannes Petrus Serrurier, 1760 - 1802 (47 years; retired; died February 3, 1819) # Christiaan Fleck, 1781 - 1822 (41 years) # Meent Borcherds, 1785 - 1786 # Helperus Ritzema van Lier, 1786 - 1793 # Abraham Kuys, 1794 - 1799 # Johan Heinrich von Manger, 1802 - 1839 (37 years; retired; died May 2, 1842) # Johannes Christoffel Berrange, 1817 - 1827 # Dr.

, 1822 - 1867 (45 years) # Johannes Spijker, 1834 - 1864 (30 years; retired; died May 21, 1865) # Stephanus Petrus Heyns, 1839 - September 17, 1873 (36 years; died in office) # Dr. Andrew Murray, 1864 - 1871 # Georg Stegmann jr., 1867 - 1880 # Dr. , 1872 - 1879 (retired; died on November 24, 1879) # Gilles van de Wall, 1874 - 1875 # Anton Daniël Lückhoff, 1875 - 1886 (New Church, later

Tamboerskloof Tamboerskloof is a neighbourhood and suburb of Cape Town, South Africa. It lies on the slopes of Lion's Head and Signal Hill, adjacent to the neighbourhoods of Gardens and Bo-Kaap. Tamboerskloof is one of the contiguous group of neighbourhood ...

) # Dr. Johannes Jacobus Kotzé, 1880 - 1899 #

Abraham Isaac Steytler Abraham Isaac Steytler (5 February 1840 - 17 December 1922) was a minister of the Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk in South Africa. He was dubbed the "Nederduitse Gereformeerde Pous" ("Dutch Reformed Pope") due to his great influence. Biography ...

, 1881 - 1915 (34 years; retired; died December 17, 1922) # Christoffel Frederic Jacobus Muller, 1887 - 1890 (New Church, later Tamboerskloof) # Adriaan Moorrees, 1892 - 1895 # Charles Morgan (South Africa), 1893 - 1896 (

Robben Island Robben Island ( af, Robbeneiland) is an island in Table Bay, 6.9 kilometres (4.3 mi) west of the coast of Bloubergstrand, north of Cape Town, South Africa. It takes its name from the Dutch word for seals (''robben''), hence the Dutch/Afrik ...

) # Francis Xavier Roome, 1895 - 1937 (

, 42 years) # Zacharia Johannes de Beer, 1895 - 1923 (

Woodstock Woodstock Music and Art Fair, commonly referred to as Woodstock, was a music festival held during August 15–18, 1969, on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, New York, United States, southwest of the town of Woodstock, New York, Woodstock. ...

, until foundation of separate congregation, 28 years) # Louis Hugo, 1897 - 1907 (Robben Island) # Dr. Johannes Petrus van Heerden, 1899 - 1935 (36 years) # Dr. Johannes du Plessis, 1899 - 1903 (Sea Point) # Dr. Barend Johannes Haarhoff, 1905 - 1912 (

Maitland Maitland is an English and Scottish surname. It arrived in Britain after the Norman conquest of 1066. There are two theories about its source. It is either a nickname reference to "bad temper/disposition" (Old French, ''Maltalent''; Anglo Norm ...

, until foundation of separate congregation) # Gerrit Johannes du Plessis, 1906 - 1912 (

Observatory An observatory is a location used for observing terrestrial, marine, or celestial events. Astronomy, climatology/meteorology, geophysical, oceanography and volcanology are examples of disciplines for which observatories have been constructed. His ...

, until foundation of separate congregation) # Johannes Stephanus Hauman, 1908 - 1918 (retired; died July 24, 1925; Robben Island) # Daniel Gerhardus Malan, 1918 - 1921 # Pieter Basson Ackermann, 1918 - 1922 (Robben Island) # Daniel Stephanus Burger Joubert, 1921 - 1925 # Willem Ferdinand Louw, 1922 - 1929 (Robben Island; retired; died August 16, 1933) # Dr. Abraham van der Merwe, 1926 - 1966 (40 years) # Jacobus Delarey Conradie, 1936 - 1967 (31 years) # Pieter du Toit, 1938 - 1943 # Theunis Christoffel Botha Stofberg, 1940 – 1944 (student pastor) # Johannes Gerhardus Janse van Vuuren, 1945 - 1954, December 7, 1963 - April 9, 1986 (32 years) # Willem Adolf Landman, 1958 - January 29, 1979 (director of the Information Bureau; 21 years) # Petrus Andries van Zyl, 1958 - 1960 (traveling missionary) # Johannes Mattheus Delport, 1960 - 1963 # Jacobus van der Westhuizen, 1968 - 1997 (29 years) # Erasmus Adriaan van Niekerk, 1972 - 1975 # Abraham Johannes Prins, 1975 - 1981 # Petrus Johannes Botes, April 26, 1981 - 2009 (28 years) # Gideon de Wit, 2003 - 2015 # Johan Taute van Rooyen, 2011 - 2018 # Riaan de Villiers, 2014–present # Michiel Strauss, 2019–present

Bibliography

* Maeder, Rev. G.A. and Zinn, Christian. 1917. ''Ons Kerk Album''. Cape Town: Ons Kerk Album Maatschappij Bpkt. * Olivier, rev. P.L. (compiler). 1952. '' Ons gemeentelike feesalbum''. Cape Town/Pretoria: N.G. Kerk-uitgewers.

External links

* * {{SAHRA site , 920180106 , Groote Kerk, Adderley Street, Cape Town
(af) Die gemeente vier sy 350-jarige bestaan
URL accessed 27 January 2015. Churches in Cape Town Churches completed in 1841 Dutch Reformed Church buildings 1678 establishments in the Dutch Empire Neoclassical church buildings in South Africa