Easter Letter

Dear Friends

These last six months have been full of activity for me. I have visited fourteen of the nineteen Presbyteries, having a meal with the Moderators and Clerks, talking about the life and work of each of these Presbyteries. There have been moments of celebration: Berea (125 years), Auld Memorial (85 years), Midrand (25 years) and in September, Durbanville (50 years).

I toured the Presbytery of Lekoa in the first two weeks of March, driving from home to Carletonville and Westonaria to Klerksdorp and Stillfontein to Vryburg and then Kuruman, Mafikeng. The second week was spent in Vereeniging, going out to Sebokeng, Sharpville, Denysville, Boipatong, Vanderbijlpark etc. It was a wonderful time and I was warmly welcomed wherever I went.

There have been meetings, oh, so many meetings! All important, most considered by their members as urgent but so many meetings. I have tried to take my place around these meeting tables and to play my part.

There have been funerals – 4 of our ministers have died since I took office: Jimmy Stevenson, Brian Woods, Leslie Dawson and Moshe Rajuili. The first three had grown old (Genesis calls this ‘full of years’) and passed on peacefully but Moshe was tragically killed in a road accident. In one way or another, I was able to express the sympathy of the UPCSA to these families.

I am grateful to God for all these and many other opportunities to serve you.

Yesterday, in a meeting, one of our elders reflected on the state of the church. She singled out ‘unforgiveness’ as one of the great challenges facing the UPCSA. She spoke about this unforgiveness as a feature of the Church, in her observation, over the last 10 years.

Forgiveness is such a complex thing – do we forgive each other our debts? Do we forgive each other for hurts caused unintentionally or for hurts caused by others who are now ‘associated’ to the person standing before us?

Easter is all about forgiveness. Easter is about God’s intervention in human history to restore the relationship with humankind. Easter is a grand display of how love can transform even the most heinous evil. 

A few years ago, Sascha and I were in London and went to see the West End stage play, “Whistle down the wind.” In this story a convict escapes and hides out in the barn belonging to a recently bereaved family. The children meet the stowaway and as a result of their naiveté and a misunderstanding, they mistake the man for Jesus – Jesus, they believe, is hiding out in their barn!

And so they begin to treat him differently – with lavish love and deep respect. Slowly, before the eyes of the audience, this convict begins to change. His whole character changes! Perhaps Andrew Lloyd Webber was right when he wrote: “Love, love changes everything.”

The UPCSA has huge challenges – not least the Church Association issue and the increasing inability of middle sized congregations to pay assessments. But the UPCSA has much to celebrate also – dynamic personnel, growth, massive social engagement (in the community) through congregations. How will we face our challenges? Surely by relying on the God who intervened in Christ.

I pray that your journey through Easter will be meaningful and that you will know again the wonder of the resurrection. May you know the forgiveness that was realized on Good Friday and the transformation of death that Easter Sunday displays.

Much love,

A Friend...

Dear Friends

My friend Dal Woodward died this week.  He was very dear to me. 

The first time we met was on Easter Sunday in 2000 or 2001. I was minister of the Margate congregation on the Natal South coast.  I was walking in to Church when the elder proceeding me reached over to his right and said to this man I had never met, “You are a man of your word”.  Needless to say, I was perplexed. After the service, I asked the elder what this was all about. He looked rather sheepish and went on to explain that Dal was the local pub owner and that on the previous Thursday night, after our Maundy Thursday service, he and his wife and two of our “old dears” had popped in to the pub after the service for a “night cap”. There they met Dal who wanted to know where they had come from “all dressed up”. They said “church”. Dal said: ”Church meets on Sundays”. They said: “Its Easter. We have services Thursday, Friday and Sunday”. Then they asked Dal whether he was a Christian. He told them he was a ‘pedestrian’ and defined this as a person walking around looking for a Church. On Easter Sunday, Dal came to Church and he was there every Sunday after that.

I made a pastoral visit to the pub. When I asked Dal for his version of the story, he told me that on Maundy Thursday, four angels arrived at his pub and ordered drinks. And that the angels led him back to Church. He always called those four his angels and even although they were a naughty bunch of angels, I began to see them as angels too. Its a strange thing but even although I did not know about Dal’s death yesterday morning, when we sang the song “We are standing on holy ground”, it was Dal who I was thinking about.

In recent years, Dal has been living up here in Johannesburg. He reached a turning point in his life some years back and admitted himself to a rehabilitation facility where he found freedom from alcoholism. After that, he found Sandra and they were married in October.  It was my joy to officiate at their wedding.  Every now and then, I saw him and Sandra sitting in the congregation. On other Sundays, they would attend St Columba’s in Parkview.  Sascha and I visited Dal last Tuesday in the Donald Gordon.  He looked frail. I prayed with him. He said I should look out for his ‘ugly face’ in the congregation. He died yesterday at home with Sandra.  I will miss my friend – someone whom God sent to me, a real sign of God’s grace to me.

There is a line from one of our new songs (sung yesterday) that becomes real to me in times like this: “We are a moment. You are forever”.

My prayer this week is about waiting and longing – a prayer for Dal (by Walter Brueggemann)

God of the Seasons,

God of the years,

God of the eons,

Alpha and Omega,

before us and after us.

You promise and we wait:

                we wait with eager longing,

                we wait with doubt and anxiety,

                we wait with patience thin

                and then doubt,

                and then we take life into our own hands.

We wait because you are the one and the only one.

We wait for your peace and your mercy,

     for your justice and your good rule.

Give us your spirit that we may wait

                obedient and with discernment,

caringly and without passivity,

trustingly and without cynicism,

honestly and without utopianism.

Grant that our wait may be appropriate to your coming

                soon and very soon,

                soon and not late,

late but not too late.

We wait while the world groans in eager longing.

Lots of love, dear friends,

My South Africa - Jonathan Jansen

Dear Friends

Today I'm sending you a letter written by Professor Jonathan Jansen of the University of the Free State. It moves me. It describes my SA too.

I will get back to the blog (on the weekend past) soon.

"My South Africa is the working-class man who called from the airport to return my wallet without a cent missing. It is the white woman who put all three of her domestic worker's children through the same school that her own child attended. It is the politician in one of our rural provinces, Mpumalanga, who returned his salary to the government as a statement that standing with the poor had to be more than just a few words. It is the teacher who worked after school hours every day during the public sector strike to ensure her children did not miss out on learning.

My South Africa is the first-year university student in Bloemfontein who took all the gifts she received for her birthday and donated them - with the permission of the givers - to a home for children in an Aids village. It is the people hurt by racist acts who find it in their hearts to publicly forgive the perpetrators. It is the group of farmers in Paarl who started a top school for the children of farm workers to ensure they got the best education possible while their parents toiled in the vineyards. It is the farmer's wife in Viljoenskroon who created an education and training centre for the wives of farm labourers so that they could gain the advanced skills required to operate accredited early-learning centers for their own and other children.

My South Africa is that little white boy at a decent school in the Eastern Cape who decided to teach the black boys in the community to play cricket, and to fit them all out with the togs required to play the gentleman’s game. It is the two black street children in Durban, caught on camera, who put their spare change in the condensed milk tin of a white beggar. It is the Johannesburg pastor who opened up his church as a place of shelter for illegal immigrants. It is the Afrikaner woman from Boksburg who nailed the white guy who shot and killed one of South Africa's greatest freedom fighters outside his home.

My South Africa is the man who went to prison for 27 years and came out embracing his captors, thereby releasing them from their impending misery. It is the activist priest who dived into a crowd of angry people to rescue a woman from a sure necklacing. It is the former police chief who fell to his knees to wash the feet of Mamelodi women whose sons disappeared on his watch; it is the women who forgave him in his act of contrition. It is the Cape Town university psychologist who interviewed the 'Prime Evil' in Pretoria Centre and came away with emotional attachment, even empathy, for the human being who did such terrible things under apartheid.

My South Africa is the quiet, dignified, determined township mother from Langa who straightened her back during the years of oppression and decided that her struggle was to raise decent children, insist that they learn, and ensure that they not succumb to bitterness or defeat in the face of overwhelming odds. It is the two young girls who walked 20kms to school every day, even through their Matric years, and passed well enough to be accepted into university studies. It is the student who takes on three jobs, during the evenings and on weekends, to find ways of paying for his university studies.

My South Africa is the teenager in a wheelchair who works in townships serving the poor. It is the pastor of a Kenilworth church whose parishioners were slaughtered, who visits the killers and asks them for forgiveness because he was a beneficiary of apartheid. It is the politician who resigns on conscientious grounds, giving up status and salary because of an objection in principle to a social policy of her political party. It is the young lawman who decides to dedicate his life to representing those who cannot afford to pay for legal services.

My South Africa is not the angry, corrupt, violent country whose deeds fill the front pages of newspapers and the lead-in items on the seven-o'-clock news. It is the South Africa often unseen, yet powered by the remarkable lives of ordinary people. It is the citizens who keep the country together through millions of acts of daily kindness."

Lekoa Tour - Day 9

Good Friends in Christ

I started off the day with the congregation of St Anthony. St Anthony is one of the Sebokeng congregations that emerged from the work of the Rev Francis Moletsane and the congregation of St Paul's, Sharpville.  In the early 70s, when Sebokeng was growing as a township, four stations were established and St Anthony's was one of them. The original building was built in 1986 and then, one day, in 2003, a significant part of the building fell down just as the mothers were leaving the building. The insurance only paid out 45% of the cost of rebuilding.

This prompted the congregation to start a massive fundraising campaign.  To the congregation's credit, they rebuilt a much improved sanctuary without any outside assistance. Today, a beautiful face brick building stands along with an office block with minister's office, kitchen and multi-purpose room. The courtyard is paved and the inside of the church is beautifully painted. Associations are active within the congregation as is a project called 'Diakonia' which feeds destitute families. The congregation is still heavily involved in completing its buildings.  The vestry is still incomplete (floors and fittings are still required), bathrooms are incomplete and the manse needs to be extended.

St Anthony's santuary

My time at St Anthony was concluded with a wonderful lunch.


In the afternoon, I visited two congregations - St Peter's, Boipatong and Bopilong Ebenezer. I visited the churches in the company of the Moderator of Presbytery, the Rev. Hugh Grant who drives from Carletonville to be Interim Moderator to these two congregations which are situated outside of Vanderbijlpark.  At St Peter's, we were guided by Elder Johannes Ramafikeng. The congregation is formed out of an outstation of St Paul's, Sharpville. It is a small congregation but values its independence. Boipatong is the place where a terrible massacre happened in June 1992, an event that seriously threatened the transition to a new South Africa (February 1990 to April 1994).

From Boipatong to the newly established congregation of Bopilong Ebenezer. This infant church is only a few months old. We were taken to the site in Bopilong where there is a small, poorly built building into which 80 people squeeze on a Sunday.  The congregation is already preparing to extend this building so that it can accommodate 150 people. There is a sense of excitement about this new venture.  I addressed members of the congregation at the Bopilong community hall at 5pm and answered a few questions before concluding for the day.

Bopilong Ebenezer Sanctuary

Elders of Bopilong, myself
& Rev Hugh Grant (Moderator of
the Presbytery)

Before I sign off for the day, I would like to mention my regret that, because I have to travel to Pietermaritzburg on Saturday to attend Rev Rajuili's funeral, I was only able to spend an hour with Bopilong Ebenezer and I am not able to meet with the people of St Luke's, Vereeniging at all.  My visit to St Luke's was scheduled for Saturday morning, my sincere apologies.

Lekoa Tour - Day 8

Good Friends in Christ

Rev Francis and Mary
Moletsane

I visited Francis and Mary Moletsane in Sebokeng this morning (Wednesday 9 March). Francis retired about 10 years ago after more than 40 years of ministry. He was originally an "evangelist", starting his ministry in the Free State and then, Barberton. In 1970, when the former PCSA came to their senses and realised that they could not perpetuate a two tier form of ministry, Francis was ordained and appointed to the new developing township called Sebokeng.  St Paul's, Sharpville, was the big church in the area then. They decided to develop a new congregation and symbolically they saw themselves as Paul sending out a younger brother. So they called the new church, St Timothy's. I wondered whether the other Sebokeng church, St Mark's, was not also named in the same way because Mark was a companion of Paul (and Barnabas).

Mary is confined to bed and very frail. She welcomed me to her home. I presented Francis and Mary with a gift on behalf of the Assembly.

The Rev Thando Mpambane is Interim Moderator to St Mark's, Sebokeng, and he arranged for me to meet elders and members who eagerly told me about the life and work of the congregation. I was treated to sandwiches and tea.  The congregation has a lovely building and a Manse which is currently rented out. I addressed the members present and answered some questions raised.

Members of St Mark's with Rev Thando Mpambane

Later in the day, I visited St Timothy's who also received me well.  St Timothy's is presently receiving a new minister, the Rev N. Kula. The Rev. Kula will be the first minister in some time.  St Timothy's (and St Anthony's) was previously served by the Rev Zamani Maqoko.
In every place, I am finding proud Presbytyerians who face challenges and yet, experience great joy in worship.  I look forward to meeting all these people again on Sunday in the combined service planned in the Saul Tsotsetsi hall.

St Timothy's

In the evening, I visited the little congregation of St Peter's, Deneysville. This congregation must have one of the most beautiful settings in the UPCSA! The congregation meets in two beautiful stone buildings (one is the church and the other is the "hall") built on a grassy patch on the banks of the vaal dam. The view over the dam is breath taking. Robbie Pitt, treasurer of Lekoa Presbytery is a member and introduced me to the congregation.

There were such encouraging questions - about Church Growth and how to reach out to young people. After our meeting, we had tea in the Church hall. I drove back to Three Rivers giving thanks to God for this group of christians meeting Sundays beside the vaal.


Greetings to all of you on this Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent.

Lekoa Tour - Day 7

Good Friends in Christ

Rev Robert Thema

I spent Tuesday 8th March in the company of the Rev. Robert Thema. Robert invited me to meet the people of St Silas, Evaton, where he is the minister. St Silas is one of the older congregations in this Presbytery, reportedly having started sometime in the 1920s. Evaton is an old township and I found the people warm and friendly. We met in the beautiful new St Silas building. The congregation fundraised and built a huge worship space with kitchen, boardroom and vestry.  There are plans to build new bathrooms as well.

Representatives from Session and the UPWF told about the projects that they are involved with and afterwards, we walked down the road to a centre caring for diabled women.  St Silas supports this centre with collections of food and clothing. Each winter, fresh blankets are collected for the centre by the congregation. I presented St Silas with a new chalice and patten from Trinity, Edenvale as well as gifts for the Thema family from the General Assembly.

St Silas Congregation

St Silas new buildings

Later in the day, we proceded to BM Molaba congregation - another long standing congregation in Sebokeng. BM Molaba has many outstations, some as far as Kokosi and Wedella near Carletonville and even near Orange farm. Rev.Thema is Interim Moderator here and the congregation say that they want to have their own minister as soon as possible but there are some essential repairs to the Manse that need to be made.

Elders & Members of BM Molaba

The congregation were pleased to see the Moderator (pardon my having to refer to myself in the third person!) and told me about their life and work. I passed on the greetings of the General Assembly to them.


Its my priviledge to recieve the friendly hospitality of so many in the family called Presbyterian.  I shall carry this with me and pass it on to others.

Lekoa Tour - Day 5 and 6

Good Friends in Christ

Sascha and my girls travelled all the way from Edenvale to Vryburg on Saturday to be with me (a 5 hour journey)! I was glad to see them when they arrived late on Saturday afternoon.

My Great Grandfather's grave.

On Sunday morning, we left Vryburg and travelled north for two hours to Mafikeng. We decided to leave early so that we could visit the cemetary before the morning service.  The Marchinkowskis were once Mafikeng people. In the early years of the twentieth century, a polish man called Fred Marchinkowski immigrated to South Africa and settled in Mafikeng and married a woman called Anne Groenewalt. They lived there and raised their two children, my grandfather, Joseph, and his sister, Veronica. The cemetary in Mafikeng is overgrown and in bad shape but we managed to find the old man's grave (he died in the late 1950s). We could not find my great grandmother's grave (She died in the late 60s).

After our sojourn to the cemetary, we proceded to Solomon Rathebe congregation where I shared the service with the Rev Malefetsane Matli. My family was warmly recieved. Rev. Matli led the service and invited me to preach and celebrate Holy Communion. The congregation presented us with a beautiful gift - a glass jug and set of glasses.  After the service, we shared a wonderful meal with the congregation. When we had said our good byes, we set out for Vereeniging (a four hour journey), travelling through Lichtenburg, Ventersdorp and Potchefstroom.

Rev Matli translating my sermon

From right: Leah, Lerato & another
young member of the congregation.

On Sunday night, we moved into the Three Rivers Lodge which will be my home for the whole of this week.


I was so grateful to "the powers that be" (The Presbytery of Lekoa and my chaplain, Mrs Sheila Hunt) who arranged for Monday 7th March to be a "day off" for me. Sascha and the girls stayed with me and we went to the Emerald Resort in Vanderbijlpark for the day. They have a zoo there which the girls enjoyed. This was followed by a game of 10 pin bowling (You should have seen 3 year old Zoe carrying her 10 pin bowling ball!) and a few hours in the Aqua Dome (massive swimming experience). We had lunch at Wimpy before Sascha and the girls went home again.

For the rest of this week, I will be in Vereeniging, going out every day to meet with the churches.

Much love