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" (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 6 January 1704 the first stone church opened with a service by the Rev. Petrus Kalden. Construction cost £2,200.
The first Afrikaner (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, 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 (Scottish minister), 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 (in Sea Point), 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.
The Gobabis Reformed Church is the oldest congregation of the Reformed Churches in South Africa (GKSA) in Gobabis in eastern Namibia. At the end of 2015, according to a poll of 300, it was the second-largest traditional Reformed Church congregation in the country.
The Keetmanshoop Reformed Church is a congregation of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa (NGK) in southern Namibia. It is the third oldest NGK congregation in the country after Mariental and Otjiwarongo. Up until the founding of the Keetmanshoop congregation, the entire area known then as South West Africa (SWA) was divided between the two mother churches.
The Mariental Reformed Church is the oldest congregation of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa (NGK) in Namibia and was founded in 1898 as the Gibeon Reformed Church.
The Brixton Reformed Church was a congregation of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa (NGK) in the western suburbs of Johannesburg, South Africa, which was absorbed along with the Johannesburg West Reformed Church (NGK) in 1993 into the new Vergesig Reformed Church. Brixton's centrally located building continues to serve the merged congregation, which has since acquired the Langlaagte Reformed Church as well as the Crosby West Reformed Church. Around 1985, the Cottesloe Reformed Church was also absorbed into the original Brixton congregation. Around 2014, Vergesig changed its name to Brixton Church.
The Fordsburg Reformed Church was a congregation of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa (NGK) that served the western Johannesburg suburb of Fordsburg from November 6, 1896, to 1988.
The Johannesburg Reformed Church was the first congregation of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa (NGK) to be founded in Johannesburg on August 14, 1887. All the congregations on the Witwatersrand stem from it, but by the 2010s, the NGK yearbook recorded only 90 in its ward which had long ceased to operate independently.
The Johannesburg North Reformed Church/Andrew Murray Congregation is a bilingual congregation of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa (NGK) in the Johannesburg suburb of Orchards. It was formed in 1999 by the merger of the NGK congregation and the Andrew Murray Congregation and functions as a church without borders.
The Johannesburg East Reformed Church was a congregation of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa (NGK) in the Johannesburg suburb of Doornfontein, just east of downtown. It is also known as the Irene Church after the sobriquet of its second and third churches on 1 Beit Street. Five weeks before its centennial, on June 1, 1997, Johannesburg East was absorbed by the Johannesburg Reformed Church (NGK), from whence it had seceded on July 8, 1897.
The Langlaagte Reformed Church was the 28th congregation of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa (NGK) on the Transvaal and the second in Johannesburg after the Johannesburg Reformed Church (NGK) (1887). The congregation is well known as the spiritual home of the Langlaagte orphanage, later named the Abraham Kriel Children’s Home after Rev. Abraham Kriel, who founded it as pastor of Langlaagte.
The Linden Reformed Church was a congregation of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa (NGK) in the northwestern Johannesburg suburb of Linden. On July 1, 2018, it merged with the Aasvoëlkop Reformed Church to form the Aan die Berg Reformed Church.
The Parkhurst Reformed Church was a congregation of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa (NGK) that was active from 1944 to 1996 in the Johannesburg suburb of Parkhurst.
The Turffontein Reformed Church was a congregation of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa (NGK) in southern Johannesburg, Transvaal. It was founded in 1906 and for years had a large membership, at times exceeding 3,000.
The Potchefstroom Reformed Church (in Potchefstroom, North West, South Africa, is the oldest congregation of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa in what was then the Transvaal or South African Republic. At its founding in March 1842, it was the 28th congregation in what would later become South Africa and the tenth outside of the Western and Southern Cape Synod.
The Rustenburg Reformed Church is the oldest congregation of the Reformed Churches in South Africa (GKSA), founded in February 1859 by the denomination’s pioneer, Rev. Dirk Postma.
The Dutch Reformed Church is a place of worship of the Dutch Reformed Church in Alexandria, South Africa.
The Moederkerk in Stellenbosch is the second oldest congregation of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa.
The Moederkerk, in Swellendam, South Africa, is the only congregation of the NG Church in the historic Overbergse town of the same name.
The Beaufort West Reformed Church is a church in South Africa, founded on 16 May 1820. It is the ninth oldest congregation of the Dutch Reformed Church in the Synod of Western and Southern Cape and the 12th oldest in the entire Church.
The Dutch Reformed Church in Jansenville was the first of a total of seven congregations of the Dutch Reformed Church that was founded in 1855 and is therefore the 61st oldest congregation in the entire Church and the 13th oldest congregation in the Synod of Eastern Cape. The NG municipality Middelburg, Cape, merged with its daughter municipality Middelburg-Uitsig as Middelburg-Karoo in 2010 and that year has since been indicated as its founding date, because Jansenville moved up one place.
The Dutch Reformed Church in Colesberg, with the Northern Cape town of Colesberg as its centre, is the 18th oldest congregation of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa, but due to the synodal boundaries that differ from the provincial ones, the fifth oldest in the Synod of Eastern Cape. On 10 December 2011, the congregation was already 185 years old. In 2015, the congregation had 90 baptized and 458 professing members.
