ST MARK'S PLUMSTEAD
AVM
2025

Word from the Rector...

 “we are unable to stop speaking about what we have seen and heard”
– Acts 4:20

Peter spoke these words when pressured by all the powers of society to keep quiet about Jesus. His response to that pressure was simply to explain that he and the early Christians were unable to not talk about Jesus. Despite what that cost them, and how much trouble they’d get into, they were just unable to do it. They couldn’t not talk about Jesus. And it was through their unstoppable witness that God shook the earth and changed the world.

If only that were true of Christians today, what world-shaking God would do. Yet, the truth is: we don’t share the early Christians’ inability. We are able to not talk about Jesus, when we choose. In a society of carefully-curated profiles and political correctness, we’ve learned to become very controlled about what we say to our colleagues, friends and neighbours when it comes to faith and God – waiting for just the ‘right moment’ or the ‘appropriate time’ to broach the topic (and secretly relieved when those moments never come!).

But this wasn’t the case for the early Christians. They couldn’t keep quiet about Jesus. Why? What’s the difference between us and them? Peter tells us: they couldn’t stop speaking about what they had ‘seen and heard’. See: they didn’t just know about Jesus. They had experienced him. The gospel was not just a set of truths they believed, it was a lived reality for them, every day. That’s why it was a reality on their lips every day – because they felt it inside them.

Today, we’re very good at knowing the gospel and having our theology right. But often not very good at feeling it; especially in a conservative church tradition. That’s why we need to learn how experience the gospel again. Even the old Puritans recognised this, centuries ago. John Owen wrote, “Get an experience of the power of the gospel in and upon your own hearts, or all your profession is an expiring thing”.

So how do we do that? How do we make sure we’re not just hearing and knowing the gospel, but also experiencing it daily? Well, the first step is a healthy and regular devotional life. Reading the bible not just to learn information, but to grow in a daily experience of God, thorough his living and active Spirit. Then I think the second key ingredient is fellowship with other Christians. We read about the early Christians: “Now all the believers were together…” (Acts 2:44). And it’s as we also learn to spend more time together, even when that’s inconvenient, that we will inspire and ignite each other with the gospel’s truth.

So that’s pretty much my challenge for us this year: let’s get better at, not just knowing Jesus, but experiencing him. This will be delightful for our souls and satisfy our deepest wants – I want it more in my life and I hope you do too. But it will also cause us, like the first Christians, to not bow to the increasing pressure our society puts on us to keep quiet about the truth – but instead to be unable to stop speaking about what we have seen and heard. And I believe it’s then that we can look forward to God shaking the earth again, even here in Plumstead.

Rector's Report: Visitors to St Marks...

 “Then Jesus told them this parable: “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.”
– Luke 15:3-7

For some reason, we see a lot of visitors to our church, but the majority of those do not stay on to become integrated in the church and grow as disciples.

To illustrate: since the beginning of 2025, our records show that we have seen at least 44 new visitors attend our Sunday services (these are only the ones for whom our Welcome Team were able to capture details). That’s a huge amount for a church our size. If all those people had stayed coming to St Mark’s, our church would’ve grown more than 50% in 4 months! – and therefore potentially more than doubled over a year. And yet, our church population has stayed relatively constant over the years. This indicates that while we have a very big and welcoming ‘front door’, we also have a very big back door.

It’s for this reason that, over the last few months, the pastoral staff have been working on a tighter follow-up system for our visitors and a deliberate ‘pathway’ for them to move through from the moment they step into our church. Of course, while it is God who does the saving by his grace alone, He graciously sees fit to use the means of our efforts to achieve his purposes. This system we use is illustrated below, and by God’s grace has already seen more people coming back to church and even being converted.    

However, having a system is not enough. It’s long been recognised that what gets new people to stick in a church, and to grow in it, is personal relationships with other members – to have real connection and feel loved by the church. And there’s only so much that the pastors can do here. This is something that needs to come from the body itself – namely, an ‘outward-looking’ church culture that seeks out and actively loves the visitors that God sends us. While the St Mark’s community has always been known as warm and welcoming, we should strive to be doing this ever better and not only welcome people, but pursue them until they’re stuck with us!… just as Jesus himself pursued us when we were lost. And remember, Jesus calls us all to be ‘fishers of people’ – well, it turns out that we can begin to do that every Sunday without even leaving our church building!

ST MARK’S FOLLOW-UP:

Below is the typical ‘pathway’ that people are encouraged to follow from when they first come to St Mark’s, to move them from merely visiting to actively believing and following Christ. This is important for every St Mark’s member to know so that we can all work together to keep moving people through our ministries and closer to Christ, for His glory.

Social Action Report...

 “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
– Matthew 6:10

In the gospel Jesus announces the good news that God’s kingdom has finally begun to be a reality on earth. With the arrival of Jesus a new dispensation has begun in world history – a time of healing, renewal and blessing.  Jesus goes back to heaven and entrusts the ongoing completion of God’s Kingdom project to his people the Church. We are to continue Jesus’ work of preaching the gospel and sharing the blessings of the kingdom in order to free people caught in bondage, brokenness and poverty. This is not a small nor an easy task but God gives us more than enough power (through the Holy Spirit) and resources (through the Church) to tackle the task with joy and confidence.

It was a productive year for the kingdom with steady growth in the number of people being involved with the various mercy ministries and the number of people being helped. We have 19 awesome people involved across the various ministries which is a really good number given the size of our church! Highlights from the year were our winter outreach programme; our community clean ups; the Latimer Aftercare/Homework Club moving forward and some challenging situations with at-risk clients that made us realise the complexity and depth of sin but also that God’s grace is more than sufficient to heal and to save.

Exciting projects for the year ahead include the launch of the Latimer Aftercare/Homework Club; starting a ‘mercy ministry cohort’ within REACH WC; supporting the development of a U-turn Service Centre in Wynberg; investigating partnerships with local business to start a social enterprise (business that supports at-risk clients) as well as our various community outreaches.

 

Good Samaritan Project 
The programme runs on a Sunday after Church and provides soup and bread but also acts as a doorway into our wider church community to receive various forms of help. This is the point of entry for at-risk clients to start receiving help. Anyone you meet that asks for food / money / clothes / shelter should be referred to our Sunday soup kitchen and from there we do an assessment of their needs to see how we can help them. Over the past year we have regularly helped between 3-5 at-risk clients per week with a meal, prayer, and encouragement from the Word. Some of the clients are now giving back to the Project by donating food. And we had the opportunity to send a family member to the REACH CrossWord Camp.

Sandy has joined Helen in making soup for us when needed and Yvonne continues to supply us with fresh veg. Emmanuel helps Bryan with cooking and clean-ups with Penny and Mari talking to clients. 

Plans for the year ahead:
more substance to the soup (chicken; mince; beef) ; expand its reach to outside clients ; make frozen soup meals available to Helping Hand and other at risk clients


Helping Hands & Jars of Hope
Helping Hands provides relief to those going through a difficult time financially and who need food support. Sandy and Gerrie make sure the cupboard is stocked. The Jars of Hope (coffee jars of dry soup mix) are very useful to supplement the Helping Hands parcels and for ‘drop ins’.

We helped 8 unique clients with an average 2-3 interactions per month. Of those 4 have gone on to receive additional help from the Church (detail in further section of the report). The clients come from diverse backgrounds – one is an economic migrant, another is a single mom with no income ; another is suffering with psychological disease.

Plans for year head:
set up qualification criteria for additional help (church attendance,  sobriety tests) ; create ‘Standby / Response Team’ who can help clients with SASSA requests, banking, ID’s; phone nrs etc ;

 

Community Outreaches
We ran several successful community outreaches last year namely our Winter Warmer and the Community Clean Up events. Levona and Carol form the core team that lead the Winter Warmer Outreach. We had at least 13 ladies make various items for Gavin’s school last year. This year Gavin has set us the goal of providing 200 beanies for his Grade R and Grade 1 learners and I know the ladies won’t disappoint. Men can get involved by donating wool and trying their hand at knitting!

The Community Clean Ups continue to be a drawcard for our Church to get together and bless our community with much needed cleaning. Its also a good starting point to raise awareness for our need to be involved in the community. Unfortunately I got the dates mixed up earlier this year but not to worry we’ll have a clean-up in the last quarter!

Plans for year ahead:
get youth involved in the winter outreach ; organise knitting workshops with youth / Gavin’s school / St Paul’s ; run youth orientated clean up event ; organise clean up of the train station precinct.

 

Care Team
The Care Team continues to serve St Mark’s in contacting and visiting the sick and those unable to attend church for various reasons. Each week we go through the Church list of members and attendees and contact those we have not seen for a few weeks. In the past 5 months we have had 68 follow ups – over 13 per month. So it’s a much needed and I know a much appreciated work.

Plans for year ahead:
recruit more team members especially ladies; develop an Action Team component that can help with emergency situation logistics (food parcels, clothes, transport etc)

 

At-Risk Clients
The purpose of Good Samaritan Project and Helping Hands etc is to be a front door for further help if needed by drawing at-risk clients into the life of the Church. We were able to help three clients last year with various needs. They tend to be very chaotic situations that need a lot of time and action from a number of people to resolve. In other words they are very time and resource intensive and they take a heavy emotional toll on everyone involved.

Client A was a single female in very bad living situation (the drug house in Churchill Rd) and needed food, clothes and a new place to stay. It took from Oct to Dec to get her sorted out along with numerous phone calls, lifts, parcels, meetings, etc.

Client B is a single mom with no income and a very dysfunctional home life. We have helped them with food parcels, electricity, stationary for the children at school etc. A major win was getting the teenage daughter registered at a high school. But the home situation escalated until we needed to get social services involved. We were involved from Sept to Oct and it is still ongoing with various flare ups.

Client C is a homeless female that was in prison. On her release she came back to us knowing we were the only place that has helped her before. By God’s grace being in prison cleared her of active addiction and she is living a Christian life! We helped her with food, SASSA grant and connecting with her daughter through social services. She currently has a stable living arrangement, an income and is still drug free – God is good!

All these cases are ongoing with much prayer and resources needed. All this to say that sin causes really deep problems that requires a network or community of care to resolve.

Plans for year ahead:
set up post-intervention care for helpers allowing for debrief and processing ; setting up Response Team that is able to help with things like SASSA , phone calls to shelters, and lifts etc


Latimer Aftercare Homework Club
We are finally ready to go! The Latimer Project was conceived last year and took a little longer to give birth than we anticipated. We struggled to get the necessary number of volunteers (we need two per day) and so the opening date kept getting pushed back. We eventually just handed it over to the Lord and kept it before him in prayer not knowing where we will get the numbers we need. But God works in mysterious ways and in his own time and this year we have an abundance of volunteers that can run it (a lesson to be learned for sure)! We have two families with up to 5 children ready to make use of the service and a roster of 8 volunteers ready to receive them!

God willing we will open on Fri 6th June and run it the three Fridays leading to the end of term. We are running it on a Friday for starters to link up to Kids Club and will roll it out on additional days in the 3rd quarter. Praise God for answer to prayer and pray that it will be an oasis of help, love and gospel opportunity to families in need of Jesus.

Youth Report...

Kids Club
Grade R-6
Fridays 6pm – 7.10pm

Kids club takes place every Friday evening and includes Prayer, Worship, Bible teaching with discussion and games.

During the 3rd and 4th term of 2024 we read a book called The Jesse Tree which covers the lineage of Jesus up until He was born.

One of our highlights was the musical production called, “Underneath the Shining Star”. We rehearsed alongside some of our older youth and it was a joy to witness the enthusiasm with which everyone took part as they shared the story of Jesus Birth. This took place on the final Friday of kids club 2024 and we were able to spend some time with parents and children around tea, eats and good conversation.

The first semester of 2025 is a 15 week series by Phil Vischer on the book of Philippians focusing on the topic of joy.

We would like to thank Gavin, Sam and Faith Alkana, Caitlin Goodwin and Damian Jacobs for assisting us regularly during 2024.
As a leadership team we thank God for the privilege and opportunity to serve His kingdom and are grateful for the relationships we are able to form with each child and family that He sends us.

Youth
Grade 7-12
Fridays 7pm – 9pm

St Mark’s Youth group has seen another year of growth in numbers but more importantly, growth in the teens’ faith and love for God. We are witnessing them desire and develop a deeper relationship with God. We are so grateful to God for growing this ministry and for working in the teens’ lives. There are 20 teens that regularly attend St Mark’s youth. We averaged 12 teens per week over the past year with 20 teens being the most we have had on a single night.

Our leadership team has also grown to 4 leaders over the past year. We have covered multiple topics over the past 12 months. We covered multiple series from RightNow Media titled Heart of God, Redeem the Screen, Psalm 23, Beatitudes, What is a Christian and most recently Why Does Jesus Matter.

We have had many fun adventures together over the past year such as braais, movie nights and laser tag.

Each year we plan for the annual Cross Word Youth Camp and last year was no different. We raised over R30 000 last year through fundraising and generous donations. We sent 12 teens and 2 leaders on Cross Word last year. This year we aim to raise as much money as possible as we are planning to send 18-24 people on camp.

As a leadership team, we are extremely grateful for the privilege of serving in God’s kingdom and walking alongside the teens’ as they grow in their knowledge and love of Jesus

Treasurer's Report...

 (to view or download the St Mark’s 2025 Income and Expenditure Statement, please tap here)

We’ve indeed been blessed by the Lord for the last 12 months ended 31 March 2025:

  1. We budgeted for a loss of R57K but ended up with a surplus of just under R8K.
  2. This was mainly due to our Givings being 6% up from last year and it made a huge difference.
  3. Costs were only up 3.5% and a lot of those costs were one-off and hopefully won’t recur again. These included:
    • The high cost of going to Synod and a course that our Pastors attended at GWC.
    • Repairs and maintenance: our builder indicated that he hadn’t charged for all the Hall upgrades – something which we accepted and a payment was made to him.
    • Remuneration to our Pastors was higher because we paid a 13th cheque, but this was covered by specific donations made by the church for that amount.
    • Most other expenses are inflationary and self-explanatory.

Some features of the Budget for 2026

  1. We’ve increased Givings by 6%: this is based very much on what we received in the last 3 months and we anticipate that continuing and hopefully increasing.
  2. General donations are down because we can’t always rely on this.
  3. Synod will be in Cape Town this year so we should save costs there; and therefore conferences and courses are lower.
  4. Printing and stationery has been reduced because the capital cost of our printer has been paid off over the last 5 years.
  5. Repairs and maintenance: while this is less than last year, it will still be high because there is a lot of repairs and maintenance to do – due to of a directive from our insurance.

We read in 2 Corinthians 9v7: “Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion for God loves a cheerful giver”. Unlike the compulsory tithes in Mosaic law, giving in the New Testament is a matter of the heart. Paul makes it clear that believers should never give out of pressure, guilt, or fear but should decide personally what to give based on their own means and convictions. The emphasis is on voluntary and joyful giving, reflecting a heart that trusts God’s provision. Another important principle is giving according to one’s ability. In 2 Corinthians 8v12, Paul states, “For if the willingness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what a person has, not according to what he does not have”. This means that giving is not about meeting a fixed percentage but about giving in proportion to what one has been blessed with. This principle ensures that those in financial hardship are not burdened by unrealistic expectations. At the same time, those who have been blessed with more, are encouraged to give more generously to support gospel work at St Marks and beyond.

As always, thank you to Helen for doing all the bookkeeping work, including counting the money every Sunday; and thank you to those who assist her.

Alan Hodson
Treasurer           

A Word From the Wardens...

Praise God that we can look back on another year of His faithful love to St Marks.

Numbers are by no means an indicator of a ‘good’ church, but steady growth is encouraging… In the second half of 2023 average weekly attendance was 54 adults. That went up to 59 in 2024, and so far, average attendance has been 72 per week this year.  Praise God that more people are hearing the gospel week by week.

Related to this, we also give praise to God for the steady stream of visitors through our doors, particularly at recent the Easter musical services, where they heard the gospel in word and song. 

Our sermon series focused mainly on the gospel of Matthew as we unpacked the teaching of Jesus during his earthly ministry. We have been blessed with excellent, faithful bible teaching and give thanks to God for Nick and Dylan.

Within our congregation, we witnessed an adult baptism, congratulated a newly married couple as well as a newly engaged couple, and we celebrated Dylan’s ordination as Deacon.  Thanks be to God for his ongoing work through his people.

Our various growth groups have continued to meet during the year.  We continued the format of prayerful reflection on daily devotional readings.  We thank God placing a desire in people’s hearts to meet around his word, for open homes to meet in, and for the building of Christian relationships as we meet together in fellowship.

We remember those who passed away this year with sadness but also joy and hope that we will see them again in glory:

  • Hilary Sauls
  • Sheila Carol
  • Sydney Rayners

Please keep your pastors in prayer:

  • Praise God that He is using Nick & Dylan full time in his service.
  • Pray that they would keep their spiritual fervour and passion for the gospel and that it will never be ‘just a job’.
  • That they would manage their time well and know what tasks to do themselves and what to delegate.
  • For their physical health, that God would keep them well and provide for them.
  • For wisdom, biblical understanding and humbleness.
  • For the ability to lead, guide, teach and encourage.

Please keep our church in prayer as we remember the way the early church devoted themselves to God’s teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer (Acts 2:42):

  • Pray that we would be a praying congregation bringing everything to God in prayer.
  • Pray that we would be a bible reading congregation and spend time daily in the Word.
  • Pray that we would be a growing congregation – both in number and in spiritual maturity.
  • Pray that we would be a generous congregation, giving joyful to the work of the Lord.
  • Pray that we would be an evangelising congregation – ready and willing to share the gospel.
  • Pray that we would be a congregation that helps and benefits the community we live in as we practically demonstrate the love of Christ.

Pray for those in our congregation suffering from illnesses, cancer, struggling to make ends meet and grieving the loss of loved ones.