St Andrew’s Church celebrates the unveiling of its new community hall in Newlands

A 20-year dream became reality on Sunday, February 1, when hundreds gathered at St Andrew's Church in Newlands for the unveiling of its newly built hall.

Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, Dr Thabo Makgoba, opened the ceremony with prayer and blessed the space, calling it a future centre for "renewal".

"It will be a place to solve solutions, a place to make people feel included and loved and feel renewed, and also allow people to come together and share stories of the past to create a future," he said.

For the 130-year-old church, the new hall marks the end of a long journey. Church warden Debbie Coombe said the parish council first envisioned the project two decades ago.

"They had a vision to build a church hall that would serve the Newlands community and allow the parish to do the work it needed to do," she said.

Until now, the church had shared a small hall with Kildare Pre-Primary School next door.

Ms Coombe said the church spent many years fundraising for this new hall, where parishioners were providing large monthly donations, and they also had the Friends of St Andrew’s parish that helped raise funds.

“It has been a collective effort of enormous generosity,” she said. 

This new hall will be used for fellowship and social events, as well as for renting it out to the community. Ms Coombe said any revenue raised from the hall will be used to support the church’s outreach programme, which is called the Ministry for the Needy programme.

The Ministry for the Needy programme supports educational bursaries for school and university students, provides food parcels, supports recognised homeless shelters, provides medication for seniors, and supports schools with equipment.

The church’s Venerable Mkhuseli Lujabe said it is an exciting time and a wonderful milestone for the church.

“For me, as the priest of the parish, I am excited for new opportunities that this building will bring for the community and for all the people of Newlands and beyond,” he said. 

Longtime parishioner Richard Buttress said he thought at the time it was an ambitious project and that it would have been difficult for the church to complete.

“Here I am today, standing in deep admiration for those who were ambitious and were striving so hard. I am emotional as I attended school here many years ago, and this place has been converted into a modern facility, which is a blessing,” he said.

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