Ministry Journey

This is a short record of where we’ve been and what ministries we’ve been involved in together. 

While looking for a ministry position within REACH-SA, Matt was invited to return to Christ Church Somerset West as an assistant minister. We accepted this offer, and Matt currently has oversight of youth and young adults ministries, preaches regularly, and fulfils a number of organisational responsibilities in the church. Kendra assists Matt with ministry and has continued to grow her business. 

We moved to the Stadtmission am Kap in 2022, a German-language church that has been based in Tamboerskloof, in the city centre of Cape Town, for the past fifty years, who wanted to reach out to the non-German-speaking community around them. The council of the Stadtmission am Kap aimed to plant a new English-language church, Tamboerskloof Community Church, to accomplish this.

After completing his curacy, Matt was seconded to the Stadtmission am Kap from REACH-SA to explore the potential for a deeper partnership between the Stadtmission am Kap and REACH-SA to support this church planting work.

Matt’s initial secondment was for one year, and while investigating the potential for partnership, Matt served as youth, young adults, and childrens’ minister, as well as preaching regularly in the German service (though in English), with Kendra’s help and support. At the end of the first year, Matt’s secondment was extended by a further two years, until the end of 2024, and he continued to be responsible for the English ministries at the Stadtmission am Kap.

Through 2023, Matt participated in a church planting cohort hosted by Union Chapel, and organised a number of conversations between the bishops of REACH-SA and the bishop of the ESSA (the denomination that the Stadtmission is part of) to determine what partnership would be most beneficial for gospel growth in the city.

Following these discussions, the Stadtmission am Kap re-evaluated their long-term ministry goals. In early 2024, they made the decision to move away from a church plant, and instead to redirect their efforts to further establish bilingual German-English ministry in the city. Given these changes and shift in responsibilities, Matt returned to ministry within REACH-SA in 2025. 

In 2019, we moved church to serve our student placements at Christ Church Somerset West during Matt’s honours year (George Whitefield College) and Kendra’s final year of undergrad (Bible Institute of South Africa). During this time we were involved in ministry to kids just about to go into high school, from grades 6-8. We ran this ministry together until December 2020.

In January of 2020, we moved to Somerset West, getting married later that month. Here, Matt served his curacy, a two-year training period. For the first year of his curacy, Matt was involved in children and youth ministry, changing the Friday night Bible study into a more approachable format for newcomers with a talk followed by small groups.

In his second year of curacy, Matt oversaw the various fellowship groups at the church and provided training and encouragement for fellowship group leaders, organising a group of coordinators to support them.

During this year we were also part of the young adults group and led that with a colleague, meeting every Friday evening for games, prayer, and time studying the Scriptures.

Of course, these were also the COVID years, and as we had previous experience with cameras as wedding photographers, Matt was soon responsible for running the audiovisual equipment necessary for church to continue online, and once the church met again, he set up and operated the sound desk.

In the meantime, Kendra grew her business; we were no longer shooting weddings (COVID and ministry meant we didn’t have the time or opportunity to continue), and it was a natural next step for Kendra to grow her business helping others as Matt got more involved in ministry.

Holy Trinity, Gardens, is Matt’s home church, and Kendra joined him there during their studies together. We both served as student placements during our theological studies, running a monthly children’s outreach based at the church, and starting a Sunday youth group for teenagers in the church.

We attended a Thursday night Bible study on the UCT medical campus, and were involved in campus evangelism. Matt also took the opportunity during the Bible Institute’s ministry week (2018) to organise a week-long outreach with REACH Students to gain exposure to evangelism, Bible studies, and campus life.

During our studies we also worked as wedding photographers and altogether photographed around fifty weddings. Matt was responsible for the technical side of things, while Kendra organised clients and managed the business. She automated a large part of the business using software called Dubsado, realised that she could help other businesses do this as well, and began offering this to others. 

Matt was attending Holy Trinity, Gardens, on Sunday mornings, but at the time, there was no youth group on a Friday night. As his family had attended TCC when he was younger, and it was closer to home, he joined the youth group there. At the same time, Kendra’s family transferred from St. James, Kenilworth, to TCC. 

Both of us joined the youth group and subsequently got involved as helpers at Kids’ Club each Friday night before youth group began. We became friends and started dating in our matric year.

After graduating from high school, we both began our respective theological studies, Matt at the Bible Institute of South Africa, and Kendra at George Whitefield College. During first year, we attended the Sunday evening service and served as student placements involved in youth and children’s ministry on Friday nights. At the same time, we were attending Holy Trinity, Gardens on Sunday mornings.