The History of St.Mark’s Presbyterian Church Yeoville

In 1904 members of St. George’s Presbyterian Church, that was situated in the Southern end of the central business district, of the Johannesburg city, took the initiative to form a congregation in Yeoville. The initiative was engendered by the long distance from the church because these members were resident in Yeoville, Bellevue and Bellevue east.

The formal meeting to form the congregation took place on the 29th July 1904.The meeting was convened by a committee made up of the following people:

J.C Gibson; T Hastings; J Niven; J.W Stark; G Granger Fleming; T Clark; WGC Nixon; F Campbell and W. Phillips. The convener of the committee was Rev Dr N.A Ross.

The first worship service of the congregation was held on the 16th October 1904 in a hall belonging to the Freemasons in Hunter street. However, it was in 1905 that the congregation took shape and established itself as a congregation we know today. The following events attest to this fact:

  • on 18th January 1905 the first minister Rev John Scott was inducted to minister to the congregation.
  • the first elders were ordained and inducted in 1905 and were G. Granger Fleming; R. McLever and F.Campbell Spiers.
  • on the 1st October 1905 the first worship hall was dedicated by the Rev T.R Ballantine and was named the Yeoville Presbyterian Church.

In 1913 an additional hall was built to cater for a flourishing Sunday school that had over 200 children. This was clearly indicative of the growth of the congregation that led to a need to build a new church. In 1922 the new church building modelled in line with the church buildings in Scotland was built and the congregation found a new identity and renamed itself St. Mark’s. The name internationally symbolized by a winged lion. What the symbol stands for and denotes will be revealed in a sermon that our current Minister, Rev Xolisa Mashibini has offered to teach on in one of his sermons. He offered this to the congregation when we celebrated the 112th anniversary since St. Mark’s was founded on the 16thOctober 2016.