About us

We are the Anglicans who worship and work between the Vaal Triangle - where Sharpeville, Vereeniging, Boipatong, Vanderbijlpark and Sebokeng are found - and the southern side of the city of Johannesburg in South Africa.

 

Why do we have such a funny name, when most dioceses have geographical ones?

 

Firstly and positively because we wanted to proclaim the reign of Christ above all at the time we were founded in 1990 - and we still do.

 

Negatively, every possible place name in this area was too politically loaded to use at that time - so we were stuck.

 

Incidentally, at that time the famous ministry at the Church of Christ the King in Sophiatown appeared to have been lost to the Anglican church in those days, though it has since (and rather miraculously) been recovered.  Although it lies in the new Diocese of Johannesburg, we wanted to commemorate it - especially as the Community of the Resurrection whose name was long associated with that church, still live and work in this diocese.

 

At the beginning we thought we were a small diocese, being only 80km long and half that wide.  But "urbanisation" is our key word - our population may well have doubled since 1990 and we have more people than the Diocese of Namibia (which is many hundreds of times bigger!) 

 

We started with 24 congregations and now have nearly 40, most of the new ones being in burgeoning housing areas around previous surbubs and townships.  Just over half of these have a recognisable church building in which to worship; the rest meet in garages, shacks or the open air.  The latest new congregation worships in French and aims to welcome refugees from the Congo and other Francophones African countries.

 

We started with one diocesan school, St Martin's in Rosettenville, with 600 learners.  Since then we have developed a partnership school with government in Orange Farm, Lesedi la Kreste Anglican Primary School, and have adopted Masibambane College also at Orange Farm - so now we have 2500 children in our daily care, together with their educators and ancillary staff. 

 

In our strategic thinking, we reckon that we should operate on (ideally) 24 stipendiary clergy to sustain and co-ordinate the 16 self-supporting clergy, and deacons and 215 lay ministers who operate in the diocese.  We currently have 16 stipendiary clergy.

 

We have links of varying degrees of formality with the Dioceses of Virginia (ECUSA), Bujumbura, and Mauritius; also with the Churches of North and South India, and are part of the Community of the Cross of Nails. 

 

In our small area we worship in most of South Africa's 11 official languages, plus a bit of French, Portuguese and other languages of neighbouring countries. 

 

Details of our ministry and outreach can be found elsewhere on the website.