Martin Hendricks at 60

A tribute to Martin at 60
If you want to meet a 60 year old, still young in spirit, meet Martin Hendricks. I have known him since 1976, a long time. A Capetonian by birth, after a few years in Port Elizabeth and the Free State as a young boy, he has certainly stuck to the mother city ever since.
Very few people would be able to see the whole spectrum of his life at a glance, which I thing has three parts, his house and home in Kuilsriver with mother Martha and sister Lorette, his work place at the University of the Western Cape at the Department of Marine Biology, and finally at the church, Eureka Congregation in 35th Street, Elsies River.
Martin is the born youth leader who became the ultimate lay leader in the church. Even though he never stood for being elected an elder his influence is far beyond what many elders and even pastors could even dream of.
We know one another from the youth days in the 1970s and 80s. Martin was my youth leader (I was the youth pastor) together with half a dozen other youngsters at this very crucial time in greater Cape Town. Not that the other leaders did not pull their weight in their way, but Martin already then was the utterly reliable and trustworthy leader.
We did many things together, as we were part of the team that made the Lutheran Youth Centre in Athlone a reality in 1980. We ran continuously youth leadership workshops, we had the open house on Fridays for the whole Peninsula in Athlone and we also had our annual camps.
For various reasons the youth centre never lived up to its name, more than for the first few years. I had already left South Africa in 1982 and Martin turned more and more to a life of music (he did not stay on too long as a youth leader as he probably did not want to be called an ‘antique’).
It must be more than 20 years that Martin has been the choir master of the Eureka Church Choir. During these years he has achieved some remarkable things. The repertoire is one thing. Traditional ‘Western’ music it there of course, but for a number of years the choir has also sung an African mass called Imiza, with African (Zulu etc) tunes. This is done together with the congregation which has become trained to take part in the responses. Lately the choir also sang a Latin mass and that happened on Reformation Day when the sermon was on Luther’s reformation message!
The choir is an impressive sight and the total membership is somewhere around 60. There are some outstanding soloists in this choir and when hearing the choir singing you certainly take note of their clear and powerful voices. They are accompanied by a very professional organist.
When I see Martin now in action, I also see in him his father, the late Dean David Hendricks, who served the same congregation for many years. His passion for the church and its individual members is something that is very visible in Martin’s own ministry.
Martin is a leader in his own right, who plays a crucial part in forming the congregational life of Eureka. He is not ordained, he is not an elder and yet his influence is there for all to see. What a wonderful testimony to those who doubt that the church will survive if there are not employed people for all the various functions! There is a strong element of God’s Grace in what Martin is doing: ‘What you have received for nothing you are also prepared to do for nothing.’