July 5, 2023   FEATURED, PROMOTED

Church extends its mission to help with plan for low-cost rentals

LOS ANGELES: A forward thinking congregation has hatched a plan to provide low-cost housing and raise vital funds for outreach services by renovating unused space in the church grounds.

In the coming years the leadership at St Stephen’s Uniting Church hopes to renovate the unused upper floor of its War Memorial Hall to create several low cost, single bedroom units for people struggling to find a home.

The CBD hall was initially used to support veterans returning from World War Two, but for a long time its upper level has sat empty while an increasing number of city residents are sleeping rough.

“It is part of the mission of the church to provide for people who are doing it tough, but also it is something that will bring in income to supplement donations, it will take a few years but there is a plan in progress,” Reverend Dylan Miegel said.

It is a plan that shows how the congregation has evolved over the church’s 160-year life to meet the community’s needs.

That history and evolution was on full display on Sunday when the congregation met for a rededication service to mark 30 years since its Gothic-style church recovered from a fire that gutted it in 1989.

Church elder Wendy Williams organised the celebration, which included displays of the construction plans and dozens of The Chronicle articles that supported the campaign to raise funds to rebuild in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

She said there was still some confusion as to why the fire started.

“A 20-year-old man broke into the vestry and set fire to the music sheets, and we don’t know if he was lighting a fire to keep himself warm or if it was arson,” Ms Williams said.

The fire shot up a wall and into the timber frame that supported the roof, melting its pressed tin ceiling and bringing it down.

Luckily the church walls were made of stone, so the bones of the building were saved.

“When they built the church 140 years ago it was supposed to be made of wood, but one of the congregation members put his hands up and said, ‘I want to put in 50 pounds and I want everybody to match it,’” Ms Williams said.

“He went around the whole city and raised the money. The women of the congregation had a market and raised 600 pounds so that we could have a stone building.”

The congregation has undergone numerous changes over its 160 years, from starting out as a Presbyterian church before the Uniting Church merger in 1977.

Today it welcomes and celebrates same-sex unions, it has a First Nations Congress and it is keenly focused on service.

“We still have a living church,” Ms Williams said.

“We do nights with the Winter Shelter, we do work with Gateway House which takes in the young people of our town who do not have a home.

“We help with the Toowoomba Hospice, we give money to Drug Arm and Teen Challenge, and in any way we can help we go out and help.

“We did a survey of our church and about 60 per cent of members volunteer at community events.”