Our previous senior minister gives a personal view of the story of our church:

Darling Street Anglican Church was born in a coffee shop in the Blue Mountains in January 1991.

For me, Darling Street Anglican Church was born in a coffee shop... John Lousada was the minister at St. Thomas' Rozelle, an inner western suburb of Sydney. John and his wife Isabel had been at St. Thomas for about four years. As returned missionaries, they were determined to preach the Gospel to the surrounding community, and had tried a number of creative experiments. For instance John had run church a number of time in Balmain Leagues Club in order to reach outside the walls of the church. And while the experiments were great, the results were not really encouraging.

It was pretty obvious that the Balmain-Rozelle area was undergoing great change. The area that had once been characterised by power stations, soap factories, boat building, ALP politics and a refusal to ever cry (remember Neville Wran?) was increasingly becoming a home renovator's paradise.

Jane and I met with John and Isabel in a coffee shop in Katoomba in January 1991. We were all at the CMS Summer School at the time. While we had known the Lousadas for many years, someone suggested they speak to us. After all we had been to overseas conference, so we must clearly be international experts in church planting!

The more John and Isabel unfolded their plans the more excited Jane and I became. The idea of planting a church where an Anglican church already existed, in the inner western suburbs of Sydney, had never occurred to us. For the first time Jane and I felt that God was calling us to do something very specific and very exciting in ministry.

To cut a long story short, Jane and I subsequently approached John and Isabel and asked if we could be involved in this church planting experiment. So in January 1992 we moved to Lilyfield and Darling Street Anglican Church.

The original church meetings were at St. Marks - then a pre-school, now our church offices. I remember my first Sunday. There were only about 12 of us gathered there. I kept looking at my watch, thinking that people were very late in turning up. Then it dawned on me that this was everyone who was coming. I think I had my first lesson in church planting - you start with very humble beginnings!

That congregation grew to about 35 regular attenders. By this stage we were starting to fill the hall. So we looked for an alternative venue, and in October of 1992 we moved to Orange Grove Public School. It was a big move for us because we were moving off church property, and some of us felt very nervous about that. It wasn't a very Anglican thing to do!

After about two years that congregation grew to about 65 attenders, and we decided to plant an evening congregation. This began in January 1994. It was a very exciting and explosive time. The congregation grew from about 20 to about 80 almost overnight. I remember finishing the meeting one night, and looking out over all the people gathered and thinking I don't know who any of these people are! It was overwhelming. While it was exciting it was also exhausting. We grew numerically faster than we grew relationally, and we seemed to attract people who needed a lot of care. People who felt burnt out from their previous church experiences, people with mental health issues like depression and anxiety, people with doubts about their faith, people wrestling with the emerging issues of postmodernism.

In 1996 we planted our third congregation. Our aim was to develop new ways of thinking about church, to experiment with the forms of our Sunday meetings. This congregation (now DS@5) developed a cafe-stsyle meeting that was very informal and very interactive.

About this time also John Lousada died very suddenly of a heart attack. I was approached by the Diocese and appointed in charge of the parish as a whole. I became the minister of the original St. Thomas's congregation.
 

A New Phase
From the 1st January 2003, we have entered a new phase of our existence. We became Darling Street Anglican Church. Our parish area covers three suburbs- Balmain, Rozelle and Lilyfield. We have three church centres- St. Mary's, St. Thomas' and St. Mark's. And we have five congregations meeting at those different centres.

In 2003 Rozelle-Lilyfield Church federated with St. Mary's Balmain. St. Mary's is the original church in the Balmain area, a graceful sandstone building right at the end of the peninsula. In recent times it has been a small congregation of energetic and cheerful people. Their previous minister, John Cashman, retired in March 2002.

Joining the two parishes together to form Darling Street Anglican Church provides us with an opportunity to develop ministry in the East Balmain area. A group of people from our 10.15 congregation are going to join with the existing congregation with a view to developing a vibrant and active Christian presence in the Balmain area.

Which brings us to where we are now. We are one church, made up of five congregations. We are diverse but we have a unity based on the love of Jesus Christ for us. I work alongside other great ministers of the Gospel- Jill Williams, Chadd Hafer, Marty Telfer and Steve Dinning. You can read about them elsewhere. And we have a church filled with people who want to serve Jesus with their lives.

Like any church, we have some real strengths and some great weaknesses too. We are a group of people who imperfectly strive to be mature in Christ, to grow in love and to share Christ with our world.

Would you like to ask any questions on our history? Anything you would like to know more about? We'd love to hear from you if you are involved in a similar ministry to our own. Contact us at info@darlingst.org.au and we'd love to help you. 
 

St. Thomas' Church then...

...and now. Ready for Darling Street Anglican Church, meeting in St. Thomas' Church building

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