By Natasha Percy

St Paul’s, Castle Hill has much to celebrate this year as it looks back over the two decades since its move to the current site on Old Northern Road. The Rev John Brook, who was the rector at the time of the move, returned to St Paul’s with his wife Joan on May 2 for a day of celebration to mark the occasion.
Mr Brook recalls that the move was a necessary step of faith for the church at the time. When he began as rector in 1979, the congregation was already starting to consider solutions to the space problem at the church’s much smaller premises. Leighton McKenzie, who was a teenager at St Paul’s at the time of the move, says the former building could no longer contain the congregation, let alone visitors, and that limited parking made attending services very difficult. “In this case, God’s people needed room to grow,” he said.
The joyous reality was that the church was growing, especially through its ministries to children and the sick. However, events and children’s ministries had to be conducted off site and Mr McKenzie recalls the considerable effort required in transporting children to GFS and CEBS from the nearby shopping centre carpark, where parents dropped them off.
In today’s much busier Castle Hill, Mr Brook says, “the occupational hazards of doing this would be huge.” On any given Sunday, the congregation sometimes had to be divided between two or three sites, and accommodating larger services for Christmas and Easter was becoming more and more of a challenge.
While moving the church to a larger site was necessary, it was also a risk, he explains, especially as the two necessary ingredients – land and money – were scarce at the time. Mr Brook recalls both were provided for the church through generous gifts. The congregation had decided against fundraising activities, preferring to keep their focus on the ministries of the church, so the money for the building of the church came simply through “what was put in the plate on Sundays.”
Research done by the parish council at the time found that the church would need a five-acre block of land, which was eventually provided by Mowll Anglican Retirement Village as the result of an exchange of land negotiated with neighbouring Oakhill College. “This really was God’s answer,” Mr Brook says. “It was through the goodwill and encouragement of Mowll Village that this was able to happen - this land was beyond our wildest dreams.”
Mr Brook remembers the sigh of relief the congregation seemed to breathe on the first Sunday that services were held at the new site.  A bigger church building and parking space allowed everyone in the congregation to attend services on site. Halls and a kitchen meant children’s ministries and events could be held on church grounds. “Basically, now we could do the things we wanted to do,” John explains. “We had a roof over our heads and room to expand.”
Today, St Paul’s rector, the Rev John Gray derives encouragement from the faith and hard work of the congregation of 20 years ago, many of whom continue to attend, and says the congregation of today has been blessed by the decisions that led to the move in 1984. “They were concerned about the next generations and we receive the legacy of their ministry,” he says. “And as lots of these people are still with us, we have been able to thank them.”
With this blessing comes the responsibility of reaching the community with the gospel, Mr Gray said. “There is a history of reaching out in this church and today, we get to ride that wave,” he says, adding that God’s provision in the past can inspire the congregation to move forward in faith. “It is OK to take bold and courageous steps of faith,” he says. “The congregation of the past did it – we can do no less.”

Natasha Percy attends St Paul’s, Castle Hill.