by Liz Hogarth

Sydney’s inner west has a new parish that extends the length and breadth of cosmopolitan Darling Street. The new parish, aptly named Darling Street, combines the old parishes of St Mary’s, Balmain and Rozelle Lilyfield, and officially came into being earlier this year.

“After a lot of negotiation it was decided to federate,” said the Rev Ed Vaughan, formerly senior minister of Rozelle Lilyfield Anglican Church and now the senior minister of Darling Street Anglican Church. “I know it’s not a very technical Anglican term, but we are actually trying to create a new entity, a new parish identity.”

The new entity necessitated a few changes. The 9.30am Sunday morning service at St Mary’s was recently given an injection of new blood from the 10.15am service at St Thomas’, Rozelle, the principal venue for the four very different congregations who used to meet under the banner of Rozelle Lilyfield Anglican Church. Other changes included the arrival of the Rev Steve Dinning, 32, fresh from Moore College, appointed to oversee the 9.30am congregation.

The café style service, set up five and a half years ago to attract those who prefer a more intimate form of church, has moved from its 10.15am slot at St Mark’s Centre, Lilyfield, to a 5pm slot at St Mary’s. “Basically we have shuffled some of the congregations around,” said Mr Vaughan.

However, the 44-year-old minister does not see the merger with St Mary’s as being in any way a betrayal of his central vision to establish new congregations. ‘We see the 9.30am congregation at St Mary’s as a church plant,’ commented Mr Vaughan. “That is not to take anything away from the people who have been there for a long time as God’s people. But we want to grow this group into a significantly larger group of people. Hence our sending 15 people down there.

“In the parish as a whole we are trying to develop a diversity of styles. So you go from the 8.45am very traditional Anglican service to the café style service at 5pm. If you work in a world that is fragmented then we have got to have a multiplicity of approaches.”

So far this multiplicity of approaches has worked well on the Rozelle area. He saw his first church plant, Lilyfield Community Church, grow from 12 to over 100 people in the early 1990s and it is estimated that over the last five years Rozelle Lilyfield Anglican Church grew by 30 per cent.

Looking to the future and the ‘big, hairy, aggressive goal’, as Mr Vaughan’s team calls it, is to have a church of 500 people by the end of 2005. There are currently 400 people across the five congregations.

As part of that growth strategy, and as a way of becoming more involved with the local community, Darling Street Anglican Church recently held a Community Election Forum to give local people a chance to question candidates who stood for the seat of Port Jackson in last month’s state election.