Not that long ago, when Stephen Gardner started as Rector at St Paul’s Canterbury, the church was a provisional parish with only 30 people. Now, it’s home to ten times that many and is at the heart of a region-wide movement that is transforming Sydney’s south-west for the gospel.
As St Paul’s enters this exciting new chapter, the congregation is pursuing a transformative building project that will enable the site to serve not only a flourishing ministry, but the wider Canterbury-Bankstown community for generations to come.
Sending people out into gospel ministry is the heart behind this building project. In 2024, St Paul’s was able to replant a new congregation back into St Matthew’s Ashbury, and is keen to do so again. They’ve also sent members to support the revitalisation of St Alban’s Belmore, and founded the Together for Canterbury-Bankstown movement that sees them work with other churches to pioneer new ministries and serve marginalised communities within the area.
“We want to keep sending people, and we would love to plant again in the next three years, somewhere else in the Canterbury-Bankstown LGA,” Stephen explains. “But in order to do that sustainably, we felt we really needed to steward the property better.”
A transformative grant builds a new community centre
In 2020, St Paul’s received a bequest towards expanding their facilities to accommodate its rapidly growing kids and youth ministry activities. Inspired to broaden their thinking of what was possible for the site, the church applied for a WestInvest grant, a building infrastructure program for Western Sydney through the New South Wales Government. To their surprise, they were successful.
“It was $875,000,” Stephen remembers. We nearly fell off our chair when that came through!”
The grant was received in 2022. Since then, the congregation has stepped up to secure what is needed in addition to the grant and bequest. The church has been able to secure a loan for the project through Sydney Anglican Loans, and the congregation has generously pledged $100-150,000 a year towards paying that off over a 10-year period.
This transformed their plans for upgrading youth and kid facilities into developing a whole new community centre that could support the many programs accessed by the community, such as the Anglicare Mobile Community Pantry. “There aren’t many community spaces where people can gather,” Stephen explains. “The State Government can see that and see all the development happening in the suburb. So the building project is to serve our community as well.”
By 2040, it is expected the Canterbury postcode will be home to 50,000 people. To be going into such a period of growth in the area with high quality facilities set up to enable ministry to continue to grow, and to plant new ministries is a huge blessing, and an exciting position for St Paul’s to be in.
The new site will include a new foyer, kitchen and bathrooms on the ground floor, with multipurpose rooms for kids and youth upstairs. The hall will be revamped as well, flipping it back to the original layout to increase capacity and taking out the current kitchen to become offices and a pastoral meeting room.
The redevelopment will also change the flow of the site with a paved area leading people out to the available green space in the church’s graveyard. “The graveyard’s a beautiful space that the community is often drawn to,” Stephen says. “And green spaces like this are really rare in Canterbury.”
All these changes will give space for the almost 90 children from creche age up to junior high currently attending regularly on a Sunday morning, and allow for further growth. The total congregation of more than 300 will have room to move and enjoy the space both on a Sunday and at midweek activities.
Construction began at the beginning of 2026, and is so far proceeding well, without any major delays or curveballs – praise God!
Strategic support, from inside and out
Managing a big project like this, with multiple sources of funding and many interested parties, has been a huge job. Stephen is grateful for Sydney Anglican Property’s support and guidance, giving access to various experts and always being on hand for advice.
“SAP’s Regional Property Manager, Michael Coyne, has been deeply helpful in a whole range of ways, particularly supporting us to complete the necessary reporting for the government on how the WestInvest grant is being used, “Stephen says.
Stephen advises other churches who are looking to undertake similar building projects to pray boldly and get organised. He reflects on how many doors God opened for them during the process.
“When it came to securing the grant funding, we found it particularly helpful to have a building committee set up with a really clear brief.” Stephen generally recommends churches get their “ducks in a row” as much as they can as early as they can with the help of Sydney Anglican Property.
“But none of this would have been possible without the people of St Paul’s,” Stephen says. “They want to use the gifts God has given them to help build the kingdom.
“We’re so blessed with the people we have, and that they have given so much of their time and energy to this project.”
Of course, building projects are disruptive, and the congregation has had to move out of its space while the building work is underway. Currently, the church is meeting at Canterbury Public School, just over the road, on a Sunday, and sharing facilities with St Matthew’s Ashbury for midweek programs. But the strengthened relationship with the school and wider community have been a hidden blessing of the process.
Stewarding for the future
Stephen is hoping the congregation will be back onsite by December, ready to celebrate Christmas together.
When that happens, the church is excited to settle into its new building and also into the role of being a sustainable sending church. “We could technically fit 320 people in the new hall, but we don’t want to do that. Our heart is to keep sending people out and keep planting congregations,” Stephen shares.
The work being done at St Paul’s Canterbury is a testament to a church willing to grow with their community, and share their resources generously with those around them. From a church that was still a provisional parish less than a decade ago, their heart for expanding that mission further into the Canterbury-Bankstown LGA, and for training and equipping leaders to plant new congregations and new ministries, shows that the St Paul’s building project is not just an investment into one church site, but an investment into reaching new ministries opportunities in rapidly expanding parts of Sydney.
“We’re really thankful to God,” says Stephen. “We keep saying as a church that our hope and prayer is that we’ll steward the resources we have so that others might reap what we sow in future generations, and that this site will be a blessing to the wider community.
“We really do pray this will enable us to keep sending people further into the south-west.”