Mount Gambier's St Andrew's Uniting Church to be sold due to steeple repair cost
The 154-year-old steeple of St Andrew's Uniting Church in Mount Gambier is in danger of collapse. (ABC South East SA: Eugene Boisvert)
In short:
St Andrew's Uniting Church was built in 1871 but its steeple could collapse.
The congregation has voted to sell the heritage-listed church and hire a different building.
What's next?
A final service will be held in January.
The Uniting Church will abandon its state heritage-listed church in the middle of Mount Gambier because of escalating costs to fix the 154-year-old building's steeple.
The church's pastor says the controversial move will allow him and the congregation to focus on Christian ministry rather than the building that services are held in.
An architecture lecturer says the sale of churches is a growing trend but it can allow heritage buildings to stay standing rather than falling into disrepair.
Pastor Dave Sigley outside St Andrew's Uniting Church. (ABC South East SA: Eugene Boisvert)
The Mount Gambier congregation voted on October 12 to move out of St Andrew's church on Elizabeth Street and to sell the building and the 9,500 square metres of land that surrounds it.
The vote came ahead of a deadline of October 30 set by the Uniting Church's statewide body, known as a synod, to make a decision on its future.
The steeple of Mount Gambier's St Andrew's Uniting Church has been fenced off for eight years. (ABC South East SA: Eugene Boisvert)
Huge cost to avoid catastrophe
A report produced by the synod in September said the rickety state of the spire meant there was an "extreme risk of a catastrophic outcome" through it collapsing.
The church was quoted $1.26 million to fix it.
St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, as it was formerly known, was built in 1871 with a spire built to be slightly taller than the nearby Catholic church.
St Andrew's Presbyterian Church in a photo from 1875. (Supplied: State Library of South Australia)
The spire was rebuilt in 1885, damaged in an earthquake in 1897, partially rebuilt in 1928 and repaired again in 1980.
Reverend Dave Sigley said the congregation did have enough money to pay for the repairs but then it would not have any funds to pay him, nor could it cover other maintenance on the building or his charitable works.
"The congregation chose to focus on the mission of the church and outreach rather than focusing on the building,"he said.
"We believe that was important because, if we did fix it, we could have stayed in the building, but the congregation wouldn't have the resources or the funds to have a minister, for starters, and to continue with our outreach.
"For us, even though it's been a very difficult decision, and we lament that, and there's a lot of people who are feeling pain in this — myself included — we realise that the mission of the church and living out the mission of Christ is more important than maintaining a historical building."
Dave Sigley has led worship at St Andrew's for eight years but was only ordained as a minister in June. (ABC South East SA: Bec Whetham)
The congregation plans to hold its last service in the old church in January before moving to a new, hired space.
Synod moderator Peter Morel said it was sad to leave the Gothic Revival church but there were many people looking for churches in non-traditional buildings with spaces such as creches separate to the main body of the church.
"The times have changed greatly and we need to be flexible [and] adaptable, as we're looking forward to newer ways of engaging people in our local communities," he said.
Emergency food relief is provided at the Uniting Church. (ABC South East SA: Eugene Boisvert)
Sale could save building
University of Melbourne architectural design and history lecturer Stuart King said there was an ongoing trend of churches having to sell their buildings, including because of costs associated with the child abuse redress scheme.
Dr King said keeping heritage buildings standing often meant finding new uses for them.
"Really, the best way to maintain them and to maintain a whole lot of values associated with them is to ensure that they have an ongoing use," he said.
"There is this challenge there about how you do that and whether the church community is able to sustain an ongoing use or whether or not you look at adapting them to different uses."
A 2007 report by specialist heritage conservation architect Elizabeth Vines said St Andrew's church was "indicative of the spread of Presbyterianism through the state".
"The quality of architectural design and building construction is indicative of the degree of affluence of the Presbyterian congregation in the South East during the Edwardian period," she wrote.
St Andrew's has a prominent place in Mount Gambier's skyline. (ABC South East SA: Eugene Boisvert)
Anger among congregation
The Uniting Church also has congregations in Mount Gambier's east and at Port MacDonnell.
They have decided not to merge, even if the Mount Gambier congregation decides to hold its Sunday services in the same building as the Mount Gambier East group.
Megan McKenzie used to be the congregation chair at St Andrew's but now worships at the Port MacDonnell Uniting Church, even though she lives in Mount Gambier.
She said the decision to sell the church was "appalling".
The church was quoted $1.26 million to fix the steeple. (ABC South East SA: Eugene Boisvert)
"That church was built by our forebears at great physical and financial cost," she said.
"We owe it to them to honour the fact that they built a church for the people of Mount Gambier to care for, to be cared for, by the minister of the times."