St Mark’s Anglican Church at Spotswood is getting a makeover so it can be used for childcare and as a centre for hundreds of Burmese refugees.
Reverend Gordon Preece said a new worship space would be built at the church, on the corner of Melbourne and Hudsons roads, for 300 Chin refugees who worship with the Lautu Baptist Church.
“We’ve been planning for quite a long time,” he said. “First of all we sold St Paul’s at Kingsville to the Antiochene Orthodox. The vicarage was bought by a local real estate and the Nissan hut behind was bought by a parishioner, who did that up really nicely.”
Mr Preece said the expanded church at Spotswood would cater for a modern parish.
“We’ve basically said it’s a church on the move,” he said. “We’ve gone from being a church that had an average age of 60 to having an average age of about 50 now.
“We have lots of young families and it was a bit of a no-brainer to have the childcare centre. It will cater for 130 children at a time,” he said.
“What we’ve got is Bloom Childcare taking over where the church hall and the tennis courts are … and then we’ll build integrated offices, children’s ministry areas and hospitality areas.
“There’ll be two worship spaces which makes enough room for the 300 Chin refugees from Burma – their name is Lautu Baptist Church. They’ve been with us for at least two years and we love them; they’re great people. They’re off-site now but they’re keen to come back,” Mr Preece said. The church’s Sunday services and kids’ club will continue at Spotswood Primary School into next year.
