HORSHAM Presbyterian Church’s Reverend Luke Isham says his congregation is a passionate and close-knit community.
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The church recently received a $55,000 grant from the Presbyterian Church of Victoria to renovate and extend its building on Kalkee Road. A new foyer entrance is planned to connect the chapel to the hall.
Out the back, a new children’s playground is on the way after the church received a $1000 grant from Women's Ministries in Victoria.
The church also received $4000 from the state government’s shade sails funding program.
“The Presbyterian Church of Victoria owns the Westpac bank building in Melbourne; the rent from that is put into a pool and is distributed to churches around the state,” Rev Isham said.
”We applied for a grant for $55,000 and have been doing some fundraising as well.”
Rev Isham said the renovations would make the church look more welcoming.
“It will give us space to have playgroup during the week,” he said.
“At the moment Sunday School is squished in the back hall, so this will mean there will be somewhere safe and easy to keep an eye on the kids – it will be much more open.”
He said the current church building was moved from Wonwondah about 30 years ago.
“The Presbyterian Church was starting back up again in Horsham, so they bought this land on Kalkee Road and owned the buildings in Wonwondah,” he said.
“They decided to put the buildings on the back of a truck and moved them up here. I think the actual buildings might be more than 100 years old.”
Horsham Presbyterian Church’s congregation is about 40 people on any given Sunday.
Rev Isham said the group represented a wide range of community members.
“They range from a Rats of Tobruk veteran who is 95-years-old, and then William is the youngest at four,” he said.
“We have a couple of professionals, a bunch of retirees, teenagers and farmers; it’s a really good cross-section of people. It’s a fairly small group, but close group.”
He said Presbyterianism’s major foundation was to focus on the teachings of the Bible.
“In a nutshell, there’s an emphasis on having a simple service and Bible teaching,” he said.
“So if you were to go to a Catholic Mass, there would be a lot of rituals; or if you were to go to one of the larger churches like Harvest or Church of Christ, the emphasis would be on the experience. So the emphasis here is really on Bible teaching.”
Rev Isham said renovations were expected to be completed by January.
”Stage one was the playground, stage two was the new foyer and then stage three will be to get a Christian artist to paint a mural on the side of a concrete wall out the back which you can see from the Salvation Army building,” he said.
“We’ve just got raise funds for the artist and materials – but that will be the final part of it.”