Margaret Reeson, (2009). ‘Great-grandfather’s gift: origins of church property in UCA’, Uniting Church Studies.
Introduction
‘My great-grandfather built this church’, church members remark. Perhaps they add, with justice, that great-grandfather and his friends built this church and that great-grandmother endured heroic feats of fund-raising for it. There is a sense of belonging, a profound sense of connection with a particular place. There is sacred memory here, of high moments of spiritual insight experienced within those walls, of the loved community with whom one shared life here, a safe place of comfort in times of calamity, a space where the rites of passage – baptisms, confirmations, marriages, funerals – have been marked and remembered. Memory, heritage and years of association and commitment to a particular church property can turn to a strong sense of ownership. There seems to be a widely held understanding that local congregations have provided their own resources for church property in the past and therefore have the right to decide the future of that property. An example of this understanding is found in Presidential Ruling #26, which states in part that:
“Most Congregations have the use of at least one Church building and many have the use of a manse as well as funds and other assets. Usually the real estate has been acquired and the buildings have been constructed with funds raised by the Congregation or its predecessors over periods of years.”[1]
During the 2008 Synod of NSW&ACT, the Moderator urged us to consider selling any church buildings that were no longer appropriate for the purpose for which they had been intended, and use the proceeds for other mission and service. However, when it came to the point, there seemed to be a great lack of enthusiasm to identify any particular church building as no longer functional for mission. Every property was valued by its congregation and would not be given up willingly. This begs the question: to what extent does each property ‘belong’ to its current congregation? Who has the right to decide how best to use this inheritance?
Was the financial contribution of great-grandfather and his neighbours – or any other previous generation – the whole story? Who provided this church property? This paper sets out to examine the historical record to test questions about the sources of funding and ‘ownership’ of church property in Uniting Church in Australia, as experienced in New South Wales.
Choices have been made by congregations of the antecedent churches of Uniting Church in Australia (Presbyterian, Methodist and Congregational) on questions of providing property resources over the past 150 years. Those choices continue to impact on today’s generations. In some ways it is a reflection of the experience of generations of a family with ties to a family home. One generation chooses to build or buy a property as a family home. The place gathers accretions of shared memories and personal treasures but when, in time, this particular property no longer meets the needs of the new generation of that family there may be strong debate over who decides its future. Whose inheritance is it? Who has a right to make decisions? Should it stay in the family or be sold? Similarly, it is important for Uniting Church communities to be clear about the sources of funding that provided them with a church property in the first place as decisions are made about the future of that property in the hands of a new generation.
Background note
There is no stately church building with a spire or stained glass in my own history of Christian worship and community. The tiny country church which my own grandfather built with his family and neighbours, and where I was baptized as an infant, still stands among paddocks. However, other places of worship that have been important locations for my own spiritual life and growth have tended to be very impermanent. One was demolished to widen a busy city street, another became an Op Shop, yet another was turned into a warehouse. While living in Papua New Guinea we often worshipped outdoors under trees or in temporary bush materials buildings; one church building of thatch and woven pitpit cane leaned so far to the left that it was pushed over before it fell over on the congregation. For years in Canberra, we worshipped in a rented school hall, until that congregation managed to build, and later extend, a church building. Now in retirement we are with another new congregation worshipping in a school hall but planning to build. So, although I and my family have often been part of Christian communities worshipping and serving in impermanent spaces, we appreciate the importance of having a physical home of our own.
It was while researching material on another theme entirely that my eyes were drawn to repeated references in a 19th century church journal[2] to the establishment of new congregations of Wesleyan Methodists in New South Wales, and ways in which their ministry and new church buildings were funded. As I scanned issue after issue of The Weekly Advocate covering years from 1874, and continuing after that journal was replaced by The Methodist in 1892, it became clear that matters of church property for new congregations – location, land purchase or gift, funding, building – had occupied the minds of clergy and people, committees and conferences, over many years. For someone like myself, these questions are contemporary. My own local congregation is placed in a community where new suburbs are replacing paddocks all around us and together we are in the throes of working toward a church property of our own in the new town centre. Primary questions for our ancestors, and for us today, are: what kind of property will serve our mission and how can it be funded? Intrigued by these clues to how well-known church properties had begun their existence, and who had paid for them, led to examination of histories of the antecedent churches that came into Uniting Church in Australia; the Presbyterians, the Congregationalists and the Methodists. General histories were also useful. These records provided background up to the middle of the 20th century. In addition, I was able to talk with senior retired clergy who spoke of policies in their former denomination in the realm of church property during the period from the 1950s until Church Union in 1977.[3]
Who helped pay for UCA church buildings?
For almost all the long-established church buildings in New South Wales built by the Presbyterian, Methodist and Congregational Churches, in addition to the efforts of local members, there is the hidden story of strong financial support by the wider denominational fellowship, and by individual benefactors with the spiritual gift of generosity even though not members of that local congregation. Some churches have also benefited from good community support in their region as well as a degree of government funding in some cases. So the vision and mission and the practical business of providing property for congregations has always been shared far beyond the local membership, whether or not people realized it.
The three denominations under consideration each had their own ways of working. The Presbyterians and Methodists had a lot in common, with centralized systems and a state-wide view. The Congregationalists, in keeping with their polity, encouraged established congregations to plant new congregations as new communities emerged in their area.
Great-grandfather and his friends; local contribution
Every new urban or rural community or new congregation has needed to find a home. Each generation has had to work it out for themselves. Most new groups have begun in someone’s kitchen, in a schoolroom or in someone’s woolshed. As new migrants, or new converts, have joined them, the growing group has decided that they need a permanent home; a secure, weatherproof, adequate place of their own.
Scots Presbyterian pioneers on the Hawkesbury River north of Windsor built their stone Ebenezer church in 1809. In Princes Street, Sydney, Sergeant James Scott paid the whole cost of a church building for the Wesleyan Methodists in 1819. As new clusters of Methodists, Presbyterians and Congregationalists gathered on the growing edges of towns or in bush communities, modest brick structures or little slab timber chapels with bark or grass roofs were erected. These were often built on a gift of land from a local church member, with local labour and materials, and with funding by subscription from member families. As the colony developed and the population grew, more substantial buildings were desired. At this point, the financial outlay became more than the local congregation could support alone, even though they made significant and sacrificial contributions in cash and kind.
It is true that great-grandfather and great-grandmother’s gifts have been important. No doubt our ancestors of those earlier generations were part of the pioneer community of faithful people and worked hard to provide this property for their own and later generations. However, it was in very rare cases that they did this alone and unaided.
Government funding for church property
In the earliest years of the colony of NSW, the first Anglican chaplain Richard Johnson built the first church building and then sent the bill to the British government. Governor Grose, antagonistic to Johnson, declined to endorse it.[4] By the 1830s, as the colony grew, the colonial authorities were trying to establish a well-served civil society. In 1836 the Legislative Council of NSW chose to pass an Act ‘for the advancement of Christian religion and the promotion of good morals in the colony’ which provided for revenue ‘to be applied in aid of the building of Churches and chapels and of the maintenance of ministers of religion’.[5] Initially this was available to Anglicans, Catholics and Presbyterians, and later, from 1845, to Methodists. With conditions and limits, the State would provide financial aid for church buildings on the pound-for-pound principle, always assuming substantial private contributions. Grants of crown land were made to some churches, particularly the Anglicans, to their benefit. It was believed that State funding was appropriate for Churches and for suitable buildings for their use, as part of supporting a stable civil society, in the same way as funding was provided for education, health services and a police force. [6]
This didn’t last, of course. There had always been debate, both from government and from within the churches, about whether this approach was acceptable. Some denominations, including the Anglican Church, believed that state support was entirely appropriate. The Presbyterians were divided on the matter with some who believed that the ‘voluntary principle’ should be maintained, with churches being self-supporting and not under obligation to the State.[7] Others criticized the ‘crutch’ of depending on funds from the Civil List.[8] There was continual debate about the role of the churches in education, and whether or not church schools should be supported by the state or have independence to design their own curriculum. This dissension may have had a part in influencing the state to withdraw its general support for church buildings. In NSW, State aid for church buildings had been abolished in 1862. (In Victoria, State grants to religious bodies ceased in 1876.[9]) In 1880, Parliament passed legislation diverting income from the Church and Schools Estate to public education, as well as terminating grants of crown land for religious purposes.[10] State support for clergy stipends and for buildings, which had begun to dwindle in the 1860s, had dried up completely by 1880. Now the churches were on their own and almost entirely dependent on voluntary support. Established congregations raised funds by charging rent for pews to regular attenders. In the 1880s someone suggested the new innovation of weekly envelopes for systematic offerings. The dramas of fundraising became an urgent enterprise; pew rents, the innovation of weekly offering envelopes, special appeals, bazaars and fetes.[11] A back story to this was the major contribution of women in raising finance for property.
After the early period when a colonial government provided at least partial funding for new church property, this support had been withdrawn. However, in the 20th century, in the years following world wars, some churches have received some government funding when their new property was deemed a ‘war memorial’. Some concessions by state or local government have also been granted to enable the building of a church property. For example, for many years until the present in the ACT, which has a leasehold system, congregations erecting a new building have not paid the full commercial cost of the land, although they have paid development costs. In 2009, a 4 hectare site in the ACT on which a new church will be built will probably cost a little under $100,000, about the price of a suburban house block.[12]
Denominational support
As the antecedent denominations of Uniting Church in Australia grew in membership and in distribution across NSW, it became clear to church leaders that new congregations needed help to become established, both to support clergy and to provide churches and manses. In 19th century New South Wales the Congregational Church found its place mostly in the major population centres of Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong. The Presbyterians were established right across New South Wales with congregations in the key provincial towns and beyond. The Methodists saw their mission as being the promotion of the spread of scriptural holiness though the land and that meant ministry in the bush as well as the towns. They saw need for the gospel in raw country towns springing up along the new railway lines, among tent-dwellers in mining communities or settlers hacking a farm out of the bush, living in simple wattle-and-daub huts. But however strong their love of God, however clear their vision for mission in their new area, very few of them were wealthy. Very few had resources apart from energy, hope and the capacity for hard work.
Although at the time each denomination was independent of the others, there was a period in the 1860s and 1870s when each group set in place similar systems to support the development of new congregations and facilities for their witness.
The Presbyterians established a Church Extension Committee following the re-union of four Presbyterian groups to form the Presbyterian Church in NSW in 1865. This was to encourage funding for manses and church buildings, supported by a Church and Manse Loan Building Fund; all congregations were expected to contribute at least one special collection to the central Fund each year. So the financial load was a shared one, rather than being laid on individual congregations. In 1878, the Church Extension Committee reported that they were giving more attention to extension in the suburbs, and a General Agent was appointed to encourage this work.[13]
In the same period, in 1859 the Wesleyan Methodists in NSW established the Wesleyan Methodist Sustentation and Extension Society. Among other general goals, the Society aimed to ‘assist in sustaining ministers in scattered and neglected populations’ and provide for ‘grants in aid of the erection of New Chapels, Ministers’ residences, and School Rooms, and towards the liquidation of debt’ on Methodist properties. The Fund was based on subscriptions, promises of funds from individuals and the efforts of ‘lady collectors’ who walked around their districts collecting from those who had promised. It was assumed that local congregations would also make major contributions to their own local needs.[14]
After the formation of the Congregational Union in 1866, they too established structures to support expansion: the Home Missionary Society, the Church Extension Society and the Building Loan Fund. Congregationalists were more likely to establish a new congregation with a building by means of a ‘mother church’ supporting work in new communities in their district rather than through a central system. This resulted in a greater concentration of Congregational Churches in Sydney suburbs, with few spread more widely. It is possible to trace the family trees of clusters of such churches, and each new cause would have had financial, material and parental/pastoral support from the stronger congregation that initiated the new group.[15]
The 1880s were a period of exceptional industry in church extension and building. It was a prosperous period in general in the community. In that decade, the Presbyterians in NSW more than doubled their number of church buildings. The Wesleyan Methodists built 100 new church buildings in that decade, many of them in rural communities. The Congregationalists increased their metropolitan church buildings from 22 to 35 in the same period. At the same time, the population of NSW was growing rapidly, more than doubling between 1871 (501,579) and 1891 (1,118,250 people).[16] By the late 1880s it was becoming uncomfortably clear to all the churches that this increased population was not all to be found in regular church attendance, with reports demonstrating that while 50% of the adult metropolitan population could be found in church in 1880, by 1890 the numbers had reduced to 40%. Even the Wesleyans, with a history of connecting with working people, were no longer attracting this sector of the population, and the Presbyterian and Congregationalists were also recognizing that they were largely middle class institutions.[17] In response, many denominations turned to evangelistic campaigns and vigorous church extension, in competition with grander and more splendid church buildings, highly visible in their local landscape.
It had once all sounded very positive. However cracks were beginning to appear. The prosperous 1880s began to slide toward the depression, severe droughts and then severe flooding, industrial unrest and catastrophic collapse of the banks of the 1890s. Congregations found that they could not repay their loans to the central fund. Special appeals were only marginally successful. If it had not been for denominational help many congregations would not have been able to support ministry of any sort and many struggled under a burden of debt. Only a minority of congregations were supporting anyone else through contributions to the various Loan Funds. Most remained focused on their own local needs. Some of the denominational leaders decided in some cases to convert loans into grants. Soon the various Funds were reporting significant arrears, and pointed out to their people that unless those who still owed for past help were able to pay, the Fund would not be able to help any new ministries at all. [18]
In the case of the Presbyterians, although a major appeal (the Majority Fund) was launched in 1886 to celebrate the 21st birthday of the Presbyterian Church in NSW, its ambitious goal was not realized as the community at large was beginning to sink into the depression of the 1890s. The Church Extension Committee began to report significant deficits, even with the help of the Majority Fund. At the same time, in 1888 they reported that fifty new Charges (congregations with an ordained minister) had been established in the previous six years.[19] However by 1892 when economic conditions were severe, the annual Assembly was very concerned about the failures in payment to the Church and Manse Loan Fund. Within a few years it was decided that most loans would never be repaid and a new system of outright grants was established. Still, finance for Presbyterian manses and church buildings continued to be the care of the state-wide Church rather than entirely the problem of single congregations and by the end of the 19th century the Presbyterian Property committee had vested all the properties of the Church in the care of a single central Board of Trustees.[20]
The Wesleyan Methodists had their own problems in the later part of the 19th century. At one point, at their annual NSW Conference in 1881, there was a debate about whether or not they could afford to set aside one of the limited number of ministers to take responsibility for the Church Sustentation and Extension Society. They decided that it was an ‘imperative necessity’[21] and appointed Rev George Woolnough (and ten years later Rev James Woolnough) to this role. Reading through many issues of the Methodist Weekly Advocate in New South Wales for the 1880s and 1890s, one finds repeated evidence of financially struggling congregations, and denominational rebukes and pleas. By 1890, after the Sustentation and Church Extension Society had been operating for thirty years, it was reported that ‘the Society had paid in grants to buildings alone the sum of £36,273.18.00’ and that the Loan Fund, starting with a capital of £700, had by then ‘enabled various Trusts to liquidate debts amounting to £35,611.5.4’.[22] Translated into today’s currency, this was a very significant effort by the denomination as a whole.[23] Despite the best efforts of those responsible for managing the Church Building Loan Fund, many congregations and their trustees failed to repay their interest free loans in the time allowed, and by the end of 1890 this Fund was faced with large arrears, depriving other new communities of the chance to gain loans at all. In a Pastoral Address to the NSW Wesleyan Methodist Conference in 1891, church leaders rebuked their people over the level of debt which was an ‘embarrassment to our circuit finances and a prejudicial effect upon our spiritual work’. They continued
God may be pleased to see His people consecrating their wealth to beautify places dedicated to His worship, but He cannot be pleased when it is done with the money of others. We cannot with due emphasis insist upon commercial honesty while the church is sunk in a sea of unnecessary debt… Where we cannot have beauty and utility without such debt, let us have utility without the beauty, then we shall have utility and honesty.[24]
A further financial scheme was initiated and put in place by Rev. James Woolnough in 1896, with a new Special Help Fund. The new Special Help Fund was intended to try to clear these old debts and so made the next issue, of working out questions of property after the Union of the several brands of Methodism in 1902, less of a problem than it could have been.[25]
The Congregational pattern of propagation, with new causes being supported by stronger established churches in the same district, was funded by ‘a measure of self-help and increasingly of such financial aid as was available from the Union through its Home Missionary Department’.[26] One reason offered for the comparative absence of the Congregational Church from small, scattered rural communities has been that a small congregation would find it almost impossible to support itself, including with property, without the aid of other churches in the denominational family; it was only after Congregational Unions and Home Mission Societies were formed that some Congregational churches were established in country towns.[27] Financial challenges of many kinds were limiting the capacity of some of the larger congregations to support new, more remote ones. An example is that of Pitt Street Congregational Church in Sydney, a ‘mother church’, but very distracted by local social and property needs during the latter part of the 19th and early 20th century.[28]
As the years rolled on into the 20th century and populations grew and moved, Australian society was faced with wars and depression. The various departments in the churches responsible for developing new congregations and helping them achieve property goals continued their work, but with changed names. Finding financial resources was never easy, and none of the special appeals for funds to clear debts on buildings reached their goals, some falling far short. In some regions, visionary leaders tackled problems associated with their Building Funds and rebuilt systems.[29] Fragile new Christian communities were encouraged and supported materially until they were independent.
Following World War 2, new challenges emerged with significant immigration, shortage of housing and population shifts. New suburbs were being opened up rapidly with little church presence. In 1950, the Presbyterians of NSW reported an increase in the number of men offering for ministry, and a surge of new housing with requests for new ministries and church buildings. However, they were forced to concede that the resources of the Sites and Building Fund were becoming exhausted and despite their hope to ‘secure sites and erect church buildings in new and growing areas, new enterprises must cease unless either generous contributions are received in 1950 or the Trustees permit this Fund to be overdrawn’.[30] The Methodists in NSW chose to employ a minister as ‘mobile worker’, complete with van, movie projector, Christian literature, and with instructions to contact new people in housing estates. He would gather a small congregation, arrange for a temporary meeting place, then move on, leaving the new congregation in the care of a neighbouring circuit. The Methodist Home Mission Department, through the Woolnough Sites and Church Extension Fund, arranged for purchase of church building sites and erection of buildings. Some of these new enterprises flourished while others did not. The effort of the Home Mission Department was seen to be limited and sometimes superficial, but if it had left it to the existing circuits it would not have been done at all.[31]
Private benefactors within denominations
There has always been another source of funds for mission and new property beyond the denominational systems of financial management. In each denomination, people with the spiritual gift of generosity have offered their help. These were men and women with private wealth, inherited, or the results of success in business, industry or government. In some cases they left major bequests to their church in their will. In others, they made significant donations during their lifetime. Still others with their families paid most of the bills for very splendid church buildings in their rural town, far grander than their farming neighbours could have afforded.[32]
Each denomination has had its own valued benefactors. For example, Robert Logan,[33] Sir Samuel McCaughey, and Colonel J.Goodlet left major bequests to the Presbyterians. Among others, David Jones and John Fairfax of the Congregational Church made significant donations for church property. The Schofields, the Brights, Ebenezer Vickery and the Woolnoughs were benefactors to the Methodists. For example, Mrs Schofield, a minister’s widow who had inherited a private fortune, lived simply and donated large sums to at least thirty church building projects, among other acts of generosity to church schools and overseas mission. She helped new and struggling congregations to get started. In her old age, she was regularly invited to open such new buildings.[34] Once a grateful congregation reported thanking her with a gift other than an engraved silver trowel – she already had some 22 engraved silver trowels from laying church foundations on previous occasions. (I am personally grateful to Mrs Schofield and the Woolnoughs in particular. The Schofield Fund and the Woolnough Fund, established in the 19th century, are helping to pay for a new church building in Canberra in 2009 for my own congregation. It would be impossible for our new young congregation to fund a new property without the substantial help of the denomination and other sources of funding.)
Generosity and careful stewardship are wonderful spiritual gifts. However, there are negative aspects to this generosity. In many cases congregations have relied on the kindness of the few and not taken responsibility for their own work, never mind supporting new work elsewhere. For fifty years, for example, over half of the total Methodist Church Building Loan Fund was the gift of only three donors.[35] The existence of substantial bequests such as the Presbyterian Hunter-Baillie Bequest or the Logan Bequest has led to unseemly and divisive jostling for access to the funds. Another problem in some places has been that the buildings funded by an individual benefactor have been inappropriate for their setting, overlarge, designed for prestige rather than mission and ‘owned’ by a wealthy family (whose descendents are no longer part of the living congregation) rather than the people of the place. Nonetheless, the forethought and generosity of strangers continues to make the impossible possible.
Conclusion
As society in NSW has changed and grown, with the sequence of wars, depression, migration, prosperity and poverty, drought and flood, and the parallel changes in faith and Christian understanding and approaches to ministry, the property that has been built in the past can be a blessing or a burden. In each generation there have been visionary people who have tried to set up structures that would support mission and ministry and have tried to provide good tools for the task. But every generation has had to face contemporary issues as they have attempted to use their property as a tool for the service of Christ.
- Questions about the church property are many, and often carry a weight of emotion as members of congregations cherish the associations of their place of worship. Such property may be too big or too small for contemporary needs, or unsuitable for mission in today’s world. At a time when suggestions are being made about alternative uses of existing church property, it is important to be clear about the origins and ownership of this property. While this paper has focused on the way in which the valuable resource of property has been bequeathed to today’s UCA in New South Wales, other writers could profitably offer theological reflection on stewardship of property, as well as material on the subject as it relates to other UCA Synods, and other denominations. UCA Board of Mission in NSW is working on options for alternative uses for existing property, to support new ministries. The Assembly Historical Reference Committee is currently considering some guidelines to help Synods as they determine whether or not a church property has heritage significance. A Working Group appointed by Assembly Standing Committee has been preparing for the 11th Assembly Proposal 70, regarding ‘Alternative Missional Use of Property’.
This overview of the history suggests that the church properties we have inherited were almost always paid for by a combination of local effort – great-grandfather’s gift – with substantial denominational support, the generosity of a few kind strangers, and in some cases, Government support, so are ‘owned’ by us all. Others in the past have made possible the church property that exists today, and today’s generation is called to wise stewardship of property for today’s new congregations and new opportunities for mission. Perhaps a renewed appreciation of this tradition of generosity may equip our “property rich” church with a new openness and flexibility as we face the future. Margaret Reeson May 2009
[1] National Assembly of the Uniting Church in Australia, 18 March 2008. Presidential Ruling 26. p5.
[2] The Weekly Advocate, organ of NSW Conference of Wesleyan Methodist Church, issues for the period 1874-1892
[3] Appreciation to the Rev Robert MacArthur (Presbyterian) and the Rev Roy Glover (Methodist)
[4] Ian H.Murray, Australian Christian Life from 1788: an Introduction and an Anthology, 1988, p.5
[5] Frank Crowley, A documentary History of Australia Vol.1 Colonial Australia 1788-1840 , 1980 p.507-508
[6] Crowley, pp. 345, 442
[7] C.A.White The Challenge of the Years: a History of the Presbyterian Church of Australia in the State of News South Wales, Sydney, Angus and Robertson 1951, p.16; G. Lindsay Lockley, Ed. Bruce Upham Congregationalism in Australia, Melbourne, Uniting Education 2001 p.314
[8] James Colwell, Illustrated History of Methodism, Sydney, William Brooks and Co, 1904 p.435
[9] C. Irving Benson, A Century of Victorian Methodism , Melbourne, Spectator Publishing Co., p. 497
[10] C.M.H.Clark A History of Australia IV: The earth abideth forever 1851-1888 , Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1978 p.285
[11] Walter Phillips Defending a Christian Country: Churchmen and Society in NSW in the 1880s and after, University of Queensland Press, 1981 p.31-32
[12] The ACT Government also uses this approach for other not-for-profit community organisations. Naturally if a church in the ACT wishes to sell their land, they cannot profit by selling that land commercially.
[13] White, pp. 24-26, 29-30
[14] Colwell, pp. 433-435
[15] Lockley, Ed. Bruce Upham, p.154
[16] Phillips, p.22-23
[17] Phillips, pp.87-89
[18] White, pp. 36, 42; Don Wright and Eric Clancy, The Methodists: a history of Methodism in New South Wales, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1993, p.63
[19] White, p.36
[20] White pp. 42, 48-50
[21] Weekly Advocate 26 February 1881
[22] Colwell, p.445
[23] As an approximate reference point, median weekly wages in 1891 were in the order of 40 shillings a week, so about £100 per annum. ABS, Labour and Industrial Branch Report, 1891-1912 Numbers 2 and 3.
[24] Wesleyan Advocate 21 March 1891
[25] Wright and Clancy, p.63
[26] Lockley p.156
[27] Lockley p. 324
[28] Emilsen, Skerman, Curthoys and Emilsen, Pride of Place: a history of the Pitt Street Congregational Church, Melbourne, Circa, 2008 see for example Chapter 4, pp. 137-191
[29] C. Irving Benson, p. 178, p. 498
[30] White, p.165
[31] Wright and Clancy p.205-206
[32] Some examples include Cameron Memorial church in Glen Innes, Hoskins Memorial Church in Lithgow, Ross Memorial in Murrumburra-Harden and a church and hall in Armidale.
[33] White, p.49
[34] Colwell, p.148
[35] Wright and Clancy, p.47
Margaret Reeson 