Our Grand opening was so special with over 400 people from the community as well as family and friends coming to celebrate with us in what God has done.
Our Grand opening was so special with over 400 people from the community as well as family and friends coming to celebrate with us in what God has done.
Our Grand opening was so special with over 400 people from the community as well as family and friends coming to celebrate with us in what God has done.
Our Grand opening was so special with over 400 people from the community as well as family and friends coming to celebrate with us in what God has done.
Our Grand opening was so special with over 400 people from the community as well as family and friends coming to celebrate with us in what God has done.
Our Grand opening was so special with over 400 people from the community as well as family and friends coming to celebrate with us in what God has done.
A new address for Gateway Baptist Church
To read about Gateway’s ministries and how you can pray for them, check out the article here.
Over the past 15 years, Gateway Baptist Church ministered from an ex Jehovahs’ witness building located in Queenstown. It had two small rooms for children’s ministry, a medium-size auditorium, a small parents room and limited office space. Meetings were held in the kitchen, which was the main thoroughfare during the week, and there were only 13 carparks!
The leadership had a vision for the church buy another facility that would allow the church to grow and serve the community more effectively. After 2 years of searching, the ex-bakery and cold storage facility on Jervois Street seemed to be where God was leading us.
The building itself was 3500 m² (7 x the size of the older facility) and the land is approximately 7000m². It has two factories working under the same roof; a bakery and a pasta factory, which provides lease money for the ministry and to service debt.
The new facility consists of several kitchens (including a commercial one!), several toilet blocks, visitor and cafe areas, a play area and parents room, a 450 seat auditorium, 7 offices, a large Children’s ministry area with 3 separate rooms, 90 car spaces and 400 square meters upstairs which we don’t know what to with yet.
It has been a journey with many major hurdles to overcome; the sale of the current facility, the rezoning of a large industrial warehouse, council approvals, membership votes and financial approvals. There is still a lot of work ahead for us too!
Following much thought, prayer and strategy, the congregation took the huge 3 million dollar step in taking on the project and commissioning a new place of worship.
Throughout these changes, we spent 14 months in a function room at AAMI Stadium in West Lakes, which was challenging and testing, as we worked to see the building come to fruition.
The building has plenty of space for our current ministries and potential future ministries, and we look forward to seeing where God will lead us.
The thinking and mentality have needed to change as we have stepped out in this way. We love how God instills vision into the heart of people. It’s scary, its faith-filled, challenging, tiring – but glorious in how God provides, sustains, grows us, leads us.
The story of Gateway Baptist church is not about the building; it’s a narrative in how a group of people with faith, in unity, with a common vision and led by God, can see wonderful things happen. God leads and walks with us – and at Gateway, we are believing that this is only the beginning! Our God is so good and we can’t wait to see the many other ways in which He will lead us.
