Wayside Chapel - Description and History

Description and History

The Wayside Chapel was established in the Kings Cross area of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia in 1964. Ted Noffs was the founder of the Wayside Chapel, which was at the time a Methodist ministry (Uniting Church from 1977). At that time, it was only a single room with a dozen chairs in a block of flats at 29 Hughes Street, Potts Point. Within twelve months of his arrival, Noffs had transformed it into a chapel, coffee shop drop-in and community resource centre. The expectations of the church hierarchy -- that Noffs's experiment would fail and become obscure and irrelevant -- were not realised.

The centre grew until it occupied the entire building at No. 29. Later it grew still further and occupied the block of flats adjacent to the first block. A crisis centre was established in 1971 to handle crises which might arise at any time of day or night, including drug overdoses and possible suicides. More conventional church activities such as weddings were also carried out and the Wayside Chapel became one of the most popular wedding venues in Sydney, along with St Mark's at Darling Point.

In the late 1990s, Pastor Ray Richmond and others established a "Tolerance Room", where people who inject drugs were able to do so in a supervised environment, as an act of civil disobedience. This eventually led to the creation of the legal Medically Supervised Injecting Centre in Kings Cross.

The current pastor is Graham Long as of 2004.

In July 2009, the Wayside Chapel received a grant of $2 million from the state government for the purpose of rebuilding its physical facilities. An additional grant from the federal government for $3 million was received in late 2009. The balance of funds were raised by private donation. Graham Long said that rainwater had been penetrating the brick walls and causing bricks to fall out. Forty per cent of the existing buildings had already been condemned, but moves were afoot to start a renovation and rebuilding worth $7.5 million.

Ted Noffs intended the Wayside Chapel to be a place where action came before preaching and engagement with the community was more important than going to church on Sunday. Successive ministers have endeavored to uphold this tradition. Noffs pioneered a number of far-reaching and innovative developments in social welfare at The Wayside Chapel:

• The Crisis Centre
• The Drug Referral Center
• Shepherd of the Streets (SOTS)
• Life Education Centre
• Relatives Against Intake of Narcotics (REIN)

Raymond Richmond was responsible for;

• Hands-On Health Centre (established by chiropractors in 1992, later closed down)
• Supervised Injecting Room