Stuart Starr / Lead Pastor, NewLife Anglican Church
Stuart Starr graduated from Moore College in 2005.
Welcome to Oran Park, a greenfield development in Sydney’s Macarthur region in the south west! Once home to motorsports like the Australian Grand Prix, the racetrack that made Oran Park famous and that operated from 1962 to 2010 has now been transformed into suburbia. But despite the raceway’s demise, the developers have sought to preserve that heritage in the area’s street names: a street called “The Straight” runs atop the former raceway, and two parallel roads proudly bear the names “Peter Brock Drive” and “Dick Johnson Drive”.
NewLife at Oran Park
My church—NewLife Anglican Church—was planted in January 2012 with the support and oversight of Peter Hayward, Bishop of the Wollongong Region. Matt and Mandy Payne joined me and my wife Carolyn to gather around the Bible in a rented house on Central Avenue.
Over the following year, a small core group grew around us. We launched regular Sunday services on January 20 2013 with 75 kids and adults, a good number of whom were friends and family supporting us just for the day. In March 2014, we moved into the hall of the newly opened Oran Park Primary School, and then eventually in May 2015, we took up residence in a wonderful modern church building on top of a hill on the recently constructed Marcus Loane Way. (I do chuckle when people ask whether its namesake was a Ford or Holden driver.)
Not only does our church’s elevation lend our colourful, 20m-high glass tower landmark status in our suburb, it also identifies it as a precinct that includes Oran Park Anglican College (a kindergarten to Year 12 school), the Oran Park Anglicare Retirement Village and the Barry Marsh House Residential Aged Care facility. Partnering with these other organisations in the diocese have been a huge blessing to us, and we are constantly working to find new expressions of fellowship that take advantage of our physical proximity and shared goals.
Master planned
When compared to other greenfield developments, one of the unusual aspects of Oran Park is the singular vision and planning that came from the ownership of the Perich family. Our town is master planned, which means that it has intentionally preserved tree-lined creeks, bike tracks, growing shopping facilities, restaurants, cafes, and a brand new leisure centre that includes a gym, a 50 metre pool and four indoor sports courts.
All this planning shows itself in the walkability of the suburb, its wider streets, its landscaping requirements, and its central high rises, which have been designed to expand opportunities to live and work locally—a sorely needed antidote to the M5 city commute. In addition, Oran Park is ideally situated, located only 15 minutes south of the new airport. There are also long-term plans to connect it directly via heavy rail by placing a station at the heart of the high-density residential quarter.
Oran Park is truly is a dynamic and constantly evolving place to live. Its first house was sold in 1839, when John Douglas Campbell transferred his property to Henry Keck for the princely sum of £1,600. The modern suburb of Oran Park was not only placed on top of racing asphalt, it was also cut from the green pastures of a dairy farming family that still runs cows to this day. The first home from this new development was sold in March 2010 for approximately $250,000. Today and 5,500 homes later, the median price of a four-bedroom home has swollen to $1,100,000, the population is comprised of well over 18,000 residents, and our diverse community includes almost 10 per cent of those of Indian heritage. Furthermore, the surrounding Macarthur region is growing at a rate of 8.8 per cent annually, which will add approximately 30,000 new residents over the next five years.
Looking to the future
Since 2015, our church has continued to grow. We launched an evening service in April 2017 and a second morning service in May 2018. Like churches everywhere else, our momentum was then severely impacted by COVID. But thanks to some wonderful work by our streaming technicians, NewLife bounced back.
We now run services at 9:30am and 6pm. Recently, we had the delight of announcing that we will be multiplying our morning services once more as we move to 8:30am and 10:30am services in February 2025.
In the 12 years since we planted NewLife, our ministry has been supported by a group we call “Partners”. This team of over 150 people is made up of men and women from teens to retirees, who are committed to our vision and mission, who are taught about our expectations, and who are invited to become contributors. They are a generous and hardworking group, and we endeavour to add to their number every term. Supporting and serving them is a small staff team comprised of Michael, Lauren, Mark and Steve, whose hard work, love and dedication I give great thanks to God for.
In April 2025, NewLife will partner with a Moore College Mission team. During my time studying at Moore, I found that each year, Mission brought the intensity of friendship and fellowship, learning and laughing, serious discussions and significant reflection together in surprising ways. I very much appreciated the opportunity to go somewhere new, observe how a church works, listen to the pastor and the people, and taste and see how God’s kingdom is lived out in one particular corner of the diocese.
We’re hoping, planning and praying that the Moore College students who come to Oran Park will have experiences just like this. As we head towards Easter, we look forward to the team helping us reach into the schools and suburbs around us in a way that is only possible with an influx of extra hands. Under God, our vision as a church is still to see new life in Jesus come to every home. May our merciful Lord make it happen!
Prayer
- Thank God for NewLife and the work he has done in Oran Park and the southwest region of Sydney.
- Ask God to have mercy on the lost: ask him to prepare hearts and minds to respond to hearing the good news with faith and repentance.
- Pray for Moore Mission: ask God to assist NewLife Anglican Church as they prepare, and ask him to stir up the student team to consider long-term gospel work in harvest fields that lie just a little further away from home.
