Church Partnership

Ivanhoe Girls’ Grammar School has a long and rich history with our local church, St James’ Ivanhoe. We do not have our own chapel, so we use St James’ for all our Junior School and Senior School Services. The old church attached to the newer building is called the Parish Hall, and we also use that for drama lessons, House Meetings and small theatre productions. Our ELC shares a fence with the church, and most of us use the walkway alongside the church as a short cut to the main shopping street. I’ve even seen groups of older students having their lunch break on the steps of the church, as though the church is really ours!

During World War Two, our school moved into the church hall and students had all their classes there. The school building was being used as a hospice. Over the years since then our school and the church have continued to work together. We have helped them upgrade their sound systems and now they enjoy the screen and modern technology during their Sunday and mid-week services. In 2003 the school year commenced with a moving service for the dedication of the Centenary Stained-Glass Window by Bishop Andrew Curnow. The artist, Glenn Mack, incorporated symbols representing the School and Parish into the three themes of the window, ‘women’, ‘achievement’ and ‘music’.

As well as sharing buildings and resources, the school and church like to support one another in more personal and faith building ways too. We have a long-standing tradition of the church nominating a member for our School Board. This is usually the Minister, and this year we formally welcomed The Reverend Mike McNamara to the position. He is continuing the tradition of opening each Board meeting in prayer, asking for God’s wisdom and guidance in their governance. For the last few years, the youth minister from St James’ assisted us in leading the Friday lunch-time Christian club ‘Mustard’. This has strengthened the fellowship between us and the church, and more recently we invited The Reverend Jessica Cheung to share with the group about her work in the church and her very interesting prisons ministry.

At the start of every year, I take the preps classes across the road to St James’, so they can feel familiar with the space before their first church Junior School Service. They love looking at the stained-glass windows and counting how many crosses are in the church building – more than 20. They often notice the Chinese signs and the baptismal font; they are very curious about what everything is. We are so thankful for the support of the clergy and staff of St James’, it is great to be able to pray for each other’s ministries and work together in Gospel Partnership. It is encouraging to me that we can, together, “run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.” (Hebrews 12:1, 2)