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Firstly, how did Roseville get so lucky to have you here? (laughs) That’s not a question! Actually, this has been my church for many years. I was a parishioner here for a while, and when the minister left he asked if I would look after the church for two days a week, whilethey were looking for another minister. I loved looking after the church so much, and the church loved me, so we eventually made it official.What do you and your family love about living in this area? We love lots of trees and just the ability to walk wherever we like, we love our dogs and the café culture. Ultimately for us it is the people that are here; the community that’s been drawn to St Andrew’s is very much our life.What would you like to see Sydney’s North Shore do better?With the busy lives that we lead and the pressures that are on families, the thing that has been squeezed out is a sense of community. Research tells us that community organisations are suffering andit is not because people are not interested in the community. It’s more because of time pressure. There are some places where you get real community; I think that local schools do community very well, but they are so busy doing the business of education that they can’t really take on the full load of community. This is whyI think churches are actually the perfect places to be centres of community. That’s really what they are all about. Churches aren’t all about just saying prayers and singing songs on Sundays for an hour; they are about sharing life together, being friends, eating and drinking together, andhelping each other to be wise and healthy in every dimension of life. That’s so much of the core of a church’s business.What would you like to see us do better?The sense of community spirit, which is not to say that thespirit isn’t there, it’s just that we are so time poor in this neck of the woods that a lot of people get home from work and want to just shut the outside gate, shut the door and bunker down in front of the TV. I often feel like that too, but I think in doing so we lose something that our forebearsfor all of history have enjoyed: openness to our neighbours and connection with each other, so that people don’t suffer alone and they always have support.Do you think it is easy for usto forget because we are so comfortable?The technological toys we get to play are great but sometimes they make us lose sight of what is most important: significance, relationships, community.You are busy working on the 20/20 vision. Who is the centre for? It’s for our wider community. At the very heart of this vision isto be the centre of community for Roseville and beyond. So we want to offer the great things about St Andrews – friendship, care, intellectual stimulation, church services, health, fun, and the arts. We want to offer thisWe are commencing a building project which will give us the facility to be able to serve the wider community...to the 150,000 people withina ten-minute drive from us.We decided very early on that we wouldn’t only be a village church that just served the 5,000 people around us in Roseville. A ten-minute drive is simple and that means 150,000 people are potentially able to benefit from our services. We are commencing a building project which will give us the facility to be able to serve the wider community more than we have been able to in the past 100 years that we have been here.Why do you think 80%-90% of people in this day and age are not going to church?Part of it is that people are so busy, and all community organisations are sufferingfrom that, such as Scouts and Rotary and RSL Clubs. Traditional community-based organisations have been diminishing over the last 30-40 years. The Church iswww.livinglocalguide.com.au “Dream, Inspire, Grow” LIVING LOCAL SUMMER 2016/17 29