Sacred Spaces

The new home for the Salvation Army in Chelmsford has been made possible thanks to a grant from the organisation and a great deal of fundraising. 

"Our previous building to this got to the stage where it needed quite a lot of repair work doing to it.

"The decision we made was to re-build on to this site so we could have a multi-function building that brings us right into the 21st Century."

Ian, a member of the congregation in Chelmsford and says: "It will mean an exciting place to worship. It will mean somewhere to reach out into the community and bring people in, because it will be warm and people will want to be."

Salvation Army Tower in Chelmsford

Ian says they've had to relocate their Sunday morning worship to St Peter's College in Melbourne.

"We'll be back in our home. But what we'll find is people will be able to see where we are," said Ian.

For Alan Watters he wanted to give the hall something of a 'Wow' factor: "We wanted to plan for expansion and we believed we wanted to have a worship hall that felt good."

He says: "This is quite some place."  

Alan believes it's still a sacred space:  "The word scared says something to me as being set apart. In our particular case set apart for the purposes of God. We had that in our old place, and whilst this is still a building site it's still a sacred place."