Geoff Moore, Web Site Admin.

In July 1972 Pastor Leslie Funk Commenced services in the old Senior Citizens Centre in the centre of Penrith, after moving from originally Bankstown then to Blacktown then to Penrith.

In 1974 the work was taken over by Pastor Harvey Goodman. The Goodman family stayed until 1985 and during that time their three children grew into their teens and late teens.

In 1978 a double block of land was purchased on the current site and in 1980 Stage 2 of the building was commenced. This consisted of a double story building where Sunday School was held on the lower floor and Church Services concurrently on the upper level. This was at a time when Penrith still had both the Army base and part of the Air Force base in the city.

In 1984 the New Main auditorium was opened and shortly after in 1985, Pastor & Mrs Ken Burdett came to the church. It was also at this time that Penrith went through a transformation from being a small Services town and Railway town to becoming a very strong community of people from all walks of life. Over a period of five years from 1982 to 1987 particularly Penrith modernized greatly and moved forward from a quiet town on the Border of the Greater Metropolitan Area of Sydney and Country New South Wales to a bustling metropolis with a large vibrant community from Emu Plains in the West, Cranebrook/Mount Pleasant in the North to Luddenham in the South and St. Marys/St. Clair in the East..

Pastor David Kemplay-Hill began with the church in 1991 and many new ventures were begun. About the time he started we had just widened the interior of the Auditorium with removal of an internal wall.

Pastor and Mrs. D. Kemplay-Hill

Pastor Hill recently paid a great complement to our former pastor now Dr Harvey Goodman in the way our building was designed to allow expansion as it was needed, without major structural alterations. And so now the buildings last internal wall is gone and we have capacity for another 60 persons in the Auditorium.

This report by Geoff your Website Administrator

Mrs. Tarn and Suzy Crocket

"Mrs Tarn is one of our 'Distant Members'..who moved up to the North Coast of NSW with her family a couple of years ago, she still is considered part of us at Nepean as she has been since 1977"

Snippets of News from days gone by at Nepean

We hope in coming days to be adding little items that may be of interest from the early days of our church here in Kingswood.

The Old Gravel Driveway

Back in about 1980, it was decided to get some Blue Metal gravel laid for our Church Driveway.

Pastor Goodman called for helpers to come on Saturday morning to help with the laying of the gravel.

Looks like all the healthy labour slept in that day.

So the total volunteer staff consisted of our Assistant Pastor back then Bro Peter Matthews, and myself. I was a lot healthier back in those days, let me tell you.

I think we both silently prayed for God to help us as we did not want to be still laying out gravel next morning for the Morning Service!

I guess we all remember that verse "Before you call I WILL ANSWER!" AMEN!

All of a sudden we noticed a Front End Loader tractor coming up Bringelly Road!

We yelled and shouted out to the driver, AND HE STOPPED, turned and drove in to where we were recovering from our initial exertion, not making much of a go of the pile!

As we had managed to get this fellow's attention. Peter and I were discussing what sort of money we should offer the guy to help us out!! It turned out I had about $10 in my pocket; so we offered this to the man to roll out the gravel for us.

What would have taken us all day and then some to do, this fellow did in about FIVE MINUTES!! Praise God!...AND HE DIDN'T WANT ANYTHING FOR IT!

What a wonderful BLESSING from the Lord!

It was a pretty overwhelming site looking at this great pile of Blue Metal Gravel sitting in the drive way, to be laod out. So we began with our shovels, and boy! It woulod have been a long, long job.

Anyone else has any old stories about Berean/ Nepean please e-mail Geoff through the Church E-mail link.

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