Lismore, New South Wales, Australia
In the early hours of 28th February, CentreChurch, Lismore, fell victim to the catastrophic inundation of water that has become the worst recorded flood in Lismore’s history.
Nestled between a real estate agent and an anti-ageing clinic, the church has a congregation of around 200 people that live within the CBD area and further afield.
CentreChurch Lismore’s associate pastor Rebekkah Battista with the gutted grand piano. PICTURE: Samantha Elley
Associate pastor Rebekkah Battista shows me in as we enter through the glass doors. We are immediately overwhelmed by the smell of mould and mud which seems ingrained in whatever is left in the gutted out building.
What was once a reception area with a small Christian bookstore is now a haven for builders equipment, slabs of bottled water and plastic chairs.
The real shock though, is when we enter the yawning darkened chasm, which was once the auditorium, with stage, seating, sound system and music area. It is all gone, lit up only by portable builders’ lights which cast an eerie glow throughout.
“We are in an old theatre that was built in the 1930s,” said Battista.
“It has been a church for at least 30 years.”
Tears well up as she starts to describe what happened on that fateful night.
“It’s hard to describe it,” she says. Her voice is thick with emotion.
“We are about 10 metres from the levee bank and when that water came over, it came over with a wave and literally blew our back doors in, rushed in and has ripped up 30 metres-by-20 metres of hardwood floor.
“It looks like the church became a washing machine…with the very heavy seats, heavy metal seats you need two people to move around, they were thrown around as if they were matchsticks.”
Ms Battista says they had to cut one seat out of the sound desk with a chainsaw, it was wedged in so hard.
The shell of what was once a beautiful, highly polished grand piano, now stands as a lonely, muddy reminder of better days for the church. The keys and internal workings of the valuable musical instrument are all gone.
“It was donated by a local doctor who had lost his son,” said Battista. “And donated it to the church 40 years ago. The replacement value is $A70,000….lost. All gone.”
Some of the debris cleaned out of the church building shortly after the flood. PICTURE: Courtesy CentreChurch
More tears as she describes the memories that had been made in this place and while the church is not a building, it is in people’s hearts, Ms Battista said they do come home.
“A lot of our congregation actually hasn’t seen inside,” she said. “It’s a real grief period as what they’ve known here is not there. For so many people this is their home and our home doesn’t look like our home at the moment.”
One interesting item uncovered during the cleaning out period was the discovery of an orchestra pit.
“We had to move the stage which was built on the hardwood floor as it was all chip board and mouldy obviously,” said Battista. “We took off some of the floor to let air flow in to dry the place out and we revealed the orchestra pit which is extraordinary, so obviously there are lots of memories in that and we found a 1950 Coke can that someone had strategically placed for someone to find, which we did.”
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Battista said she can feel the city’s heart is broken and going through large amounts of grief.
“As a church we are just trying to work out where we fit and how do we help,” she said. “There’s lots of checking in with people and practically we have been partnering with Convoy of Hope, run by Joel and Julia A’bell. Basically they contacted us the day after the flood. They brought a team down to help serve Lismore [and] all our church members in clean up.”
“What [the flood] has done is brought lots of connections with Love This City charity, part of our church on the Gold Coast and Gold Coast Hillsong has been amazing [as well as] King’s Church.
“All those have been reaching out to us and because we’ve been at ground zero, we’ve been able to let them know what the need is and marry the people up in Lismore to the people who are giving and wanting to help, so we’ve been a conduit in the city for those churches outside the area.”
The front of CentreChurch with the large heart for Lismore. PICTURE: Samantha Elley.
According to Battista, the future of the church will one day be back in the city.
“We feel we need to be in the heart of the city,” she said. “For us to come back will be at least $A800,000 and we are insured for $A240,000. “God wants us back in the city and we actually want to set it up in the future so it will be an easy washout and then we can serve the city.”
“In the 2017 flood we had flood water to the stairs and we were able to washout very quickly and we became a place of serving food. We served the city through other churches pouring food in and we were sending teams out to deliver it.”
The church currently meets at the Summerland Christian school auditorium just up the road at Goonellabah and considering the work needed, Battista said it will be a miracle to be back in their own premises by Christmas.
“When we walked through the doors here, we had a mat that said ‘Welcome Home’,” she said.
“I miss this home.”
