One of Australia’s fastest growing churches is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. Calvary Christian Church was founded in 1924 as a house church in Townsville by Charles Enticknap.
Its first convert donated the equivalent of $5,000 to buy a large tent in which the congregation could be accommodated for the first ten years.
The church then moved to a city building and by 1970 had an average attendance of 67. That’s when Marie Cartledge and her late husband David took over as senior pastors. Marie recalls: “We had a move of the Holy Spirit within a year which brought about a cleansing in the church and it just grew and grew and grew and never stopped.”
The church bought a 37 hectare block of land at Mount Louisa which was then on the outskirts of the city and developed a campus with a large auditorium and established the Calvary Christian College.
In the 1990s it moved into mission work and opened a house for kids at risk.
Since the turn of the century it has expanded to eight campuses across Queensland including Brisbane, Cairns, the Sunshine Coast, Rockhampton, Emerald, Yeppoon and Blackwater, attracting thousands of new members.
In 2018 it opened its first overseas campus in East London, South Africa as a hub for potential expansion across Africa. On Sunday (April 21) a new Calvary church holds its first service in Port Moresby.
Former Senior Pastor Marie Cartledge observed that Calvary is “founded on a pioneering spirit that breaks new ground.”
Photo: Facebook – Calvary Christian Church
