Community & Business
21 October, 2025
New life breathed into old church: Orthodox Church finds home in Cambooya
After a decade of searching for a stable worship location, St. John the Baptist Orthodox Mission has secured a home at the former Cambooya Uniting Church, a major milestone for the growing Toowoomba Area congregation.
The move to the Uniting Church building at 19 Eton Street provides stability following years of transient worship spaces.
The mission traces its roots to occasional, laity-led services at the University of Southern Queensland’s (UniSQ) multi-faith centre in Toowoomba, beginning around 2015.
“Reader Services started here in Toowoomba simply because there were people who knew how to conduct them,” Father Erich Fein, the mission’s rector said.
“And the Brisbane Orthodox community consistently supported us, with clergy travelling to Toowoomba for the Divine Liturgy.”
Key challenges included finding a dedicated space and building a congregation of consistent members. Early growth relied on members like church warden and Reader Peter Beatie, who joined in 2017 and was later tonsured as a reader.
The community also benefited from Orthodox families relocating from Brisbane.
Post-pandemic, the mission saw increased interest, fueled by its online presence.
“People are searching for a connection to early Christianity, which Orthodoxy preserves,” Father Erich Fein said.
“Our presence online through Facebook and our website, alongside being on Google Maps, has certainly helped people reach out to us.”
“We often have several visitors each week; many of them young people and young families, which speaks to the growing interest in Christianity that reflects early church history and traditions.
“Now that we are based in Cambooya, we can continue to grow our congregation and settle here as a fixture of the community.”
Frequent relocations, driven by limited resources, ended when the Cambooya Uniting Church offered an affordable, long-term solution.
“Property to lease in Toowoomba was too expensive for a small grassroots community such as ours, so we were very grateful when the Uniting Church offered us such a great space in a beautiful regional town,” Fr Erich said.
The Orthodox community has company, being situated on Eton Street, only 200 metres from the local Anglican church and next door to the Roman Catholic congregation - a street nicknamed ‘holy street’ by parishioners.
Services, such as the Divine Liturgy, have been practiced with minimal changes since at least the fourth century, and deeply stress the importance of church history, lives of the saints, and fundamentally communion with God.
“Orthodoxy is at its core designed to bring individuals into communion with God, possessing a nature that may be seen as more ‘mystical’ compared to Western traditions,” Peter Beatie said.
“It places strong emphasis on church history and drawing on the wisdom of predecessors.
“The faith is aimed at union with Christ, with practices serving as “stepping stones to that.
“Services are sung to help bring us into that space, and we pray often for everyone.”
“There can be a bit of a culture shock for some people, particularly from Protestant backgrounds.
“Things like icon veneration, incense, and singing of prayers can seem quite foreign at first.
“But it’s actually going back to how we used to pray.”
“Orthodoxy is not a legalistic religion but one focused on cultivating a relationship with God, and there’s a beauty in Orthodoxy that I have never seen anywhere else,” Fr Erich said.
The congregation currently holds two regular services each week, with additional services for special times of the year such as Easter, all services conducted in English.
This includes a candlelight Saturday evening service at 5pm called Vespers, which aims to prepare worshippers for Sunday.
Additionally, the Divine Liturgy, the main Sunday service, following St. John Chrysostom’s 4th-century format, generally occurs every Sunday at 9am, complete with scripture readings and a short sermon.
Fellowship follows every service, with a catechism class and prayer instruction also offered many weeks each year.
Father Erich said the church welcomes anyone to stop in for a visit and observe an Orthodox service.
“All services are in English and all are welcome,” he said.
