Restoring a beautiful community landmark
On December 13, 2020, our heritage status building suffered an unsolved arson attack.
For the past six years we have committed to restoring this beautiful church to reflect its heritage status and to provide our congregation with its much-loved worship space.
In this time, when heritage buildings are at greater risk of being leveled, we are thrilled with the refurbishment and are enjoying using this beautiful space once again.
The interior work is now complete which reinstated the internal architecture and character of the Class B heritage status of the church and included improved lighting, heating, emergency lighting, security cameras and a fire surveillance system. The next stage is rebuilding the steeple and we do not have all the funding to complete this work. If you are able to help us, we welcome any donations that will enable us to complete this work.
All donations are tax deductable and may be paid directly into our restoration account or via stripe here: https://www.ststephensponsonby.org.nz/donation
Update August 2026
We are about to start work on phase two of the rebuild, which includes rebuilding the steeple.
The steeple was not fire-damaged but requires strengthening due to its age. Most of the structural integrity of the steeple has been affected by the elements over 140 years. The southern wall requires strengthening and this work will conclude the exterior rebuild.
The third and final phase of the project relates to repairing the church organ which was water damaged while the fire service extinguished the fire.
The church organ was originally installed in 1910 and was partially refurbished two years before the fire.
The congregation is now enjoying using their church again, and other groups continue to meet every week in the back or middle hall. Funding the rebuild has been difficult due to rising building costs and covid, and the economic downturn has made it hard to raise the grant funding required to complete the rebuild.
We need approximately $300k to repair the church organ so if you can help us with our funding, we would appreciate hearing from you at or you can donate to the rebuild if you wish.
