The oroginal church building is constructed on the corner of Hanover and Great King Street, with the foundation stone laid April 1864, and opening services held August 1865.
Credit: Te Papa
By 1880 the Sunday School room was built in which a free reading room was eventually opened for the public in the absence of a public library in the city.
Credit: Benchill / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
In partnership with the Baptist Missionary Society, Hanover Street became the first Baptist church in NZ to send a missionary overseas - Rosalie McGeorge, 1886.
She was followed by Miss A. Bacon (1887), Miss L. Peters (1894), Miss Emma Beckingsale (1895), Dr and Mrs Charles North (1898), and in later years, Miss Isobel Swan to Bolivia and Dr Dion Warren to Nigeria.
Mission work began amongst the Chinese who had settled in the city following the 1860s Otago gold rush.
A dedicated Chinese Sunday school class was formed in the 1890s, fostering deep community ties and resulting in a special silk banner gifted to the church by the Chinese congregation around that era.
Credit: Hocken Collections
By the early 1900s, the congregation had grown to nearly 400 and the building was groaning under the strain of age and numbers. It was decided that a whole new church building was needed, and the current brick building was built in its place.
The foundation stones were laid in 1910 and the first service in the new building was held in 1912.
Credit: Chris Horwell / Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga / 2014
Hanover Street Baptist is sold and the church moved into the Dunedin Teacher’s College auditorium for more space.
After vetting dozens of potential locations within the city for thirteen years, land search coordinator Murray Cowan shifted the search out of the city, which eventually led him to the 7.6-hectare block in Concord right next to the Southern Motorway.
The church moved its services to Otago Boys' while the new build takes place in Concord.
100 years on to the day of laying the foundation stone of Hanover St in 1910, the turning of the first sod took place at the Concord site.
More than 150 people attended the unveiling of the new church's foundation stone as part of the church's 150th anniversary celebrations.
Our purpose-built complex officially opened its doors to the public in February 2016.
