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A five-level building in the Adelaide CBD will become the new home for Australian Lutheran College (ALC) and the Churchwide Office.

The building is located at 139 Frome Street, Adelaide, in close proximity to Bethlehem and St Stephen’s Lutheran churches. Ample parking for visitors and staff is available onsite and within 200 metres.

The acquisition of this property follows the sale of the LCANZ’s properties in North Adelaide for a net price of approximately $52.5 million, which was above market valuations.

The purchase of the building is expected to provide benefits in working more closely on mission and ministry and sharing common facilities, as well as streamlining some back-of-office operations. The new premises are also expected to provide the opportunity for other church entities to co-locate.

Parts of the building are currently tenanted, and this is expected to continue, providing an ongoing income stream for the church.

Settlement on the property is due at the end of November when work will commence to fit out the floors to be occupied by LCANZ bodies. MPH Architects has been retained as the firm to design the workspaces in consultation with representatives of ALC and the Churchwide Office. The project is being overseen by Tony Materne, a director of MPH and member of St John’s congregation, Unley.

The purchase has been funded through LCANZ reserves and deposit monies from the sale of the North Adelaide properties. The majority of the proceeds of the sale are payable in July 2026.

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A Congregational Life website designed to support congregations and agencies in areas including worship, pastoral care, discipleship and faith teaching, outreach and church planting, and community service is being developed by the church.

As an outcome of a recently released report addressing the LCANZ’s ongoing ministry challenges, including its pastoral supply shortage, the website will help equip faith communities as they adjust to the church’s changing context. To be launched later this year, it will offer relevant resources and raise awareness of learning pathways that are currently available or being developed.

The website was recommended in the summary report of the Ministry Future project, which was received with approval in May by the General Church Board (GCB). Led by Victorian District Bishop Emeritus Greg Pietsch, the project was established by the College of Bishops (CoB) in 2022, with the support of GCB, to ‘consider and develop a coordinated response’ to the decreasing number of pastors in the LCANZ and the changing nature of its communities.

The report contains a multi-faceted approach to tackling what Pastor Greg says are ‘clearly evident’ difficulties facing the church. The three-part response developed to address these challenges is:

1. a regional rather than solely congregation or parish approach to organising pastoral ministry,
2. suitable pathways into general and specialised service – both lay and ordained, paid and voluntary, and
3. a regular way of ordering the service of lay people involved in word and/or sacrament ministry, in addition to the existing preparation and call of Specific Ministry Pastors (SMPs).

‘(We have) a large number of pastoral vacancies, long periods in vacancy with frustration over the call process and communities struggling to afford a pastor’, Pastor Greg says in the report.

‘Yet ministry needs and mission opportunities still continue in the Lord’s harvest field.’

Pastor Greg says the Ministry Future project ‘does not pretend to be every answer to the changes we face’, but rather that it hopes to be of help. He also asks LCANZ members to commit the church, its communities and the project outcomes to prayer.

Read more, download the Ministry Future report and access a question-and-answer document about the project at www.lca.org.au/ministry-future  

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