Perth Voice Interactive

THE Sonlife church is hoping to turn a run-down industrial shop on West Perth’s Cleaver Street into a new house of worship.

Pastor Binh Nguyen started the independent church in his living room three years ago, having been with the Anglicans for three years.

He had about a dozen people at his first sermon, and the congregation has since grown to more than 100.

Sonlife has been operating out of the Loftus centre, but with a growing congregation was looking for a roomier HQ that doesn’t have to be set up and packed away each Sunday.

Pastor Nguyen chuckles that when he first spotted the Cleaver Street place “it was infested with cockroaches, it had no ceiling or carpet, it was dirty, but I could see it being transformed into a wonderful place of worship where people can experience the love of God”.

Vincent council staff initially wanted to refuse the new church in West Perth, worried about traffic, but councillors relented, arguing there was very little on Sundays. They said it’d be a resurrection for the rundown area.

A refugee who left Vietnam in a boat at the age of five, Pastor Nguyen was a high school science teacher when he felt “there was this greater calling”.

“It grew in me and got stronger and stronger.”

He says his church wants to show the community its love in practical ways, practising what it preaches. It puts together hampers for the poor, works with Foodbank, supports single mums, and holds parenting and marriage courses.

Pastor Nguyen says it’ll be a lot of work to get the place up to scratch and take a few months to finish. “We don’t know where we’ll get the money from, but God knows!”

by DAVID BELL