Presbyterians raising the roof

One of the city's older churches is undergoing a facelift to protect itself from the heavens.

Roofers recently began the $110,000 task of replacing 4000 ageing tiles above the sprawling Wollongong Presbyterian City Central Church complex in Kembla St.

The project is a prelude to work in March, which will involve enclosing part of the iconic spire in glass to protect the historic organ below from water damage.

Pastor Brett Richardson said the church had embarked on the refurbishment with a great deal of reluctance.

The needs of the congregation had to be balanced against the responsibility to maintain one of Wollongong's most architecturally significant buildings, he said.

"We would much prefer to be pouring money into people, not into buildings," he said.

"The church of Jesus Christ doesn't exist to build monuments to itself, it exists to communicate the gospel, and while our church building is in a prominent location and is important to us, we don't want it to dominate our priorities."

In March, scaffolding will be erected around the spire so that tradesmen can repair concrete, install new internal ladders and insert glass windows at a total cost of $164,000.

"The great irony in this is most of the money we have had to spend on this building lately is going into things people will never see, like tiles and electrical wires and sound systems," Pastor Richardson said.

"One of the things about a church building built 70 years ago is that it was designed not to use amplification. So while this building has pretty good acoustics the church has invested in a very, very good sound system because we believe it's important to actually hear what is happening in here each Sunday."