For the first five years of the colony, divine service meant a tree, a tent, or whoever’s hut would hold a congregation. Chaplain Richard Johnson, who had already preached the first Christian service in the colony on 3 February 1788 (text: Psalm 116:12 — “What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me?”), finally got tired of waiting for the government to build a church. In mid-1793 he paid for one himself — about £67 12s. 11½d. — and opened it on 25 August 1793.
The building stood near today’s Richard Johnson Square, at the Hunter / Bligh / Castlereagh intersection (live text’s “Johnson Place”). It was wattle-and-daub on strong posts, thatched, T-plan, earthen floor, said to seat about five hundred. On weekdays Johnson and his wife Mary ran a school there for 150–200 children. Lieutenant-Governor Grose had been in no hurry to fund a proper church; Johnson’s private initiative irritated him and still did not fill the pews — Christmas Day 1793 drew only a few dozen.
On the evening of 1 October 1798 the church burned. Contemporary suspicion pointed at convicts angry at Governor Hunter’s push for compulsory Sunday attendance; the attribution is traditional rather than courtroom-proven. A store shed was fitted up for worship afterward. Nothing of the 1793 fabric survives. St Philip’s is the later parish church, not this building — do not merge them.