The Queensland Congregational union was formed in 1861, under the Religious Educational and Charitable Institutions Act 1861. Congregationalists had been working in Queensland from 1853. The organisation has a history of providing out-of-home care for children since 1929. In June 1977 the Australian Congregationalists joined with the Presbyterian and Methodist churches to form the Uniting Church of Australia.
The Queensland Congregational Fellowship writes of their history:
Congregationalists have been in Australia for a long time: they were second only to the Anglican chaplains and during the 1790s made Sydney Town their base for the evangelisation of the Pacific.
Among the European settlers of what was then the Moreton Bay District of New South Wales, Congregationalism goes back to the 1840s when Rev Edward Griffith from Wales came out to pastor a little congregation at Ipswich. He was the first of many ministers sent out by the Colonial Missionary Society of London. Griffith’s stay in Ipswich was short but he went on to an esteemed ministry of thirty years in Brisbane. And his son Sir Samuel Griffith became State Premier, father of the federal constitution and first Chief Justice of Australia.