Social action will increase in future years, following the creation of the separately administered Christ Church St Laurence Charitable Trust.

The Bishop of Australia, William Grant Broughton, saw the need for another church for the settlement at the city's southern boundary, then becoming a poorer industrialised quarter.

The first rector, W. H. Walsh, like Bishop Broughton, was associated with the High Church group in England which was led by Joshua Watson and which also included Edward Coleridge.

The result was a gothic church interior, with an ordered liturgy – Sung Matins and Evensong supported by a robed choir, and frequent Communion services with an offertory of sacramental alms and a surpliced preacher.

The most significant dispute with Christ Church occurred in 1868 when Barker ordered the removal of an image of the cross above the altar from the newly installed tiled reredos.

[12] Following Bishop Barker's death, the parish, under Charles Garnsey, began to adopt Anglo-Catholic practices, which had appeared in England in the 1860s and gathered strength (while also generating opposition) in the 1870s.

In 1910, Archbishop John Wright imposed the requirement that all clergy, upon appointment, undertake not to wear the eucharistic vestment (the chasuble) in any church in the diocese.

Sometimes led by as many as three thurifers, the processions featured parish organisations and guilds, clergy from around the Anglican Communion (in copes), the occasional mitred bishop (mitres being a rarity in Sydney), clergy from Orthodox churches, and representatives from sympathetic Sydney parishes and St Gabriel's, a girls’ school run by the Community of the Sisters of the Church in the nearby suburb of Waverley.

Henry Robertson (1802-1881) designed Christ Church in a transitional style incorporating Old Colonial Gothick Picturesque and Victorian Free Gothic.

Interior design features by Blacket include the font, pulpit, carved pew-ends, and panelling at the west end (originally part of a choir gallery).

After a land exchange with the New South Wales government when Central railway station was built, Clamp designed a new rectory and vestries (1904) and a new school building, now the parish hall (1905).

In 1938, a large mural on the east wall was painted by Vergilio Lo Schiavo (1909-1971), one of the few artists to have employed fresco technique in Australia.

The work included cleaning and repointing the stonework, restoring the cedar pews and repainting the timber ceiling, pillars and sanctuary panelling.

They include work by leading stained-glass companies of the mid-19th century: James Powell & Sons and Charles Clutterbuck and Clayton & Bell, all of London, and William Wailes, of Newcastle upon Tyne.

The windows designed by Clayton & Bell were manufactured at Mells, Somerset, and are early work by the brothers Edwin, Harry and Mark Horwood.

[20] Of historical interest is Clutterbuck's memorial window for the family of Sir Alfred Stephen, Chief Justice of New South Wales (1845–1873).

Over the course of the first half of the twentieth century, Christ Church displayed a variety of framed art prints by Renaissance and later artists.

The set of 14 icons depicts scenes from the life of Jesus and the Church and carries on the sequence commenced in the Triptych of the Incarnation.

Morning and Evening Prayer are also read daily by parishioners unable to attend at the church, using the videoconferencing software Zoom.

Outside of formal services, the church is open for long hours on weekdays, when it is visited by many people from its busy neighbourhood who use it for personal devotion or meditation.

Additional choir events include carol services for Advent and Epiphany, and an orchestral Mass on the anniversary of the church's dedication in September.

At the Sung Eucharist on Sundays the congregation sings the ordinary, using a variety of musical settings, including some written specially for this service.

The choir is committed to new music by Australian composers and has commissioned liturgical works from Brooke Shelley (Viri Galilaei, 2021), Fiona Loader (Angelus ad virginem, 2020), Joseph Twist (Missa brevis, 2020), Oscar Smith (St Laurence Service, 2020) and William Yaxley (Mass for St Laurence, 2019).

Concerts and the orchestral Mass are accompanied by the church's ensemble-in-residence, the Muffat Collective, a period instrument quartet, augmented by other professional musicians.

It has toured extensively in New Zealand, the UK and continental Europe, and the United States, with residencies in Westminster Abbey and St Paul's Cathedral, London, and services at Notre-Dame, Paris.

The present organ, built by William Hill & Sons of London in 1891, was privately owned in Sydney before it was bought by the parish in 1905.

The social action of the parish has a long history that stretches back before the creation of government welfare agencies and the state school system.

In the war of 1914–18, the parish offered a "cheero" in the hall, feeding and entertaining servicemen passing through Central Railway Station.

Other groups or projects funded through the Anglican Board of Mission - Australia include: Mudgin-Gal, Aboriginal women's organisation, Redfern; Wontulp Bi-Buya Theological College, providing adult education for Aborigines, Cairns; literacy in Vanuatu; disaster risk reduction and emergency support in South Sudan; an integrated gender project in Zambia.

The college moved its premises to Dolls Point (Primrose House, 190 Russell Avenue) in 1930 and closed in 1934 after a brief return to its old location.