The AIM church in Alice Springs was originally established by the Australian Mission Society under the direction of Arnold and Dorothy Long. It was handed to AIM in 1986. This ministry originally involved two centres - the current one at The Gap and a property at Mt Nancy. The Mt Nancy facility was under the leadership of Norm and Lola Wall and the Gap facility was staffed by workers no longer with AIM. When the workers left the Mt Nancy property it was sold (1998) and Norm and Lola moved to the current property until they retired in early 2007. Up until mid 2009 when the Stuart's started, the work was maintained by short term workers.

Alice Springs has both permanent Indigenous residents and many transient Indigenous people who come to Alice Springs for many reasons including medical attention etc. The AIM church in Alice Springs has been impacted by the transient population so that local leadership has not been successfully established.

Indigenous people live in a variety of situations within Alice Springs. This includes housing scattered throughout the town as well as camps set up to provide a place to stay when people from various areas were visiting towns. These camps were originally tribally focused but this has declined to some extent with people mixing more freely. They are now permanent residential places rather than short term accommodation. The church folk come from the town as well as the camps.

Apart from the use of a bus to pick up people from town camps little or no work has been done to develop ministry in any of the town camps due to a lack of staff.

AIM would like to develop a team of workers based in Alice Springs to facilitate the development of an Indigenous Church and the training Christian leaders in the Central Australian region. AIM is keen to work with other churches, groups and missions to achieve this end.