Participants’ Guide Menu
- The big picture – what we are on about
- Finding your way into our church life
- Who’s who and what do they do?
- Church membership
- The church covenant
- You, money, and your church
- Understanding our worship
- Our beliefs
- The history of our church
- Church constitution and policies
- Duty of care, pastoral accountability, and complaint procedures
There’s no single path through the shared life of this church, and no timeline you’re expected to follow. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably already taken at least a step or two — perhaps you’ve joined a Sunday service, exchanged a few words with people, maybe explored the daily prayer. Or perhaps you’ve been circling for a while, reading and watching from a little distance, not quite sure what the next move is.
What follows is a map of the possibilities, loosely grouped from the less to the more committed. It isn’t a checklist, and the categories aren’t stages you need to complete in order. Think of it as a landscape you’re free to move through at your own pace, in your own direction. Some people will do almost everything shown here. Many will find an intermediate level of involvement that suits them well and stay there happily for years. All of that is fine.
The one thing we’d say is this: if something here seems to be calling to you, trust that. There’s no need to wait until you feel ready enough, connected enough, or certain enough. This is a community that makes room for people who are still working things out — because most of us are, and have been for a long time.
Ways to settle in
Our Sunday gathering is the heart of our common life, and it’s where most people find their footing. It happens every week at 5:00pm Melbourne time. If you’ve already been a few times, you’ll know something of its shape and rhythm. What you may not yet have fully experienced is what it feels like when you’re more settled in it — when the liturgy begins to be familiar, when you recognise faces and they recognise yours, when the silence stops feeling awkward and starts feeling like something you’ve been waiting for all week. That depth tends to come gradually, and it comes through showing up. If Sunday worship has felt like something worth returning to, returning is probably the next move.
Sometimes the most useful thing is simply to talk. Nathan is available for conversations by phone, Zoom, or in person in Melbourne — no agenda required, no commitment implied. If you have questions about the church, the theology, the worship, or where you might fit in it, a conversation is a good place to explore that. Many people find it helpful at various points along the way — not just at the beginning.
Three times each day, Monday to Saturday, small groups gather online for one of our prayer offices — Matins, Vespers, or Compline. These are more intimate gatherings, usually between three and twelve people, weaving shared liturgical prayers and psalms with space for free prayer. Some people find their way into the community’s deeper life through daily prayer rather than Sunday worship — and a few are more consistently present here than anywhere else.
If you haven’t tried the daily prayer yet, it’s worth knowing that you’ll need to let us know in advance — we don’t publicly advertise the connection details, partly for online safety reasons and partly because these gatherings are small enough that we’d like to know you’re coming. Get in touch and we’ll gladly welcome you in.
One of the common assumptions about online church is that it lacks real conversation and genuine community. That hasn’t been our experience — but we also know that if someone wants to avoid real connection, it’s easier to do in an online gathering than a physical one. In a physical church, leaving straight after the service means running a small social gauntlet. Online, you can simply click Leave.
Which is why staying to chat after Sunday worship or daily prayer is a more deliberate choice here than it might be elsewhere — and perhaps more meaningful for that. After the Sunday liturgy, we use Zoom’s breakout rooms for open conversation in smaller groups, reshuffling every eight minutes while allowing people to stay in a conversation if they want to. After the daily prayer offices, those who stay are each given the opportunity to share something with the group, without interruption, before the conversation opens up.
These are the spaces where people actually get to know one another, care for one another, and build real friendships. If you’ve been attending but leaving promptly, staying is probably the single most effective next step toward feeling genuinely part of things.
Ways to Connect More Deeply
The email list is the primary way of staying informed about what’s happening in the life of the church — announcements, upcoming events, decisions under consideration, invitations, and prayer requests. It’s sometimes more than just announcements, but that’s broadly what it’s for. If you’re not currently receiving it and would like to be, get in touch and we’ll add you.
Cloud of Voices is our private online community — think of it as something like Facebook, but private, with no algorithms, no advertising, and no data harvesting. Everyone there already knows one another.
For a community that gathers exclusively online, with members spread across Melbourne, regional Victoria, and beyond, Cloud of Voices is where the ongoing texture of shared life can happen: the checking in, the sharing, the spontaneous connection that a weekly liturgy alone can’t sustain across distances. It’s a space for posting photos, reflecting on the week, asking for prayer, sharing something that moved you, or simply staying present with one another between Sundays. There’s no right or wrong way to use it — it’s a conversation, not a noticeboard.
Participation is opt-in, and those who prefer not to join won’t miss any official communications — those come via the email list. If you’re not yet part of our Cloud of Voices and would like to be, get in touch with Nathan and he’ll set you up.
From time to time we gather physically — for shared meals, retreat days, outings, attendance at public events, or our annual church camp. For an otherwise online congregation, these gatherings have a particular intensity: the first time you share a meal with people you’ve only ever seen on a screen is its own kind of experience. We have a commitment that any gathering that needs to be open to all will be online or hybrid, so there is no expectation or obligation around our occasional physically gathered events. But if the opportunity arises and something in you wants to go, it’s worth trusting that.
Small churches like ours depend on volunteer service for much of what goes on. The pastor is our only paid employee, and we’d rather he spend his time on preaching and pastoral care than on tasks that others could do. If you’d like to share in making things happen, it’s worth thinking about what you might bring — IT, administrative, organisational, musical, or whatever else. Even if someone else seems to be doing something, they may only be doing it because no one else was available.
If you can sing, there is one way of contributing that is open to any number of people. Our worship includes prerecorded congregational singing, built from individual recordings contributed by members in their own time. Contributing your voice is an easily accessible way to make a concrete difference to the worship experience — and for some people, a surprisingly meaningful way of feeling genuinely part of something rather than just attending it.
Ways to Formalise Your Belonging
In Baptist practice, the congregation is the governing body of the church — which means that when significant decisions need to be made, it’s the gathered membership that makes them. We do some of this in formal online church meetings, and some through discussions on our email list and in small group conversation, prior to votes that confirm an emerging consensus. Beginning to participate in these discussions is a meaningful step toward taking on a share of responsibility for the community’s common life. You don’t need to be a formal member to contribute to the conversations, but covenanting membership is the formal way of claiming your voice and your vote. There is also day-to-day governance done by the Host Group, and membership is open to any covenanting member.
Offerings of money to the church are acts of worship — and also a share of a collective responsibility. In Baptist churches there is no central fund and each congregation must be financially independent, so everything we pay for depends on what members and regular participants contribute. The church is probably the only organisation you belong to that allows you to choose your own membership fee — but contributing financially, at whatever level is reasonable for you, is one of the ways of saying that you have a stake in this community’s future. Some people begin contributing early; others wait until they feel more settled. What matters is that it’s genuine.
Becoming a covenanting member is the formal way of saying that this is your church — that you’re committing yourself to its community, its shared life, and its ministry in the world. It isn’t a requirement for belonging or for participating in most of what we do — plenty of people are deeply woven into our life without ever formalising it. But for those for whom it matters to make that commitment explicit, it’s there. The pathway varies: for those who are newer to church and to Christian faith, there is a process of formation and personal discernment. For those joining after many years in a similar community, it’s much simpler. If you’re wondering whether you’re ready, that wondering is probably worth a conversation.
