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Finding Your Way In

There’s no single path into the shared life of this church, and no timeline you’re expected to follow. Some people come to a Sunday service and know within a few weeks that they’ve found their place. Others circle for months — reading, asking questions, attending occasionally — before they feel ready to go further. Some arrive through an unexpected door altogether: a daily prayer gathering, reading sermons online, a friend’s invitation to the church camp.

What follows below is a map of the possibilities, loosely grouped from the less to the more committed. It isn’t a checklist, and the groups aren’t stages you need to complete in order. Think of it more as a landscape you’re free to move through at your own pace, in your own direction. Click on the items to learn more. Some people will do almost everything shown here. Many will find an intermediate level of involvement that suits them. We’ve even had some who mix and match in unexpected ways — say, two low commitment options and one of the highest — and stay that way happily for years. All are fine.

The one thing we would 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 Experience Us

Our Sunday gathering is the heart of our common life, and for most people it’s the natural place to begin. It happens every week at 5:00pm Melbourne time, and joining for the first time can feel as low-key or as engaged as you need it to be. Some people join late with their camera off and their finger hovering over the Leave button — the online equivalent of slipping into the back pew with a hoodie over your head. That’s entirely welcome; we won’t push you to make yourself known before you are ready. Others turn their camera on from their first visit, let people see their face, and begin to be known. Some even turn up early and chat with other early arrivers. There’s no wrong way to start.


Sometimes when finding your way in, 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 whether any of this might be for you, a conversation can be a good place to start. It doesn’t mean you’re signing up for anything. Many people find it helpful to have talked with someone before they attend for the first time; others come to it after they’ve been around for a while and want to go deeper. Either is fine.

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. They use liturgies that mix regular shared prayers and psalms with space for free prayer. Those who attend are free to leave as soon as the prayers end, or stay to chat afterwards and get to know one another better.

For most people, Sunday worship comes first — but not always. Some people have found their way into this community through daily prayer rather than Sunday worship, and a few are more consistently present here than anywhere else. If a briefer and smaller scale point of entry appeals to you, this might be it. You will need to let us know in advance if you’re wanting to join, because we don’t publicly advertise the connection details for these daily liturgies — partly for reasons of online safety, 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 do know that if someone wants to avoid it, it’s easier to do in an online gathering. In a physical church, leaving straight after the service means running a small social gauntlet. Online, you can simply click Leave and not even the most over-enthusiastic greeter will be able to block your way out.
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. Every 8 minutes we reshuffle the groups, but people can navigate to a vacant room if they want to continue a conversation. After the daily prayer offices, those who want to stay are each given the opportunity to share something with the group, without interruption. Once everyone has had an opportunity (which you can decline), then there is open chat for as long as people wish. 

These are the spaces where the people who gather for worship actually get to know one another, care for one another, and build real friendships. If you want to know whether this community is for you, staying to chat is probably the quickest way to find out.

Ways to Connect More Deeply

Our congregational email list is where a lot of the church chat happens between Sundays — announcements, discussions, invitations, prayer requests, and the occasional spirited exchange of views. Asking to be added is a small but real step toward being part of the community’s ongoing conversation rather than just its Sunday gathering. There’s no obligation attached, and you can step back at any time. But if you find yourself wanting to know what’s going on between Sundays, this is where to look.

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 (you get to find out how tall they are or aren’t!). We have a rule 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. They aren’t frequent, and they are often not so much organised church events as group invitations from someone in the congregation. Attending them represents a step from the online to the physically gathered — which for some people feels natural, and for others feels like a bigger move. There’s no pressure either way, but if the opportunity arises and something in you wants to go, it’s worth trusting that.

Small churches like ours are dependent on volunteer service for much of what goes on. The pastor is our only paid employee, and we would rather he spend his time on preaching and pastoral care than on administrative or practical tasks that could be done by others. So if and when you feel that you’d like to share in making things happen, you may want to think about ways that you could contribute. Perhaps you have particular gifts or skills you could offer — IT, administrative, organisational, musical, or whatever else you bring. Even if someone else seems to be doing something, they may only be doing it because no one else was available. Don’t be afraid to ask. 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, it’s a surprisingly meaningful way of feeling genuinely part of something rather than just attending it.

The Revd Dr Paul Sheppy, Fellow of Regent’s Park College, Oxford

The Revd Dr Paul Sheppy
Fellow of the Centre for Baptist History and Heritage, Regent’s Park College, University of Oxford

“This church holds good memories for me of worship and life richly woven together. Experimental but grounded in daily reality, there is an integrity to what happens here. What I found especially moving was that the gifts and abilities of all are used; people are not overlooked here but treasured for themselves.”

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 of it through discussions on our email list and small group conversation, prior to eventual votes to 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 these conversations, but covenanting membership (described under the final tile) is the formal way of claiming your voice and your vote. There is also some day-to-day governance that is done by the Host Group (our name for our church council), and membership is open to any covenanting member, so there may come a time when joining it seems like a contribution you could make.

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, and occasionally when a big decision needs to be voted on, it makes a difference. The pathway to covenanting membership varies. For those who are new to church and to Christian faith, there is a process of formation and personal discernment on offer. For those joining us after many years in a similar church, it’s much simpler. If you’re wondering whether you’re ready, that wondering is probably worth a conversation.


Offerings of money to the church are acts of worship — and are 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. No longer maintaining a building has reduced our costs — but there are still plenty of them. 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. We don’t have rules about it. We’ve had people whose financial generosity has been one of their primary ways of belonging, even while their other involvement remained modest. What matters is that it’s genuine.