Our Values and Vision
Our DNA
The church was established in the 1860s to serve the needs of the thousands of migrants that were coming to Australia in search of gold and economic fortune. As a church today, we seek to welcome and support asylum seekers and refugees who come fleeing war, violence and persecution from their countries.
As followers of Jesus we believe that faith is vitally important. We are challenged to explore how spirituality resources our everyday life and informs the issues people are facing in the life of our city.
While we gather at 4 Miller Street, West Melbourne and our community centre is located at this address, we see church predominantly as the people with whom we connect, not a place we attend.
As a church we want to make our community a much better place for everyone to enjoy.
We keep asking, “Where is God at work in our community and how, at this time, are we being called to share in this work?”
Our focus is primarily on serving our local community but we do support people and projects in different parts of the world.
Hospitality
We believe that genuine relationship and a sense of belonging are not optional extras to community life — they are the very environment in which healing, growth, and faith take root. Hospitality is therefore not a program we run, but a posture we hold.
This conviction is ancient. From Abraham rushing to prepare a meal for three strangers, to Jesus eating with tax collectors and outcasts, the Bible consistently presents the shared table as a place where something sacred happens. Who we eat with and how we eat together, has always mattered.
We understand this form of hospitality as an obligation rooted in love. We welcome the stranger, provide food and comfort, and farewell guests safely on their way. The stranger at our door may, as Abraham discovered, may be a messenger of God or even the presence of Jesus.
In practice, this means we work to ensure that no one who comes among us feels invisible. We welcome newcomers with warmth and follow through with genuine relationship. We share meals and make space at our tables for the poor, the lonely, and those on the margins, just as Jesus described in the parable of the Great Banquet. We do not privilege the comfortable. Sharing food is not merely a social gesture, but a spiritual recognising of common humanity.
We do not hoard. We remember God’s economic blueprint from the lesson of the manna in the wilderness: there is enough. God provides daily bread, and those who gathered more found it spoiled. Food is a gift, not a commodity to accumulate.
Ultimately, every meal we share together is a small reflection of the feast the scriptures promise — the table where all peoples gather, where the last are first, and where the presence of God is known in the breaking of bread, as it was on the Emmaus road.
We value collaboration with others rather than doing our own thing and so we seek to strengthen existing alliances and forge new partnerships.
Other things that we hope to be as a community are: loving, compassionate, people-centred, celebrators of diversity, listeners, eager to embrace change, creative, contextual, searching, insightful, trusting, serving and supportive.
Local Images that Challenge Us
Like our local 57 Tram, we are people on a shared journey. We have not chosen our fellow travelers, we get on and off at different stages and all people who are seeking to explore the journey of faith are encouraged to join.
Like our local parklands at Flagstaff Gardens, Royal Park, Eades Park, Miller Street Reserve, we want our community to be an attractive oasis in the city that provides refreshment to people of all ages and helps them to flourish.
Situated near the city’s educational precinct, we want to be a community that is always learning, listening to and contributing to the public conversation while stimulating each other with an exchange of ideas.
Located near the Queen Victoria Market with the colourful variety of fruit and vegetables, we want to be a people who delight in diversity and extend a welcome to all, irrespective of their religion, age, gender, race, political affiliation, language and sexual orientation.
In the early years of the city there was a ‘Blue Lake’ in the lower part of West and North Melbourne which had pure water, colourful plants, rich birdlife and fish. Unfortunately as the city grew, this body of water became the ‘West Melbourne Swamp’ and the city’s rubbish dump. We are challenged by God’s call to join others in being planters, gardeners and caretakers of the land, the waters and the skies of West and North Melbourne.
Situated at the junction of North & West Melbourne and on the edge of Melbourne’s CBD, we are challenged by Jesus who spent much of his time on the margins, with outsiders. We seek to follow the call of Jesus to welcome all people, especially those on the edge of our communities.
We strive to be at the cutting edge as we innovate, explore new ways of being church, experiment and take risks.
