So it’s been a while. Or maybe you’ve never been part of a church. You probably have questions. We’ll try to answer a few for you here.
Where is your church?
We meet in Annerley in the Annerley Church of Christ building pretty close to the corner of Annerley and Ipswich roads, across the road from the Junction Hotel (aka The Muddy Farmer). We often go to the pub for lunch after church. There are bus stops nearby, and there’s plenty of parking on site or on the streets around the church.
What should I wear?
You might think you have to dress up for church. That’s not our style. Come in whatever you’re comfortable in. If that’s super formal, we won’t judge, but if it’s super casual, that’s great too.
What time should I arrive?
Our service begins pretty close to 10am. It goes for around an hour and a half. You can see what we do in a service here. If you want to get familiar with the exits, or maybe meet a few people, it’s ok to arrive early.
Our band will be practicing for about an hour before the service starts, and there’ll be people hanging round chatting to each other. We have a few people who keep an eye out for visitors, don’t be scared if someone says hi, but don’t feel pressured to make small talk either.
Are you kid/family friendly?
We’re a church that is multi-aged, we have newborns and octogenarians attending each week. We try to cater for everyone. There’s a parent room up the back of the church where you can take your infants if you’d like, but we cope with kid noise pretty well. In fact, we love it. Church is meant to be fun.
We have a kids church for primary aged kids. We believe kids are part of our community, and Kids Church covers the same content from the Bible that adults will be looking at, just in age appropriate ways (and probably playing more too).
Kids join us in the service for the first few songs and then head down to the hall where they’re looked after by qualified members of our church community (kids church leaders have Blue Cards, and have completed child safety training). You’re welcome to go with them to check it out until you’re comfortable, and, kids are welcome to stay and participate in our service with you too. We’ll provide warnings if a talk is going to deal with mature content.
What should I bring?
Nothing. Just yourself, and maybe a friend if they’ll help you feel more comfortable.
Are you going to ask me for money?
No. On some rare occasions we might talk about money, but when we do, it’s so that our members or regulars can keep up to date with our finances. We’re totally funded by the giving of our community, but we don’t expect anyone to give until they’re part of our community and won’t hassle you to do so.
What are you on about anyway?
There’s some info on what we believe here, but the short answer is that we’re on about Jesus, and what it looks like to meet him and have your life changed for the better — and how it might also change the world if more people took him seriously.
Our normal style is to work our way through books of the Bible over a bunch of weeks, we call these ‘series,’ and each week there’ll be a sermon (a talk), and our Growth Groups will dig into the same part of the Bible and talk about it together during the week. You can see what these talks are like because we post videos online each week.
If you’re interested here are our community’s Mission, Vision, and Values.
What do you do during the week?
The answer is ‘everything’ and ‘not much.’ We have Growth Groups, and we’d love you to join one. But otherwise keep ‘official’ church activities to a minimum. Here’s why we do this, and more info about Growth Groups.
How do I get involved?
We’d love you to be part of our community — the first step to doing that is to join a Growth Group. These are our small groups that meet throughout the city during the week. If you’re keen to take that next step, grab someone on Sunday and ask. You don’t have to have made any big decisions about who Jesus is, or what your long term commitment to church is to join one of these groups, they’re a great way to meet us, and to meet Jesus.
Once you’re in a Growth Group, there are plenty of ways you can serve with us — in our church community, and in the wider community, and at some point, if you decide you do want to follow Jesus and join us officially, we can talk about baptism (a thing Christians do to celebrate the new life we receive from Jesus as we become part of his church), and membership.