about habitat uniting church

hawthorn & canterbury

You will find Habitat in Hawthorn and Canterbury. You'll discover many community groups and activities across our church sites.

The Habitat office and Spirituality Centre is based in Hawthorn where throughout the week people engage in programs, workshops and activities.

Canterbury is where we worship in our stunningly refurbished church.

Habitat Uniting Church is grounded in the Christian tradition and seeks relationships of mutuality and trust with community partners.

we believe

The Christian Church is called to embody God’s loving presence and, inspired by the Holy Spirit, to participate in the extension of Christ’s ministry and consciousness in the world. Habitat Uniting Church seeks to participate in the life of God by creating a habitat in which to share God’s hospitality.

As community in diversity, we actively seek to develop partnership relationships with multi faith groups and networks characterised by Christ-like friendship. Partnerships become a context of mutual respect, to share in God’s hospitality and work on common projects that make a difference in the world. In this way, we become a hospitable habitat, a home, in which life can be planted, nurtured, grow and flourish; return to the earth to nourish the new. The Habitat Uniting Church is home to a community who invite others to share the sacred space we inhabit together.

As every gardener knows, a habitat must be fertilized and pruned, planted and built upon so that it can continue to provide a home and seedbed for life to flourish and grow. Our renewed ministry plan seeks to cultivate the foundations for our ministry vision that have been established across our three sites. We see ourselves not as a static organisation with boundaries, but as communities of people with a common sense of mission who are on the move. We are moving toward the vision of the kingdom of God’s loving economy becoming a reality.

Missional communities become spaces for learning, where we are formed in our faith, practice the spiritual disciplines of prayer and discernment, and work together to generate our shared vision. As a community, we engage in our current cultural context. We do not cut ourselves off from it, but inhabit it, respond to it and call it to account. We engage with our context offering critique, seeking Christ like reform.