Doncaster Church Of Christ

Doncaster Church Of Christ Here you will find purpose, hope and meaning for life in the context of a Christ-centred community.

Doncaster Church of Christ is a church of around 300-400 people. We are a diverse group with people of many backgrounds and interests. All age groups are represented and catered for and we are a very open, tolerant and accepting church. Love, grace and care for the individual are high values at DCC. While maintaining a core biblical focus we are a church willing to explore and trial new concepts in order to deepen our understanding and experience of the Christian faith.

Head to the new Doncaster Church of Christ page… Due to some legacy issues with Admin set up the old version is...
28/05/2026

Head to the new Doncaster Church of Christ page…
Due to some legacy issues with Admin set up the old version is being superceeded for all upcoming events.
Just Type- Doncaster Church of Christ in to FB search and look for …

Or head to this link:
https://www.facebook.com/share/18dNQ92hUw/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Sunday 15th March 2026Lent Week 4~ The Heart of God in the Crooked Streets ~A Cloud of WitnessesHebrews 11:11-16 & 12:1-...
13/03/2026

Sunday 15th March 2026

Lent Week 4
~ The Heart of God in the Crooked Streets ~
A Cloud of Witnesses

Hebrews 11:11-16 & 12:1-3

Sunday@10 worship - retirement farewell for John & Chris Sharpe

Sunday@5 contemporary worship & Baptisms

As I arrive at the final day of this season of call, I am filled with nothing but gratitude for the many, many people who have brought encouragement, provoked personal growth, pressed me to go further and deeper and have been tremendous companions on the road of faith, hope and love.

You have all been gifts to Chris and I… gifts from God through many seasons - on smooth waters and rough seas, through sunshine and rain, laughter and tears.

Today, at this conclusion, there are people who have been with Chris and I all the way through the twists and turns of ministry. There are people from Werribee, Richmond, Montrose, Ringwood, Mornington and Doncaster Churches of Christ.

Thirty-seven years is a significant slice of time. I remember hymn books and overhead projectors, transparencies upside down and back to front, the arrival of computers - cassette data, floppy discs, USB, the Cloud, Zoom. Every tech change has been a symbol of shifts in culture, connection, engagement and the fabric of what a Living Temple might even look like.

We travel together as a kind of time machine of longings, braided cultures, memories, expectations and desires from many different times and fragments of culture… but through it all, One Lord, One Faith and One Baptism.

In the end, I am so grateful to Jesus who has equipped me to mix with other cultures even when I have no other language, to read hearts rather than words, and to find friends while sitting in the dirt at the very edges of reason. I know that Pentecost is real because I have lived it.

In all of this, I cannot conclude this long journey of ministry without acknowledging my constant companion, friend, lover, reality therapist and inspirational presence – Chris Sharpe. When the wheels fell off, she found the tool kit, when I lost myself, she had a handy map on hand, and when I listened enough, I’d find my next best idea. This has been a partnership from the beginning. In all the ‘what nexts’ we will keep looking towards God’s promises and the home that we are all called to.

I am also grateful to my two incredible sons, Matthew and Joel, who were so young when we left our home in Werribee. They have navigated many changes and somehow survived my distracted absences and ridiculous work ethic to emerge as two of the most interesting, passionate, kind, and thoughtful people you can meet. Thank you!

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”
Hebrews 12:1-3

John Sharpe

Sunday 8th March 2026Lent Week 3~ The Heart of God in the Crooked Streets ~What Well Do We Drink FromJohn 4:5-42Sunday@1...
06/03/2026

Sunday 8th March 2026
Lent Week 3
~ The Heart of God in the Crooked Streets ~
What Well Do We Drink From
John 4:5-42

Sunday@10 worship
Sunday@5 Community Dinner Pizza feast

I journey to Sychar often in my mind
Sometimes it is Westfields
Sometimes Vic Market
The train,
A queue
A new face
A chance meeting
Eternity visiting in thin places

The unnamed woman at the well reminds me that every conversation can be an opportunity for change.
Even difficult, questioning, and prickly conversations can offer a fresh bubbling spring of living water offering
Reconciliation
Renewal
Transformation
Hope
A new birth
All possibilities wait at the well

As Jesus holds stillness in turmoil, presses honour to dishonour and grace to the overlooked
The shamed
The discouraged
The disadvantaged
The marginalised
A generosity of spirit flows in hidden places

The woman leaves rejoicing
Overflowing
A surprising evangelist
A cry of “Good News” goes out through streets
The one so often judged
Neglected
Despised.
Calls out “Come and see …God is visiting… I have found the one.”

“Lift up your eyes for the fields are ripe for harvest.”

John Sharpe

Posted by Gabriel Ng MP Today (Friday March 6th) is World Day of Prayer, this year dedicated to Christian women in Niger...
06/03/2026

Posted by Gabriel Ng MP
Today (Friday March 6th) is World Day of Prayer, this year dedicated to Christian women in Nigeria and the unity of Christian communities worldwide.

Thank you to Doncaster Church Of Christ for hosting an inclusive, multi-denominational service and sharing understanding of faith in other cultures.

And In the twinkling of an eye… here we are.Get on board… after 12 years in secondary education and 37 years of pastoral...
04/03/2026

And In the twinkling of an eye… here we are.
Get on board… after 12 years in secondary education and 37 years of pastoral ministry, the time has come to hoist the mainsail and let the wind of the Spirit carry Chris and I to islands unknown.

Doncaster Church of Christ are Inviting you to my final service as Senior Minister on Sunday March 15th 10am

Any financial gifts can be made to:
Doncaster Church of Christ
Bank CBA
BSB: 063 882
Account: 1017 3050
Please label as: John or Retirement

Sunday 1st March 2026Lent Week 2~ The Heart of God in the Crooked Streets ~A Revelation by nightJohn 3:1-17Sunday@10: Wo...
27/02/2026

Sunday 1st March 2026
Lent Week 2
~ The Heart of God in the Crooked Streets ~
A Revelation by night
John 3:1-17

Sunday@10: Worship followed by Special General Meeting - re Ministry Appojntment
Sunday@5: Contemporary worship

Night settles like a question over the city.

The streets bend and dance in the flickering oil lamps behind windows.

Lit by these wavering fragments of half-truths and half-shadows, Nicodemus comes – searching - man of learning moving through quiet streets. His questions are as mysterious as the laneways he walks. He comes by night, as so many do when quiet is needed for the sacred things, when stillness is sought for moments of grace or for when exposure is to be avoided.

Jesus meets him there and, with every word, expands the horizon of life, the depth of transformative hope, and the wellspring of joy.

“Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”

It is a strange word to hear for a man of the Torah, compliant rituals, and routines. Not words reform, or refinement, not a better way of moral walking and enforced denial - but a new birth. A beginning that does not trace the old routes of power, holy separation, or purity. The heart of God is not found by mastering a map, but by being remade into one who can see differently, hear a new world, and grow in wonder.

“How can this be?” Nicodemus had hit a wall, a limit, as we all do eventually. How do you start again when your life is already so far along its path? When we live so much by habit, the expectations of others and both self-confirming and life-confining judgements.

Jesus speaks of Spirit and wind.

The wind of the Spirit blows through the crooked streets - wilfully. It passes through them. It stirs what is stagnant, lifts what has settled, opening sealed doors in tired hearts. You do not control it. You hear it. You feel it. You are changed by it. A new life reaches out, joining heaven and earth.

In this birthing, this breath, God’s own life moves through the hidden alleys of the human heart, rearranging all the furniture in what we had imagined to be our true life.

“For God so loved the world…”

Not the ordered world, not the deserving world, not the daylight world - but the whole world. The tangled, the complicated, the wandering world. Loved not from a distance, but by entering it. By giving. By risking presence in the very places where love is least expected - where people both strain against and seek to excuse their nature.

“Be born from above – born again.”

The Son is not sent to condemn the crooked streets, but to walk them. Not to expose them from afar, but to inhabit them so fully that even their shadows begin to loosen, and light enters where dark ignorance had once ruled.

Nicodemus leaves - a night transformed - somewhere between shadow and dawn, listening for the wind, learning that the heart of God is already moving in the places he had thought too tangled to be redeemed.

It is possible that there in the crooked streets, in the midnight questions, in the unsteady longings that a fresh baby suddenly arrived in ancient skin.

A miracle feels its way along the old pathways.

The cloaked pharisee feels the renewal of strength, the thrill of wonder and transformed hope in a world that is new, beautifully unknown and changed because he is inhabited by the breath of eternity.

“For God so loves…”

John Sharpe

Special meeting post Sunday@10 this week ( March 1st) immediately after service for membership affirmation of the appoin...
24/02/2026

Special meeting post Sunday@10 this week ( March 1st) immediately after service for membership affirmation of the appointment of Doug & Mel Pors into a shared Senior Minister Role as John retires …
Profiles are available in last weeks newsletter … if you would like them emailed to you please contact Lai Poh in the office or John Sharpe.

Sunday 22nd February 2026~ Rebuilding the House ~Having the Form without the PowerJohn 2:13-25Sunday@10: Worship Shnday@...
20/02/2026

Sunday 22nd February 2026

~ Rebuilding the House ~
Having the Form without the Power

John 2:13-25

Sunday@10: Worship
Shnday@5: Creative gathering / The Lounge Navigating open conversations

Last Wednesday was Ash Wednesday and the traditional start of the road towards Easter for many churches.
Lent has traditionally been associated with fasting.
Fasting is practised in many ways.
For some, it might be fasting from coffee, tea, or various foods, for others, it might be social media, Netflix, or the news. Imagine fasting from gossip, negativity and rumours.
Lent adjusts our seeing, our hearing and the recognition of our true nourishment.

Lent: The Clearing of the Temple
Reflection on John 2:13-25

As Passover drew near
The city swelled with devotion.
Pilgrims pressed through the gates,
pockets heavy with coin,
hands clutching doves,
hearts rehearsing prayers.

And there
in the temple courts
the Holy hum had hardened
into commerce.

The bleating of sheep
drowns the psalms.
Money strike tables of exchange
like small metallic verdicts.
Even worship, it seems,
has found a price.

Then Jesus enters.

He sits
braiding cords together
A whip
a deliberate weaving
of judgement and grief.

The tables thrown over
as easily as excuses.
Coins scattered like startled fish.
Doves burst skyward
in a sudden flurry of grateful wings.

“Stop making my Father’s house
a marketplace.”

What tables have we set up
In our sacred space?
What bargains have we struck
with fear
with ambition,
with the need to be seen?

How easily the soul
becomes transactional
Sold for a price
We trade obedience for approval,
silence for safety,
devotion for advantage.

And Christ still enters in.
Rebuilding
Rebirthing
Renewing

He overturns what we have arranged
so carefully.
He scatters what we have counted
so anxiously.
He drives out
what we misunderstood as a necessity.

And in the overturning of everything
We are remade.

John Sharpe

Sunday 15th February 2026~ Rebuilding the House ~The Joy of the LordNehemiah 8:1-10Sunday@10 worshipSunday@5 Contemporar...
13/02/2026

Sunday 15th February 2026
~ Rebuilding the House ~
The Joy of the Lord
Nehemiah 8:1-10

Sunday@10 worship
Sunday@5 Contemporary worship

The world behind the words:

Nehemiah 8 is not a celebration of private spirituality- but a passionate outpouring of public formation and communal engagement. It is a powerful remembering, a re-owning, a retuning and a renewed entering into the heart of God. Its parallels in the New Testament rest with the parables of both the Wedding Banquet and the Prodigal Son. Jesus is the fulfilment of the law and the prophets, the firstborn from the dead, the living temple, the incarnation of God with skin on, who makes a home spacious enough for the whole world through all time and generations (John 14).

8 important observations:

1: The exiles have returned to the land, but their deepest question is ‘Who are we?” As one person, they seek their belonging in the Living Word.

2: They themselves ask for the reading of the Word; it is not imposed or forced. They desperately want to live inside the hope of God more than the walls of rebuilding.

3: They lean into the Word from dawn to noon. They listen to and are drawn towards the Call and Character of God.

4: As the Levites “… gave the sense of the Words” it is not just a translation, but an orientation to enter their Home.

5: They weep in grief, not because the Torah is cruel or full of harsh judgment, but because they are waking into who they are meant to be.

6: Their tears are interrupted because holiness is not for despair, but for a renewed belonging.

7: Feasting is commanded as an outpouring of wonder, joy and inclusion…. It is to be shared with everyone. No one is to miss out.

8: Then the seismic earthquake sentence, ‘The Joy of the Lord is Your strength'… “Not ‘your joy or an expression of your delight’ is your strength” but - God’s joy.

Living in the joy of God is your strength…So, don’t collapse into shame or live in blame, but inhabit the reality of God, and stand inside God’s heart of home and welcome, knowing that whatever is built or rebuilt in bricks and mortar cannot be a substitute for the Spiritual architecture of God that pours out wonder, belonging and love to all with the eyes to see, the ears to hear, the heart to desire and the tongue to say ‘Yes- Amen’.

Sunday 8th February 2026~ Rebuilding the House ~Called by NameIsaiah 43:1-22Sunday@10: WotshipShnday@5 : Community Dinne...
06/02/2026

Sunday 8th February 2026
~ Rebuilding the House ~
Called by Name
Isaiah 43:1-22

Sunday@10: Wotship
Shnday@5 : Community Dinner

Everyone matters - prophetic reflection

At the Gate: Between Exile and Welcome:

There they stand

the relay of voices

between heaven and earth

The prophets at the gate.



Women and men,

young and old,

calling across time’s chasm

These friends of justice.



Surprised by their calling,

often reluctant,

they wear the suffering of others

like sackcloth on skin.

A fire in their bones,

the passion of God,

unstoppable words on their lips.



They stand at the gates

where papers are checked,

where shadows divide the broken,

where names are deliberately mispronounced -

Where hate is dressed in finery

and cruelty paraded as wisdom.



At the gate,

efficiency bans hope.

At the gate,

unbridled disdain discards the innocent.



Still, the prophets stand.

They scan the horizon,

raising their eyes to the hills.

They do not ask who belongs.

They do not measure worth.

They cry out instead:

What has happened to your remembering?



You were strangers once.

How did you become the Pharaoh -

the breaker of lives,

The curator of slaves?



You traded promise for walls,

true worth for trinkets,

the image of God so comfortably sold

like cattle in the marketplace.



God has no need of your empty worship.



The prophets grow louder.

They sound the warning

Exile is here.



Collapse did not arrive with sirens,

but with neat justifications,

fluttering excuses

turning laughter into crime,

love into incarceration.



God does not ask for open borders,

but for open hearts -

to remember hunger,

the mould on stale bread,

the terror of being branded unwanted,

a blemish on the evening news.



What happens to the stranger at your gate?



Exile is not God’s tantrum.

It is God’s grief

When mercy has been so tortured,

so distorted,

that it no longer recognises itself.



When the proud call it weakness

and drive it out of town.

When those who remember its welcome

are harassed

until fear strolls the streets

as casually as a purring cat.



Exile is the remedy - the rehabilitation

Sometimes it is in leaving

Walked by captors down an unknown road

Sometimes it is in staying and slowly seeing

You were Babylon all along.



By the rivers of bitter tears

quietly,

stubbornly -

hospitality reappears

As resistance.



A loaf is broken.

Shared.

A name spoken slowly like a revelation

known.

A child welcomed without conditions.

Joy bubbling like an unfamiliar tongue.



Hospitality is the long road home -

Dusty feet welcomed

Safe under the banquet table of peace.



Hope does not begin with walls rebuilt

or power restored.

It begins when the gates become

human again -

when arms open,

when broken feet are kissed,

when holiness meets you

in all your own alien strangeness

and calls you friend.



This is the work before us:

To keep ourselves

from becoming the kind of people

who would need exile

to remember

how to be human.



What happens to the stranger at your gate?



They are the unknown gift -

The hidden prophet

revealing who we are,

the mirror reflecting

the nation’s heart

The distance from our true belonging.



“I am the gate…come to me all who are weary.”

Jesus - John 10:9 & 11:28-30

John Sharpe

Address

674-680 Doncaster Road
Doncaster, VIC
3108

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 3pm
Tuesday 9am - 3pm
Wednesday 9am - 3pm
Thursday 9am - 3pm
Friday 9am - 3pm
Sunday 8am - 7:30pm

Telephone

+61398481546

Website

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