About Saint James

I'm NEW Here

St James is a Gospel-Centred Anglican Church that longs to share the good news of Jesus with the people in and around Glen Iris, Melbourne. Established in 1920, we are in a season of renewal. We are an intergenerational and culturally diverse church and we would love to welcome you into God's family.   

Our vision is to be a church that unchurched people want to belong to. 

Our mission is to know Jesus and make Jesus known. 

As an Anglican Church, we are a part of a historic work of God to reform his church, the people of God. We have our roots in the early church, affirming the early statements of faiths of the Apostle’s Creed,  Nicene Creed, and Athanasius Creed, the two sacraments or expressions of God’s grace in communion and baptism. We affirm The Thirty Nine Articles as a statement of faith formed in the reformations and the Book of Common Prayer and Ordinal as a guide for worship and the Christian life.  

As a Gospel-Centred Church, we are a part of God bringing revival and the renewal of faith and mission in his church, where God enlivens and warms our oftentimes cold apathetic hearts. A contemporary statement of our gospel convictions can be found here.  

So what do we believe? 

We Believe in God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit   

We believe in God who is good, infinitely powerful, merciful, gracious and loving. We believe God made everything and everyone, that God made us for a reason and for relationships with himself, that God saves us and empowers us for life, and that God will bring all things to his intended glorious purpose. We believe there is only one God, but three persons, God the Father, God the Son (Jesus), and God the Holy Spirit.  

A little more about Jesus and the Holy Spirit 

Jesus is the most incredible person who ever lived. He is fully God, so he is eternal, and he also came to earth 2000 years ago, to live a normal life but with extraordinary consequences. In his life, Jesus taught us the way to live with God, the way of peace and love and truth and justice. He showed us more than anything else in history, the truth of God, the beauty of God, and the absolute relevance of God for the world at all times.  

We believe Jesus died on a wooden cross, a Roman device of shame and torture, and on that cross Jesus answered the need of all who are tortured with guilt and shame. Jesus died to bring forgiveness, he died to bring reconciliation, he died to save us from death. We believe Jesus also came back to life. He really was dead but he came back to life because that is the future hope of all who trust in him, that we will be recreated into a life without the scars of our past shame and pain, and that new life starts now. This is what we call the Gospel, the good news that Jesus is the saving King who leads his people for eternity. And it changes everything. It gives us a new identity, it gives us purpose and meaning, it gives us a new family, and it gives us so much peace, and hope and joy. 

The Holy Spirit, the presence and power of God, dwells within all who obey Jesus and he leads us, comforts us, speaks truth to us, whispers hope. The Holy Spirit grows us to be more like Jesus, loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle and self-controlled, and the Spirit empowers us to live as a follower of Jesus and to join God in his mission of telling the world the great good news that Jesus saves.  

We believe God is truly amazing, good news for all.  

We believe God speaks to us through the Bible  

We believe the Bible is the authoritative and trustworthy words of God in all matters of life and faith and conduct. In the pages of the Bible, God reveals himself to us, who he is, his plans, his actions, his character, his love for the world he made. And in the bible we come to know ourselves, our uniqueness, that we are so loved and treasured by God, and also our darker side,  our brokenness and need for a saviour beyond ourselves.  

If you want to hear God’s plan for your life, the deep truths of the universe, then within the pages of the Bible you will meet God and whatever is true, and right, and lovely, and life giving.  

We believe that there is something called sin 

Within the hearts of every human who has ever lived and who will ever live, there is an internal drive to live as if we are the diviners of our destiny, the giver of our triumphs, that we are the ones who truly matter. This is something that the Bible calls sin, the willful rebellious pursuit of living as if we are gods of our lives and God is not. The result of sin is that we experience pain and loss, despair and frustration. This is the cost of sin, being separated from our life giving and loving God creates turmoil in our hearts and relationships and experiences so that nothing feels quite right. The end cost of sin is death, physically and spiritually. The only answer for sin, is to trust in the saving work of Jesus who died to save us and rose again to bring in us new life.  

We believe God brings us into his family, the church  

The word church is used mostly to refer to buildings often with a cross on top, but the church is actually God’s family who gather in his presence, to worship him, to care for one another, and to join in God’s mission to care for the needy, find the lost, heal the brokenhearted, and fight for justice. And the church is worldwide! The church is made up of different nations, languages, denominations, races and genders. The church is made up of anyone who believes in and follows in the footsteps of Jesus.  

God’s mission and the work of the church finds its fullest expression in telling the world the glorious news that Jesus is the saving king, persuading all people to trust and obey Jesus, to equip and guide people as disciples of Jesus so that through the the Holy Spirit we grow into the fullness of Jesus.