About Us

Our Minister,
Rev. Anneke Oppewal

North Balwyn Uniting Church is a friendly church within the Presbytery of Yarra Yarra in Balwyn North, in the Eastern Suburbs of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.  To download the NBUC brochure, click here.

Our Minister is the Rev. Anneke Oppewal, who is assisted by Rev. Deacon Jenny Preston.

North Balwyn Uniting Church has a congregation of 450 people, with an average worship attendance in excess of 120 worshippers each Sunday. We gather in a beautiful modern building that was purpose-built for our congregation in 1951.

We are a family-friendly, caring Church community who share the good news of the gospels with each other, and those around us, through a well-informed, living faith.

Our main worship service takes place on Sunday Morning at 10.00am. Through the week there is opportunity to engage in many social activities, education opportunities and outreach. 

Our Church boasts a beautiful pipe organ and a choir. In our Sunday morning worship the psalm is often sung by a cantor.

A children’s story is told and child-friendly activities take place during the Sunday morning service.  Our aim is to make the service a meaningful and enjoyable experience for people of various ages and backgrounds. Our theology is bible-based, informed by tradition, trying to grapple with the issues and challenges of our time, missional and forward looking.

An Evening Service takes place at 7.00pm on the last Sunday of each month, which follows our Mind Body Spirit speaker at 5.30pm. This half-hour service is a prayerful, meditative and musical time that focusses on the relationship between faith and life as discussed by the speaker.

Every last Wednesday of the month at 2.30pm, we celebrate communion at Afternoon Church. This is a short, gentle communion service, which takes place in a more personal and intimate environment, gathered in a circle around the table in the Narthex.

What kind of Church is this?

Our aims:

• We aim to be a congregation that risks living the teachings of Jesus, renouncing privilege and living in conscientious active resistance against evil, both individually and within society.
• We aim to participate in bringing to fruition God’s good intention for the world.
• We aim to help people discover positive purpose in life through worship and learning.
• We believe good relationships between people are the most important means of expressing our beliefs in the God of Jesus.
• We aim to be an open and welcoming church that declares God’s love for all people, and invites all people to join us in following the way of Jesus the Christ.
• We aim to recognise the integrity of other faiths that have different names for relationship with God.

Our goals are:

• To preach the Word in a way that is relevant to people’s lives.
• To recognise the strength of mainly traditional music in liturgical worship, while being open to other musical traditions and possibilities.
• To maintain/ make available strong educational opportunities, to enable the exploration of faith and the living out of it in the wider world.
• To maintain a strong pastoral ministry.
• To continue and build on our current established programmes and enrich them with new content and directions of exploration.
• To be open to new mission opportunities.
• To create opportunities for busy younger people to attend and participate in the life of the church.

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