Celebrating our Unity and Diversity

Sanctuary Sunday

The next Sanctuary Sunday will take place in March 2018

Sanctuary Sunday is an opportunity for all who make up Hobart Baptist Church to gather together to celebrate God’s goodness and our diversity. Hobart Baptist Church is made up of several congregations, communities of faith, and groups (such as Meet & Make and Boys’ Brigade), and few of us see the full breadth and depth of the whole church.

We want you to be a part of this special bi-annual coming together.

Sanctuary Sunday gives us a glimpse of who we are when we are all together in the one place, at one time.

Hobart Baptist Church – Where Strangers become Friends

Hobart Baptist Church is a welcome haven of faith and friendship. For over 130 years, people have enjoyed the safety and refuge found here. In 2017, well over 350 adults, youth and children of many nationalities find belonging, security, and freedom within our various gatherings across the week.

In significant ways, the church community is a shelter for these different groups, including many refugees who have found a haven here over the decades. For all these people, Hobart Baptist Church is a sanctuary.

Originally, sanctuary meant “a sacred place”, and the large auditorium, or tabernacle, where people usually meet at Hobart Baptist is often referred to as “The Sanctuary”. Over the years, the original term broadened to mean any place of safety and shelter. These days, we talk of “political sanctuary” for people; and even, “wildlife sanctuary” describing safe places for animals and/or plants.

So “Sanctuary” aptly describes Hobart Baptist Church, because in addition to being a building for worship of the Creator God, many people have found a safe place to belong, to make friends and to encounter Jesus.

Under the banner of Hobart Baptist Church, we are defined by, and proud of, our diversity. We are a place where people from different nations, backgrounds, ages and experience find acceptance and welcome.

Our diversity is a gift, and an opportunity to live out Jesus’ prayer:

The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me . . .  John 17:22-23, (ESV)

In a world violently divided by ethnicity, faith, political stance, class and gender, there is a desperate need of sanctuaries, such as Hobart Baptist Church. Our hope is for a glimpse of God’s heart for the diversity of humanity.

Sanctuary Sunday Sept 2017