Name of Ministry
Celebrate Messiah
The history of the Jewish people in Australia began with eight Jewish convicts from England who arrived at Sydney Cove with the First Fleet in 1788. In the following years, the British transported hundreds more Jewish prisoners to the Australian colonies from the United Kingdom. Free Jewish immigrants began arriving by the 1820s. Today, Australia has a growing population of Jewish people, especially in the major cities of Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane. The Jewish population is approximately 130,000 people out of a total of almost 26 million Australians.
In 2000, Chosen People Ministries partnered with Celebrate Messiah—Australia, which was established in 1995 and operates under the direction of its founder, Lawrence Hirsch.
Celebrate Messiah has been involved in various forms of Jewish evangelism, such as street work and relational ministry. The ministry also provides practical assistance to the Jewish community in Australia through the benevolent ministry of Tikkun Olam. They have planted three Messianic congregations: one in each of the two largest cities—Melbourne and Sydney—and one in the national capital, Canberra.
The Caulfield Messianic Centre, the first property specifically built to be a Messianic center in the Southern Hemisphere, is in the heart of Jewish Melbourne and was completed in 2021. It houses Beit HaMashiach Messianic Congregation and the Messianic Training Centre offering courses in Hebrew, biblical studies, Jewish evangelism, and Jewish life and culture.
Celebrate Messiah also reaches out to Russian-speakers from the former Soviet Union and refugees from Ukraine. It pioneered work among the Jewish people of Far East Russia in the region of Birobidzhan, also known as the Jewish Autonomous Region, as well as Artyom and Blagoveshchensk.