Month: August 2014

Investment in fossil fuels off the table for WCC

Post author By revivewa
Post date August 16, 2014

During a recent meeting of the top governing body of the World Council of Churches (WCC), its Central Committee said “no” to investments in fossil fuels. Prior to this announcement some member churches were already committed to the divestment of fossil fuels, including the United Church of Christ in the United States, the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia and the Church of Sweden.

In April last year, the Uniting Church Synod of New South Wales agreed to divest in fossil fuels and created national news. Other churches around Australia are in talks about how they too can divest. And in May of this year, people from all over Australia withdrew their investments from Australia’s ‘big four’ banks – ANZ, Commonwealth, NAB and Westpac – choosing to invest their money in more sustainable methods as part of Divestment Day, organised by Market Forces and 350.org.

Tags divestment, WCC, World Council of Churches

News & Announcements

Mukinbudin: Uniting ahead of the times

Post author By revivewa
Post date August 12, 2014

Mukinbudin Uniting Church will be celebrating their 50th anniversary while also welcoming Rev John McKane as the new minister to the Eastern Wheatbelt Parish, which also includes Merredin, Bruce Rock and Southern Cross Uniting Churches.

Well before the union of the three churches which formed the Uniting Church, the Congregational and Presbyterian Churches were already worshipping together in Mukinbudin. Rev Terry Tero, the minister at the time, used to take services in the local Country Women’s Association (CWA) building, before encouraging the congregation to build their own church in 1964.

The church was named ‘Mukinbudin Pioneer Church.’ A Sunday School hall was built in 1973 to cater for a number of young families that were attending. The congregation are now looking forward to welcoming Rev John McKane. John, his wife Bronwyn and his two young children will be arriving in Australia from South Africa, where he has been the minister at Linden Presbyterian Church, Johannesburg. He was ordained in the Uniting Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa around 15 years ago and has had a connection to our land prior to his move, his father being Australian.

Bob French, from the Eastern Wheatbelt Parish is looking forward to the fresh new faces in the region.

“It’ll be the first time that we’ve had a minister with school-age children in a long time,” he said.

The induction and anniversary service will be held at Mukinbudin Uniting Church on Sunday 24 August. Past and present ministers and members are invited to commemorate the occasion.

Top image: The assembled community for the opening of Mukinbudin Pioneer Church in 1964.

Tags Church and Community

News & Announcements

Stop playing politics with lives

Post author By revivewa
Post date August 11, 2014

On 21 June, church groups, political groups, non-government organisations (NGOs) and caring individuals gathered on a hill facing the Yongah Hill Immigration Detention Centre to show the detainees inside that we did care about their plight and that they weren’t forgotten. We stood on our hill, waved banners, lights and shouted chants. In turn detainees would chant back. They knew that we were there and they were thankful.

That evening, as an Amnesty International representative, I gave a speech where I reflected on how I first came across the problems faced by refugees in Australia. I was about 10 and found a picture of a barbed wire fence with children behind it on the cover of a magazine. I assumed that far away something terrible was happening and we were being asked to help fix it. We were after all the lucky country and we were often using that luck to help others.

Tags Refugees and Asylum Seekers

News & Announcements

Bringing the bush indoors

Post author By revivewa
Post date August 10, 2014

Busselton Uniting Church will once again bring the bush indoors for their annual Wildflower Exhibition from Thursday 18 to Friday 19 September. Come and enjoy the wonderful presentation of specimens and displays.

Also on display will be beanies, woodturning, a video, photos, the Geographe Community Nursery plus teas, lunches, cakes, crafts and produce. Tammie Reid, Rural Leadership Fellow is the guest speaker and Vasse Primary School Choir will perform.

The official opening is at 2.00pm on Thursday 18 September. Admission is $10 adults, $6 pensioners, and children are free. For more information, contact Linda Stephenson at bsnuca@westnet.com.au or call 9752 3304.

Tags Church and Community

Stories & Feature Articles

Choose life

Post author By revivewa
Post date August 6, 2014

It seems to me that the notion of some choices being ‘life-giving’ and others being the opposite is pretty well established in our secular context. I have heard the expression used in relation to lifestyle choices concerning such aspects as diet, recreation, vocation and voluntary service towards others. Sometimes actions can be described as life-giving in the most literal sense, as when someone is rescued or revived from an accident of some description, or helped to turn back from a path of self-destruction. Here, we do well to remember that many people have been robbed of all that is life-giving by the abusive actions of others towards them. In such circumstances, it may be something as simple as the unconditional acceptance by another that is life-giving.

Through the gift of faith, and the guidance of scripture, we can learn much about the Christian understanding of what is life-giving. What we find there is striking affirmation of these understandings that are widespread in the secular context. It is as if, as human beings, we are hard-wired to know what is good. The difference is, of course, that in the Christian understanding the source of life is God and that which is life-giving is that which accords with the kind of life that God intends for us. We find this spelled out in the book of Deuteronomy as Moses speaks with the Hebrew people about how God expects them to live when they enter the Promised Land. “Choose life”, he concludes, “so that you and your descendants may live ….” (Deuteronomy 30: 19b)

Tags Theology and Spiritual Reflections

News & Announcements

We’ll take families out of detention, West Australians offer

Post author By revivewa
Post date August 5, 2014

Western Australian churches and leading non-government care organisations have offered support and housing in the community for families with infants being held in offshore detention, following reports of desperate mothers self-harming and attempting suicide on Christmas Island, and offers like this being made by organisations in Queensland and South Australia.

Organisations including the Anglican Diocese of Perth, the Catholic Archdiocese of Perth, the Coalition for Asylum Seekers, Refugees and Detainees (CARAD), and the Salvation Army have written to the Minister of Immigration to make this offer. The organisations have joined with other not for profits in Australia who are making this sort of proposal offering to house and support detained families with young children, allowing them to live in the Australian community while their claims are processed.

The Acting Moderator of the Uniting Church in Western Australia, Rev Ken Williams said, “We must always remember that asylum seekers are human like us. We find it deeply concerning that nearly 1000 children remain in detention and yet both major parties remain unmoved in their position on asylum seekers. What we are saying today is that alternatives are available. Detention is no place for any child and as a first step towards the release of all people in dehumanising detention, we offer to care for families with newborns and infants.”

At least 71 children have been born in Australia to women seeking asylum. Some mothers are brought to the mainland to give birth before being returned to off-shore detention, while others in the on-shore network have been deported to Christmas Island with their young babies.

Tags Refugees and Asylum Seekers

Stories & Feature Articles

Yearning for nature: Is there respect?

Post author By revivewa
Post date August 3, 2014

In Australia’s cities, it’s so easy to spend days or weeks without really connecting with the natural environment. Not only that, but how many of us actually know how the ecosystem works, or where our place in it is? Even in rural areas, it could be said that we dominate the land without really living with it.

Over time we’ve lost a vital connection to the earth and the natural system with which we once lived. Rev Dr Geoff Lilburne has a passion for theology of the land and has published works in the areas of contextual and eco theology. Geoff said that while we place a lot of importance on our history – or timelines – we also should be thinking about the space that we exist in.

“In our western tradition we have tended to think time and history are important, but we haven’t tended to think of ‘space’ or ‘place’ as important,” he said.

He continued, saying that it is important for churches to develop a sense of place by living locally and taking care of the spaces that we inhabit.

Part of thinking about this local space means looking into how we consume our food. While the food we eat is possibly one of the most direct ways we interact with our natural environment, many of us have no real sense of where it has come from and the work and resources that have gone into producing it. We may rationally know that our beef is dead cow or that our apple has grown on a tree, but for most of us, our minds simply don’t comprehend what that actually means for the producers, the economy and the planet.

Tags Environment, Sustainable September

Stories & Feature Articles

Education journeys in the North West

Post author By revivewa
Post date August 3, 2014

Just four weeks before this edition of ‘Revive’ went to print, Gail Cresswell packed up her things in Margaret River, in WA’s south west, and moved to Mowanjum, a remote Aboriginal community in the north of WA on the outskirts of Derby. With a passion for education in Indigenous communities, she is starting up a Montessori program for kids under three.

Montessori is an alternative form of education that encourages independence by creating an environment for children to learn at their own pace. Gail said that the system focuses heavily on learning by observation and involves lots of one-on-one interaction. “It’s about each child,” she said. “It’s a learning journey for each child.”

“It’s about the kids learning to be resilient and learning to be responsible to themselves.”

It is also a system that has been highly successful in Indigenous communities around Australia. Towards the end of August, Gail and her assistant, Daphne Gilbey, a member of the Mowanjum community, will be attending the Thursday Island Montessori Summit where they’ll be exploring the benefits of the Montessori approach in Indigenous cultures.

Tags First Peoples, Mowanjum