Month: August 2015

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News & Announcements

New directions for Frontier Services

In an emotional discussion, the 14th Assembly sought to understand the reasons behind the changing circumstances of the Uniting Church’s valued remote area ministry, Frontier Services.

Frontier Services is changing tack, re-directing its work to community support activities and resourcing patrol ministry. Less than a year after Frontier Services celebrated its 100th anniversary  and the 13th Assembly reaffirmed its commitment to the people of remote Australia in 2012, the ministry found itself under severe financial threat due to the high costs associated with the delivery of aged care services in remote areas.

The major financial burden caused by sanctions, and the need to spend significant amounts of money to rectify major deficiencies in systems and services, took a great toll on Frontier Services,  and particularly its people. It was recognised that Frontier Services’ commitment to filling a need in remote Australia was the catalyst for the difficulties. As a growing number of small aged care  service operators proved unable to fulfil demanding accreditation standards, Frontier Services increased the number of aged care services it operated by about threefold.

Past president of the Uniting Church in Australia, Rev Prof Andrew Dutney, told the Assembly that Frontier Services never planned to increase its operations.

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Celebrations to mark the faith, mission and ministry of Australia’s first Methodist minister

A special celebration marking the 200th anniversary of the arrival of Australia’s first Methodist minister the Rev Samuel Leigh will be held at Sydney’s Wesley Centre 220 Pitt Street on Sunday 30 August beginning at 2.30 pm.

In 2012 Wesley Mission celebrated 200 years since Sydney’s earliest Wesleyans wrote a letter to the Methodist Church in Britain pleading for a minister.

Three years ago almost 2000 congregation members, supporters, donors, volunteers and staff of Wesley Mission marched through the streets of Sydney and gave thanks to God at the State Theatre for 200 years of Methodism in Australia.

The landmark service at Wesley Mission on 30 August 2015 will celebrate its sequel.

Wesley Mission Superintendent the Rev Keith Garner said the arrival of Samuel Leigh in 1815 had realised the hopes of Sydney’s earliest Wesleyans, and in 2015 Wesley Mission will give thanks for the first minister’s faith, ministry and enduring legacy.

“As Australia’s first Methodist missionary, Samuel Leigh showed remarkable courage and perseverance in the face of great hardship and the gruelling task of ministry in the fledgling colony of Sydney,” he said.

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Stories & Feature Articles

Detention adds death to distress and despair

Part of what makes our nation and our society so great is the Australian concept of a ‘fair go’, along with the willingness to ‘lend a hand.’ It is part of our core business as churches and community organisations to care for the vulnerable, for the stranger. Indeed you could suggest it is part of every Australian’s DNA to care for those in need. It is with great sadness then that we must admit that we have neglected to lend a hand to asylum seekers and we are not providing them with anything closely related to a ‘fair go’. Instead our detention policies are actually adding distress to despair – and now death as well. Mohammad Nazim Najafi, aged in his mid-twenties, died a lonely death last Friday evening.

The Coalition for Asylum Seekers, Refugees and Detainees (CARAD) has been working with a number of churches and community groups visiting asylum seekers in Yongah Hill Immigration Detention Centre (IDC), on the outskirts of Northam since the centre was opened in 2012. We have come to personally know many of the asylum seekers who are detained there, with friendships formed and affection shared. Their stories are all unique, and yet share similar threads – longings for loved ones, memories of war and persecution, journeys of peril, and always, a desire to work, to contribute and ultimately give back to Australian society.

So it is with troubled hearts that we share this reality: detention and the length of time it is taking to complete the claims assessment process is killing our friends. We have slowly watched the despair rise to levels we did not dare believe it could go. Just last week the debilitating hopelessness that indefinite detention brings contributed to the death of a young asylum seeker at the Yongah Hill IDC. In the past year two men with Bridging Visas have taken their own lives in Perth. We cannot let such tragedies occur so quietly. We invite you to share our dismay, our outrage and demand another way. The halls of these detention centres and the processes of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) have too many shadows for a democracy such as ours.

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Stories & Feature Articles

Travelling north: our new president

On 12 July, Stuart McMillan was installed as the new president of the Uniting Church in Australia at the 14th Triennial Assembly. Matt Pulford interviewed him recently and shares Stuart’s  journey with Revive.

Six weeks after being interviewed in Sydney for an accountant position at the Uniting Church in Australia’s (UCA) Northern Synod, Stuart McMillan found himself standing alone with his swag on the edge of a dirt airstrip at Ramingining, 560 km east of Darwin. No one got the message that he was coming. No one knew who he was, and more practically, no one was there to pick him up. So he hitched a ride into the community with some locals.

The year was 1982. Stuart McMillan was 27 years old. He and his wife Ros, a behavioural scientist, had made the big decision to leave their comfortable community in Sydney’s suburban northwest to move to Darwin with their young family. For some time, Stuart and Ros had known that they wanted to do something in their lives that would make a difference in the world and to live out the values of  their shared Christian faith.

Stuart remembers feeling a deep concern for Australia’s First Peoples from the time he was in primary school in the 1960s. By the early 1980s Stuart and Ros were active in social justice issues at the Chester St Congregational Church in Epping, and keenly followed news about Aboriginal land rights that would filter through from Darwin via Rev Jim Downing, a local minister there. From time to time Jim would send telegrams to his friends down south, urging them to advocate for various Aboriginal causes to their local Members of Parliament. After consideration and discernment, Stuart and Ros’s opportunity came when they spotted the Northern Synod’s job ad in the newspaper one Saturday. Six weeks later, as he stepped off that deserted airstrip in the middle of Arnhem Land, Stuart McMillan began to live out his lifelong passion, and form his personal covenant – to use the modern UCA expression – with the First Peoples of Australia.

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News & Announcements

14th Assembly: moments before God

The 14th Triennial Assembly Meeting was held from Sunday 12–Saturday 18 July. It brought together Uniting Church members from around Australia to discern the will of God and the direction of the church for the next three years. Nigel Tapp reports.

There are those within the Uniting Church who would deride the triennial Assembly gathering as a bit of talkfest. And yes, there is a lot of talking over the six days as the members deal with a  range of issues, both of a social nature and also how the church does church and how it engages with its congregations, synods, councils and one another. But, much is achieved and some of those truly special – or most powerful – moments actually come in silence before God.

Such was the story of the 14th Triennial Assembly in Perth last month. The gathering tackled weighty subjects such as same gender marriage, the role of elders within the Uniting  Church, church governance, Federal Government cuts to overseas aid, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, the treatment of those seeking asylum and Federal and State  Government policies aimed at closing remote Aboriginal communities.

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News & Announcements

Innovative Juniper simulation centre best in WA

A state-of-the-art centre that connects advanced technology and training with the experience of older people has won a major award for innovation.

The Juniper Simulation Centre in Bentley is a pioneering project that is helping meet the growing needs of an ageing population by providing high quality clinical learning experiences for care and health professionals of the future. Juniper is a Uniting Church WA agency and a leading provider of retirement housing, home care support and residential care services in the aged care industry.

It received the prestigious Innovation in Clinical Supervision award at the WA Clinical Supervision Awards 2015 held at the State Reception Centre last night.

Created by Juniper in partnership with Curtin University the Juniper Simulation Centre is a highly functional recreation of an older person’s living spaces, where activities of daily living and care can be enacted and analysed in adjacent training rooms, in real time.

“By bringing together experienced care professionals, educators and students, the Juniper Simulation Centre is facilitating excellence in clinical care, development of new models of care and shared learnings that will translate into great benefits for residents and clients,” Juniper chief operating officer, David Fisher, said.

“Our clinicians gain valuable skills for the workplace and hundreds of health sciences students experience the c

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Stories & Feature Articles

On the road to Emmaus

Rev Dr Emanuel Audisho, multicultural ministry co-ordinator at the Uniting Church in WA, led the Bible study on Wednesday 15 July at the recent 14th Triennial Assembly of the Uniting Church in Australia, held in Perth. His study on Luke 24: 13-35 is below. In this study, Emanuel focused on the perspective from Middle Eastern culture. 

Station One: Travelling with Jesus in the 21st century

When Jesus ministered in Israel, he and his disciples walked everywhere. This was their only means of transport. Walking was the usual way of travelling in the Middle East at that time.

For the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, walking and talking was perhaps a means of managing their grief and distress. Many people today go for walks to manage stress but without Jesus walking can be lonely.

As they walked the two disciples discussed the events of the past three days. It is clear from Luke’s account that they didn’t understand all that had happened. They were disappointed. They told Jesus that they had hoped that the man who had been crucified would have been the one to redeem Israel v21. They also told him of the rumors of the Resurrection, but it seems that they found this too hard to accept.

Luke tells us that: “They were kept from recognising him.” v16. We can’t be sure why this should be so, but it is within God’s sovereign will to decide when and where and how he will reveal himself to his people.

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News & Announcements

Uniting against racism in sport

The Uniting Church in Australia (UCA) and the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress (UAICC) stand as one with AFL player and former Australian of the Year Adam Goodes, who has been subjected to unacceptable racist booing at AFL games.

The Uniting Church and the Congress are two of 150 organisations calling today for renewed efforts to stamp out racism in sport and everyday life.

UCA President, Stuart McMillan, says Australians need to come to terms with the reality of racism in our country.

“People should be cheering Adam Goodes not booing him. He is a magnificent ambassador of the First Peoples of this nation,” said Stuart.

“We applaud his many achievements as an athlete and as a role model for all young Australians.

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