Month: August 2016

All ages benefit from digging deep in Kununurra

Post author By revivewa
Post date August 29, 2016

Older people are enjoying the fruits of a wonderful new vegetable garden they helped to create with students and international volunteers.

The project sprouted recently at Juniper Kununurra Community Care and was made possible by travel company Rustic Pathways which gives students and volunteers empowering travel experiences that positively impact communities across the world. Juniper is an agency of the Uniting Church WA providing residential and community aged care services.

Three Australian school groups from Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney visited the facility along with volunteers from all across the globe including Japan, Spain, Sweden, China and the USA.

Juniper’s community operations manager, Brenda Murray, said clients and staff very much enjoyed the visits.

“Not only do we now have a beautiful garden that will provide fresh vegetables and herbs but we have established a new and hopefully long-lasting relationship with the team from Rustic Pathways,” she said.

Tags Ageing and Community

News & Announcements

Lay ministry as important as ever

Post author By revivewa
Post date August 29, 2016

With more and more Uniting Church WA congregations finding themselves without an ordained minister minister, lay ministry is continuously recognised as an important part of the life of the church.

In rural areas, lay ministry has become especially vital. In WA there are currently only three ordained Uniting Church ministers in inland rural placements; Northam, Wagin and Merredin.

Rev Alistair Melville, a member of the Rural Ministry Team for the Uniting Church WA, recently supported a group of people to enrol in Certificate IV in Ministry and Theology with the Australian College of Ministry (ACOM). There are currently eight Uniting Church members enrolled in the course, and three recently graduated in July. Students are supported financially by their congregations and, through an arrangement between the Uniting Church WA and ACOM, receive a reduced course fee.

Jenny Pollard from Narrogin Uniting Church recently completed Certificate IV in Ministry and Theology. Designed as a three-year course, Jenny managed to complete it in two. Working as a YouthCARE chaplain at Narrogin Senior High School, she earned credits towards the coursework through her employment experience.

Tags Theology and Spiritual Reflections, Training

News & Announcements

A new future for Uniting Church history

Post author By revivewa
Post date August 24, 2016

The Uniting Church in Australia has established a National Historical Society. Those who are already engaged, through state Uniting Church Historical Societies, through the teaching of religious/church history or through regional or local church history groups and programs, welcome this move and look forward to what it will contribute to the important processes of understanding, recording, debating and celebrating our history and allowing that history to inform our future journey as a pilgrim people on the way.

To formally launch the new national society, and also to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the Uniting Church (not to mention the five hundredth anniversary of the Protestant Reformation) a conference is being planned for 9-12 June 2017 (the Queen’s birthday long weekend). The conference will be held at Pilgrim Uniting Church in Adelaide, starting at 5.00pm on Friday 9 June and finishing by 12noon, Monday 12 June.

It will feature major contributions from specially invited keynote speakers and panel discussants; short papers presented by conference participants, including academics, non-academics, local historians, archivists, former missionaries, members of the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress (UAICC), clergy, laity and anyone interested in and engaged with Uniting Church history; workshops and field visits; and plenty of opportunities for networking.

Tags Uniting Church

News & Announcements

Vale Brian Heath: pilgrim on a journey

Post author By revivewa
Post date August 23, 2016

When Brian Heath spoke to anybody – parishioner, counselling client, a couple wishing to get married, a friend – he was right there with you, totally engaged. When you spoke to him, you felt that you were the most important person in the world to Brian. And you were. He was fully present, in the moment. This gift helped him connect with, and serve, an enormous swathe of people of different types and backgrounds.

Storyteller, passionate preacher and ‘ideas man’, Brian created whole new perspectives upon the Gospel and how to weave it into everyday life, with fun, with feeling and with authenticity.

In private life he was fully engaged with the visual arts, being a friend of many painters; the South Australian Dieter Engler, and WA artist Shirley Winstanley, for example. Brian was very keen on photography and film and he was a friend of the late, great Australian filmmaker Paul Cox. He also loved working with his hands – he built various shacks at Bush Harmony, the adventure camp he established near Boddington – and friends, Christians and clients alike enjoyed the rustic joys. A sheet of rusting corrugated iron was the basis for multiple photographic studies, with stunning effects. He was a cool guy.

Born in 1930 and raised in Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa, Brian could not have envisaged the extraordinary journey his life would take. It took him both across the seas to train in theology in London, at New College, to ministry with the Congregational Church in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, and later to a bounteous life in Australia with the Uniting Church. He journeyed from being an enthusiastic young man to becoming an equally enthusiastic, wise, funny and passionate elder. He journeyed together with an extraordinary number of people, touching their lives and supporting them as people, in both their personal and spiritual lives – always with a smile, often with a joke or a story.

Tags Our People and Agencies

News & Announcements

Faith communities heed call from the Pacific

Post author By revivewa
Post date August 22, 2016

A diverse range of Australian faith communities are responding to a call from some Pacific Islanders for a ‘Pray for Our Pacific Sabbath’ in September.

Koreti Magaega Tiumalu is a spokesperson for the group and is based in Fiji.

“While the fight against climate change takes many forms around the world, praying together as a region and community concerned about the devastating impacts of climate change across the Pacific is also a powerful way we can unite to combat the climate crisis,” Koreti said.

Faith communities are mobilising in a compassionate response to the impacts of record-breaking cyclones and to sea level rise, which is already forcing the evacuation of thousands from atolls to Australia’s north.

“People in villages scattered across the Pacific and other low-lying lands are suffering from the results of the decisions and lifestyles of others in lands far away,” said Rev Alimoni Taumoepeau, Uniting Church Minister at Strathfield, NSW. “This is an injustice. More than that, when the sea has swamped their land, there is no high ground to which they can flee. This is terrifying.”

Tags Environment

News & Announcements

New care hub will deliver enhanced services

Post author By revivewa
Post date August 22, 2016

UnitingCare community services provider, Juniper, plans to build an innovative aged care service hub in Kununurra to provide a full range of options to meet the needs and aspirations of the local community.

Vaughan Harding, chief executive of Juniper, said the project brings together 32 residential aged care places with home care and support services in a modern facility designed for the Kimberley climate and sensitive to local cultural expectations.

“We have worked closely with the community to help realise a vision for Kununurra, to bring enhanced aged care services and opportunities to the town and region that are designed to meet current and future needs,” Vaughan said.

Located on the corner of Coolibah Drive and Ivanhoe Road, the new facility will feature a range of accommodation layouts including single rooms with ensuites and two- and three-bedroom rooms with ensuites.

Tags Ageing and Community

News & Announcements

Honouring our diversity

Post author By revivewa
Post date August 21, 2016

Every two years Uniting Network Australia (UNA) hosts a national conference, commonly known as ‘Daring’.

UNA is the national network for lesbian, gay, bisexual, intersex and transgender people, their families, friends and supporters within the Uniting Church in Australia. The theme for this year’s event in Melbourne was ‘Daring to Reach Out – Honouring Our Diversity’.

‘Daring’ may seem like a funny name for a church conference, but it comes from a time when it was not particularly safe to identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, intersex and queer – (LGBTIQ) people in the church, or society for that matter.

The first conference ‘Daring to speak – Daring to listen’ in 1994 was an important moment, a safe space created to discuss faith and sexuality, and to network and support each other in life and ministry. Since that first Daring, people connected to UNA have continued to gather every two years for much the same purpose.

This year’s conference, held from 10–13 June in Melbourne, aimed to hear from diverse voices from a range of cultural and faith backgrounds. We learned about different understandings of family and kinship. We heard the experiences of people from multicultural and cross cultural networks in understanding and connecting with people of diverse sexualities and the importance of a theology of hospitality in understanding and working through our differences.

Tags LGBTQIA

Stories & Feature Articles

Moderator’s column: Do we pass the welcome test?

Post author By revivewa
Post date August 19, 2016

A friend of mine spent a few years away from church. She was burnt out. Eventually she decided it was time to return to a worshipping congregation, but wondered which one. She decided to go visiting congregations on a Sunday morning in the hope she might be welcomed beyond a handshake at the door and a copy of the news-sheet.

She worked out a ‘cup of tea’ test. The plan was to hold her cup of tea after the service, very slowly sip it, and smile at everyone who walked past, hoping that someone might be interested enough to pause and talk with her.

Sadly, several churches failed the cup of tea test. Thankfully, at least one church passed the test when someone noticed her, engaged her in conversation and seemed genuinely interested in her wellbeing.

Too easily we conclude we are a friendly congregation, when it may be the case that we do not notice or go out of our way to look after the newcomer or the stranger. We may have created a place of welcome for the regulars, but not so much for the hesitant visitor.

In congregational ministry I regularly encouraged our leaders to follow the ‘two-minute’ rule. I would suggest that straight after the benediction every leader resist the temptation to gravitate towards their friends. Rather, in those two minutes they should cast a careful eye around the congregation for the visitor or stranger and go straight to them with welcoming words and see where it might lead.

Tags Theology and Spiritual Reflections

News & Announcements

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

Post author By revivewa
Post date August 18, 2016

The Uniting Church WA welcomes Premier Colin Barnett’s comments that he supports families now held on Nauru being settled in Western Australia.

In February 2016, a number of WA churches joined with other churches around Australia in offering sanctuary to any family in Australia for medical treatment, who were in danger of being returned to Nauru.

In 2014, the Uniting Church WA joined with other churches and leading non-government care organisations in offering support and housing in the community for families with infants being held in offshore detention.

The acting moderator of the Uniting Church WA, Rev Ken Williams said, “We must always remember that asylum seekers are human like us. We find it deeply concerning that nearly 50 children remain in detention offshore 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 will welcome families into Western Australia and offer to support them as they settle here.

Tags Refugees and Asylum Seekers