Month: February 2017

Easter art exploring loss, grief, oppression and mortality

Post author By revivewa
Post date February 15, 2017

Uniting Church in the City, Wesley Perth, one of the oldest and iconic churches in Perth, is for the eighth time preparing to present the Stations of the Cross Art Exhibition at Easter.

This year, the commissioned artists – who hail from diverse cultural and religious backgrounds – were asked to focus on the embodiment of humanity within their works and to engage in interfaith dialogue by exploring universal experiences such as loss, grief, oppression and mortality. Through a variety of forms – including painting, sculpture, photography and textiles – the exhibition bridges between sacred stories and the issues and events that are present in our contemporary world.

Tags Books, Films, Art, Awards and Recipes, Easter

News & Announcements

Tribute to a founding father

Post author By revivewa
Post date February 12, 2017

A rededication ceremony was held on Sunday 27 November to commemorate the relocation of a memorial for Rev David Shearer from St Andrew’s Uniting Church to its original setting at David’s gravesite in East Perth Cemetery.

Prior to his career as a minister, David was a school teacher, a profession he worked in until he was licensed to preach by the Free Church Presbytery of Edinburgh in 1871. He was ordained the following year. David was given a commission from the Established and Free Churches of Scotland to establish the Presbyterian Church in Western Australia. He sailed from Gravesend, with his wife Margaret and family, arriving in Fremantle in October 1879.

Tags Our People and Agencies

News & Announcements

Faith and friendship at Yurora

Post author By revivewa
Post date February 9, 2017

Yurora NCYC 2017, the Uniting Church in Australia’s National Christian Youth Convention, had its genesis in 1955. These days it is a festival of art, music, theology and fellowship.

Yurora runs for five days every two to three years with hundreds of young people from across Australia attending. This year, it was held from 8–12 January in Sydney with a program including Canadian group Tim Neufield and the Glory Boys, and a whole crowd of Australian artists, including Pirate Church, who feature in this edition’s profile story on page 6.

Covering dozens of important social and theological topics, festival goers attended sessions throughout the day learning about issues like reconciliation, multicultural worship, the intersection of environmental care and theology and a host of other hot issues.

Tags Uniting Church, Youth

Stories & Feature Articles

Moderator’s column: Life beyond the fishbowl

Post author By revivewa
Post date February 7, 2017

One of the greatest English rock bands, Pink Floyd, has a line in one of their songs that has always intrigued me: “we’re like two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl, year after year. Wish you were here.”

These lyrics suggest, rather cynically, that living today can feel like living in a fishbowl. The more I thought about life being like a fishbowl, the more it seemed to me that there is some truth to the idea.

Water magnifies every action we take, making it look way bigger than it probably should be. Life in a fishbowl means that small things appear much bigger. A rather innocuous comment can be seen as a massive put down; a flippant remark can be taken as a serious rejection of a person; a mild, gentle criticism can be misunderstood as a character assassination.

In the world of the fishbowl, many things are exaggerated or magnified causing a distorted view of reality. Fishbowl thinking over scrutinises, dissects and then replays over and over again the same unbalanced view of reality.

Every now and then, I think I suffer from this condition and I am not alone. Others in the church are also unconsciously affected by a fishbowl mind-set. Sometimes when I am in conversation, I hear a grievance. They range from the trivial, to the important, to the very serious. Discerning which category they belong in is a prayerful, pastoral art. To reinforce the petty is not helping anyone. To minimise the serious is pastorally neglectful.

Tags Our People and Agencies, Theology and Spiritual Reflections

News & Announcements

Harvest thanksgiving and centenary celebrations

Post author By revivewa
Post date February 6, 2017

On Sunday 11 February 1917, a young music teacher by the name of Mildred Grigg gathered four children together in the home where she lived with her parents for the first meeting of what was called the Pioneer Sunday School.

The house was in Pangbourne Street, Churchlands, in the western suburbs of Perth. In 1924 it became known as Wembley Park after the suburb of London which hosted the British Empire Exhibition in that year. By the end of 1917 there were 26 names on the Sunday School roll, regular worship services were being held in the Grigg home, and the Methodist Church had purchased land a few doors down at 35 Pangbourne Street, where the first church building was erected a few years later.

Tags Church and Community

News & Announcements

Joining forces for climate action

Post author By revivewa
Post date February 1, 2017

A diverse group of 40 signatories representing Western Australian health professionals, religious leaders, farmers, renewable industry experts, environmentalists and unions have launched a joint statement calling on all parties leading into the WA elections to provide decisive action against climate change. The Uniting Church WA is among them.

The coalition wants WA to become a renewable energy superpower and says the government must commit to rapidly transitioning the state to renewables.

An online petition has also been launched calling on the community to demand action from their candidates.

Professor Fiona Stanley says Western Australia has the economic and technical capacity to lead in the transition to renewables.

“We just need the political will to do so,” she said.

“Fossil fuels are a major contributor to air pollution, which is now close to tobacco as a leading cause of death globally.”

Tags Environment