Month: April 2018

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News & Announcements

Retired ministers are all ears

Assembled for fellowship at Rowethorpe Uniting Church recently, about forty retired ministers and spouses heard Vaughan Harding, Chief Executive of Juniper, a Uniting Church WA aged care provider, outline present trends in an ageing population, government initiatives in facing these challenges, and the ways that not-for-profit agencies like Juniper are accepting the task of planning for the future needs of our senior citizens.

Vaughan, who will retire later this year after 29 years with Juniper, drew attention to practical issues facing ageing people who wish to relocate, and in particular the financial issues of entering an aged care facility.

“Shop around,” he said, “and there are qualified staff at Juniper who can give useful advice.”

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Stories & Feature Articles

Being messy, being church

With the full support of Rockingham Uniting Church, my home congregation, I flew to Melbourne to attend the Australasian Messy Church Gathering, in February. Having only a small idea as to what Messy Church was about, along with fellow youth leader, Kelly Crothers, I was keen to find out more with the hope of bringing this concept back to our church.

The gathering was held in the Centre for Theology and Ministry in Parkville, a magnificent heritage building that was itself inspiring. In attendance were people from all over Australia, New Zealand, UK and Malaysia. We were very blessed to have Canon Lucy Moore, the founder of Messy Church from The Church of England, as the special guest and keynote speaker. Lucy’s enthusiasm was infectious.

The other keynote speakers were Rev Greg Ross, a Uniting Church WA Minister who has a long established Messy Church in Bunbury; the talented Rev Brenton Prigge a former Uniting Church WA Minister who played guitar and sang hymns that he had written; and Rev Debbie Smith from New Zealand who spoke to us about maximising the potential of your Messy Team. At this point, I realised how important having help and working as a team will be.

We learnt the values of Messy Church and that it is not just for children. It is a Christ centred church in its own right for all ages, gathering together to enjoy creativity, celebration and hospitality. Sharing a meal isan important part, as Lucy said, “You can’t share the abundance of Godwith a biscuit.”

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Stories & Feature Articles

Mentoring Program enriching lives

Trinity North Uniting Church are running a Mentoring Program for its high school age members who attend the vibrant church in Greenwood.

Instead of attending the regular Sunday worship service at 9.00am, mentees between the ages of 11 to 17, are whisked away by their mentors to a nearby park or café for a chat. The first session in February 2018, saw seven mentors and mentees attending. The organiser of the Mentoring Program is former Kids Church Co-ordinator at Trinity North Uniting Church, Kylie Steed.Though the church has a regular Youth Group, Kylie and other church members felt something more needed to be done for the younger members to feel more connected to their local church.

“The idea came out of our Children and Youth Ministry team that we try a Mentoring Program. One of the aspects we wanted was a small group discussion on a Sunday morning during worship time,” said Kylie.

“The benefit of this program is our teenagers have someone else at the church who knows what they are up to. Someone other than their parents are having a conversation with them and are interested in them, and that makes such a big difference for a teenager,” said Kylie.

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Louise Pekan: living the love of Christ everyday

Pastor Louise Pekan loves babies, families and communities. She’s also passionate about encouraging others to be leaders in their own contexts, so it’s no surprise she’s begun working with families and children in and around Melville as the new Community Engagement Pastor at Melville Uniting Church.

After hearing at a Presbytery of WA meeting recently that the Uniting Church WA has been in steady decline for a number of years, Louise – alongside the Melville congregation – is ready and  prepared to try a new way of being church. While these ideas may be new to some, Louise has already seen the success of community engagement projects she’s run in Perth, as well as been a part of in Chicago in the United States of America, where she lived on and off for five years.

As Melville Uniting Church started thinking about selling up and joining other nearby congregations, Louise, with the help of Rev Mark Illingworth, Pastoral Relations and Placements Co-ordinator at the Uniting Church WA, will instead work with them to create meaningful networks with the local community. And as I sat with her over coffee, it was pretty clear she not only has the  experience to do this, but also has a deep passion for hospitality and building a space where all are welcome.

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News & Announcements

Australian Christian Men’s Choir

Dutch musician Arjan Breukhoven will visit Australia for the sixth time for a series of ten organ concerts in the Perth and Albany regions of WA. Arjan is well-known in the Netherlands as an organist, pianist and conductor. He is musical director of three large Christian male choirs in the western part of Holland and is starting a new choir project in Western Australia.

You are invited to join this project by singing in the Australian Christian Men’s Choir with Arjan as conductor. This Christian men’s choir will have five rehearsals in the Free Reformed Church of Kelmscott on Thursday evenings, starting on 5 July at 7.30pm. During the rehearsal there will also be a break, since it is important to connect with the other singers and socialise. After these five rehearsals there will be a concert at St John’s Anglican Church in Fremantle and it will also join in with a community hymn singing in the Free Reformed Church of Kelmscott.

The repertoire consists of well-known Christian hymns. Beside these hymns the choir will also sing spirituals and classical works during the program.

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Discerning the faith journey

Sixteen members of the Presbytery of WA and one member of the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress (Congress WA) gathered for a retreat on Saturday 24 February, to give serious and prayerful consideration to the ways that they discern the will of God.

The group included six people who are engaged in a Period of Discernment (POD); one Candidate for a Minister of Word; five Faculty members of Perth Theological Hall; and the convenors and  some members of the Candidates for the Ministries Committee (CMC) and the Commission for Education for Discipleship and Leadership (CEDAL).

The group gathered at Kalamunda Uniting Church for the retreat, facilitated by Rev Gordon Scantlebury. The theme for the day was Discernment. The group used the tools developed by Ignatius of Loyola, to consider how we open ourselves to God’s Spirit, how we seek the leading of God, and how we discern and decide in our faith journey. The retreat ended with participants each sharing the burdens that they felt personally, and their best hopes for their own futures.

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Cyclone Gita update

Rev Dr Stephen Robinson, National Disaster Recovery Officer for the Uniting Church in Australia, recently visited Tonga, in the wake of Tropical Cyclone Gita, which affected Island nations in the South Pacific including Tonga, Samoa and Fiji. He shares some of his experience with Revive.

On Monday 12 February, Tropical Cyclone Gita devastated the islands of Tonga, with winds of 230km/h whipping the Southern Coast of the main island of Tongatapu. Locals had taken warnings seriously and prepared as well as they could, but lightly built houses were no match for the monster storm.

The fact that it struck at night probably saved scores of lives, as people were bunkered indoors and avoided injury from flying roofing iron and falling trees. The negative is in the lasting memory of families who huddled together through the terror of a sleepless night of pitch darkness and screaming wind, hoping and praying their place of shelter would hold together.

With the dawn’s light, people ventured out to assess the damage and found this particularly confronting. Many houses lost all or part of their roofing, torn metal and splintered wood, thousands of fallen trees and palm fronds scattered. Rain continued to inundate many houses that had escaped the worst of wind damage. Power poles leaned precariously or snapped off completely, and power lines lay across muddy roads.

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A night in the wilderness

Kids’ Camp Out (KCO) was once again a great success. The overnight camp was held from Saturday 10 to Sunday 11 March at Advent Park in Maida Vale. Junior leaders began their camp on Friday 10 March, as they helped to prepare for the arrival of campers.

Children, junior leaders, camp leaders and volunteers came together from all over the Uniting Church WA to explore this year’s theme, ‘Wilderness,’ through craft, games, activities, food, worship and play. With a night of rough winds, campers had to move from their tents into on-site cabins, however that didn’t detract from all the fun.

KCO is an annual event of the Uniting Generations team at the Uniting Church WA. Thanks go to all the Uniting Church WA volunteers who help make KCO possible.

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Stories & Feature Articles

Moderator’s column: Seeking wisdom

It is nearly fifty years since my wife, Jill, and I moved to Western Australia. The plan had been for us to stay four years, but Perth made such an impression upon us that we never left.

We have so many vivid memories from those early days in Perth and one of those for me is of the beautiful Reflection Pond in front of Winthrop Hall at the University of Western Australia (UWA). The Memorial Seat that looks down the length of the pond from the eastern end bears the inscription: ‘Verily by beauty it is that we come at wisdom’. The motto of UWA itself is: ‘Seek Wisdom.’

In the season of Lent that will be just concluded by the time this edition of Revive is published, I’ve been prompted by a few things to reflect upon the nature of wisdom, within the context of a Benedictine concept of renunciation.

What is truly important in the journey of following Christ, and what should be renounced in order to pursue it more fully?

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Vulnerability and ageing: recognising elder abuse

The Australian Government recently announced a national plan would be developed to address elder abuse in Australia. Many organisations in the sector have welcomed the announcement, which was one of the key recommendations of the Australian Law Reform Commission’s 2017 report on the issue, Elder Abuse: a national legal response.

Elder abuse is widely seen, rightly so, as an abhorrent crime. But sadly, the World Health Organisation (WHO) report that 15.7% of people aged over 60 have reported abuse, which means that
75 000 people in Western Australia are potentially affected. It is estimated that many cases go unreported. Most cases are forms of financial abuse; however, there are many different types of abuse. WHO defines elder abuse as “a single or repeated act, or lack of appropriate action, occurring within any relationship where there is an expectation of trust, which causes harm or distress to an older person.”

As well as financial, reported types of abuse also include psychological, social, physical, neglect and sexual.

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