For Lent Event this year, Victoria Park and Districts Star Street Uniting Church decided to adopt the Sri Lankan Interfaith Pre-school Program, setting a target of $2400, which will feed 20 children for a year. The Uniting Church in WA agreed at its annual Synod meeting in 2013 to support the program which is run by the Methodist Church in Sri Lanka.
Bruce Barber is a Uniting Church minister and selfconfessed preacher. The title of this book is a reference to Nietzsche’s Parable of the Madman from The Gay Science of 1887 in which a madman lit a lantern at noon and ran to the marketplace crying that he was looking for God. The parable announces the death of God under the auspices of the Modern age.
Bruce’s analysis is genealogical in that he traces the changes that have occurred in Christian theology from the early church to the Medieval to the Modern and, for the lack of a better term, the post-Modern. This does not mean that there are no people who now understand theology in the mode of the preceding eras, but it does point to a succession in which theologies outlast their usefulness. This genealogy of ideas goes some way towards explaining why, in our day of the Modern-post- Modern cusp, preaching has become largely unintelligible and alienated from general discourse.
An energetic crowd took to the streets of Fremantle last weekend to show their support and welcome for asylum seekers and refugees in Australia.
The Refugee Fiesta, held on the Fremantle Esplanade on Sunday 15 June, was a family friendly affair with speakers, food, music and activities. Organised by the Refugee Rights Action Network (RRAN), the Uniting Church in WA joined other organisations such as Amnesty International, Coalition for Refugees Asylum Seekers and Detainees (CARAD), Mercy Care, the Anglican Church Diocese of WA and Friends of Palestine as they showed their support.
William Emilsen is deeply committed to collecting observations about, and recording the history of, the Uniting Church in Australia (UCA). He was a founder of Uniting Church Studies, and earlier edited the collections Marking Twenty Years (1997) and The Uniting Church in Australia: The first 25 years (2003).
An Informed Faith has chapters on spirituality, ministry, scholarship, The Basis of Union, management, politics, Uniting Church schools, ecology, the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress, living cross-culturally, other faiths and evangelical and progressive Christianity. Authors include Ian Breward, Chris Budden, Tony Floyd, Katharine Massam, Marion Maddox, Michael Owen, Geoff Thompson and Val Webb.
The Uniting Church in WA welcomes its newest minister of the Word with the ordination of Corina van Oostende at Fremantle Wesley Uniting Church last Friday.
Rev Corina has had a long journey towards fulfilling her call to ordination and has always felt that she wanted to work with people. Coming to Australia in 1994 from the Netherlands, she became a member at Fremantle Wesley and took up roles in hospital chaplaincy; at Shenton Park Rehab Hospital and Fremantle Hospital in the Mental Health and Outpatients wards.
She has also worked with UnitingCare West’s Rainbow Project, a service that provides connection, friendship and support for people living with a mental illness.
Corina said that the people she’s met over the last ten years have confirmed her call to ministry.
The simple idea of starting a music class in the Villawood Detention Centre, Sydney, has created a vast network of instrument donors for asylum seekers in detention. Sydney-based volunteer music teacher Philip Feinstein established classes inside the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre around two years ago. He has now expanded the Music for Refugees project to include almost all Australian immigration detention centres, including Christmas Island and Nauru.
“I go to three-day conferences and end up exhausted. This one has been full on, yet I feel so energized.”
“Best conference I have been to in its feel and purpose.”
“A time for renewal and rest in God.”
As feedback on conferences go, Mandjar, the National Lay Preachers Conference, was tops.Max Howland, Chair of the National Lay Preachers Committee described it as “wide-ranging and well-balanced”.
It was a perfect day with perfect weather with everyone enjoying the 90th anniversary at Dowerin Uniting Church on 30 March. The birthday cake was cut by Aileen Thornett, a member of the Dowerin congregation, in her role as the Shire of Dowerin’s Citizen of the Year.
On Sunday 8 June the Uniting Church in Australia congregation in Mandurah held a special Breaking of the Ties service as they said farewell to Rev Ian Pearse. Ian has accepted a call to Bacchus Marsh in Victoria.
Ian and his wife Bev have been in placement in Mandurah for 5 years serving the community. Ian was a member of the Interagency Group who organise the annual Christmas Hamper distribution, Youthcare who support the Chaplains in schools, Peel Homelessness Night shelter group and Rotary. He supported the Mandurah Rainbow lunches providing a range of care for those who attended.
Juniper, a Uniting Church in WA agency and one of Western Australia’s largest providers of retirement, residential and home aged care, brings a free information session for seniors, families and friends to help people maintain a healthy weight.
Ever wanted to know the difference between a portion and a serve and how it can enable you to lose weight? Or how to read those confusing numbers in food packaging?