When you are experiencing homelessness, winter in Perth can seem endless. For UnitingCare West, the onset of winter has seen an increase in the numbers of people seeking assistance.
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Bringing winter warmth
Author: revivewa
Now its 94th year, the Busselton Wildflower Exhibition is gearing up to welcome local enthusiasts as well as visitors from further afield this September. The South West corner of Western Australia is renowned for having one of the richest and most diverse flora in the world and attracts visitors from around the State, Australia and overseas.
Exhibition chairman Barry Oates said it was an opportunity to see spectacular wildflowers you couldn’t see anywhere else in the world.
A Dedication Service for the new premises of St Andrew’s Uniting Church was held on Monday 16 June.
The new building is located on Bennett St, East Perth, and will provide a space for the congregation to live out their vision of reaching the people of East Perth, and building their congregation as a company of God’s faithful people. Prior to moving into their new premises, St Andrew’s Uniting Church were holding worship services at St Bartholomew’s, following the sale of the church building on Pier St due to safety concerns.
The latest copy of The Big Issue states that “more than 116 000 Australians don’t have a place to call home each night – and more than 8 000 of these people are sleeping rough”.
Indeed, I’ve noticed an increase in the number of rough sleepers in the doorways, parks, alleyways and on pavements in Perth’s CBD over the past year or so. Many of them depend on the charity of passers-by and/or charitable organisations for the wherewithal to continue living.
How can we be so hard-hearted to see these unfortunate human beings struggling to keep alive, whilst doing so little to help them, in what is claimed to be a nation built on Christian values?
UnitingCare West’s Rainbow Lunch celebrated its 20th anniversary this month. Around 100 past and present volunteers and friends gathered at Maylands Mt Lawley Uniting Church to mark the occasion.
Rainbow Lunches are a social group, set in churches, inviting people who are experiencing mental illness or loneliness to join them for lunch and a chance to connect with other people in the community.
Larissa Muir, Senior Project Officer NDIS Transition at UnitingCare West, said that Rainbow has quietly evolved over the past 20 years, beginning with a focus on befriending people living with mental illness and now expanding to other areas to include people in all sorts of situations, such as those who are vulnerable to homelessness, those who have exited prison, as well as people that have battled physical illness or are awaiting a transplant.
The Uniting Church National History Society Biennial Conference took place at the Centre for Theology and Ministry in Melbourne from 7 to 10 June.
The theme of the conference was ‘Finding a home in the Uniting Church?’ We reflected on what it means to belong to the Uniting Church in this day and age.
Over the two days 20 papers were presented by members of the society and interested historians. These papers covered a wide variety of subjects.
After a long illness, Grant Adams died in the Kalamunda Hospice on the afternoon of 12 June 2019.
Grant made an enormous contribution to the life of the Uniting Church as General Manager of Good Samaritan Industries (GSI) and in leading seminars on ‘Church Renewal’ in many of our parishes.
Grant was appointed to GSI in the early 1980’s at a time when the company had a huge debt and was in danger of becoming bankrupt. His leadership enabled GSI to discharge that debt well before his retirement.
Yesterday, Tuesday 11 June, Bicton Uniting Church celebrated the 40th anniversary of their CARE Centre. As past and present friends and volunteers of the program gathered and shared memories, it was clear that this program means so much to many people.
The CARE Centre (Christian Action Requires Empathy) is a friendship group for elderly people in the community. For one morning a fortnight, volunteers pick up people in the local area, by a bus gifted from Fremantle Wesley Uniting Church, and bring them back to the centre for entertainment, craft, memory days, laughter and love.
Plato advised: Leave it to the experts and Aristotle: Trust it to the wisdom of the people themselves.
The Progressive Christian Network WA conducted a very successful ‘Sustainability Now’ workshop at All Saints Floreat Uniting Church on 8 June. The inaugural event was dedicated to the First Peoples of Australia and the late Dr Bernard Bowen, a lifelong member of the Uniting Church, whose scientific legacy will benefit generations to come.
Over 70 people engaged with a range of eminent speakers.
Fr Rod Bower, activist and Rector of Gosford Anglican Church, set the religious theme with the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden as a sign that humankind was not to consume all that nature provides, to value the Sabbath for a sense of belonging to a wider community and the feeding of the five thousand; a story of creating abundance in the face of scarcity.
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Let them settle here
The Australian Churches Refugee Taskforce is urging the newly elected Federal Government and Prime Minister Scott Morrison to resolve the plight of the 1000+ refugees in Manus and Nauru, some of whom are now in Australia.
In a letter signed by numerous religious leaders across Australia, they write: “Let them settle here.”