Category: News & Announcements

Categories
News & Announcements

Funding boost for chaplaincy in WA schools

YouthCARE, a provider of chaplaincy services in Western Australian state schools, welcomes the announcement by the Federal Government to continue chaplaincy funding.

$247 million will be allocated to schools across Australia as part of the National School Chaplaincy Program.

In his budget speech, Treasurer Scott Morrison announced the Federal Government would be “extending the National School Chaplaincy Program on a permanent basis, with a special new anti-bullying focus”.

YouthCARE Chief Executive Officer, Stanley Jeyaraj, said the decision provides certainty for a large number of state schools in WA to access chaplaincy services.

Continue reading “Funding boost for chaplaincy in WA schools”
Categories
News & Announcements

Budget 2018: Important initiatives but short on heart

The President of the Uniting Church in Australia, Stuart McMillan, has welcomed a number of important initiatives for First Australians in the 2018 Federal Budget.

Stuart said he was cheered by confirmation of a $550 million Federal commitment to a new five-year agreement on Remote Indigenous Housing with the Northern Territory Government.

“The housing needs of First Peoples have been scandalously neglected for so long,” he said.

“The Government has promised to ensure Aboriginal community control will be at the heart of this investment, from decision-making to employment and business procurement. If it does this, it will be an excellent outcome.”

Stuart was delighted at the extension of Medicare funding for dialysis services in rural and remote regions and confirmation that Purple House – Western Desert Dialysis in Alice Springs will receive $23 million in funding over the next few years.

Continue reading “Budget 2018: Important initiatives but short on heart”
Categories
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.”

Continue reading “Retired ministers are all ears”
Categories
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.

Continue reading “Australian Christian Men’s Choir”
Categories
News & Announcements

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.

Continue reading “Discerning the faith journey”
Categories
News & Announcements

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.

Continue reading “Cyclone Gita update”
Categories
News & Announcements

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.

Continue reading “A night in the wilderness”
Categories
News & Announcements

Juniper appoints new Chief Executive

Juniper, a Uniting Church WA agency and one of WA’s largest providers of aged care and community support services, has named Chris Hall AM as its new Chief Executive.

Juniper Board Chair, Fred Boshart, welcomed Chris’ appointment and paid tribute to retiring Chief Executive, Vaughan Harding, for his service to the organisation which has spanned almost three decades.

“Under Vaughan’s leadership, Juniper has prospered and stands as a 21st Century organisation serving more than 4 000 older people from Wyndham to Albany, one of the largest care footprints in the nation. More importantly, Juniper now provides some of the most forward-thinking services available,” Fred said.

“Since joining Juniper in 1989 Mr Harding oversaw decades of change. More change and a higher pace of change seem inevitable, as ageing ‘Baby Boomers’ change the population profile, funding levels are reduced, red tape and regulatory burdens increase and an increase in ‘user pays’ creates a more competitive marketplace.”

Continue reading “Juniper appoints new Chief Executive”
Categories
News & Announcements

Review: Promises and Blessings in the Book of Revelation, by Doug Rowston

Mosaic Press, 2014

“Today’s reading is from the Book of Revelation…” you can feel the apprehension… and no wonder. Like the evolution of our language from Oxford Dictionary standard to smart phone condensed, we have lost the understanding of the many codes used in the Bible, particularly those used within the pages of Revelation.

Promises and Blessings is a short (100 pages), easy to read book, which uses pen portraits of the ten martyrs who adorn the west front of Westminster Abbey as intermissions. Their relevance to the main context of the book are as examples of sacrificial, Christlike faith.

Best read alongside the Book of Revelation, its objective is to demystify much of the ancient text which was written in code to protect early Christians from punishment if they were caught reading it. It identifies the secret code as threefold: a number code, a colour code and an animal code.

Continue reading “Review: Promises and Blessings in the Book of Revelation, by Doug Rowston”
Categories
News & Announcements

Review: Resurrecting Easter: How the West lost and East kept the original Easter Vision

By John Dominic Crossan and Sarah Sexton Crossan, Harper Collins, 2018.

Biblical scholars John Dominic Crossan and the late Marcus Borg conducted pilgrimages over the years to Italy and Turkey, two of which I was fortunate to attend.

We learnt that all the major events in Christ’s life are described in the Gospels but no direct reports of the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Instead, many artistic impressions of Jesus’ resurrection were created, some we visited in churches, caves and museums.

The first direct image appears by 400 and is part of the West’s individual resurrection tradition. The second direct image by the year 700 is part of the East’s universal resurrection tradition named the Anastasis, Greek for resurrection.

For 15 years Dominic and Sarah Crossan travelled across Europe and Asia creating a comprehensive photographic archive of this resurrection imagery. How timely when this book with Sarah’s images, the ancient texts which inspired them and Dominic’s scholarly interpretation arrived for Easter.

The cover image of their book is from the 1300s Chora Church in Istanbul, where we gazed at this beautiful Anastasis mosaic high in the half dome of the apse of the risen Christ, enveloped by a star studded mandorla, grasping the wrists of Adam and Eve, the personification of humankind. Christ pulls them from their tombs while standing firmly on the shattered gates of hell with lock and bolts strewn around his feet. Christ is trampling down a well-trussed Hades, guardian and personification of death, who is lying prone beneath his feet.

Continue reading “Review: Resurrecting Easter: How the West lost and East kept the original Easter Vision”