A Closure of Ministry Service was held for Rev Karama Ioapo and Rev Brian Thorpe on Sunday 27 August at Trinity North Uniting Church, Greenwood Worship Centre.
Both Karama and Brian had been serving with the congregation for 17 months, Karama began as a supply minister and moved into a ministry placement, while Brian served in Intentional Interim Ministry. Karama will be moving to a placement with Frontier Services in Atherton, Queensland, and Brian while be retiring from active ministry.
For the past eight years, Uniting Church in the City, Ross Memorial West Perth has been running a series of sessions focusing on our environment, to coincide with Sustainable September.
This year, all sessions will commence on Tuesday evenings at 6.00pm, with refreshments available from 5.30pm. Each session will last one hour, with time set aside for questions.
On Tuesday 5 September, David Galloway, from the Curtin University Sustainability Program, will reflect on how thinking around sustainable development has evolved over the past 30 years, and how his understanding of faith has developed and been informed by his work.
On Tuesday 12 September, Felicity McGeorge will talk on the importance of the wetlands.
Building on work done in 2014 and 2015, as well as this year by Rev David de Kock, General Secretary of the Uniting Church WA, members of the Uniting Church Synod of WA will have an opportunity to engage with the new Synod Strategic Plan at the 41st Annual Meeting of the Synod of Western Australia this September.
In June, a Strategic Advisory Group, including members from Uniting Church WA schools, agencies and congregations, gathered to offer feedback on the plan before it is presented to the Synod meeting for final evaluation.
The Strategic Plan recommends that the church accomodate localised Centres for Mission, which will establish one place as a resourcing centre for several nearby congregations. These Centres for Mission will act like a Uniting Church hub, creating more support and resources for new activities. The plan also incorporates a three-year roll-on budget, which will provide more forward planning than our current one-year budget.
I heard a story recently about a fight between two wolves, which were both fierce and competitive. The question was asked ‘which wolf will overcome the other?’
The simple answer is whichever wolf we feed.
Ethics is rather like this. There is a growing awareness that ethics matter. We live under the shadow of the tragic findings of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. There has been story after story of the most horrendous misuse of power and of the failure to bring the perpetrators to account.
As a Uniting Church, thankfully we have become much more conscious of the essential need for the church to be a safe place for everyone, especially children. We have a strong Code of Ethics for people in ministry and a Code of Conduct for Lay Leaders that guides us in areas where there is ethical ambiguity, and points us to ethical wholeness. Ethics must matter to all of us. While the Gospel offers grace and forgiveness, it comes with the call to discipleship, to live a holy life; to pursue a lifestyle of behaviour that models the highest Christian standards of ethics.
The new Makes You Wonder app puts a program developed by Rev Dr Ian Robinson, while on beach mission, into the hands of people in their busy lives.
Ian said the materials were originally designed for “people being people and talking to each other about what was on their hearts. And if you open your heart to somebody, they meet the Jesus who lives there.
“Makes You Wonder is a resource which helps people connect with their communities and their world. The overall theme is to help people find their voice, with their own faith, in their own world. It doesn’t ask people to run more programs, but put this kind of authenticity into the people you already are,” said Ian.
The Uniting Church WA celebrated over the weekend, as Rev Hannes Halgryn and Rev Dr Herman Nienaber were admitted as Uniting Church Ministers of the Word during a service at Uniting Church in the City, Trinity Perth. Hannes and Herman were both previously ordained in the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa and have currently been serving in placements at Uniting Church in the City.
Rev Dr Ian Tozer, Deputy General Secretary of the Uniting Church WA, shared some of their past with the gathered congregation. He said that both Herman and Hannes grew up in South Africa.
“Hannes studied there and trained for ministry at the University of the Free State; Herman at Stellenbosch University and the University of Pretoria where he completed his doctorate and has worked at the University of South Africa,” Ian said.
“They both served a number of congregations in South Africa before moving to Australia.”
In opening the Juniper Charles Jenkins Transition Care service in Bentley, Chief Executive Vaughan Harding said the 60 bed facility will deliver a first class service helping older Western Australians through a vital phase in their recovery from illness.
“This highly significant service will help relieve pressure on the public hospital system and most importantly will support older people with the best possible nursing and allied healthcare,” he said.
“We will help people to return to health and an independent life wherever possible, and otherwise help them transition into the most appropriate form of care and support for their individual needs, be that in their own home or in residential care.”
Society around us constantly divides and labels people on the basis of their age. We are divided into generational cohorts and given nicknames that supposedly summarise our most defining characteristic: ‘Boomers’; ‘Gen Y’; ‘Millennials.’
These divisions serve political and marketing purposes, but they leave our community fractured. The Gospel of Jesus, however, reconciles us to God and calls us beyond boundaries of age, gender, ability and culture, into community together, to be formed by one another as together we love and serve a world in need.
Churches are increasingly aware of the need to recover the values, practices and skills for gatherings with all generations together. Multi-generational, multi-age, all-age, crossgenerational and intergenerational approaches offer us different ways of healing the divisions in our gatherings and create the potential for new spaces of engagement with those not yet part of a faith community.
With joy and celebration, Rev Karama Ioapo was admitted as a Uniting Church Minister of the Word at a service on Sunday 16 July, at Trinity North Uniting Church, Greenwood Worship Centre.
Karama was ordained in the Samoan Methodist Church in 2008. He served as a Youth Co-ordinator in Queensland, and then in parish ministry in New Zealand. In 2014, he completed a Masters of Arts in Theology and Transformative Practice in Birmingham, UK.
For the past year he has been serving as a Supply Minister at Trinity North Uniting Church.
Rev Brian Thorpe, also serving at Trinity North Uniting Church, preached during the service on Romans 8: 1-11.
Brian reflected on Paul’s letter to the Romans, and what Paul might say to us now, in our current society.
With a name inspired by JR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Elevenses at Trinity North Uniting Church is a discussion-led worship group making a big impact in the lives of the people who attend. In the book, Elevenses is a meal break taken by Hobbits at 11.00am. Although they do provide refreshments, at Trinity North, Elevenses is so much more than just a snack.
While the group has been beneficial for the young adults who attend, it is not specifically aimed at young people and attracts members of all ages. Its intergenerational scope has created a space where people can explore life’s big questions with others who have different perspectives.
Jana MacAdam is a member of Trinity North Uniting Church, Greenwood Worshipping Community, and a first-year university student. Feeling too old for youth group, Jana felt she needed more theological discussion than traditional Sunday morning worship could provide. On approaching her church council, she found they too had been discussing how they could provide a space for young adults to explore their faith.
“We found there was a need for something to cover the gap,” said Jana. “We’ve got the youth group and that’s really running well, but then you’ve got nothing for anyone who’s too old for youth group, and nothing on a Sunday.”