For this year’s International Women’s Day, Kate Leaney, Social Justice Officer at the Uniting Church WA, takes 5 minutes with us to reflect, and share some of her inspirations and passions.
Category: Stories & Feature Articles
I’ve never met anyone who loves horses as much as Minna Sanders. And from this love of horses, a beautiful endeavour has grown.
Minna, having just finished Year 12 at Seton Catholic College, recently won a Good Sammy Business Start-up Award. This bubbly, passionate teenager was one of six recipients who received a cash grant to go towards setting up her own business.
Good Samaritan Enterprises (previously Good Samaritan Industries), is a Uniting Church WA agency providing employment options for people living with disability. They’re lovingly known throughout WA for their ‘Good Sammy’ op-shops, but they also provide a range of services helping people find meaningful employment. The award has been a huge asset for Minna, who will use the grant for advertising and supplies for her micro business – Minna’s Creations. She is now well on her way to getting her pyrography woodwork into the market.
An art exhibition held at Willetton Uniting Church in February has raised over $1 500 for the Uniting Church in Australia National Disaster Relief Fund, supporting those impacted by bushfires around the country. Willemina Foeken, artist and member of Willetton Uniting Church, held the exhibition in February, with a second one to be held from Sunday 8 to Thursday 19 March, at the Diamond and Jewellery Centres of Australia (DJCA), 97c Flora Tce, North Beach, Perth.
Now retired, Willemina previously worked as a school art teacher. These days, she still teaches art, but to small groups of up to six people in her home studio. She has been passionate about drawing her whole life, and inspired by her environment.
This summer’s bushfire season has left Australia damaged and sore. In true community spirit, we’ve also seen some amazing stories of people coming together to volunteer their time, donate their money, and support each other in harsh times of need.
The Uniting Church in Australia has been, and continues to, provide a range of support for people and communities affected by devastating bushfires around the country – both in crisis care and long-term recovery. In the first 11 days of 2020, 63 Uniting Church chaplains were engaged at 36 bushfire crisis centres. Together they volunteered 1 677 hours of chaplaincy with people directly affected by the fires, some of them experiencing the worst days of their lives.
It’s always easier to cope with the Christmas season when there is someone to walk beside you.
This year, UnitingCare West and the Uniting Church community walked alongside more than 2 000 Western Australians, providing the help and material assistance to ease the stress and difficulty many families feel throughout the season.
The unprecedented demand for UnitingCare West’s support services through November and December could easily have become overwhelming if not for our Uniting Church community. Together, we supported Western Australians who are doing it tough.
UnitingWorld’s Lent Event is your chance to join others who are pledging to live simply during the 40 days of Lent. You can sign up as an individual or with a team to raise funds for and learn about projects that are building peace between Muslims and Christians as they beat poverty together. Lent Event will be held from Wednesday 26 February to Friday 10 April 2020.
This year’s feature project is in Ambon, Indonesia, where unthinkable violence in 1999 left 5 000 dead and 70 000 homeless. UnitingWorld’s partner, the Protestant Church of Maluku, is running projects that bring people together for peacebuilding workshops and livelihood projects. The aim is to create bonds of friendship between Muslims and Christians while generating desperately needed income in a province where most people live on less than $1 a day.
How can you be involved?
- As part of a team or as an individual, take up the challenge to live simply for 40 days. The new Lent Event website allows you to easily create a personal challenge- forty days of prayer; forty days on one meal a day? Share your goal via Facebook or email with friends and family to help raise money for some of the poorest people in our global neighbourhood. Track your progress, create a blog post, engage your children and young people.
- Be inspired by stories of peace building and transformed lives, told through our weekly video series, Bible studies, prayers and reflections. You can download these directly in the one simple package here, including an inspiring promotional trailer to use with small groups and congregations.
All funds raised support Uniting Church partners in Ambon and beyond to fight poverty, raise up women and girls, build the capacity of leaders and run peacebuilding activities.
A Trawloolway man reflects on Christian faith, by Garry Deverell
The Uniting Church has come a long way in its walk with Aboriginal people, but how deeply have we contextualised our theology in the full history of this place called Australia?
What colonial lenses do we still look at God and church through? What have we missed about our understanding of Jesus and the gospel by not fully appreciating Aboriginal perspectives?
These are some of the questions that Garry Worete Deverell, a Trawloolway man from northern Tasmania, has asked in this important contribution, to guide our reflection and practice of what being Christian means in the colonised land of Australia.
Deverell invites us, with a sometimes courageous vulnerability, to consider his own reconciling of Aboriginal spirituality and Christian scripture. He offers both profound insights and confronting challenges. Deverell turns a revealing light not only on our subtle and often unrealised Western dualism that can separate spirit from earth, but also on the reality of doing theology on invaded land.
By Gil Cann, 2018, Albatross Books
‘People don’t need more information, but more affirmation; not more training, but more recognition of the gifts God has already given them. They don’t need to be recruited, but released. They don’t need more courses, but more opportunities for ministry. They need to be valued and appreciated – they need your encouragement and prayer” (pg 121).
Based in Melbourne, Pastor Gil Cann is a frequent preacher and evangelist across Australia, including rural WA and speaking at CampFIRE, an annual camp run by the Pastoral Network of Evangelicals Uniting in Mission Action (PNEUMA).
His exploration of the most pressing issues facing the church and our society are both challenging and encouraging, making this a highly recommended read for anyone who continues to hope, pray and work for a future where the church is relevant and effective. My personal copy of this book is underlined and highlighted throughout, as Gil raises our gaze from the church as an organisation, where we are all about the same thing, to church as an organism – the body of Christ – where the same thing is in us… the Holy Spirit.
Categories
Lessons from Bourke
My wife and I were lucky enough to travel through Bourke in western New South Wales on a trip through central Australia to visit our son’s family in Melbourne.
I have been involved with the Mowanjum Aboriginal community for over ten years as a member of the Boab Network, which grew out of All Saint’s Floreat Uniting Church. Through the network, we have become very familiar with the issues that confront Aboriginal people in the Mowanjum community and the nearby town of Derby.
More than 200 members of the St Stephen’s School community enjoyed a night under the stars at the School’s inaugural Community Campout.
Although temperatures dropped below zero, nothing could dampen the warmth and community spirit of the event. St Stephen’s School has owned the 115-acre property in Dwellingup, which was recently renamed The Kaadadjan Centre, for several years. It is opposite Lane Poole Reserve and is bound by the Murray River, Bibbulmun Tracks and Munda Biddi Trails. It has been used mostly for Outdoor Education and camps, but the school has been working to open it up to more curriculum areas for learning and enjoyment by the wider school community.