Category: Stories & Feature Articles

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Stories & Feature Articles

Moderator’s column: Do we pass the welcome test?

A friend of mine spent a few years away from church. She was burnt out. Eventually she decided it was time to return to a worshipping congregation, but wondered which one. She decided to go visiting congregations on a Sunday morning in the hope she might be welcomed beyond a handshake at the door and a copy of the news-sheet.

She worked out a ‘cup of tea’ test. The plan was to hold her cup of tea after the service, very slowly sip it, and smile at everyone who walked past, hoping that someone might be interested enough to pause and talk with her.

Sadly, several churches failed the cup of tea test. Thankfully, at least one church passed the test when someone noticed her, engaged her in conversation and seemed genuinely interested in her wellbeing.

Too easily we conclude we are a friendly congregation, when it may be the case that we do not notice or go out of our way to look after the newcomer or the stranger. We may have created a place of welcome for the regulars, but not so much for the hesitant visitor.

In congregational ministry I regularly encouraged our leaders to follow the ‘two-minute’ rule. I would suggest that straight after the benediction every leader resist the temptation to gravitate towards their friends. Rather, in those two minutes they should cast a careful eye around the congregation for the visitor or stranger and go straight to them with welcoming words and see where it might lead.

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NYALC: a space for young people

Three years ago, the Uniting Church in Australia, in conjunction with the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress (UAICC), established a conference for young adults. The National Young Adult Leaders’ Conference (NYALC) is run each year to provide an opportunity for young people in the church to meet, network, be refreshed and to learn and develop their leadership skills.

This year, NYALC was held from Friday 8 to Wednesday 13 July in Burleigh Heads, Queensland. A cohort of eleven young people from Uniting Church Western Australia and UAICC Western Australia congregations attended the conference.

Jack van der Pal, from Rockingham Uniting Church, was one of the young people who attended.

Jack is in his final year of a double degree in Geology and Geophysics at Curtin University. He serves his congregation in music, audiovisual, and helps to run the young adult ministry.

On why he chose to go to NYALC Jack said, “At first, I was a bit unsure and then I started speaking to people [who had attended previously] and they said that it’s amazing when you get so many young people together. So I wanted to go and discover what it was like for myself.”

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Made on Earth: how gospel writers created the Christ, by Lorraine Parkinson

Made on EarthWe are so fortunate, biblical scholarship reveals two gospels. The gospel of Jesus, whose teachings to counter the sin of human violence led to his unjust death. This gospel of Jesus’ teachings became incorporated into gospels about Jesus as the Christ sent by God to die as a sacrifice for our sin.

Lorraine Parkinson, an ordained minister of the Uniting Church, with a PhD from the French School of Biblical and Archaeological Studies in Jerusalem explains both gospels in her two books.

The first, The World according to Jesus: his blue print for the best possible world (2011). Then Made on Earth: how the gospel writers created the Christ (2016) presents detailed evidence that the Christ of the gospels is the creation of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John, plus later editors.

Thus the gospel writers bequeathed to Christianity two contradictory gospels. The one about Jesus the Christ, increasingly irrelevant to most people, while the gospel of Jesus of Nazareth addresses the escalating violence, which we are all called by God to resist.

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Standing on holy ground

Rev Eira Clapton recently visited Sri Lanka with UnitingWorld staff, to see the work of the Methodist Church of Sri Lanka, which is supported by a partnership with the Uniting Church WA. She shares stories from her trip with Revive. 

I start a new notebook for this Sri Lanka trip, because a pen and paper are quickly accessible when you want to make notes in a foreign country. On the title page I write the words: “What if we were standing on holy ground?”

Holy ground is difficult to get to. For us it involves a very early start. At 3.51am, I climb into a small bus and we set off on crowded roads out of Colombo to the more remote north-east of the country. These are the areas which have been devastated by the double disaster of civil war and tsunami. There are fewer people to do the work in these areas – many of the young were killed in the war or the disaster, or left disabled by them. The roads are poor so the villages are hard to get to, isolated from each other and from government services. The bus rollicks over dry creek beds and picks its way at a snail’s pace around deep potholes.

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Truth and life for those worn down

In Micah 6:8, the prophet challenges us, “What does the Lord require of you? Surely it is to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

Six years ago, my daughter – who is a professional midwife – was advised that her unborn child had a high risk of Down Syndrome and was advised to consider abortion. She struggled with this advice and in her prayers turned to this text. She and her husband decided to go ahead with the pregnancy and to face whatever consequences may lie ahead; acting justly, loving mercy and walking with God. As it turned out their son, who has been named Micah, was born without Down Syndrome.

I write this because we so often make our choices for our own personal benefit, rather than for justice, with mercy and in humility. It is a difficult balance and we often get it wrong.

Jesus set us an example of how to walk this balance. It did not mean that his view of equity for all made him a soft touch. Indeed not! He was angry at injustice, he rejected favouritism, and he overturned the tables of the crooked moneylenders. And yet he called a tax collector, loves sinners and forgave those who killed him.

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Belonging in Port Hedland

The Port Hedland community is often called a working town, a community in isolation, whose main focus is work. This makes for a community that is transient and, particularly in the current economic climate, unstable. This dynamic is reflected in the church community. We find ourselves experiencing ‘belonging’ with a completely different group of faces and personalities every 12 to 18 months.

The people, while they are in Port Hedland, work, at times, long hours and long weeks without a break. Those who work in community services work hard, long hours. This church community is one like I have never experienced before. We are small, but we are made up of such different people with rich and disparate beliefs, creeds, and philosophies which inspire and guide our lives.

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Students serve in South Africa

A group of St Stephen’s School students have brought smiles to the faces of hundreds of underprivileged children in South Africa, following their recent service learning trip during the April school holidays.

The tour, co-ordinated by St Stephen’s School secondary teacher Dale Kelly, saw the Year 10 students cart bricks, paint and perform manual labour to upgrade sporting and other facilities at the Jehovah Jireh Haven (JJ Haven) orphanage on South Africa’s Sunshine Coast.

They also visited homeless shelters and townships to gain insight into the living conditions of disadvantaged South Africans; played soccer games against local teams; and delivered 250 pairs of soccer boots donated by the St Stephen’s School community.

“It was an amazing experience for all of us,” Dale said. “To be able to give something to the children who have so little was a huge reward. Our students showed great maturity and compassion throughout the trip and learned an appreciation of how privileged we truly are in Australia.”

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Raising a village in Camillo

We’ve all heard the saying ‘it takes a village to raise a child.’ Louise Pekan, part-time outreach worker at The Billabong Uniting Church, puts this into action and more; believing it takes a village to support mums too.

With a passion for children and families, Louise felt called to start a Mothers of Preschoolers (MOPS) group in Camillo, a suburb in the City of Armadale. With assistance from members of The Billabong Uniting Church, the program launched in May last year and meets at the Kelmscott Church of Christ.

“Surrounding the area is Armadale and Kelmscott which have a lot of programs running out of them, a lot of infrastructure, support groups, and community centres and things,” Louise said. “But Camillo itself has kind of been left alone to a great degree.

“So we have seen that space, where particularly the schools and the families are struggling to gain support from outside sources, and have kind of gone, ‘how can we bring in some of the things that we know and know how to do well, encourage others, equip them and empower them to do that themselves?’”

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On-site chaplaincy

It is no secret that the mining boom in Western Australia is over. The resource industry has slowed and hundreds of former fly-in-fly-out (FIFO) workers are struggling to adjust to life after FIFO, still more remain on resource projects in remote Western Australia. So how do FIFO workers who are still on projects deal with the pressures of a slowing industry, along with isolation and increasing money problems?

Rev John Dihm provides services as a chaplain to FIFO workers at a number of Rio Tinto mining camp sites in the Pilbara, with the Uniting Church WA’s Remote Area Ministry, Tom Price. John moved to Tom Price three years ago from South Australia where he ministered to people living on stations.

“I thought I’d be doing station work again, and very little mining work. I met the mining manager here and we became very good friends,” he said.

Three months into his time there, his manager friend called John to ask for his help; one of the mine workers at the site had died by suicide. This was the beginning of John’s ministry to FIFO workers in the Pilbara.

According to John, “FIFO workers talk to you about three things: one is their relationships back home, two is about their financial situation, and the third one is about their anxiety of being on site.”

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Black Pearls shine brightly in dark times

The Uniting Church WA Black Pearl Network has just returned from another fascinating trip to the land of Papua, a place of both hopeful and troubling developments. Geoff Bice, justice and mission consultant at the Uniting Church WA recently traveled to West Papua with the Black Pearl Network. He reflects on his journey.

Whenever we say we are going to West Papua, people often think we mean Papua New Guinea (PNG), but we don’t. It’s close in a number of ways, but an entirely different place. It’s on the same landmass, its people are of a shared ethnicity, and it’s roughly equivalent in size to PNG; but it lies within the borders of Indonesia.

Whenever we go we do so at the invitation of our partner church – Gereja Kristen Injili Indonesia (GKI) di Tanah Papua – an amazingly courageous and gentle collection of Christians who are always wonderfully friendly and hospitable to us.

Whenever we come back we are always a little bit different. In a good way.

As always, it was a delight to meet with previous students from the Australia Papua Cultural Exchange Program (APCEP). We are always sure to take up a selection of children’s English books for them to use in running their own English classes with other young Papuans. It is so encouraging to see our small contribution multiplied by the students as they pass on their knowledge to others in their community.

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