Category: Stories & Feature Articles

Moderator’s column: First the call, then where?

Post author By revivewa
Post date December 22, 2015

Walker Percy once wrote, “you can get all straight A’s and still flunk life.”

Somehow we fail at life if we are unable to discover its, and our own, meaning. Deep in our hearts most of us want to find and fulfil a purpose bigger than ourselves. Kierkegaard, a Christian philosopher, put it this way: “the thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wants me to do.”

We live in a time when we have too much to live with and too little to live for. Having lots of possessions and people in our lives still leaves a gap; a longing for something more, a sense of purpose and a sense of call.

Tags Theology and Spiritual Reflections

Stories & Feature Articles

Billabong Centre a community hub

Post author By revivewa
Post date December 17, 2015

The Billabong Community Centre has been a long term project for Billabong Uniting Church. Hard work has finally paid off, as the centre officially opened its doors on Sunday 4 October.

The congregation celebrated with an opening worship service and a Grand Opening Community Festival, a family friendly community event complete with a petting zoo, bouncy castle, face painting and plenty of games for young and old alike.

The Billabong Community Centre has been built with the local community in mind. The centre has purpose built function rooms which can be booked out by various community groups, including a main kitchen, upstairs and downstairs rooms, a meeting room, a resource library and a large outdoor grassed area. There is also a playgroup room which has its own kitchen and outside playground area which is perfect for children’s birthday parties. Kids clubs, exercise classes and conferences have already started taking place at the centre.

Tags Church and Community

Stories & Feature Articles

Charity ride supports crisis care

Post author By revivewa
Post date December 13, 2015

Byford Crisis Care, a community service of Byford Uniting Church, recently received a huge amount of support from the local community to help families in need in the lead-up to Christmas.

Linda Burgess, an assistant at Byford Crisis Care, mentioned to her family about the great work of her friend, Helen Rowe, a member at Byford Uniting Church, providing food parcels and assistance to families affected by domestic violence in the district.

Tags A Helping Hand

Stories & Feature Articles

Memories wrapped in bricks and mortar

Post author By revivewa
Post date December 7, 2015

St Andrew’s on St Georges Terrace, is the church where my parents were married in 1943 and where I went to annual church services as a PLC student. Probably the last service I attended, the church was packed for the funeral of Heather Barr, principal of PLC and lifelong St Andrew’s member who died suddenly and unexpectedly in 1989. Those are my memories of St Andrew’s.

I’ve begun this article with personal memories because in my research I have found plenty of information on the building but very little on the people who worshipped faithfully each week, whose life milestones of baptism, marriage and death were celebrated there. And yet it is people who are the church, not the building.

The birth of St Andrew’s began with the arrival of Rev David Shearer. Through the joint action of the colonial committees of the Established and Free Churches of Scotland, he was commissioned to plant the ‘blue banner’ of Presbyterianism in the colony of Perth, Western Australia. He arrived at Fremantle with his wife, Margaret, and seven children, plus governess, on 1 October 1879. Not one to waste time, he held his first service ten days later in St George’s Hall, Hay Street. His sermon was preached from the deck of HMS Pinafore, the set of the Gilbert and Sullivan musical comedy performed there the previous night.

Tags Church and Community

Stories & Feature Articles

Exchange of hope in Tanah Papua

Post author By revivewa
Post date December 6, 2015

“We cannot forget the value of this program for both the Australian and Papuan communities involved,” Rev Brian Thorpe, minister at the Scarborough and Waterman’s Bay Uniting Churches reflected as he sat waiting for his plane back to Perth. “It truly is an exchange program through which everyone benefits.”

Brian is a member of the Black Pearl Network, a multi-congregation network of the Uniting Church WA dedicated to supporting the work of our church partners in Papua. He recently returned from a trip to Tanah Papua, the eastern most province of Indonesia, along with Kerry Povey from Trinity North Uniting Church, Lee-Anne Burnett from All Saints Floreat Uniting Church and myself, justice and mission officer for the Uniting Church WA.

The beautiful and sometimes troubled province often referred to as ‘West Papua’ has become lodged firmly in the hearts of this small, but dedicated group. Through the Black Pearl Network (a name given to the group by the Papuans they work with), the Uniting Church WA supports a number of projects run by our partner church, Gereja Kristen Injili Indonesia (GKI). This trip was yet another chance to strengthen these relationships and continue the mutual learning the partnership provides.

Tags A Helping Hand, International

Stories & Feature Articles

People’s Climate March: Australia has spoken

Post author By revivewa
Post date December 3, 2015

To coincide with the United Nations climate talks in Paris, thousands of Australians came together across the world to call for strong action on global climate change. The marches were held across the weekend of 27 – 29 November. The Uniting Church in Australia encouraged all its members, congregations, schools and agencies to take part. The marches were well attended, with an estimated 45 000 people marching in Sydney alone, with 7000 at the Perth rally.

The Perth rally began from Wellington Square, following a welcome to country by Noel Nannup and a spirit dance from Indigenous dancers to chase away bad spirits. There were speeches from firefighters and religious leaders, calling for urgent climate action. The rally was led by frontline communities; Indigenous groups who were already feeling the effects of climate change. A large contingent of doctors were also marching, concerned about the health impacts, along with environmental, religious and political groups.

Tags Environment

Stories & Feature Articles

Rick Morrell: honoured to be part of the journey

Post author By revivewa
Post date October 22, 2015

Rick Morrell, after 23 years in ministry leadership working with young people in the Uniting Church WA, will be leaving his role as co-ordinator of the First Third team to begin a position with UnitingCare NSW and ACT.

Rick gave up a promising career in civil engineering to answer a call to candidate for the Order of St Stephen as a youth worker in 1981. Since that time, he has mentored and journeyed alongside hundreds of young people as they meandered their way through faith and life. In 2009, Rick started a process of transition from youth worker towards ordained ministry. While he never intended to leave WA, having been born and bred here, the call to ministry is one which can’t be ignored.

“If I’m going to be true to becoming ordained then I also need to be true to the notion of call,” he said. “And when the call comes, the call comes.”

Rev Hollis Wilson, convener of the First Third Working Group, said that Rick has been on a lifelong journey with ministry.

“His sense of call to ministry has been woven throughout much of his life’s journey,” Hollis said. “Rick’s impending ordination in October has really involved 23 years of ‘formation’ that has equipped him to skilfully fulfil a wide range of roles within the Uniting Church.

“In November, Rick will take up the position of director of mission for UnitingCare NSW and ACT. This appointment is an affirmation of the varied gifts and skills that Rick has exercised here in Western Australia and it is with sadness for us and elation for NSW and ACT that we congratulate Rick and send him on his way.”

Rick has been involved in all aspects of ministry with young people in the Uniting Church WA, including camps, retreats, National Christian Youth Convention (NCYC), workshops, training and more. His proudest moments include the formation of First Third Ministry in 2008.

“The decision of the Synod and Presbytery to commit to a ten-year window of First Third ministry was a great point of leadership, and somewhat prophetic, because it has enabled us to think outside the traditional models and to explore with substantial freedom new approaches, and thinking in new ways, about ministry – particularly to people under 30-years-of-age,” he said. “The key to that has emerged, that First Third is really an intergenerational strategy which cannot be ignored in any model or paradigm that we choose to follow.

“Arriving at that point has been one thing that I would take away as a significant achievement.”

While he is sad to leave the role and ministry which he has shaped and moulded for years, he is confident that the First Third Team will carry the light and continue to share the concept of First Third ministry with the church.

“There’s now a team of people who can really articulate the First Third concept,” he said. “I’m really confident in that and really proud that they’ve been able to pick that up – and it will only grow because it’s a developing theory and a developing theology.

“I’ve always delighted in seeing young people grow in themselves and in their faith journey and it has been an honour for me to have been part of those journeys.”

Rick’s ordination service was held on Saturday 24 October, 11.00am, at the Cottesloe Civic Centre, overlooking the ocean.

Top image: Rick Morrell was presented with a silver bullet at the 2015 Synod meeting. He has always said that he didn’t have one.

Heather Dowling

Tags Our People and Agencies

Stories & Feature Articles

Editorial: Where there is hope

Post author By revivewa
Post date October 20, 2015

The devastating image of Aylan Kurdi, the three-year-old boy washed ashore in Turkey, inundated my Facebook and Twitter feed in September.

I hate seeing the exploitation of such an image; an image which exposed a beautiful boy in his most vulnerable moment. But, I hope that it moved the world to think differently about refugees, asylum seekers and the crisis in Syria. There are real people, with families and children, who are suffering.

On 7 September, at Get Up!’s Light the Dark event, more than a thousand people crowded the Perth Cultural Centre to light a candle to remember Aylan and others who are seeking protection – many who have died doing so. Similar events were held all over the country.

Jarrod McKenna, founder of the First Home Project and pastor at Westcity Church, spoke at the event.

Tags Refugees and Asylum Seekers

Stories & Feature Articles

Moderator’s column: Hope for the future through Jesus

Post author By revivewa
Post date October 18, 2015

There are plenty of people who are willing to write off the Christian church, believing that we have no future; that we are without hope. In a recent article, one journalist argued that with the worldwide spread of education, technology and science, the need for religion would evaporate. Our world would become at last religion-less, a bit like John Lennon’s song, Imagine – the dream of a world free of religion.

Rather than ask, ‘has the church a future?’ I first want to ask, ‘has the human race a future?’

Ideas of the future exercise a great hold over us. Indeed, we need some idea of the future if we are to achieve anything in the present. The trainee soldier, athlete, politician and student are often motivated by a sense of what may lie ahead. In our diverse society, different hopes about the future are emerging.

The humanist looks for a society where human reason and mutual consideration will flourish. The environmentalist hopes for a sustainable world where pollution is minimised and the earth flourishes again. Many dream of higher standards of living, full employment, a fairer distribution of wealth, an end to poverty, injustice, violence and greater prosperity. Christians, while sharing these hopes, have a distinctive contribution to make when thinking about the future.

Tags Theology and Spiritual Reflections