Category: Stories & Feature Articles

Family violence: change the conversation

Post author By revivewa
Post date October 12, 2015

When Rosie Batty bravely spoke to news cameras outside her home on 13 February 2014, the day after her son, Luke, was murdered by his father, she spoke up for women and children all over Australia.

Filled with grief from losing her 11-year-old son, her moving address to the nation shone light on family violence across Australia.

“No one loved Luke more than Greg, his father. No one loved Luke more than me. Family violence happens to everybody, no matter how nice your house is, how intelligent you are. It happens to anyone and everyone,” she said.

From that moment on, Rosie has dedicated her life to changing conversations around family violence, giving the issue the recognition it needs. It was for this reason she was awarded the Australian of the Year accolade in 2015. Her campaigning has paid off, as on 24 September, the Federal Government announced a $100m package to tackle domestic violence. Rosie welcomed this announcement, while acknowledging there is still a long way to go.

Speaking to the WA Department of Health this year, Rosie highlighted some of Australia’s grave statistics.

“It’s a huge issue because its two women a week on average being murdered right now, one in three women affected by violence, one in four children,” she said. “It means that you know somebody who has family violence in their lives, or has experienced family violence.”

Dr Deidre Palmer, moderator of the Uniting Church in South Australia and president-elect of the Uniting Church in Australia, has also been involved in speaking up on the issue. Last year she launched the Beyond Violence campaign, a Christian response to dealing with domestic violence in our communities. With a background in social work, Deidre knows all too well that abuse comes in many forms. While physical abuse often leaves visible marks, emotional, financial and spiritual abuse are also debilitating.

Tags non-violence, Social Justice

Stories & Feature Articles

Great things, great love: a refugee story

Post author By revivewa
Post date October 6, 2015

There’s an old saying: “We cannot do great things, only small things with great love.”

Sometimes, perhaps we can do both.

Kakuma refugee camp is a sprawling mass of humanity on the border between Kenya and South Sudan. Under canvas and tin supplied by the UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency, and the Kenyan government, more than 150,000 people make their homes, many separated from brothers, sisters and parents by fighting across the border in South Sudan and Somalia. Into this maelstrom, another little life emerged last month. Her name is Deborah. She might never have been.

It was an ordinary morning for young South Sudanese midwives completing their prac in the Kakuma Mission hospital. Many in their early twenties, they’ve been relocated with the help of the Uniting Church in Australia from the South Sudanese town of Leer due to heavy fighting. Their training facility was torched. Some of the women don’t know where their families are – many fled into the surrounding bush as rebels stormed the area. Husbands are missing. Children.

The young women carry on with their studies, supported by UnitingWorld partner, the Presbyterian Relief and Development Agency of South Sudan. They’re determined to finish their midwifery courses and when stability returns, go back to their country and serve their sisters. In the meantime, they study at Kakuma and serve their fellow refugees.

Tags A Helping Hand, International

Stories & Feature Articles

Naming God

Post author By revivewa
Post date September 19, 2015

Some feminist Christians have apparently abandoned the doctrine of the Trinity, in which God is known as ‘father, son and holy spirit’. Others still use these words, knowing that all human language is symbolic and inadequate for naming God and that gendered words do not make God male.

However, the political and pastoral uses of an implied maleness in naming God have always affirmed and empowered men, in preference to women, in the church. How should that be weighed against the danger for the church in abandoning the doctrine?

Alternatives that name three functions instead of relations, for example ‘creator, Christ and companion’, can only be accessories, not central in doctrine or liturgy. Alternatives such as naming God ‘mother’ and suggesting the spirit is female do not seem to find wide acceptance in ordinary congregational life. Perhaps they only create the same problem differently. Perhaps they founder on the facts that Jesus was a man and that his naming God ‘father’ was very distinctive.

But the use that Jesus made of claiming God as his ‘father’ is equally distinctive, if less discussed. It had radical implications for him and his political and pastoral relations with others… which were not good news for patriarchy.

According to Mark’s Gospel, unclean spirits recognised that Jesus was the son of God, but two important groups of people did not. Religious leaders accused him of sorcery, and Jesus’ own family accused him of insanity. Jesus’ mother and brothers and sisters attempted to restrain him (3:19b-22). And yes, this does mean real brothers and sisters; Mary’s other children. But where was Joseph, who, we imagine, begat these other children? Surely it would take a father, the real authority in a first-century Palestinian household, to restrain a first-born son like Jesus, not younger brothers, or sisters or a mother?

Tags Theology and Spiritual Reflections

Stories & Feature Articles

Exploring the deep with Odd Fish

Post author By revivewa
Post date September 10, 2015

On Monday nights in a cosy corner of the historic Fremantle Wesley Uniting Church, a handful of people come together to eat, pray, and share in the Gospel in a spiritual space.

They call themselves Odd Fish, referring to their nature of going against the status quo of contemporary society and choosing to walk the path of Jesus, sharing love with the outsider. Each Monday evening they share a simple meal together before taking part in a casual liturgy and discussion on a variety of topics.

Paul Montague, First Third specialist for the South Metro Region and one of the group’s founders, said that the group is a space for people to explore their spirituality and connection to religion, including missional activities.

“Most of the core group are in their 20s and 30s,” said Paul. “I don’t think it’s really about boundaries of age, though. Older people who identify as a bit of a free spirit but have an affection for the tradition of contemplation or mysticism, or have a leaning towards ‘Christian humanism’, would fit right in.

Tags Church and Community

Stories & Feature Articles

Getting curried away

Post author By revivewa
Post date September 6, 2015

This June, 100 people from Uniting Church in the City (UCIC) sat down to a delicious lunch of six different Sri Lankan curries, prepared by Maru, one of our Tamil friends. Maru’s childhood and education was severely disrupted by the 27 year old war in Sri Lanka, as he and his family were forced to move seven times to avoid the bombing raids carried out in the Tamil lands in the north.

His mother taught him to cook, so that whatever happened in those uncertain times he could feed himself and those around him. In July 2014, I had the great privilege of travelling to Sri Lanka to attend the Sri Lankan Methodist Church’s bicentennial celebration of 200 years of Methodism in Sri Lanka, and seeing the many projects being run by the church there as they seek to rebuild people’s lives after the war. To mark this momentous occasion, a celebration service was held in a great cathedral in Colombo, attended by 9,000 people, a government stamp was printed and a book on the history of Methodism in Sri Lanka was published.

One chapter in that book entitled Rethinking Mission in Sri Lanka was written by Rev Dr Albert Jebanesan, the president of the Methodist Church in Sri Lanka, and has particular relevance for us in Australia, posing such questions as, ‘How can the church in Australia engage with the culture around it?’ and ‘Can we acknowledge and embrace the beauty and truth of other cultures and ideologies around us as expressions of the ceaseless creativity in the natural world and in human cultures which we call God?’

Tags Church and Community, International

Stories & Feature Articles

Craft group adds warmth to Perth charity

Post author By revivewa
Post date September 6, 2015

For the past seven years Wembley Uniting Church has been running a Craft Group, which meets at the church on the first and third Friday mornings of each month.

Although, in the beginning, the idea was for each member to choose their own craft, one particular project soon became the focus of the group’s activities. This was crocheting rugs and knitting teddy bears for the local not-for-profit charity, Wheelchairs for Kids.

Initiated by the Rotary Club of Scarborough in 1998, Wheelchairs for Kids consists of a large team of volunteers who assemble wheelchairs in a warehouse in Wangara. These are then distributed free to disabled children in almost eighty under-resourced countries. To date, they have made over 30,000 wheelchairs. The rugs are a valuable addition to the machines, which also go with soft toys and small tool-kits.

Tags A Helping Hand, Church and Community

Stories & Feature Articles

Alive @ Assembly

Post author By revivewa
Post date August 20, 2015

With a touch of jet lag, great hopes and a few anxieties I checked in on Sunday lunchtime at Trinity Residential College for the beginning of the Uniting Church’s 14th Triennial Assembly. This Assembly was on our home turf; Trinity, the Assembly accommodation, is a Uniting Church WA college, and just across the road from the beautiful Winthrop Hall where we had our daytime sessions.

Our collective task was the same as whenever people of the Uniting Church meet in church councils, presbyteries and synods; we gather in the presence of God to discern the will of God. For the next six days that was our core purpose. The smoking ceremony right at the beginning reminded us of the welcome of Nyungar people and our covenant with the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress (UAICC).

The evening installation of our new president, Stuart McMillan, was a powerful and creative celebration of the rich diversity of God’s people in the movement we call Uniting Church. Sadly, sometimes worship is bland, but the worship experience was rich and varied and honoured the one who brings sparkle and new life to us. Rev Cathie Lambert, worship coordinator for the week, and her team did an amazing job. Each morning we began with worship that was simple, reflective and celebratory; this set the tone for the rest of the day. I also believe that the faithful band of prayer warriors who prayed and fasted for 40 days and gathered each morning to pray on a 24-hour basis during Assembly, significantly contributed to the texture and spirituality of our gatherings.

Tags Uniting Church

Stories & Feature Articles

Living life and faith cross-culturally

Post author By revivewa
Post date August 19, 2015

Rev Dr Apwee Ting found wonder in diversity from an early age.

“Growing up in Indonesia was such a happy time for me,” recalls the Uniting Church in Australia’s (UCA) newest national director.

“I remember playing outside from morning to night – flying kites, playing soccer, badminton and marbles. We had many friends of different ethnicities and everyone always left their doors open.”

Half a century later Apwee will be looking to share that same sense of wonder across the Uniting Church in the area of Multicultural and Cross Cultural Ministry (MCCM).

While Apwee’s national role commenced in July, his preparation for the role has been a lifetime in the making, and begins with his own migrant journey.

The Ting family settled in Solo in Central Java in the 1950s.

“My parents were farmers who migrated from Fujian Province in China looking for a better life,” he explains. “For them the diversity of Indonesia meant opportunity.”

There was hardship too. By 1962 when Apwee was born, Java was gripped by severe poverty and increasing political tension ahead of Suharto becoming Indonesia’s President. The chief concern of Apwee’s family was day-to-day survival.

Tags International, Multi-Cultural, Multicultural

Stories & Feature Articles

Partner church guests take in the sights of Perth

Post author By revivewa
Post date August 16, 2015

International guests to the 14th Triennial Assembly a tour of local Indigenous sites, visited local enterprises, and enjoyed some local multicultural hospitality on day four of the meeting.

UnitingWorld guests and other ecumenical partners found themselves warmly welcomed at St Aidan’s Claremont Uniting Church as guests of the congregation and the Western Australia Multicultural Committee at an Assembly Multicultural Dinner.

“The most lovely food and the most lovely people!” enthused Pacific partners in particular as they tucked into traditional taro and other delicacies from their homelands. Domino’s Pizza also put in a special appearance, as did a youth choir singing grace and Rev Steve Francis, moderator of the Uniting Church in WA.

UnitingWorld guests continued to be impressed with Western Australian innovation and commitment on a morning tour of the Good Samaritan Industries warehouse in Canningvale. Donning bright fluorescent vests – some of which they were reluctant to hand back later – the team toured the floor of the factory which provides employment for people with disabilities, who sort and prepare donated goods for sale in iconic ‘Good Sammy’ stores throughout WA.

Tags Intercultural, interfaith, International, Multi-Cultural, Multicultural