Category: Stories & Feature Articles

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Stories & Feature Articles

Editorial: TLC – Mission accomplished

I’ve previously written in Revive about my connection to Trinity Learning Centre (TLC) as a past student when my son was a baby. It was a sad day for many other past students, teachers,  classroom supervisors, crèche staff, congregation members, committee members and volunteers when TLC closed its doors on Saturday 28 February this year. TLC, a program of UnitingCare  West, originally began out of Trinity Uniting Church (now part of Uniting Church in the City) providing education and support to pregnant and parenting young mothers. I’ve written about the  impact TLC had on my life before, so I won’t get into that again. I have a better story to tell…

At the farewell, Sue Ash, CEO of UnitingCare West, spoke about the sadness and anger people felt at the news that this amazing program was ending. She then reminded us of the success of TLC  – not just for the women who graduated, but also for the church as it filled a need. When TLC began, almost 30 years ago, there was nothing like it in Perth. Dr Harry Cohen recognised a need  for young mothers to have an opportunity to finish high school, through his work at King Edward Memorial Hospital for Women, which has a dedicated adolescent maternity ward.

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Moderator’s column: We are who we eat with

Someone once said, ‘we are what we eat.’

I am not so sure. Maybe we are who we eat with.

I have shared two meals recently that made me think more deeply about the faith we are called to practice every day. One meal was a breakfast. There were over 100 homeless people present; it  was a fried breakfast, the best kind. It was at Tranby Day Centre, a service provided by UnitingCare West on Aberdeen Street, Perth, just around the corner from the Uniting Church Centre.

It was a Friday summer morning and most of those enjoying the bacon and egg had spent the night out in the park, on a bench or in a shelter if they were lucky. I witnessed an outstanding  ministry that demonstrates in practical ways the care of God and the compassion of Christ. Everyday, God calls us to care about others, especially those who are so easily forgotten or  neglected. One of the traps of living in an affluent and materialistic society is that we can so easily overlook people on the fringes and only eat with people who are like us. Jesus demonstrated a  radical hospitality, dining with all kinds of people.

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A space for all to share their gifts

Several times I have heard Rev Prof Andrew Dutney, president of the Uniting Church in Australia, speak of paragraph 13 of the Basis of Union with young people. I get excited every time he  brings it up because it challenges my imagination, pushing me towards a vision of the future church that I sense lying in wait, not quite revealed.

The paragraph reads:

Basis of Union paragraph 13 – Gifts and Ministries

The Uniting Church affirms that every member of the Church is engaged to confess the faith of Christ crucified and to be his faithful servant. It acknowledges with thanksgiving that the one  Spirit has endowed the members of Christ’s Church with a diversity of gifts, and that there is no gift without its corresponding service: all ministries have a part in the ministry of Christ. The  Uniting Church, at the time of union, will recognise and accept the ministries of those who have been called to any task or responsibility in the uniting Churches. The Uniting Church will thereafter provide for the exercise by men and women of the gifts God bestows upon them, and will order its life in response to God’s call to enter more fully into mission.

There are several points of interest in Paragraph 13. Firstly, there is an affirmation that “every member of the church” is to be engaged in confessing Christ and faithful service. This is a  reminder that the first third, people aged 30 and under, are not just Christians in waiting, but members of the body of Christ with the same responsibilities to serve and confess as older members  of the church. Secondly, there is the point that the Spirit has given a diversity of gifts to members of the church, and “there is no gift without its corresponding service”. This is a  fascinating idea. If the call is for all gifts to be used in service then it becomes imperative, not only for us to identify the gifts of everyone in our congregations, but to help them use them to  serve the church, each other and the world. Far from the humility often pushed upon us, this call links back to the idea of not hiding our light under a bushel, suggesting that it might in fact be a  sin to fail to use our gifts for the good of others.

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Concern for WA’s remote Indigenous communities

As the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress (UAICC) prepares to celebrate its 30th anniversary on 29 May this year, its members and supporters enter, yet again, an emotional  struggle to protect their human rights.

On Close the Gap Day, 19 March, hundreds of people marched from Forrest Place in Perth’s CBD to Parliament House in West Perth, to voice their concerns over the planned closure of 150  remote Aboriginal communities around Western Australia. Last year, the Federal Government announced it would pass on the responsibility of funding remote Aboriginal communities to the  states. In turn, this led to an announcement from the State Government that it could no longer afford funding to these WA communities, and that it would be cut.

The announcements have caused anger, frustration and devastation amongst Indigenous Australians and the wider community. Even more hurt was caused when Prime Minister Tony Abbott  suggested living in an Aboriginal community was a lifestyle choice, and that Australia could no longer afford to fund those choices.

Rev Sealin Garlett, chair of the WA Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress, disagrees.

“Indigenous people have a deep connection to our land. This is not just a ‘lifestyle choice’, but part of our cultural and spiritual identity. We need to be on country to look after it,” he said.

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President’s Easter message: Receive the peace, seek the justice

Christ is risen: he is risen indeed! I wish you all a happy Easter, on behalf of the Uniting Church in Australia. I hope that this Easter is a time of peace for you and that you have opportunities to share it with your family and friends. Holidays are precious, but the meaning of this one in particular is profound.

The Apostle Paul summed up Easter like this:

“…in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace…and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.”

Paul’s message of equality and mutuality remains as radical today as it did 2000 years ago. It wasn’t just a religious elite or a specially favoured clan or class or community who could become people of God. All people were people of God through Jesus’ death on the Cross and his resurrection. For Paul, this equality surpassed the bounds of race, class and gender.

He said, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

This is the consistent message of the New Testament that echoes to us down the millennia: In the risen crucified Christ, God gathers people together who don’t belong together, and have no history of getting along together.

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Why did Jesus die?

Why did Jesus die?

Many of you will immediately respond (wondering why I ask the question) “He died for my sins.”

But I’d suggest that we Christians need to stop and think about this a while, for at least a couple of reasons.

Firstly, if you respond with this answer when asked what is Easter all about by someone who is not ‘churched’ what would they make of it? What do you actually mean? “Jesus died for my sins” is actually a shorthand phrase for a lengthy theological account that many of us would have trouble explaining.

But secondly, as the billboard outside St Lukes, Auckland says “Jesus did NOT die for our sins.”

We actually know very little about the death of Jesus. We do know that he was crucified, probably around the Passover, in Jerusalem, by order of the Roman prefect of Judea, Pontius Pilate. It’s not much, but it tells us something significant about Jesus and why he was killed. It tells us that his executioners were Roman, not Jewish. It tells us that his crime was sedition against the Roman state. It tells us that he was regarded by his executioners as a peasant nobody who had the temerity to challenge the Roman ‘peace’.

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Life Abounding: A reading of John’s Gospel, by Brendan Byrne

Brendan Byrne completes his excellent Gospel commentaries with Life Abounding on John. He believes John proclaims a  gospel that will lead readers from mere existence to abundant life, enabling the development of a deep relationship with Jesus Christ. I find it a joy to read Byrne’s clear and uncluttered style and profound insights simply expressed.

While a commentary, Byrne’s pastoral aim means he does not enter into every academic discussion, preferring to seek  theological and spiritual riches in the text. It is both full of depth and accessible. A Melbourne Jesuit, Byrne’s decades-long experience as a New Testament teacher and researcher in the United Faculty of Theology in Melbourne is evident.

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From the Archives: World War I chaplains

Throughout 2015, to mark the centenary year of the ANZAC landing at Gallipoli, Revive will be publishing a series of articles  highlighting the men who provided chaplaincy to those who served in WW1.

Rev Charles Jenkins was born in Maldon Victoria 1869 and arrived in Western Australia in 1896 to become the assistant to  the Rev Dr Rowe of the Perth Circuit. On the completion of his term in Perth he moved through the country areas of WA as a much loved pastor to the people.

Charles, a Methodist minister, was commissioned on 20 January 1915 and sailed on the troopship HMAT Itonus doing duty  as a transport Chaplain for the voyage only. He returned to Australia three months later.

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Tradie volunteers prepare for Outback Links farm revival

The farmers of remote Australia need your help. Many are facing their third year of drought.

Without good rainfall, there are no crops or less stock to generate income for farmers. If vital equipment and infrastructure wears out or breaks down, there isn’t the money or means to repair it. It’s part of a downturn on the land that can lead to stress and depression.

Frontier Services, a national agency of the Uniting Church in Australia, has been helping people in remote Australia for more than 100 years. Since 2005, their volunteers’ program ‘Outback Links’ has grown to more than 1,000 volunteers who travel to remote properties to assist families through difficult times.

This April will bring a new development in ‘Outback Links’ when 10 young apprentice tradespeople participate in a 6 day ‘Outback Links’ farm revival in the drought-afflicted region around Lightning Ridge in North-Western NSW. This trip is a follow up from one in November 2014 where volunteers worked on 30 local properties.

Volunteers include plumbers, mechanics, electricians and carpenters. Under the supervision of professional tradespeople and host farmers, they will repair broken equipment like tractors, motor bikes and farm machinery, and rebuild infrastructure like sheds and homes.

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How Jesus failed: Truth from the mouths of enemies

‘Let’s go back in time and listen to the voices who mocked Jesus. Hard though it is, let’s hear what they said against him and  uncover what it actually means.

Political failure

“Are you the King of the Jews?” asked Pontius Pilate. Did he really want to know, or was he hurling out one of those sick  jokes that come up among soldiers? He could not see a man with an army. His followers, all disappeared by now, are all  ordinary folks and broken people. Is he going to rule the world with that lot?

Pilate thinks a king would gather to himself  unanswerable power, but Jesus does not really give him much of an answer. Political failure? Today, the lasting truth is that  Pilate is gone and the risen Jesus rules billions of souls.

We broken souls have been the bearers of the news of real enduring glory.

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