Tag: Church and Community

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God’s creative vision: a welcome celebration for the Perth Samoan Uniting Church

The Perth Samoan Uniting Church was celebrated and welcomed as a new Uniting Church WA congregation on Friday night, 14 October at Advent Park Maida Vale. It was agreed during a special meeting of the Presbytery at the Annual Meeting of the Synod that the congregation would be received into the Presbytery.

The celebration coincided with the Uniting Church Samoan National Leaders’ Conference, which was held over the weekend in Perth.

To a packed house, including guests from the national and local Samoan community, as well as other churches in Perth, performances from the congregation’s youth choir helped to create an upbeat atmosphere, full of joy.

Rev Steve Francis, moderator of the Uniting Church WA welcomed the Perth Samoan Uniting Church into the flock.

“One of the great gifts of the Uniting Church is that we are a multicultural church,” he said. “And we are celebrating that tonight.”

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Mission for vision

Members of Rockingham Uniting Church have a proud outward looking tradition of supporting causes well beyond the local church.

Over the last 12 months we have risen to the challenge of no less than four special appeals. Our latest venture was in support of the Lions Eye Institute (LEI) in memory of my wife, the late Kaye Hogg for research  into blinding Inherited Retinal Diseases and Macular Degeneration. Our efforts resulted in a donation of $3 000 going to the work of Associate Professor Fred Chen at LEI.

Kaye was a loved member of our congregation who inherited Retinitis Pigmentosa which eventually took her sight. Legally blind by the age of 50, it was her long held desire to donate her eyes to medical science  upon death.

When diagnosed with a non responsive high-grade lymphoma and given 12 months to live, Kaye and I approached Associate Professor Fred Chen at LEI concerning her desire. Fred’s immediate response was, “Kaye, this is a unique opportunity to advance the research into Retinitis Pigmentosa that I am doing.”

He went on to explain that to be an organ donor, it is necessary to die in hospital, where organs and tissue can be harvested and preserved within one hour of death. When Kaye died in Hollywood Hospital in April  2015, Professor Chen came immediately and collected the eyes, and some skin. He already had her DNA.

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Uniting Aid celebrates 35 years of caring

In 1981, the churches of the Uniting Church Yokine Region Parish conducted a community study to assess how they could serve their community and, recognising the physical needs of the struggling members of  their community, they established Uniting Aid at Dianella Uniting Church.

This year is Uniting Aid’s 35th Anniversary and it really is an organisation worth celebrating.

At its inception, Uniting Aid was aphone-in service for co-ordinating community assistance. The services provided then were broad: lifts for people to essential appointments, grocery shopping assistance, moving goods by trailer, and providing occasional respite for in-home carers. These days, Uniting Aid looks different in service, but is similar in spirit. Now operating out of a building in Nollamara, the use of which is  donated by the Uniting Church WA, Uniting Aid is made-up of 65 volunteers who undertake a variety of tasks across the week.

Margaret Waller, chairperson of Uniting Aid, said the volunteers are fantastic.

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Walking together over the Rainbow

Over cups of tea, bickies and cake in a beautiful old Nedlands home, three dedicated women shared with me their passion for creating supportive, safe and open places for people living with mental illness, through  the Rainbow project.

Rainbow runs in five locations around Perth offering, fortnightly or monthly social gatherings, including lunch and a time of sharing.

Ruth Reid has been patron of Rainbow in WA since it began in 1998, and still offers her time each month, despite ageing into her 90s. Marian Hillam is the co-ordinator for the Claremont/Nedlands Rainbow   group, which has been running for around 11 years, and Sarah Robson is a new recruit, having recently started volunteering at Claremont/Nedlands.

Ruth and Marian are members of Nedlands Uniting Church, while Sarah found Rainbow through Volunteering WA. Sarah loves cooking, and was looking for a way to be able to share her gifts with people in the community – Rainbow provided that perfect space. Rainbow now comes under the umbrella of UnitingCare West, after its formation in 2006. Volunteers take on a range of roles and all receive mental health training.

According to Ruth, the Rainbow journey all began with a phone call from Rev Joyce Wilkins, who was minister at Manning Uniting Church at the time. Joyce and Ruth, along with Audrey Frances, another Rainbow pioneer, got together to discuss how to offer friendship and support to people in congregations, and the wider community who were feeling isolated, as a result of mental health issues. Ruth said that it started as a  place of friendship, which hasn’t changed.

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Roaming gnomes for Cambodian youth

Emma Oxenburgh, from Trinity North Uniting Church, will be broadening her horizons early next year when she travels with World Vision to visit youth programs in Cambodia. She will travel with ten other  Australians, along with five Cambodians, all aged between 18–25.

Emma is currently studying a double major in marketing and international communications at the University of Western Australia (UWA), and has recently done an internship with Reconciliation WA. She has a keen interest in ethical travel and international community development.

She said that the trip is not a ‘voluntouring’ (volunteering plus travel) experience, but rather an opportunity to learn more about Cambodia and the projects that World Vision supports there.

Emma said she’s keen to add some real life experiences and a human perspective to her textbook experiences gained while studying at university.

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Theological curriculum for the 21st Century

For the last eight years a group at All Saints Floreat and Wembley Downs Uniting Churches have been using the Living the Questions curriculum for their theological education. The material of DVDs and study notes are produced by two American Methodist ministers, of which one (Rev David Felten) spent a year at Perth Theological Hall, Murdoch University. The curriculum is now in use in nearly 5000 churches across North America, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.

Our churches will be repeating the study again in 2017. Subject to copyright, studies available from Living the Questions which include the DVDs and study notes are being made available for loan at cost through the WA Progressive Network.

The WA Progressive Network has brought leading progressive theological scholars to Western Australia such as Dr Val Webb, Michael Morewood, Dr Greg Jenks, Prof Brandon Scott, Rev Dr Lorraine Parkinson, David Galston, Robin Meyers and locally Rev Prof Bill Loader and the Very Reverend John Shepherd.

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A place to be refreshed

On Friday 17 June, dozens of women carrying Bibles and notepads converged on Swanleigh Conference Centre for Women’s Weekend Away 2016, themed ‘Me and my God’.

The history of the Women’s Weekend Away spans more than half a century, beginning in 1965 as an initiative of South Perth Uniting Church. Over the decades, this event was a joint initiative between South Perth, the former Como and Manning congregations, at present a number of women from Swan View Uniting Church serve on the board.

Women from 17 congregations attended the Women’s Weekend Away, including Bindoon, Gingin, Trayning and Mukinbudin.

Organiser, Fiona Paice explained that the diversity of attending women is an essential element of the longevity of the event.

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Messy gifts of the spirit

Rev Greg Ross, minister with the Wellington Regional Mission, has recently returned from the Mission Shaped Ministry Intensive and the International Messy Church Conference in England, UK. While there, Greg, with travel companion Rev David Kriel, mission planner for the Uniting Church WA, spent time with Dave Male, national adviser for pioneer development for the Church of England and also a member of the Fresh Expressions team, and Lucy Moore, founder of Messy Church.

Both conferences were run by Fresh Expressions, an ecumenical organisation resourcing new ways of being church.

Bunbury St Augustine Uniting Church, part of the Wellington Regional Mission, has been running a vibrant and popular Messy Church congregation for the last seven years.

Messy Church is a welcoming gathering for people of all ages inviting people to explore Bible stories, create craft, join in meaningful conversation and share a meal together. It’s a Fresh Expression of church which is reaching out to people across the world.

In Bunbury, the congregation started with about 25 people attending, and has now grown to about 50–70 attendees at each monthly gathering. Many of those had either never previously attended church, or had left the church for a significant period of time and have started attending  again.

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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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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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