Tag: Multi-Cultural

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News & Announcements

To be a witness: Indonesian National Conference

The Indonesian congregations of the Uniting Church, with different ethnicities and backgrounds, gathered here in Perth for the 14th Indonesian National Conference.

GKI Perth Uniting Church (Indonesian) in Mosman Park, the only Indonesian speaking congregation within the Uniting Church WA, was given the privilege to host this important biennual  conference. It ran from 5 to 7 May, attended by eight Indonesian speaking congregations from multiple Australian states. We all came to share stories and brought messages from our home congregations.

The theme of this year’s conference was ‘To be a witness.’

“Have we become a witness of Christ in our family, in our church, and in our community?”

That is the message that was given by Rev Thresi Mauboy, the Moderator of the Uniting Church NT, in the evening devotion on the first day of the conference.

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News & Announcements

Cool Burn Camp back in May

Cool Burn is an intercultural family camp for people living in Western Australia (WA) and is organised by the Uniting Church WA’s Multicultural Ministry. For two days and one night, people from culturally diverse backgrounds get together to share their faith and inspire each other.

Rev Dr Emanuel Audisho, the Uniting Church WA’s Multicultural ministry co-ordinator welcomes all to join the camp.

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News & Announcements

The presence of Christ in the Middle East

A delegation of Uniting Church leaders travelled to Lebanon in January with the aim of building relationships with churches in the region.

The delegation included Stuart McMillan, president of the Uniting Church in Australia, Rob Floyd, national director of UnitingWorld, and three Uniting Church ministers from the Middle East,  including Rev Dr Emanuel Audisho, multicultural ministry co-ordinator for the Uniting Church WA.

The group met with the leaders of the Union of Armenian Evangelical Churches in the Near East, the National Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon and the National Evangelical Church of  Beirut. They also visited a range of historical sites, including one of the ancient jars from the biblical story of the Wedding at Cana (John 2) and one of the earliest memorial sites of the Armenian  Genocide in Antelias.

While in Lebanon, the group also spent some time at Fondation le Grain de Ble, a program for local refugee children which provides camps, clubs, sport, literature, games and entertainment for  refugee children in Lebanon, with an aim to share God’s love.

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News & Announcements

Voices raised for our Pacific neighbours

Over 200 Christians from all around Australia, representatives of Pacific communities and members of Parliament gathered in front of Australian Parliament House this morning calling on Australia to be a better neighbour to our Pacific brothers and sisters. The gathering was part of Micah Australia’s Voices for Justice event.

Speakers from Fiji, Tonga and Kiribati shared their experiences of climate change, and the effect it is having on their lives and communities. They called on politicians to make a greater commitment to climate change action and aid focussed on Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) for developing nations in our region. Prayers were said for our churches, our nation, our nation’s leaders and our world.

Rev James Bhagwan, a leader from the Methodist Church of Fiji, greeted the crowd with a traditional greeting – “Bula!” – as a reminder of the importance of place and relationships.  He called on the Australian government to love and care for all people, including our Pacific neighbours.

“To love and care for only a few is not to love at all,” he said.

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Hall restoration makes space for growing congregation

This year GKI Perth Uniting Church (Indonesian) has been undergoing a restoration of their church hall; the Mosman Park building had previously become dilapidated and had largely fallen out of use.

Leo Thamron, GKI Church Council secretary, said the church has seen such growth that the restoration was necessary to increase the space to accommodate the growth.

“GKI has been growing significantly over the last fifteen years or so and what happened was that we renovated the basement of the other building but that was still not enough,” he said.

“The short-term plan is to use the hall to accommodate the Sunday School children. Medium to longer term, the plans are for the building to host cultural events… not just for the Indonesian community but for the  Mosman Park community as well.”

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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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Stories & Feature Articles

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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Sharing the peace at KCO

The Uniting Church is a proudly multicultural church with congregations made up of people from many different cultures and ways of life. This year was the first year a contingent of youth from the Samoan Uniting Church Faith Community attended Kids’ Camp Out (KCO).

Speaking with their youth co-ordinator, Hanamoa Vaitogi, it was clear that the young people of he Samoan Faith Community are an active and eager group. The Youth Group often performs cultural dance and songs together for community and church events, with the younger kids joining the young adults for performance and fellowship.

Hanamoa explained that the youth and young adults of the community usually spend time together as a large group.

“Nearly every week they do sports in the park or I’ll book a hall and they’ll perform together,” she said.

While it was an unusual experience for the youth to strike out on their own, Hanamoa said they really enjoyed it.

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Beth Shalom raising the roof

To encourage, listen and engage with their young people, Beth Shalom Tongan Uniting Church recently purchased a range of music instruments for the purpose of starting up a band. Many of the young people have musical gifts and skills that they wanted to use in the congregation to express their love of Christ.

Using a $4,500 grant from the Uniting Church WA’s Innovative Opportunities Unlimited Fund (IOU), Beth Shalom purchased an acoustic guitar, bass guitar, speakers, a mixer and a microphone. The band was formed, raising the roof each Sunday. Before each service, the band plays up to an hour of praise music, celebrating and worshipping God.

At the recent Summer Spirit event, held in February at All Saints Floreat Uniting Church, the group performed with high energy, enthusiasm and talent, and showed all those present, from the wider Uniting Church WA, just how loud church can be.

Kalo Fotu spoke on the importance of listening to their young people and engaging them as active members of the congregation. Whether a project succeeds or fails is not the point; it’s about giving young people a chance to express themselves.

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Celebrating five years of Marhaba

In April 2011, the Multicultural Ministry Network of the Uniting Church WA established the Marhaba Multicultural Community Centre with their first meeting at Uniting Church in the City, Wesley Perth.

Rev Dr Emanuel Audisho, Multicultural Ministry co-ordinator, describes Marhaba as his dream, a dream he carried with him from his home country of Iraq. Emanuel established a Marhaba community in Jordan with the goal of giving young people opportunities to engage with the refugee church in Jordan. The aims of the Marhaba community in Perth has similar, but broader goals.

Marhaba in Perth was established to connect people from diverse multicultural backgrounds with the church. The name Marhaba is the amalgamation of two Aramaic words. The first ‘Mar’ meaning God and the second ‘haba’ meaning love; Marhaba literally translates to ‘God is love’.

Emanuel says that the key message of Marhaba is in its name, he wants “people from all cultures and backgrounds to know that God is love”.

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