Tag: Multicultural

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SHARE and humanity thrives

Rev Roy Surjanegara is the Minister at GKI Perth Uniting Church, an Indonesian speaking congregation in Mosmon Park. This edition, he writes about this year’s Family and Culture Month at their church.

September is the month to celebrate family life and Indonesian culture for GKI Perth Uniting Church. We call it ‘Family and Culture Month’. Each Sunday, one ethnic group is highlighted in the service through the use of the local languages for the Bible readings, songs, and prayers. Musical instruments, clothing, decorations, and traditional food also play an important part in creating the atmosphere of being in Indonesia for a day. This year, we celebrated the Batak culture of Sumatera, the Sunda culture of West Java, the Dayak culture of Borneo, and the Tionghoa culture of Indonesian-Chinese descendants.

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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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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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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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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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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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Harmony and diversity: transforming the church

Australia is celebrated as a multicultural country, with around a quarter of Australians born overseas, according to the latest Census data (2011). This Census also confirmed that WA is the most culturally diverse state in Australia, with 31% of Western Australians originally hailing from other countries.

In WA, Harmony Week runs from Tuesday 15 to Monday 21 March. It’s an opportunity to celebrate multiculturalism and for cultural groups to learn and grow from each other. Inspired by the United Nation’s International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Harmony Day and Harmony Week aims to end discrimination by celebrating difference and getting to know each other. While Harmony Week shines a spotlight on our diversity, its aim is that we carry those stories and relationships throughout the year.

Rebecca Ball is the executive director for the Government of Western Australia’s Office of Multicultural Interests. She said that there is a range of benefits to living in such a diverse community.

“There’s a multitude of benefits. It’s realising that where you think there might be difference, in fact we’re all the same,” she said. “To have a society that’s diverse really can only improve ones understanding of other people; it can broaden our minds, accept difference. You don’t have to agree with one another on every point, but at least you can understand one another’s viewpoints. And that is absolutely essential to a peaceful and tolerant society.

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Living life and faith cross-culturally

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.

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Cool Burn: sharing in diversity

This September, the Cool Burn Intercultural Youth Camp will engage youth from around the church with an inspiring and relationship-building experience. This is the second time the camp has  run; with last year’s event a successful and engaging time for those involved.

A joint initiative of Uniting Church in WA’s Multicultural Ministries and First Third, the camp invites young people aged 13 and over to come and share time with God and with people from different cultures within the diversity of the Uniting Church in WA. Running over the weekend of 19–20 September it will be a fun and reflective time including loads of activities, worship and  sharing between cultures.

Rev Dr Emanuel Audisho, multicultural ministry co-ordinator said that the camp will create lasting relationships between different cultures within the church.

“We have in our vision to encourage the youth to come together from different cultures and backgrounds, to sit together, share with each other and to have fun,” he said. “We want to let them  know that we are many people, one body of Jesus Christ and that the Uniting Church is a multicultural church, the church for all God’s people.”

The camp will be held at the Alfred Hynes Seaside Camp in Rockingham and to register, or for more information, contact Alice Boomer at alice.boomer@wa.uca.org.au or call 9260 9800.