Synod Snaps – May 2017

The Sipwell faith community celebrated the Easter dawn around a campfire and enjoyed a fish breakfast.

St Luke’s UCA at Devon North in Gippsland, decorated a wooden cross with fresh flowers. It stood outside the church from Maundy Thursday until Easter Tuesday.

Moderator Sharon Hollis preached at her mother’s congregation at Dookie Uniting Church on Easter ...

March 2017 Crosslight now available


Uniting Church minister Rev Mark Dunn is pictured at the memorial tribute to the victims of January’s Bourke Street tragedy. Read more about the work of the Victorian Council of Churches Emergencies Ministry chaplains here.

All of the March Crosslight stories are available here. Crosslight is also available in digital format.

Highlights this ...

Mods’ Quad

PENNY MULVEY

It is not often that you encounter more than one Uniting Church moderator at a time, so meeting four plus one former moderator led me to consider a collective noun to describe such a group. I discarded ‘doctrine of’, apparently the collective noun for doctors. That didn’t seem to capture the key role of our moderators. What ...

Spiritual first responders

PENNY MULVEY

Chaplains volunteering with the Victorian Council of Churches Emergencies Ministry spoke to more than 3300 people on the day of, and the days following, January’s Bourke St rampage.

VCC Emergencies Ministry CEO, Rev Stuart Stuart, said it doesn’t matter what kind of emergency it is, the human response is the same.

“People are looking for meaning in ...

Coming out and speaking out in Islam

DAVID SOUTHWELL

Australia’s only openly gay imam says that religious leaders with progressive views on sexuality need to speak up to save young lives.

“The frustration is when we keep silent about it as religious leaders,” Nur Warsame said.

Mr Warsame personally knows of four young Muslims that identified as LGBTI who have self-harmed.

Mr Warsame, who will be ...

Call for unity

REVIEW BY NICK MATTISKE

BOOK | THE END OF PROTESTANTISM | PETER LEITHART

Peter Leithart’s book The End of Protestantism is not a lament for the decline of Western Christianity or a pessimistic prediction, but Leithart’s hope for the dismantling of denominationalism and the unification of the global Christian church.

It is, as he admits, a rather utopian hope. ...

A helping hand

The story of Alan Stafford and the Uniting Church Emergency Fencing Team came to my attention via a copy of an article in the Benalla Ensign last month. It included news that Alan, a long-time member of Benalla Uniting Church, had just received an Order of Australia Medal in the recent Australia Day Honours list “for service to the ...

Space for grace in sexuality debate

WILLIAM LOADER

In November last year I was invited by the Evangelical Theological Association to present a paper at their annual conference in San Antonio on same-sex relations. I was one of a team of four, brought together by Zondervan Publishing House to write a book, which has since been published: Two Views on Homosexuality, the Bible, and the ...

Search on for next moderator

Wanted: Nominations for moderator-elect.

Attributes: Practically perfect in every way (to quote Mary Poppins).

Well, OK, no one is perfect. However, the 15 points listed on the VicTas website to describe the kind of person the Church looks for in a moderator might suggest a modern-day saint or super being.

As well as being a pastor, proclaimer and prophet, ...

Living our mission

Forty years ago, the inaugural Assembly of the Uniting Church issued a Statement to the Nation. This statement outlines the Uniting Church’s desire to be involved in “social and national affairs”. The Church engages with our neighbours worldwide but particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. The statement commits the Uniting Church to basic Christian values of the “importance of every ...

Candidates’ Tasmanian retreat

Candidates at Pilgrim Theological College and faculty staff spent five days in Tasmania last month experiencing ministry and the life of the Church in the island state.

It was the first field trip of its kind arranged with a presbytery.

Head of College Rev Dr Jenny Byrnes said it was a golden opportunity for candidates to imagine themselves in ...

Leading the way

REVIEW BY MARGARET REESON

BOOK | OUR PRINCIPLE OF SEX EQUALITY: THE ORDINATION OF WOMEN IN THE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH IN AUSTRALIA 1927-1977 | JULIA PITMAN

FORTY years after the inauguration of Uniting Church in Australia, it feels natural in 2017 that women are moderators in four UCA synods and a woman is president-elect. But those of us who have ...