By Andrew Humphries
It was a simple walk but it held plenty of significance for those who hope for a better path between Australia’s First and Second Peoples.
A “walk on country” was one of the highlights of the Uluru Statement from the Heart camp at Adekate Lodge, near Creswick, last week.
From today (April 23) it is mandatory for all churches in Victoria to keep attendance records via a QR code.
Keeping those attendance records is now a legal requirement.
If it hasn’t done so already, a church must register for a unique QR code and it will be provided with a link for an A4 poster containing that QR code ...
By Cathy Withiel
Helen Malins had no idea when she volunteered to take part in groundbreaking research that it would end up almost saving her life and allow her to resume her passion for travelling.
The feisty 80-year-old, who normally exercises three times a week at the AgeWell centre’s seniors gym in Hawthorn, took part in 2019 in the Your ...
By Andrew Humphries
If you’ll pardon the pun, acclaimed chef and cookbook author Gabriel Gaté had the audience eating out of his hand at North Ringwood Uniting Church yesterday.
The occasion was the launch of the fifth edition of one of Australia’s most enduring guides to cooking, the PWMU Cookbook.
Since the first edition in 1904, the cookbook has become ...
By Andrew Humphries
When Australia Remade national co-ordinator Millie Rooney sat down at her computer for a virtual chat with Uniting Church members last September, she was hoping for a robust discussion around the theme of ‘public good’.
She got that and more during a fascinating talk examining what is meant by public good, how we see it in action, ...
By Cathy Withiel
Where there’s a will there’s a way. That was the motto adopted when chaplains serving in Uniting AgeWell residential sites across Victoria and Tasmania dealt with restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Some innovative thinking included delivering services via Zoom, standing on a garden path in the middle of winter booming a service through a microphone to ...
By Andrew Humphries
When the steering committee responsible for forming a new Uniting Church congregation in Boroondara decided on the best way to mark the occasion, one date immediately came to mind.
The Kew Uniting Church, made up of the East Kew, Joong Ang and West Hawthorn congregations, as well as many people associated with Boroondara Community Outreach, was officially ...
By Andrew Humphries
When Graeme Sutton and Andrew Shearer-Cox walk past the large stained glass window installed in the Bev Pratt Chaplaincy Centre in Ballarat, they are given a daily reminder of just how important a chaplain’s role is.
The stained glass window, featuring an image of Jesus holding a lamb on his shoulder, has come to represent a great ...
By Andrew Humphries
In 1955, Robert Menzies was our Prime Minister, John Cain Sr’s reign as Victorian Premier ended, Melbourne defeated Collingwood in the VFL Grand Final and the board game Scrabble made its Australian debut.
And in regional Tasmania, a shy 15-year-old girl took her first tentative steps on a path that would define her life for the next ...
The story of our life turns, when we are known and called by name. John 20: 16
Back in 1992 (and here I’m revealing my age), I heard the Red Hot Chilli Peppers’ song Under the Bridge for the first time. It was during Lent, just before Easter.
By Andrew Humphries
In Uniting Church faith communities right around the country this Sunday, women ministers will take centre stage as they spread the word of God, just as they have done since the church’s formation in 1977.
There is nothing unusual in that and, in fact, so widespread are female ministers in our church that we almost take them ...
By Andrew Humphries
For Kathryn D’Alessandro, necessity really was the mother of invention when it came to organising February’s first ever online Synod Meeting.
Organising a “virtual” meeting, rather than one held in the normal face-to-face town hall setting, presented a huge challenge for the Synod Meeting project manager.
When the decision was made in August last year that ongoing ...