Insights December / January 2018

insights

DECEMBER/ JANUARY 2018

HUMANNOT NEEDS

SPECIAL NEEDS CHRISTMAS UP CLOSE HOSPITALITY INSPIRED BY THE GOSPEL

Through commitment to family, community and heritage, we help our clients to celebrate the life and memories of a loved one.

Rookwood Cemetery has a long history with the Uniting Church, both directly and through its former churches.

Rookwood’s Presbyterian and Methodist sections date back to 1867 when the cemetery was first established.

To meet the needs of our families: - We offer a number of tranquil interment areas - We provide contemporary function spaces for memorial and condolence events - We have an onsite florist that can develop memorable floral tributes

uc ap ulse.o rgfor .au more information.

Contact the Rookwood General Cemeteries Reserve Trust fac e b o o k .c o m/ U CAPulse P 02 8575 8100 tw itte r.c o m/ uc ap ulse E info@rookwoodcemetery.com.au instagram.c o m/ uc ap ulse

A Hawthorne Ave, Rookwood NSW 2141 W rookwoodcemetery.com.au

W E L C O M E F R O M T H E G E N E R A L S E C R E TA R Y

Preparing hearts for what lies ahead REV. JANE FRY GENERAL SECRETARY The General Secretary is appointed by the Synod to provide leadership to the Church by actively engaging in strategic thinking about the life, direction, vision and mission of the Church.

PHEW! It’s the end of the year at last! As far as I can gather, everyone’s tired, people are looking forward to the beach and the cricket, to reading trashy novels and losing the phone (or, at least, hiding it under a cushion for a while). It’s been an intense and in many ways, a disturbing year, so a few weeks of ‘slow news days’ wouldn’t go astray either.

Time to rest, refresh and regroup in peace.

carry forward, what do we need to leave behind?

In the beginning, so it is said, God looked on the work of creation and said that it was good, it was good, it was very, very good. God was pleased, perhaps delighted, with the result and imagined for that creation and for humanity that was part of it, a flourishing life, a connected life. A life encapsulated in the Hebrew word ‘shalom’.

It didn’t always work out like But wait – it’s Advent - time that. Along the way, God to wake up, time to get ready, revisited the creation project, time to straighten paths and and did a bit of review and prepare roomy hearts for the revision – re-creation – Jesus-shaped future that’s because the original concept coming towards us. There’s was still so compelling. a bumper sticker It may even be that appears that God found from time to re-creation time – Jesus WE ARE CALLED even more is coming. delightful, full TO LIVE TOGETHER Look busy, of amazing IN HEARTFUL, but I’m possibilities.

HOPEFUL, JOYFUL pretty To the extent WAYS, ALIVE TO THE sure that that, God SPIRIT OF GOD ‘looking busy’ decides to won’t be come and get sufficient for the amongst it. To transformation that experience at first hand God has planned. and to be hands on in the What ‘time’ are we actually eternally unfolding creation/ in – is it time to wind down, human drama. or time to wind up?

Jesus takes the whole Perhaps re-creation might history of God and God’s have something to do with it? people and says – with his life – this is what it looks It’s probably a natural like walking around. It’s the tendency, when we get to movement from arms folded, these breaks in time, to look to arms outspread without back over the year, the life, qualification to embrace the the history and reflect on the whole creation, all humanity highs and lows, the gains – chosen or not chosen, and losses over that period. special or ordinary, entitled To ask ourselves, how did or not entitled. we do? Did we do well, or not so well? What do we want to In the life of Jesus Christ, our appreciation of what

it means to be human in relationship with God and with each other is shaped and stretched to the limit — hearts are prepared and minds are awakened — as Jesus demonstrates what it means to walk the Godtalk. This is what captured the disciples and apostles and, in another of God’s re-creative endeavours, eventually brought the church into being.

We are the people called into being, to walk the God-talk and to do stuff that makes a Jesus-shaped difference in the world. We are called to live together in heartful, hopeful, joyful ways, alive to the Spirit of God moving among us, so that people may know the presence and the blessing of God. So, anticipating re-creation in the holiday season, there are some really important disciplines to prepare our hearts. These are disciplines particular to this time of year.

Here’s my version: • watching the cricket (well known contemplative practice) • playing on the beach with the grandbaby (an expert in the art of playing) • enjoying family (catching up & laughing a lot) • and, maybe, cleaning out a couple of cupboards (possibly a definite maybe).

Have a blessed holiday – wind up or wind down as it seems good to you – and God will prepare all our hearts for whatever lies ahead. i

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HUMAN NEEDS NOT SPECIAL NEEDS

While it is easy to judge others based on worldly classifications of power and weakness, ability and disability, the message of Jesus at Christmas is one of God demonstrating power in the most unexpected way.

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YOUR SAY

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ENTERTAIN ME

The Uniting Church in Australia is one of the country’s largest denominations.

Our vision is that it will be a fellowship of reconciliation, living God’s love, following Jesus Christ and acting for the common good to build a just and compassionate community of faith.

MANAGING EDITOR Adrian Drayton EDITOR Jonathan Foye PRODUCTION/DESIGN Rana Moawad EDITORIAL/ADVERTISING/ DISTRIBUTION INQUIRIES PHONE 02 8267 4304 FAX 02 9264 4487 ADDRESS Insights, PO Box A2178, Sydney South, NSW, 1235 EMAIL insights@nsw.uca.org.au WEB www.insights.uca.org.au Insights is published by the Uniting Church in Australia, Synod of New South Wales and the ACT. Articles and advertising content do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editor or of the Uniting Church. Contents copyright. No material from this publication may be copied, photocopied or transmitted by any means without the permission of the Managing Editor.

CIRCULATION: 15,000. ISSN: 1036-7322 Commonwealth of Australia 2017.

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M O D E R AT O R ’ S R E F L E C T I O N

Making room REV. SIMON HANSFORD MODERATOR The Moderator is elected to give prophetic and pastoral leadership to the Synod, assisting and encouraging expression and fulfilment of faith, and the witness of the Church.

I REMEMBER Christmas worship as a child, squeezing in beside my grandpa in pews designed for slightly fewer people. I recall comprehensive Christmas meals over the years with family and friends, as tasks were delegated so that the meal could be celebrated in all its glory, with even lounge chairs conscripted around the table and every fan on full.

I also recall the moment of uncertainty as new faces joined the table, invited because they were new in town, or to our family, or simply were in need of a welcome. The moment was only that, ameliorated by hospitality and Christmas pudding.

It’s not always easy to find space for new traditions.

“We’ve always done it this way” is the catch cry for present openings, or whether the pudding has coins in it. As families grow, shrink, and change, we discover that seafood actually can be as enjoyable as turkey, or that there have been decent carols written since the composer of ‘Away in a Manger’ stopped Jesus crying.

It’s not easy, but it is necessary.

We are invited into the astonishing Christmas story of God breaking into our world, but as the story grows in the gospel accounts, it almost appears that there might not be enough room. Whether the risk of Mary’s pregnancy, the No Vacancy sign at the Bethlehem local, or the rush into Egypt, the presence of Jesus in the world does not have an easy beginning.

There are echoes of this throughout the gospels, as Jesus is welcomed conditionally, or refused, by a number of people.

The echoes grow louder as the shadow of the cross looms larger.

The last gospel reading before Advent reminds us that Jesus is present in the least likely – stranger, prisoner, hungry, destitute. So much so, that “Emmanuel, God With Us” becomes comprehensively profound, and not simply a Christmas hashtag.

comprehensive ‘Yes’ vote in the Same Sex Marriage postal survey?

In the humanity of Jesus, all humanity - all flesh - finds its worth.

We are the Uniting Church, formed for hospitality, by the embrace of God. We joined others at our creation, and have sought a more complete union ever since. We embrace different cultures, different worship and wrestle with the implications of looking and listening beyond ourselves.

How might we speak for those who cannot speak for themselves, or who are brushed aside? How can we welcome those whose value is dismissed, or demeaned?

Taking Jesus at his word; what does it mean to make room for him, when it is uncomfortable, even unpleasant?

This question is asked of us When I consider WE ARE THE in scripture, our Church, and UNITING CHURCH it is asked look at how FORMED FOR of us in the we worship, community witness HOSPITALITY BY and it is asked and serve, THE EMBRACE of us each I experience OF GOD time we hear great hope. And the declaration of when I consider forgiveness to share what is possible if we Christ’s peace and break open ourselves even more to bread together. the Spirit of God, then I am unnerved – wonderfully - at This question begs larger where God might lead us. ones of our discipleship.

What does it mean for us to Shall we make room, make room when we consider commencing this Advent and those whose lives, as I write Christmas, for the newness this, are circumscribed by of God? detention on Manus Island The traditional evangelistic and Nauru, because they question is whether we sought life for themselves have invited Jesus into our and their family? What hearts. Christmas declares room can we offer those something entirely more First Nation leaders and wonderful. The birth of Jesus communities who sought is the declaration that God to have their voices heard has indeed invited each – when asked – and were and all of us into God’s refused? What is asked of own heart. God has declared us in the light of our nation’s us welcome. i

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LETTERS

Your Say MERRY CHRISTMAS!

This month contributors will receive a DVD Christmas pack that will contain The Case for Christ from PureFlix and Ben Hur from Sony Pictures Entertainment (and a couple of surprises). ‘Your Say’ letters should be send to: insights@nswact.uca.org.au or posted to Insights, PO Box A2178, Sydney South NSW 1235 Letters may be edited for clarity and length.

MY SPIRIT WAS LIFTED

I attended my first ever Synod in 2017. It had its theme “Telling our Story” and found for me it did exactly that. I came away encouraged and affirmed. I was very excited by the spirit and a deep sense that we have a wonderful story in the gospel of Jesus. The poetry and preaching of Joel McKerrow lifted my spirit and affirmed to our powerful story.

Rev. Mata Hiliau brought each of our days together in reflection with a warmth and in ways that confirmed acknowledged all that was good in the day. Hannah Boland had a message that touched us deeply as she shared her personal journey of faith through incredible hardships and disappointment with a remarkable hard hitting integrity. So my spirit was lifted.

TELLING OUR STORY

Thank you for the latest issue of Insights with its coverage of the recent NSW Synod gathering. It was refreshing for me to read of the variety of activity and planning going on. I was especially interested in the article by the new Moderator Simon Hansford, “The Story That Lies Ahead”. It is always encouraging to have our vision turned to the future with all the wonderful possibilities before us.

Pat and I now reside at the Gold Coast in Queensland where Pat is in the Cypress Gardens Nursing Home and I am in the Residential Community nearby. We still have happy memories of our time in NSW and in particular of the Synod of 1989. We took the theme then of Living the Story and this is why I am excited by this latest emphasis.

IT IS ENCOURAGING TO HAVE OUR VISION TURNED TO THE FUTURE WITH ALL THE WONDERFUL POSSIBILITIES BEFORE US

Further I sensed that Rev. Simon Hansford and Rev. Jane Fry will create a leadership team that will tackle the reforms we need to make us nimble and responsive on the huge challenge we face to be that fellowship of reconciliation to which we are called.

John Williams, Canberra Regional Presbytery

Note: See opposite for Daniel Mossfield and David Russell’s summary of the outcomes from Synod 2017.

The story in which we share is a beautiful one, inspired continually by our conviction that our Master is the Living Lord and the source of all our hopes and plans.

I want to wish the Synod well, to congratulate Simon and to assure you that you have our prayerful support as you prepare to share in the next portion of our story which may well be the best of all.

Bill Adams, Gold Coast QLD

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News

A GUIDE TO THE SYNOD OUTCOMES FROM CANBERRA REGION PRESBYTERY David Russell and Daniel Mossfield have summarised Synod’s major decisions and outcomes below: ADMIN, SSC AND ROLES

• Rev. Simon Hansford was inducted as Moderator • Rev. Jane Fry was elected and commissioned as General Secretary

• John Thornton was elected as Chair of Advisory Committee On Ministerial Placements

• The size of the Standing Committee was reduced to

20 or 21 members. Further work will be required to ensure membership reflects the Synod’s diversity (including Culturally and Linguistically Diverse, gender and rural/urban balance).

PATHWAYS AND STEPPING STONES Pathways is a project that will consult with Presbyteries and Congregations to help set strategic priorities for the Synod and to develop local initiatives. Pilot’s have been undertaken in Parramatta Nepean Presbytery and New England North West Presbyteries with positive feedback. Synod approved the rollout of Pathways across NSW and the ACT (with appropriate funding)

by Synod April 2019. This to take account of already existing Presbytery strategies. Stepping Stones will respond to findings of Pathways.

PULSE The next generations ministry of Synod (children, youth and young adults) is being reimagined as ‘Pulse’ (ucapulse.org.au).

Sufficient funding was allocated for the next five years to create a team to resource this ministry across the Synod.

The leadership of this project are creatively thinking about how Pulse will support the whole Synod, including rural and remote areas.

SALTBUSH Synod refreshed its commitment to support ministry in the rural and remote regions of NSW through strong endorsement “Saltbush” lead by Mark Faulkner. Subtitled “Uniting the scattered community”, Saltbush seeks to foster, resource and link various ministries.

UNITING ABORIGINAL AND ISLANDER CHRISTIAN CONGRESS (UAICC) Support was granted in principle for UAICC to gain certain aspects of a Presbytery, including the placement of ministers, candidates in college, and establishing new congregations.

More details will be worked out by Synod Standing Committee.

Walking on Wiradjuri country will be an opportunity for people to learn about Indigenous culture in early 2019. More information will be shared about this event soon.

MOBILISING MINISTRY This initiative will encourage ministers to build a relationship with a rural congregation, and provide four weeks of ministry a year on an ongoing basis (with city congregations to support this time). This will not be supply ministry, but an ongoing relationship. Sydney Central Coast and Macquarie Darling presbyteries will participate in the trial.

STEWARDSHIP CONTRIBUTION A new contribution to the Synod to be made by all parts of the church (congregations, schools, agencies etc). This will replace Living is Giving from 1 July 2018.

Exact details and figures will be worked out in consultation with all parts of the church to ensure it is equitable. More information packs will be sent out to Presbyteries and Congregations early in 2018.

MARRIAGE CONVERSATION Assembly General Secretary Colleen Geyer led a conversation with the Synod in small discernment groups around the Marriage Conversation that will culminate in decision making at Assembly in July 2018. Assembly is asking Synods to give feedback to help frame the conversation.

People’s feedback via discernment included:

• a sense that Assembly needs to make a decision at its Canberra Regional Presbytery has set up a site and links to a whole range of resources and information from across the diversity of our faith and culture. We thank Mid North Coast Presbytery for the hard work they have done to make this available to us. Resources are available at mncuca.org.au/the-australianmarriage-law-postal-survey

next meeting;

• that we hope we can hold together as a Church despite differences of opinion on this issue;

• that any decision will need to be well-communicated, • and extra pastoral support provided, that is especially mindful of LGBTIQ and ethno-cultural communities.

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UNITING SOCIAL JUSTICE FORUM

HELPING US CHANGE THE WORLD

This year has been an exciting and eventful one for the Social Justice Forum (SJF) with lots happening in each of our campaigns. It’s incredibly rewarding being part of the effort to make a difference in some of the biggest issues facing our society. A brief look back at what the SJF Team has achieved this year, with your support.

GIVE HOPE CAMPAIGN

Palm Sunday Rally and worked with partner organisations, faiths and communities to develop future strategy.

AFFORDABLE HOUSING

THE SJF TEAM AT THE 2017 PALM SUNDAY RALLY FOR REFUGEES IN SYDNEY

Refugees and people seeking asylum in our community and in detention continue to need support. Our tradition of providing practical assistance continued this year through our Easter Voucher Appeal and an emergency appeal for the #LetThemStay cohort.

These raised over $2,600 worth of vouchers for people in need. We thank the Uniting Church community for your incredible generosity.

This year we’ve engaged with communities across Sydney, including our congregations, to help “change the conversation” around people seeking asylum.

We’ve facilitated Table Talks featuring refugee storytellers, and Community Action Workshops teaching practical strategies to dismantle negative perceptions of people seeking asylum.

We’ve attended vigils to protest offshore processing, run online actions, joined thousands for the annual

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Affordable and secure housing is a basic human right – not a privilege for the wealthy. In 2017 we campaigned hard with nonprofit partners in the Sydney Alliance and Make Renting Fair campaign, for more affordable and secure rental housing. We helped organise large public rallies, met with Ministers and MPs, made submissions to inquiries and reviews, helped build petitions and online actions.

NSW PLANNING MINISTER ANTHONY ROBERTS WITH UNITING CHURCH AND OTHER LEADERS AT OUR AFFORDABLE HOUSING ASSEMBLY

Partly due to these efforts, both the NSW Government and Opposition have responded with policy initiatives to address this critical problem – which hurts families and communities across Greater Sydney and beyond. We’ll continue in 2018 to seek meaningful

and enforceable affordability targets, and protection of tenants from eviction without valid reason.

DRUG LAW REFORM

OTHER CAMPAIGNS

In addition to our major campaigns, SJF has also supported advocacy and action around family and domestic violence, childhood obesity, gambling reform and climate/environment issues.

WORKING TOGETHER

A QUESTION FOR OUR EXPERT PANEL AT THE UNITING CHURCH FORUM ON DRUG LAW REFORM

In 2016, our Synod initiated this campaign after hearing of harms caused by current policies. It was agreed we should campaign for personal illicit drug use to be treated as a health rather than criminal justice issue. Uniting’s campaign advocates for more investment in treatment and safer options for drug users, and for decriminalisation (not legalisation) of personal use.

We’ve gathered an alliance of over 50 health, medical, legal and community organisations, and held a church members’ awareness forum featuring expert speakers. Our work in 2018 will build towards a major public awareness and political advocacy campaign.

None of this could happen without the enthusiasm and involvement of our Church and Uniting community. We look forward to another big year of social justice action ahead, and we hope you can join us in this work. Please contact us to find out how to get involved.

MORE INFORMATION? GIVE HOPE CAMPAIGN:

nswact.uca.org.au/ social-justice/thesocial-justice-forum/ give-hope-for-asylumseekers/

AFFORDABLE HOUSING CAMPAIGN

nswact.uca.org.au/ social-justice/thesocial-justice-forum/ affordable-housingcampaign/ DRUG LAW REFORM CAMPAIGN

nswact.uca.org.au/ social-justice/thesocial-justice-forum/ drug-law-reformcampaign/ Email:

socialjustice@uniting.org

Uniting for Disability Inclusion

Cultivating Hospitality in our Communities Workshop | 22 Feb 2018 With the rollout of the NDIS underway, the landscape is changing for those living with a disability.

On the 22nd February from 9:30am to midday, Uniting will facilitate a workshop on disability inclusion at the Centre for Ministry in north Parramatta. This will be an opportunity to hear stories and share ideas as to how Uniting and congregations can work towards cultivating hospitable, disability inclusive communities. The workshop is free, with morning tea provided.

To hear more or RSVP, contact: • Caitlin Scott, Chaplain, Mission (E: cscott@uniting.org, Ph: 0437 877 976) • Shane Fenwick, Church Engagement Leader, Mission (E: sfenwick@uniting.org, Ph: 0437 314 971) • Kerry Lambert, Business Development & Innovation Manager, Disability (E: klambert@uniting.org, Ph: 0458 898 933)

A THEOLOGICAL RESPONSE TO POLITICAL POPULISM

ONE YEAR AFTER TRUMP’S ELECTION HELD AT Epping Uniting Church on the 3rd of November, Political Populism & A Theological Response had a lot to say about the US President’s populist rhetoric and how it led him to power.

The event’s speaker, Rev. Dr John Flett, is a lecturer at Melbourne’s Pilgrim Theological College and the author of The Witness of God. Flett told the conference that secularism has not removed theology from its central part in public discourse.

“While we often think that theology lacks [a] presence within secular societies—this is not the case,” he said.

“Theology is absolutely everywhere…and it is not so easy to divide the political from the theological.”

He defined populism as a rhetoric that cast a particular majority, ‘the people’ against a marginalised ‘other’.

JESUS “REMADE IN OUR IMAGE”

Rev. Dr Flett argued that Trump’s election had invoked an eschatological framework that Christians were being persecuted.

This, he said, was accompanied by popular images of Jesus as a “frontier man” and a “warrior Christ”.

“We have remade Jesus in our image,” Rev. Dr Flett said.

Event organiser and Macquarie University Chaplain Liam Miller told Insights that the event was “fascinating”.

“The church needs to be a community that reads the signs of the times. When we consider our times, many disturbing trends can be placed under the umbrella of populism,” Mr Miller said.

“It was great to have John Flett unpack the particular ways populism creates us/ them dynamics...Both in the ways we ignored our own boundaries, our own bubbles and in our reluctance to develop and engage in robust, constructive theological dialogue in the public sphere.”

Stephen Mansfield is the author of Choosing Donald Trump, a book that explores why American evangelicals supported Trump. In an interview with NPR, he said that this support had affected evangelical Christianity’s public image.

“If you say the word evangelical to those outside of evangelicalism, they assume it’s a political movement, and that’s part of the problem,” Mansfield said.

Jonathan Foye

PROSPECTUS

2018

Churches and Presbyteries across NSW and ACT will soon be receiving their copies of the 2018 Prospectus from United Theological College and Uniting Mission & Education.

Prospectus 2018 is our ultimate education guide for short courses, workshops, retreats, expos, tertiary study with United Theological Collee and the latest information on UCA scholarships available in 2018.

SUPPORTING #LIFELONGLEARNING

We invite you to think about your interests and passions for learning in 2018 and talk with us!

Call: (02) 8838 8900 Visit: utc.edu.au ume.nswact.uca.org.au

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A nativity in the Palestinian Territory I cringe at the Nativity.

The one that I walk past each Christmas in the shopping centre as I listen to the jingle of Carols and the rattle of coins and the soft cooing of baby Jesus so porcelain and so white.

But Mother Mary, she comes to me.

Her son came into this world all bloody and crying and squished lips searching for breast. He came with sweat. He came with agony.

The wailing of birthing heard piercing through Palestinian sky.

The women gathered around.

The men not allowed. Mary screamed and the animals bucked.

The manger smelt like s--t that night.

Like every newborn the Christ was pushed from the warmth of a stretched womb and out into the harshness of reality.

Straw covered in blood and placenta.

Like too many newborns, he had no home to lay his head.

From the beginning, a refugee, forced to escape, to seek asylum in Egypt.

I think today of the many babies born in this way, in the wake of war and dictators. Fleeing.

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But Mother Mary, she comes to me.

The bitter wailing of women is still heard on the breeze, on the night after Christmas, in Bethlehem. Where every single baby boy was needlessly slaughtered in the wake of the saviour.

And they were my children. And they were yours.

Their fathers broke in their shame as they tried to stand between the soldiers sword and the soft forehead of their baby boys.

And I think today of Aboriginal children taken away and the Fathers desperate cries and their heads beaten by rifles just trying to stop the white man from stealing their most precious things.

Too many taken and too soon.

I wonder if Bethlehem cursed Mary and Joseph for bringing this slaughter down upon them, I would have. I would have cursed God. I would have cursed the night of our dear Saviours Birth.

O’ little town of Bethlehem in Palestine, just beyond the wall, where Shepherds watch their flocks by night now guided by a star or winking satellite or drone in flight.

Burnt and bombed.

Where babies never get a chance to grow up to be saviours.

In the midst of occupation and resistance and fleeing and seeking asylum and governments built on power and a world built on atrocity, the inequality of patriarchy.

In the midst of wrapping paper and gift.

Mother Mary, she comes to me.

Let every heart prepare him room.

Not for the nativity too quaint and too cosy.

Prepare for the bloody.

For the wailing.

For the fleeing.

For the burning.

For the broken.

For the dispossessed.

For the lonely.

Prepare for the Christ, he comes disguised and desperate. i

Joel McKerrow is a writer, speaker, educator, community arts worker and one of Australia’s most successful internationally touring performance poets.

LEFT: DIANNE TORRENS AND PASTOR PETER BOUGHEY WITH YOUTH FROM THE TCL PROGRAM RIGHT: TOYS CREATED BY TCL INSET: RUSSELL CROWE VISITS THE TCL SHOP IN CASINO

Toys Change Lives

It’s been a year since Insights caught up with founder of the Keeping Our Freedom Youth Indigenous Corporation (KOFY), Pastor Peter Boughey and his initiative that is giving youth in Casino a new lease in life.

Pastor Boughey has so far mentored 20 young men released from juvenile detention through the initiative’s Pathways Employment Project called Toys Change Lives (TCL).

Creating unique toys decorated with traditional aboriginal artwork, TCL has provided the boys with a positive working environment that gives them an income and invaluable skills.

“What it has done has given them the opportunity to see how you actually work, because these boys probably haven’t seen anybody work on a regular basis.

Where they have to get out of bed even when they don’t feel like they want to get out of bed and go to work.

But at the end of the day or of the week you get a big surprise when you receive that big fat pay packet and that’s the incentive,” says Pastor Boughey.

Last time we spoke to Pastor Boughey and the young men, they were crafting the toys in Pastor Boughey’s backyard shed turned workshop. Today with the proceeds from the toy sales and www.

donations, they have been able to expand the program and rent a shop in Casino’s main street.

The new shop officially opened in May 2017 and consists of a workshop, an art gallery and a small library where people are able to share and read novels for free. And of course the shop houses decorated wooden toys made by the young men.

TCL and the mentorship it provides gives the boys a better chance of re-entering life after detention.

“One of the boys who started with me 15 months ago [is] studying to become a youth worker. And yet two years ago he was sitting in detention.”

“Another boy got an apprenticeship as an apprentice chef,” says Pastor Boughey.

Investing money in these boys’ development and rehabilitation, according to Pastor Boughey is money well spent.

“It is a program that works. In the last twelve months... we’ve saved the government just under 2 million dollars,” says Pastor Boughey.

The program is more than about monetary concerns instead it’s a chance for these young men an opportunity to turn their lives around.

You can purchase a TCL toy by going to the official website www.tcl.org.au

This initiative is not only helping those who have been released but those who are in detention and those who are at risk of offending/reoffending.

“We’ve been invited into juvenile justice centres, to take the boys in there and tell the other boys their stories, which they find inspiring,” says Pastor Boughey.

The shop is all about creating a positive space. “They know who I am and what I stand for…It’s a big opportunity to witness,” says Pastor Boughey.

Pastor Boughey is continually trying to find ways to help fund this program, which has so far been at a personal expense and with an initial grant thanks to Uniting.

To help this quest the TCL team have renovated a coffee cart that now sits in shop. But to actually start operating it, they need funds to comply with council requirements, such as adding a hot water service and sink.

A way people can help make this happen is by simply buying the toys (just in time for Christmas) or making a donation.

“Every toy is different, it’s the same shape and everything like that but all the painting is different because everything is done individually.

“So anybody who buys a toy, knows that they are getting the only one in Australia like that,” says Pastor Boughey. i Melissa Stewart

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Local church in a global world OUR GREATEST GIFT? And I could not believe it. This was my dream come true.”

Earlier, I’ve watched this same young woman - articulate, confident and laughing - lead a group of children in song and deliver a Bible reading.

She’s explained to me that the key to ending poverty is education, economic initiatives for women so they can make a better living for their families, and more investment in the local economy from the Fijian government. Through her own studies, she intends to be part of that change. And at every step along the way, it’s been not only her mother, but her local church holding her hand.

UnitingWorld, the international partnerships agency of the Uniting Church, invests in local churches like this one in the Pacific, Asia WE WORK THIS and Africa. For over WAY B EC A U S E a hundred years, WE BELIE VE THE we’ve encouraged, LOCAL CHURCH strengthened and I S T H E B E AT I N G supported wellHE ART OF GOD’S trained local people PRESENCE IN called by God, as well THE WORLD as ordinary members of the church family, doing what churches do best: loving and serving others.

It’s that time of year when people are giving gifts through International NGOs aplenty. Curious Christian friends sometimes ask me: “So what’s special about UnitingWorld?”

This is what I tell them.

AS A LIGHT RAIN falls on one of Fiji’s squatter settlements – a place built on abandoned swamp land without running water or reliable electricity – a young woman tells me how the local church gave her the greatest gift of her life.

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“After my dad died I thought that would be it,” she says, her eyes dropping for just a moment. “I thought that university was only for… you know…. rich children. But then my church told me that with you guys… through UnitingWorld and the church in Australia… they would pay my fees.

We work this way because we believe the local church is the beating heart of God’s presence in the world. When a life like Arishna’s is changed there’s no question about where or how it took place – a light shines in the darkness, and that light points back to Christ. For millions of people around the world, these are the cradles of hope where God is most easily found.

We work through local churches because they’re in for the long haul, as Christ’s body in a community.

And that’s important. Because while providing resources like clothes, drinking water or blankets is undeniably critical, our local church partners examine what causes a problem in the

ARISHNA AT WORSHIP WITH THE COMMUNITY IN SUVA

first place – from every angle. They’re heart surgeons.

“It always makes people feel good to give to big organisations providing something concrete – food or shelter.” Siera Bird told me recently when I visited a training conference in Fiji that attracted women from all over the Pacific. “But we also need support for those asking the hard questions within the culture itself – preachers, teachers and mentors.”

For Siera and our partners in the Pacific, where violence against women is more common than almost anywhere in the world, that means tackling the wickedly difficult cultural and theological causes of gender inequality. One of their most effective tools? Straight up biblical teaching, helping unpick centuries of misuse of Bible passages that keep women poor, sick and silent.

“There’s no way that violence against women in the Pacific will improve unless we use the influence of the local church, person by person, to help men and

women understand how to see each other – with equal dignity - through God’s eyes.” Siera continues. “That’s because the Bible is so central to Pacific culture – more than 90% of Islanders identify as Christians. They trust in Christian faith far more than in any presentation of so-called ‘human rights’ or ‘feminist’ teaching from well-meaning westerners.”

UnitingWorld is an organisation accredited and trusted not only to share the best in aid and development, but to wisely use theology and support the local church as its agent of change while respecting and caring for people of all races and religions. And that’s unique.

It’s our greatest gift and best hope for lasting global change.

Our church partners are addressing the causes of some of our world’s most difficult issues - violence against women and girls, conflict, changing climate and disaster, how to care for people who are abandoned because of age or disability. They bring the life-changing wisdom of Scripture to bear on those

issues because they know it genuinely has the power to transform. As they grapple with critical questions like “has God abandoned us?” and “what’s the role of a man in a modern family?” we help provide theological resources, counselling and training.

As we celebrate the birth of one child, in one forgotten backwater of an empire surely too large to notice, let’s celebrate the growth of our thousands of local churches worldwide, who shine lights like stars that illuminate the universe. This is how Christ continues to be born in the hearts of people everywhere. i Cath Taylor

To make gifts that change lives this Christmas, head to UnitingWorld’s gift catalogue everythingincommon.com.au

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Human eds Ne

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While it is easy to judge others based on worldly classifications of power and weakness, ability and disability, the message of Jesus is one of God demonstrating power in the most unexpected way.

As we reflect on the message of Christmas, we are reminded that Jesus Himself came bearing all the signs of human weakness. He came in the form of a vulnerable baby, wholly reliant on others for nurture and care. He experienced the limitations of the human body and was as susceptible as any of us to hunger, tiredness and sorrow.

Rather than marginalising and excluding people deemed weak and powerless by our society, the Apostle Paul says these are the people who are indispensable to the Body of Christ.

Insights spoke to Churches and individuals to find that there are many ways that the we can break down some of the barriers that lead to isolation of those in our communities with disabilities. All to ensure that we are truly living out our calling to be a hospitable, loving, inclusive, community and Church. After all, people with a disability need love, acceptance, compassion inclusiveness and care. These are human needs, not special needs.

NOT Special Needs

P16 / DISABILITY AND THE BODY OF CHRIST P18 / PERSONAL REFLECTIONS P22 / CHURCH INITIATIVES P26 / THE CHANGING DISABILITY LANDSCAPE P29 / WONDER MOVIE REVIEW

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Disability and the

Body of Christ SEEING A FAMILY MEMBER WITH A DISABILITY BEING EXCLUDED FROM CHURCH HAS INSPIRED 17 YEARS OF WRITING AND THINKING ABOUT DISABILITY FOR DR LOUISE GOSBELL. LIKE MANY PEOPLE, I had never stopped to think about the challenges experienced by people with disability in the church.

I didn’t really think about the difficulty faced by church members in wheelchairs or walking frames attempting to enter heritage-listed buildings with steep stairs and no ramp. I didn’t think about the distress that could be caused by the absence of accessible parking or accessible toilets for some church members with disability. I didn’t think about the concerns of parents of children with autism and whether their child would be accepted by their peers and included in kids’ church. These things were simply not on my radar until disability suddenly became personal.

irrespective of physical or intellectual ability or disability. I also heard stories from families who were asked to leave their children with disability at home on Sundays because their child was considered too disruptive by the congregation. And what I heard – and still hear regularly – from ministers and church members is that people with disability make up only a small percentage of the community so it is simply not economical to make changes to the physical access of the church for such a small number of people.

But there are some flaws in this argument.

Firstly, the World Health Organisation estimate that approximately 15% of the world’s population live with disability. Not only this, but research shows that statistically every person on the planet will pass through some period of their life with disability. For some people, that disability might be a permanent condition that is apparent from birth.

For others, their disability might be acquired as a result of an illness or ageing. But whether that disability is permanent or temporary, evidence indicates that the average person in the western world will spend between eight and 20 years of their life with some form of disability. If disability is an inevitable part of the human condition then disability is also going to be an inevitable part of our church communities.

WHILE THERE IS ENORMOUS DIVERSITY AMONG THE MEMBERS OF THIS BODY ALL MEMBERS ARE CALLED TO LIVE IN UNITY AND ARE TO BE GIVEN OPPORTUNITIES TO USE THEIR UNIQUE SPIRITUAL GIFTS

By the time I married my husband Mark, his brother John was 14 years old. Through my relationship with John and my parents-in-law, I became more aware of the barriers that prevent people with disability being included in society. But while I grew in my general understanding of disability, I did not give any consideration at all to disability in the context of the church. This changed when a new minister began at the church John and my parents-in-law were attending.

While John had been involved for many years with welcoming, as well as making other contributions to Sunday services, when a new minister began at the family’s church, he immediately put a stop to all John’s serving roles. The belief of the minister was that someone with an intellectual disability doesn’t have the capacity to understand the gospel and therefore shouldn’t be allowed to be in any up-front position in the church. While my immediate response was one of shock, I realised that I had never really considered disability from a theological perspective before. Suddenly, I had questions I wanted answered. Was the minister justified in his decision? And is there anything in the Bible on how we should treat the people with disability in our midst?

INCLUSION IN CHURCH COMMUNITIES

After this incident with John, I quickly became incredibly passionate about working towards the full inclusion of people with disability into church communities. I met with people with disability, their families and carers, and heard stories of church communities with all members being valued and included

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In his first letter to the church in Corinth, the Apostle Paul says that just as in a human body, different members of the church have different functions.

Paul says that while there is enormous diversity among the members of this body too, all members are called to live in unity and are to be given opportunities to use their unique spiritual gifts.

DISCERNMENT OF SPIRITUAL GIFTS

Often Paul’s descriptions of individual spiritual gifts are interpreted in terms of a person’s natural or learned abilities.

However, Paul is not talking about natural talents but about the spiritual gifts allocated to one and all in the body of Christ by the Spirit. While sometimes these spiritual gifts might overlap with a person’s natural or learned abilities, for example, someone who is a good public speaker might also have the spiritual gift of teaching, we cannot be certain that this is always going to be the case. This means it is impossible for us

to discern a person’s spiritual gifts based on their physical or intellectual capacity. The reality is that it is the Spirit who distributes gifts to every member of the body and does so for the common good of the body. How then can any member of the body declare the uselessness or limitations of the gifts God has imparted on another member of the body? Indeed, Paul addresses this very topic in 1 Corinthians:

resurrection will this weakness be cast off: then our bodies that are “sown in weakness, (will be) raised in power” (1 Corinthians 15: 43). This is weakness we all jointly participate in despite appearances that some might be stronger or smarter than others. In this sense, while we all have various abilities and disabilities that make us different, our shared experience of human limitation is what makes us all the same.

“The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” (1 Corinthians 12:21)

Paul also talks about weakness in 1 Corinthians 12 as that it only appears to be weakness. The Corinthians are judging one another based on a range of different categories – who was wiser, who possessed the greater gifts, who had greater social power. But Paul says the categories that the Corinthians were using to judge one another were completely flawed because this was merely the appearance of weakness.

Every member is given spiritual gifts by the spirit and the capacity to be able to use those gifts to serve the body even when those gifts are not immediately apparent to the other members of the body. In fact, Paul says that those members whom we consider “weaker” – whether because of disability, age, socio-economic status or anything else – are actually “indispensable” for the effective functioning of the body of Christ!

Earlier in the same passage, Paul says that each one of these spiritual gifts is given as “a manifestation of the spirit.”

However, the word “manifestation” here could easily be translated “revelation”. The gifts of the spirit thus serve to reveal the Spirit to each and every one of the members of the body. This idea of “revealing” the Spirit is helpful in that it emphasises that through the exercising of spiritual gifts, each member of the body has the capacity to demonstrate, indeed, reveal, something of God’s Spirit to one another in the body.

Whatever a person’s physical or intellectual capacity, every member of the body has been allocated their own spiritual gifts which they are to utilise in order to reveal the Spirit for the edification of the whole body.

Paul is concerned that the members of the Corinthian church are labelling some of the other members “weaker” than others because they do not possess some of the apparently more prestigious spiritual gifts such as that of prophecy or teaching.

But whether these members are considered “weaker” because of physical weakness, social powerlessness or because of an apparent lack of wisdom (in relation to the Corinthians’ warped ideas of what spiritual wisdom actually looked like), Paul cautions the Corinthian church against such judgements by saying that:

Paul challenges us that we simply cannot judge one another based on outward appearance or physical or intellectual capacity because this is simply not the way God has put the body of Christ together.

JESUS CAME BEARING OUR IMAGE

As we reflect on the message of Christmas, we are reminded that Jesus Himself came bearing all the signs of human weakness. He came in the form of a vulnerable baby, wholly reliant on others for nurture and care. He experienced the limitations of the human body and was as susceptible as any of us to hunger, tiredness and sorrow. Not only this, but while Jesus’ followers anticipated a Messiah who would lead a rebellion and fight against their Roman oppressors, Jesus did something wholly unexpected. He died in the shameful way of the cross. The message of Jesus’ life and death might have all the appearance of weakness and foolishness, but actually, this was the ultimate demonstration of God’s power at work. It was the means through which we are offered salvation.

While it is easy to judge others based on worldly classifications of power and weakness, ability and disability, the message of Jesus is one of God demonstrating His power in the most unexpected way. Given that this is the upside-down message of the gospel, should not the body of Christ respond accordingly?

Rather than marginalising and excluding those people deemed weak and powerless by our society, Paul says these are people who are indispensable to the body of Christ. i

“…those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable,” (1 Corinthians 12: 22).

IN THE FULLNESS OF THE RESURRECTION

Throughout his letters to the Corinthian church, Paul talks a great deal about weakness. In one sense, Paul talks about weakness as an inevitable part of the human experience and our participation in a fallen world.

We all experience limitations in our body, the things we wish our bodies could do but cannot.

We all experience the effects of ageing and we will all experience the ultimate sign of the fall and human limitation: a physical death. It is only in the fullness of the

Dr Louise Gosbell is a Senior Research Fellow at Anglican Deaconess Ministries in Sydney and a lecturer at Mary Andrews College. Louise is also an adjunct lecturer at Alphacrucis College and Charles Sturt University. This is an edited version of Dr. Gosbell’s article. For the full version, go to www.insights.uca.org.au

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his mission encouraged by divine strength and human companionship. Such a story catapulted me into the study and practice of ordained ministry. Chaplaincy with people with intellectual disability, theological librarianship and aged care chaplaincy were the avenues of service, I believe, God called me to serve.

s r e i r r a b FOR THIS MARATHON WHEELER

HEATHER COOMBES, RETIRED MINISTER AND AUTHOR

A DIAGNOSIS of cerebral palsy, a neurological condition affecting posture, movement and muscle tension would be a challenge for any new parents to hear about me, their prematurely born daughter. This would be especially so, during missionary service in South India in the early 1950s. All sorts of questions would be raised. What would the future hold? A work colleague of my parents glimpsed possibility, naming me “our littlest missionary”. Such was the beginning of an intriguing yet challenging life.

Living in a country town in NSW in my early years gifted me with a growing appreciation of simple things.

My caring family embraced me while attending a mainstream infants’ school. Even though I clattered along in cumbersome callipers and full length arm crutches, I enjoyed acceptance and friendship in the school and church environment. My biggest challenge in these few years was coping with loneliness and temporary separation from family while recovering from surgeries that would require rigorous physiotherapy.

One of the positive outcomes of this period was the special relationships formed with others who had more severe

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forms of cerebral palsy than I had.

My high school education unfolded through the Correspondence School while I attended therapy sessions at the Spastic Centre (now Cerebral Palsy Alliance). Teen years are difficult for many. I was no exception. Rebellion, religious questioning and jagged emotional adjustments to the experience of disability reared their heads with ferocious energy. Hanging out with wonderful friends in a socially conscious Church Youth Group were true godsends at this time.

Tertiary education in Behavioural Sciences coupled with a generous Commonwealth Rehabilitation Scheme which offered driving tuition and vocational training was an opening door to intellectual stimulation and rich friendships.

Being a physically disabled new graduate in a wheelchair was difficult in the highly competitive job market. Eight months of unemployment caused me to spiral into depression. I lost my drive and purpose until I enrolled in a postgraduate diploma in librarianship.

Following this stage of education, I learnt the value

HAVING A DISABILITY IS A REALITY I CANNOT CONTROL I CANNOT CHANGE IT BUT I CAN CHANGE SOME THINGS WHICH CAN BENEFIT THOSE AROUND ME of doing voluntary work as a door-opener into paid work.

The strategy led me to paid employment as a librarian and alerted me to the potential power of lobbying in the realm of disability. I was ordained as a Uniting Church Minister in 1986 where I saw another source of purpose in ministry.

After some years, I was struck by the experience of the Biblical Moses who was called by God to liberate the Israelites from Egyptian slavery. I identified with the hesitant hero who offered lame excuses regarding his incapacities. Challenged by God, despite his limitations, Moses eventually agreed to

I have been supported by family, friends and a faith in God refined by fire. Faith has sustained me within the context of a supportive Christian community, it points me to the reality in my life of the ministry, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. The teachings and actions of Jesus reflect his compassionate inclusion of “the outsider” — a guiding principle for me in years of ministry. I firmly believe that God is near to the brokenhearted, close to those who suffer. God is also a God of new life, second chances and a beacon of hope. Heartfelt prayer is a means of maintaining connection with this Divine strength in the midst of my limitation.

The Serenity Prayer has always struck a chord with me.

Having a disability is a reality I cannot control. I cannot change it, but I can change some things which can benefit those around me. My faith encourages me, with all that I have, to leave this world a better place, even in small ways. i

Heather Coombes is a retired Uniting Church minister and author of Marathon Wheeler: Living with Physical Disability available on Amazon or heathercoombes.com

THE

TWO

US!

OF

FAT H ER A N D SON, SCOT T A N D M ICH A EL STA N TON, R EFL ECT ON W H AT I T M EA NS FOR T H EM TO BE PA RT OF A CH U RCH FA M I LY A N D HOW ‘BEI NG VA LU ED A N D BELONGI NG TO A COM M U N I T Y IS I M PORTA N T TO A L L OF US.’ Michael: My name is Michael Stanton and I am 20 years old.

In my spare time I like to do swimming with Special Olympics where I compete in competitions all over NSW most months. I am training hard for the Nationals in Adelaide in April 2018. I have Autism Spectrum Disorder. I like to listen to music and my favourite singer is Taylor Swift.

Scott: My name is Scott Stanton and I am Michael’s Dad. Like most accountants I am an exciting person to know, and my wife Suzanne is a Minister in the Uniting Church. When I’m not working too hard, I spend lots of time with Michael.

Many Church communities we have been involved with would consider Michael and I as a bit of package deal, never too far away from each other. I love travel, food, photography and sport, which is what Michael also enjoys. He must have spent too much time with me!

WATCHING CONGREGATION MEMBERS MAKE AN EFFORT TO ENGAGE WITH MICHAEL ... IS INCREDIBLY REWARDING WHAT ARE THE JOYS AND CHALLENGES OF BEING PART OF A CHURCH COMMUNITY?

Michael: The joys of being part of a Church Community is meeting new people, singing hymns and listening to the Minister’s sermon. I also like being part of the Church Community when I do things like bible readings, or playing the aboriginal clapping sticks at the start of the service when Reece plays the didgeridoo. The challenge for me is trying to understand what people are saying, and picking up what the sermon was about.

Scott: I’m interested in and inspired by the lives and faith journeys of others, the joy of worship music, and sermons that make you laugh and challenge your thinking. We began our faith journey in the Uniting Church at a time in our lives when Michael was four and his disability was at its most confronting. We were struggling with what the future held for Michael, and us. We were fortunate our congregation saw past the meltdowns and tantrums, didn’t assume we were bad parents, and joined us on the journey we were on. It could have been very different.

HOW HAS THE CHURCH COMMUNITY MADE YOU AND YOUR FAMILY FEEL WELCOME?

Michael: When I was a young boy and grew up at Menai, Marcia and Andrew welcomed me. Ron was a nice person because he was the Minister of the Church. He used to ask me to choose a picture for the front of the newsletter each week.

Salesi has welcomed me to Jannali by inviting me to church services. I went to the Uniting Church 40th Birthday celebrations at Jannali in June 2017. Bec and James have welcomed me to Hope Uniting Church by inviting me to church and socialising with people. Bec has a little baby called Rowan. I think Rowan is cute and I like seeing him.

Scott: Suzanne’s journey to becoming a Minister has led Michael and I away from our original home Church at MenaiIllawong to many parts of the Uniting Church. In a relatively short period of time we have briefly felt part of the communities of United Theological College, Ashfield Uniting Church, Bankstown Uniting Church, Burwood and Malvern Hill Uniting Churches, Hope Uniting at Maroubra, and Jannali Uniting Church. It would be fair to say that all the Church communities that Michael and I have been involved with have willingly offered us faith, hope, friendship, activities, entertainment and support.

Being valued and belonging to a community is important to all of us. When your child is diagnosed with a disability, you can’t help but think about what the future may hold for your child.

What will they do, or not do? Will they ever speak, get a job, and have relationships with people? Whether Michael would find ways to belong to a community is one of many things I instantly no longer took for granted once we received his diagnosis.

We have been fortunate. Michael did eventually talk at about six years of age. Today he is unusually social for someone on the Autism spectrum. He has developed independent living skills but is yet to succeed in the challenge of getting a job. Finding a job is a big challenge for people with disabilities.

Michael has met so many incredible people in his life that have each had a significant hand in his development. Many of these people have been Uniting Church people who just took the time to get to know him. Watching congregation members make the effort to engage with Michael, get to know him, love him for who he is, and be interested in his life and cheer him on as he develops and achieves new skills and abilities, is incredibly rewarding. It gives me hope for the future. i

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Hospitable,

loving inclusive

REV. CHRISTINE PALMER ENCOU R AGES CH U RCHES TO OFFER MORE SOCI A L LY INCLUSI V E EN V IRON MEN TS FOR FA MIL IES PARENTING HAS ALWAYS been a rewarding but challenging role. You just have to look at the rise of parenting blogs and online groups to know that we all need support and someone to walk the journey with us as we try to juggle its demands. Add into the mix the challenges of a child with a disability, and the need for a supportive, understanding community becomes greater.

Parents of children with disabilities can find life overwhelming at times, as they juggle extra appointments with therapists and doctors, fill in paperwork for equipment and support, advocate for their child, deal with daily physical, medical and behavioural issues. Then there’s the emotional toll that all of this can take.

As the parent of a young adult with profound intellectual disability, and the coordinator of a support group for parents of children with disabilities, I have experienced and listened to parents speak about these challenges. The loneliness that can come over time as friends, and even family, lose contact with them because they struggle to know how to interact, support, or understand why just getting out of the house can be a logistical feat in and of itself. Sometimes various environments and places become difficult as sensory issues, safety and accessibility become barriers to participating, which leads to an even greater sense of social isolation.

One of the ways that we do this at South Turramurra Uniting Church is to offer a safe space for parents to meet together.

As the children play, volunteers help to keep an eye on the children so that the parents can share together.

While support groups are a safe place for parents to share with those who really understand the issues that they are going through, like all other families we all need and want to belong and be part of the wider community, and not to be separate.

We all benefit from a community that is diverse.

Unfortunately, at times the church reflects our wider culture in excluding those who are ‘different’, rather than being welcoming and inclusive. We are called to be a community that welcomes people of all abilities, rather than putting up barriers that keep people out. There are many ways that the church can break down some of those barriers that lead to isolation, and ensure that we are truly living out our calling to be a hospitable, loving, inclusive community. i

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REV. CHRISTINE PALMER WITH HER FAMILY

HERE ARE SOME SUGGESTIONS FROM CHRISTINE TO CREATE A MORE SOCIALLY INCLUSIVE ENVIRONMENT: • Offer to watch the child • Recognise that all during morning tea so that families are different, and therefore their needs the family can stay and enjoy morning tea and will be different. Ask conversations with out questions, find out what constant interruptions. would be helpful. What one family needs will not • Understand that there be the same as another. are good and bad days and that sometimes the • Take time to get to family just can’t make it. know the child: find Be sure to keep in touch out what you need to with them. know in order to help out.

• Offer to give the parents Do they have sensory some time out. issues, or behavioural issues? What is their • Be prepared to hear the receptive and expressive hard stuff when you ask language capabilities? how they are going.

• If you run children’s • Learn to cope with programs provide an extra noise and different friend or carer to help a behaviours, and let the child participate in the family know how good it is children’s programs. to have them there and to hear their child being part • Find ways that involve the of things. child at their own level.

• Families don’t always • Create a safe want to be defined by environment: do outside disability. There is areas need fencing and more to their lives, so child safety gates? be sure to find out about the rest of the family.

• Accessibility: is there Constantly being asked space for a child to about your child can wander if they need become draining. to? Or space for wheelchairs within the • The church might be congregation that are able to help advocate or not right up the back away raise funds for equipment from everyone else? or support.

UNITING TRANSFORMS SUPER BUG SUFFERER’S LIFE W HEN CHRISTIAN GOZALEZ GOT A SORE THROAT, L ITTLE DID HE K NOW HE’D ACT UA L LY CON TR ACTED A DEA DLY BACTER I A L SU PER BUG W HICH WOU L D LEAV E HIM FIGHTING FOR HIS L IFE J UST A MON TH L ATER.

arranged to take Christian for tours,” explains Elyse.

WITHIN A FORTNIGHT of getting sick in September 2016 the carpenter, from Macquarie Fields in Sydney’s south west, was travelling on a train into the CBD when he suddenly lost the use of his arms and legs.

Christian was impressed by supported accommodation Ferguson Lodge, in Lidcombe, which also had a gym on site.

“There’s no doubt about it, I thought I was dying,” says Christian, 40.

“I was frantic, desperate. I was with a friend who first called for an ambulance and then helped me call my mum to say goodbye to her.”

It was in hospital that doctors discovered Christian had contracted the MRSA bug in his throat and broke the news he was unlikely to regain use of his limbs again.

Christian moved into the spinal cord unit in the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney where he stayed for ten months.

“It was the first time in his recovery that he was being given a choice of where or how he received support. I think that moment was a game changer for him.

He started to have hope about living an independent life again.”

The former gym enthusiast and boxer was about to be given his chance of regaining a hobby - one many of us take for granted.

“It was wonderful when I moved. I got my privacy back, my freedom. I started going to the gym twice a week, once with a personal trainer and once by myself. I can’t begin to tell you how great it feels to have a touch of normality back in my life. It’s amazing,” quips Christian.

He moved into his new home in August 2017 and hopes that next year he may move into his own fully independent home.

Elyse says the transformation of her client has been amazing, both physically and mentally.

“When I first met him I could see he was aching to get on with his journey. I simply helped him to do it. As soon as I got him out into the community, he was raring to get on with things,” she says.

If you ask Christian about Elyse, he smiles broadly and shakes his head as if it’s too much of a struggle to put in words his gratitude.

“I wouldn’t be where I am today without her,” he explains simply.

“I’d still be in that hospital bed feeling sorry for myself.” i

UNITING SUPPORT WORKER ELYSE HAS SUPPORTED CHRISTIAN ON HIS JOURNEY TO REGAIN HIS INDEPENDANCE

“I shared a room with three others and I watched as those patients came and went. Everyone else seemed to improve and have hope of moving out of hospital, but I didn’t. I became frustrated and felt depressed. I wondered if I’d ever be able to move into my own home. It became a sort of pipe dream,” admits Christian.

Christian’s progress was slow and although he regained some feeling in both hands and his right leg, his use of those limbs was limited and he still had no use of his left leg. He was confined to a wheelchair.

In May 2017, Christian got his NDIS plan and realised he had been given funding for a support worker. He turned to Uniting for help and support Co-ordinator Elyse Quintal stepped into his life.

Elyse helped apply for more funding for special equipment and liaised with the hospital for opportunities of an independent life for Christian.

“The social workers at the hospital gave me information on residencies and I

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Church initiatives FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES From youth support groups to adult fellowship groups, Uniting Churches in New South Wales and the ACT have unique services for people living with disability and their families, tailored to their needs. In some cases, these spring up because of congregations’ needs. In others, churches start new outreaches for their local community context. In every case however, there is a desire to be inclusive of all the abilities that form part of the Body of Christ.

‘LOVE FOR EVERYONE’ AT KENTHURST UNITING CHURCH THE ANNANGROVE/KENTHURST CROSSROAD Group meets at Kenthurst Uniting Church every Thursday afternoon.

Maureen Warden has coordinated the group for 20 years.

Every term, Maureen and a team of helpers meet and organise a program with activities ranging from planting bulbs for springtime, making Mother’s and Father’s day presents and making Christmas presents.

“There is an animal night when the young adults will groom dogs and interact with them,” Maureen said. “We study a different country each year.”

“We learn a song in their language, study the culture and even have a night with food from that country. Then there is our music night. Mr Dennis, from church will come along and play his guitar and sing. The young adults will dance, sing-a-long and play tambourines and other instruments.”

The group also has an outreach mission each year. For the last 10 years the group has been sending bags of school items to schools in Papua New Guinea.

“This year, our group have hand drawn on calico, which is then sewn up into wash bags,” Maureen said. “These bags will be filled with bath items for a child and will be sent off to local women’s refuges before Christmas. This is our group’s way of doing something for someone less fortunate than themselves.”

“We try to cover a large range of activities so that everyone can benefit from our group. We bring to them the message of Jesus Christ – ‘Love for everyone’. That people with disabilities have the same chance as us to have a happy and healthy normal life.”

Maureen told Insights that Crossroads is a “wonderful” group.

“It gives us a chance to share time with some great people,” she said. “They come into each meeting with joy and enthusiasm and one can’t help but smile.” i

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WE BRING TO THEM THE MESSAGE OF JESUS CHRIST ‘LOVE FOR EVERYONE’. THAT PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES HAVE THE SAME CHANCE AS US TO HAVE A HAPPY AND HEALTHY NORMAL LIFE

LAUGHING AND DANCING TOGETHER SOUTH TURRAMURRA runs an initiative called Gift Finders which was started by Bill and Ruth Thomas who were doing supply ministry with the Congregation. Having looked at the needs in the community they decided to run a club for people who have varying abilities who share a meal together.

When the Rev. Christine Palmer was employed as a minister in the Congregation, she continued Gift Finders and partnered with Ability Links through Uniting for a grant to run a monthly get together. Christine and husband Damian decided to run a social inclusion BBQ for the whole community and out of this initiative some friendships developed with a number of group homes in the area. The groups really loved planning the gatherings and being part of the inclusion BBQ. The group homes also wanted to be involved in Gift Finders.

“We opened this up and the members of the group homes took on the planning of the evening get togethers,” Christine explains. “They really enjoyed setting up, preparing the meals and deciding what activities they would like to do.”

“One of the activities they love to do is karaoke and so we applied and got a grant from Ability Links for the karaoke machine. So they love doing this after we have cooked the meal. Even those people without speech love to have a go, which is always enormous fun. We end up dancing to Michael Jackson and Abba and having a ball.”

This has turned into a once-a-month gathering with three group homes involved and participating at their level.

“If we all think we are made in the image of God and we all think we have a part to play, then that absolutely includes everybody no matter what our ability is,” said Christine of the need to include all abilities in Church. “We also have a support group on Thursdays that meets to support parents with children who have disabilities and so we have some volunteers to look after the little ones so the parents can have a chat together.”

“As things become more challenging, particularly families with children with intellectual disabilities we struggle.

Sometimes inclusion means that children need to be in a special environment, so making space is more challenging. How do we make space for everyone? That is the biggest question, but its a vitally important question to be asking of our Church communities.

“The things that I love about our Saturday nights is the friendships that have been built. Standing side by side somebody else turning sausages on the BBQ, setting tables, laughing and dancing together.” i

INTEGRATION WITHOUT AGE LIMITS AROUND 1998, Teen Plus was born as Teen Club at St Matthew’s, Baulkham Hills. This social group for people with disabilities was embraced “wholeheartedly” by the Congregation.

Jane Cole has been the group’s coordinator for almost two decades. According to Jane, Teen Club kicked off with a dozen high schoolers. That number has been consistent; so has many of the group’s members. “We started out as a youth group but they’ve all grown up,” Jane said.

Teen Plus has a fortnightly gathering on Sunday afternoon (involving activities, dinner and attending the evening service).

“I am totally humbled by them,” said Jane. “I think the people at Teen Plus are unashamed of their faith.”

After a formal Bible Study of The Good Samaritan parable, Jane asked the group who they would like to be in it. Everyone wanted to be “the helper” in the parable, so Jane asked what kind of help they might offer. She expected them to say they could help out with the dishes or behave well at home. “But they said, ‘Well, we need to help the poor children.’ And that just blew my mind.”

With its network of supporters, the mature Youth Group extended their “Good Samaritan” help to providing education material to 400 kids in the Philippines at Christmas, as well as medication for indigenous children at a local hospital. i

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IT TAKES ALL SORTS MEREWETHER UNITING CHURCH run a group called All Sorts and have recently renovated a house owned by the congregation to open a L’Arche house for those living with disabilities.

The Reverend Jennifer Burns told Insights that the All Sorts group was built on a similar initiative that has run at the congregation for 30 years. This new group has the goal to broaden its scope to include people with all abilities.

“For people who come now, some of them have had strokes or all sorts of health incidents that have might have changed their abilities and living.

“It’s called All Sorts because we wanted to make it very clear that all sorts of people were invited,” Rev. Burns said.

Volunteers range from university students to congregation members to members who also have disabilities.

“Everyone is there together and learning from each other and offering what each of them can do,” said Rev. Burns.

Each Tuesday the group meets to share morning tea and conversation.

Activities throughout the day include group exercises run by a physiotherapist or occupation therapist. Once a month there is organised entertainment.

Each meeting has around 30 to 50 attendees, ranging from late teens to early twenties, through to people aged over 80 years old.

“It’s about friendship and involvement and getting to know each other,” Rev. Burns said.

“I’m quite passionate about involving everyone in life and people who are different meeting together and learning from each other.”

This desire to ensure the congregation reached all people, for Rev. Burns came from being involved in a less resourced congregation in Newcastle in her youth.

“So as a teenager social justice became very important to me and that is something that I have carried on through life, which now I express in part through this Tuesday group and the L’arche house,” said Rev. Burns.

missional use for the house owned

by Merewether congregation.

Since July this year, renovations to the home have been made with the help of volunteers from Merewether UCA, other Uniting Churches, The Community Kitchen Merewether, Newcastle Lions Club, Newcastle High School and L’Arche Hunter. The L’Arche house project is also being supported by The Hunter Presbytery.

The five bedroom home is now open and can house up to four people, with the fifth room acting as an office sleepover for staff. To enquire about vacancies, contact Rev. Burns at minister. merewetheruca@gmail.com. i

www.

The L’Arche house in particular came out of the aspiration to effectively find a

For more on All Sorts go to merewether.org.au/ ministries/all-sorts

THE VALUE OF INDEPENDENCE WHAT WILL HAPPEN to my child when I die? That is the question which haunts all parents of people with a disability.

Where will they live? Who will care for them? Who will love them?

ROSS WALKER LODGE BEFORE

St Margaret’s Uniting Church community in Hackett, Canberra, were addressing these needs when they decided to embark on a housing solution.

Ross Walker Lodge is a home for people with disability. The Lodge was completed in 2011, drawing on a $1.1 million grant.

In developing accommodation for vulnerable people and people with disabilities there has been tension in recent years between the value of independence and the benefits people gain from living in community.

The Lodge is designed to enable residents to have as much independence as they wish, but also security and companionship that comes from being part of an intentional community.

The six or seven residents have the dignity of being part of a household in a home they can call their own. All residents have their own, large private space in a bed-sitting room with room to entertain guests, make a cup of tea, and each has an ensuite bathroom. There are also communal areas for cooking, dining and socialising, which residents can use to the extent that they wish, minimising any sense of isolation or loneliness.

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ROSS WALKER LODGE AFTER

Evening meals are provided and shared communally with the Resident Coordinator, who keeps an eye on security overnight and at weekends. Most residents have outside daily activities accompanied by their individual support workers, but are also free to join in group activities such as book club and Stepping Stones music, art and craft or outings with a coffee run by St Margaret’s volunteers.

The lodge is run by a Management Committee and is fully supported financially from rent paid by residents who generally receive the Disability Support Pension with housing supplement, along with their individual NDIS packages which are in part pooled to facilitate meal preparation and cleaning. i John Goss and Keith Baker

GIFTS AND GRACES CONCERT FEATURING ST MARGARET’S STEPPING STONES LIFE MUSIC AND ART GROUP PHOTO BY BRIAN STEWART

STEPPING STONES FOR LIFE

MUSIC AND ART GROUP ST MARGARET’S HELD its Gifts and Graces concert in July 2017 that focussed on people with different abilities performing on stage in the congregation’s hall.

I knew you were coming I would’ve baked a cake.” Another showcase saw a participant who could remember everyone’s birthday in the room without hesitation.

The concert was part of the church’s diversity week and featured the St Margaret’s Stepping Stones Life Music and Art Group that consists of mainly older people who live with various disabilities.

The room was filled with smiles, song and laughs and as Pam said, it was all about inclusiveness. “[It was] also the idea that we are all equal in the eyes of God,” said Pam.

The idea for this concert came after one of the volunteers Pam Kelly, had seen her granddaughter’s concert that looked at how people were able to fully enjoy life when they found something they were good at.

With the help of the rest of the volunteers Pam was able to organise Gift and Graces and give group members the opportunity to showcase their unique skills on stage.

“Events like these lend a broader understanding to the community [about people living with disabilities] but they also give people a chance to express who they are,” said Pam of what she described as an unconventional concert.

There were eight acts during the concert that included dancing and singing, but also diverse showcases. This included one participant, who is a great cook, decided to dress as a chef. She then gifted the audience with cakes, all the while the audience sang the song “If

The concert gave a chance for people in the community as well as church member to get a better understanding of what the group does and who they are.

“What’s also come out of it, is that the actual disability group has a lot more confidence and they are all helping out with music now and singing on their own and everything,” said Pam. The Stepping Stones Life Music and Art Group initially started in 2001 and meets every Friday afternoon, for art craft and music activities. Some of the regular group members also live at the St Margaret’s Ross Walker Lodge. i Does your Church involve people with disabilities in ways that have enlivened your communities of faith? Share your stories with us by sending an email to insights@nswact.uca.org.au

WHAT IS ABILITY LINKS? Ability Links supports people with a disability, their families and carers to live the life they want, as valued members of their community. Ability Links staff, also known as Linkers, work closely with Congregations across NSW. Linkers have strong local knowledge and work alongside communities, supporting them to be welcoming and inclusive.

For more information on Ability Links, go to facebook.com/ UnitingAbilityLinks, call (02) 8830 0768 or email abilitylinks@uniting.org

Watch the video “What Linkers Do” bit.ly/UnitingAbilityLinks

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AUSTRALIA’S CHANGING

The National Disability Insurance Scheme is one of the most ambitious social reforms ever carried out in Australia. But what is it? How does it fit into the bigger picture of Australia’s changing disability landscape? And what opportunities and challenges does it bring for the church?

WHAT IS THE NDIS? The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is a new way of providing support for Australians with disability, their families and carers. Once it is fully implemented it will provide support for about 460,000 Australians who live with a permanent and significant disability, so that they can live “an ordinary life.” It is designed to ensure that anyone who is born with or acquires a disability will get the support they need. The supports provided by the NDIS will help people with disability to build the skills and capability they need in order to participate fully in community life and, if appropriate, get a job.

The NDIS helps people with disability to: • Access mainstream services and supports. These are the services available for all Australians from people like doctors or teachers through the health and education systems. It also covers areas like public housing and the justice and aged care systems.

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• Access community services and supports. These are activities and services available to everyone in a community, such as sports clubs, community groups, libraries or charities.

• Maintain informal support arrangements. This is help people get from their family and friends. It is support people don’t pay for and is generally part of most people’s lives.

• Receive reasonable and necessary funded supports.

The NDIS can pay for supports that are reasonable and necessary. This means they are related to a person’s disability and are required for them to live an ordinary life and achieve their goals.

AS IMPORTANT AS THE NDIS IS, IT’S ONLY ONE PIECE OF A BIGGER PICTURE...

WHAT’S THE BIGGER PICTURE? In 2008 Australia signed up to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).

The purpose of the CRPD is “to promote, protect and ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons with disabilities, and to promote respect for their inherent dignity.” It identifies persons with disabilities as “those who have long-term physical, mental, intellectual, or sensory impairments which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others.” (Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Article 1).

The Convention is shaped by eight General Principles: 1. Respect for inherent dignity, individual autonomy including the freedom to make one’s own choices, and independence of persons; 2. Non-discrimination; 3. Full and effective participation and inclusion in society; 4. Respect for difference and acceptance of persons with disabilities as part of human diversity and humanity; 5. Equality of opportunity; 6. Accessibility; 7. Equality between men and women;

The Strategy covers six policy areas: 1. Inclusive and accessible communities: the physical environment including public transport; parks, buildings and housing; digital information and communications technologies; civic life including social, sporting, recreational and cultural life.

2. Rights protection, justice and legislation: statutory protections such as anti-discrimination measures, complaints mechanisms, advocacy, the electoral and justice systems.

3. Economic security: jobs, business opportunities, financial independence, adequate income support for those not able to work, and housing.

4. Personal and community support: inclusion and participation in the community, person-centred care and support provided by specialist disability services and mainstream services; informal care and support.

5. Learning and skills: early childhood education and care, schools, further education, vocational education; transitions from education to employment; life-long learning.

6. Health and wellbeing: health services, health promotion and the interaction between health and disability systems; wellbeing and enjoyment of life.

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If we as a church are going to respond to the challenges and opportunities the NDIS presents, it’s important to understand how the Scheme fits into this bigger picture. And this bigger picture provides even more opportunities and challenges for the church.

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the National Disability Strategy, are ambitious goals that seek to correct the longstanding mistreatment and marginalisation of people with disability. As a community called to embody the love of the God revealed in Jesus of Nazareth, a community called to recognise that we are all made in the image of God, we are challenged to play a part in contributing to the successful achievement of those ambitious goals.

NOW IS THE TIME TO FACE THE CHALLENGES, AND TAKE UP THE OPPORTUNITIES THAT THE CHANGING DISABILITY LANDSCAPE IN AUSTRALIA PROVIDES FOR THE CHURCH OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FOR THE CHURCH The NDIS, as one part of a bigger picture, is designed to do more than provide people with disability with the support they need. Without a change of values and habits in the wider community, we could provide all the funding in the world and people with disability would still experience mistreatment, exclusion, and oppression. That’s why the NDIS, in addition to providing individual funding packages for eligible people with a disability, has a second aspect to it called Information, Linkages, and Capacity Building (ILC).

The focus of ILC is genuine community inclusion, ensuring that people with disability are connected into their communities, and making sure that the wider community becomes more accessible and inclusive of people with disability. One way that it will seek to do this is by “making sure mainstream services or community organisations become more inclusive of people with disability.” Our congregations are community organisations that need to take up this challenge of being more inclusive. But there are also opportunities here for us, as the NDIS will offer support, and perhaps even funding, as we take

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up this challenge. The ILC guidelines say that the NDIS will work with community organisations to “increase their awareness of the needs and desires of people with disability and will explore strategies to assist them to address simple improvements that may be needed to their facilities to enable access and participation by people with disability.”

The NDIS is more than simply a new way of providing people with disability with the resources they need to live a full life.

It is one part of a larger project of genuine social inclusion of people with disability, and the church by its very nature is called to be actively engaged in that larger project. Now is the time to face the challenges, and take up the opportunities, that the changing disability landscape in Australia provides for the church. i Damian Palmer teaches history at United Theological College, and is a Research Fellow, with a focus on disability, at the Public and Contextual Theology Research Centre (Charles Sturt University)

Wonder TWO OF MY three boys suffer from a rare genetic condition known as Ocular Motor Apraxia (OMA). It messes with the brain’s ability to learn, taking the hard-won neural pathways you lay down every time you master a skill, and erasing them at random. You can take weeks to learn a word – like ‘Dad!’ – and lose it the next day.

WONDER’S AUTHENTIC PORTRAYAL OF LIFE WITH A DISABILITY RESONATES WITH MARK HADLEY

praying desperately as he enters his school alone – “Oh God, please don’t let them hurt him…” Her heart breaks weeks later just at the sight of a single child laughing alongside her boy.

Auggie’s sister Via loves her brother, but finds herself telling a boy she meets at high school that she is an only child.

Some things can be made to stick over time, but that time is often measured in years. It’s a little more complicated than that, but OMA basically affects everything from Wonder doesn’t have a strong Christian reasoning to walking – and my oldest son has it message to share. There is no God standing close, just bad. He will probably live in the world of an eightas He promises, to bear the burdens of His children. year-old for the rest of his life. So, you can see In fact, some of the morals Auggie’s teacher shares IF WE LIVE LIKE why, as a father and a scriptwriter, I have amount to little more than sophisms, extolling CHRIST, LOVE LIKE more than a passing interest in stories about students to always choose kindness because CHRIST, SPEAK THE people with disability. truth can hurt. Yet there was one precept, written WORDS OF CHRIST, on Auggie’s blackboard that particularly caught NO ONE WILL August Pullman, better known as ‘Auggie’ to my eye: “Your deeds are your monuments.”

DOUBT THAT WE his family, suffers from his own rare genetic FOLLOW CHRIST condition called Treacher Collins syndrome.

I guess it resonated strongly because it was He required extensive plastic surgery growing so familiar. Two thousand years earlier, Jesus said up, leaving him with the sort of face that literally something similar: “By your fruits you shall know makes small children cry. Auggie, played by Jacob them.” Auggie’s teacher was right – long after you are Tremblay, has been home-schooled for the first ten years of gone, people will remember you for what you do. But it’s Jesus’ his life. However, his parents – played by Julia Roberts and words I’m hoping my son will one day learn. Because, more Owen Wilson – believe it’s time he takes his first steps into the importantly, it’s the kind of deeds you do that will tell people outside world. They enroll him in fifth grade at a local school, what you believe. and the plot takes the path you would expect. Auggie is bullied If we live like Christ, love like Christ, speak the words of Christ, by boys who call him ‘Gollum’ and ‘Darth Sidious’. However, then no one will ever doubt that we follow Christ. Not doing so he’s blessed by a couple of real friends, and his character is just as clear a message. ultimately makes a world of difference. But that’s not what impressed me…

I really valued the multifaceted insight Wonder shares with those who haven’t had much to do with disability. And those Wonder sets itself apart as a film by employing a unique who have will find a great understanding of their good and bad storytelling device. Every 20 minutes or so the film changes its days. perspective. The story begins with Auggie, but then shifts to the point of view of his mother, followed by his sister, then his I also hope my boys will grow up to practice kindness, without best friend, and so on and so on... Auggie always remains at letting go of what is right. But most of all, I hope they realise the centre of this little universe, but what we’re gifted with is that, disability or no, they can always bear the sort of fruit that a much more informed and emotionally accurate view of what says, “This one loves Jesus.” i it means to live within the orbit of a disabled child. Auggie’s Mark Hadley mother Anne is a pragmatic personality, but she finds herself

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Hospitality inspired by the gospel THE GREAT AUSTR A LI A N DREA M IS DEA D. AT LEAST, IT IS IN SY DNEY, THE MOST POPUL ATED CIT Y IN THE L A ND OF W IDE-OPEN SPACES, QUA RTER-ACRE BLOCKS A ND EX PENSI V E STU DIO A PA RTMENTS. OFFICIALLY RANKED as the second most unaffordable house market in the world (after Hong Kong), Sydney has become a housing nightmare for many. An annual report released this year by research group Demographia announced Sydney’s average cost of housing to be 12 times the average household income.

Ouch. Demographia suggests a housing market is “affordable and healthy” if the average cost of buying a house is up to only three times the average household income. Ouch and ouch.

If you are trying to buy a place to live in Sydney in 2018, prepare for ongoing trauma to your hip pocket, even if you earn more than average. But what if you earn less than average — or less than that? Or you are unemployed?

Or homeless? Sydney seems close to inhospitable or uninhabitable for anyone not pulling in a king’s ransom.

Parramatta Mission is an unusual, notable Uniting Church located at the heart of what is the geographical centre of Sydney. Parramatta is one of Sydney’s major suburban CBDs, a thriving mini-city of business, development and culture. Since the 1970s, the Uniting Church in downtown Parramatta has been doing what it can to support vulnerable, poor and mentally ill people in its community. With cost of living in Sydney threatening to destroy anyone not made of money, Parramatta

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Mission’s accommodation and social services have only increased in value.

HOUSING AFFORDABILITY SUGGESTIONS

Parramatta Mission Senior Minister and Group CEO Keith Hamilton doesn’t have the quick fix or simple solution for the housing affordability issues confronting Australia. Having been heavily involved with helping vulnerable people find housing solutions, Keith knows that answers only can come from various sources. “Ultimately, it won’t be about one thing. It will be about a matrix of things,” says Keith, who offers a brief list of possible remedies for Australia’s housing woes.

RESTRICT NEGATIVE GEARING

KEITH HAMILTON IS SENIOR MINISTER AND GROUP CEO AT PARRAMATTA MISSION.

Keith Hamilton is Senior Minister and Group CEO at Parramatta Mission. Why an ordained minister is also a “Group CEO” tells you a lot about the size, scale and composition of Parramatta Mission. What reveals even more about Parramatta Mission’s approach to serving God is InSpiring the Common Good, a document developed during the past year.

InSpiring the Common Good is a five-point theological explanation of why Parramatta Mission does what it does. In detail across several pages, it outlines the biblical backing for why Parramatta Mission headquarters wants to be “a place of life and worship, community and practice established in the hospitality of Christ”.

Amazingly, InSpiring the Common Good was put together to support a $42 million development proposal for its site.

“We are pricing people out. It’s a huge issue,” Keith summarises about the headline problem of soaring house prices in Sydney. In short: as cost of housing rises, it’s harder for people to enter such a ferocious market. “There is a problem when we have people who own multiple houses, still getting their negative gearing and all those kinds of things.” Keith would like to see greater limits imposed upon negative gearing, such as it being available for only one or two investment properties (irrespective of how many investment properties someone owns).

BUILDING AND PLANNING

Keith believes high-rise housing needs to be built. According to Keith, Sydney cannot keep spreading out because “all we’re doing then is ending up with people living 50 kilometres away from where they work. So I think it makes perfect sense that we are building higher buildings around railway stations.”

• Keith would like a “social benefit” tariff to come from the sale of land near a railway station. Market value of land increases whenever it is near a railway station, and a tariff flowing from this inflated sales price could be carved off to go towards social housing programs.

• Parramatta Mission is a member of activist movement Sydney Alliance, which is pursuing a program with the State Government (a program that Parramatta Council has committed to) that would see a percentage of affordable housing being compulsory whenever council land is redeveloped.

• “One thing I [also] think is worth exploring is where a developer might be allowed to build, let’s say, a ten storey building and they’re prepared to have a certain number of rooms or units which are “affordable”, fixed at some kind of percentage. Then, there might be permission to build an extra couple of floors to compensate for [lost rental revenue].”

CHURCH DEVELOPMENT

Keith points out that Uniting already is working with UCA churches to encourage particular forms of redeveloping their land for housing: “For example, it would be possible for the church where it has land, to develop that to provide some kind

A BUILDING PROJECT, BUILT ON BIBLICAL FOUNDATIONS

When the proposal was submitted this year to City of Parramatta Council, InSpiring the Common Good went with it. Imagine! A $42 million development proposal — including innovative accommodation solutions — being presented to a City Council, accompanied by the Christian beliefs and thinking which inform it.

Such a combination suggests it is possible to do what too many can think impossible —apply Christianity to reallife situations.

“As we started looking at our redevelopment, we had to start with theology,” explains Keith. “Our starting point is not the dollars or buildings or the building design; it’s got to be theology. We are a church, so we start with theology.

If we start with the building or finances, there is no necessary reason that we will get to theology from that.”

“When we have engaged with Council, we’ve begun by talking about our theological understanding. We’re not saying to Council they have to become Christians or, if you like, buy our theology, but you do need to understand so that you can understand why we are doing what we are doing.”

do in their community. And much of what they are doing for their community is at the extreme end of the housing affordability crisis. While Keith has suggestions for how to broadly address the costs of living in Sydney [see side panel on the left], the massive redevelopment of Parramatta Mission centres on responding comprehensively to homelessness in Parramatta.

Parramatta Mission already offers significant accommodation and mental health services across Sydney and beyond (extending to the Central Coast and Hunter Valley). But it hopes to get approval to build a housing hub that would allow vulnerable people to transition through different stages of accommodation, in the one location. Being called Common Ground, this socially conscious hub on the redeveloped Parramatta Mission site also would offer employment opportunities.

Subsidising the cost of Common Ground would be private accommodation and business premises, located alongside the crisis and social housing. Parramatta Mission’s

INSPIRE: THE COMMON GROUND PROPOSED DEVELOPMENT

integrated scheme for helping to combat homelessness aims to not rely upon Government funding, which means it would remain free to set its own Christianityinformed agenda.

The expected annual cost of running Common Ground is in the ballpark of $3.5 million. Such a massive financial outlay reflects Parramatta Mission’s theological approach to the value of those God has

created. “I think the bottom line is that everybody is made in the image of God and certain things flow from that, in terms of value, worth and those sorts of things,” summarises Keith.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 32

Keith and his Parramatta Mission Congregation are a community wanting their Christian priorities to be the foundations of what they

OUR STARTING POINT IS NOT THE DOLLARS OR BUILDINGS OR THE BUILDING DESIGN IT’S GOT TO BE THEOLOGY

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MARTIN PLACE TENT CITY Homeless and vulnerable people cultivated a prominent Tent City this year on the doorstep of Sydney’s financial district.

Parramatta Mission Senior Minister and Group CEO Keith Hamilton’s response to that highly publicised village might shock you: “My personal view is that they should not have been allowed to stay there.”

“We should not normalise homelessness; We should not normalise people living in a tent. We need to recognise that there is something wrong when people have to live in a tent, in this day and age.”

“I get it if there is no other form of accommodation for anyone, anywhere, so then living in a tent might be the right thing to do.

But we live in a time where we have so many more resources.

To normalise and say it’s OK for someone to live in a tent, when someone else lives in a house, there’s a whole piece about inequality and the common good involved in that.”

Despite Australian society projecting that our worth is found in what we achieve or what we do or who we marry or how much money we have or the house we buy, Keith points us back to truth that Parramatta Mission is based upon. “Our baseline identity is someone who is loved by God. Of course, someone living on the street forgets that, naturally. Mind you, most of the population forget that, to their great detriment.”

“Intrinsic to who we are is to have somewhere to live and to be in relationship. To be on the street or sleeping rough tends also to coincide with broken relationships.”

Keith isn’t trying to oversimplify the causes of homelessness. Instead, he’s reinforcing how followers of Jesus Christ know that no matter what else is said about housing issues, God did forge humans in relationship, for relationship.

That foundational reality makes an ongoing and distinct difference to the reality of dwelling on earth.

God is a God of community with us. God cares not just for an individual, but for all.

God went so far for right relationship with us that, as Keith notes with admiration, God limited himself to human form for a time. “There is a complete identification of

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God as one of us, among us, in Jesus,” says Keith, before listing off things Jesus went through that every one of us experiences (such as birth, hunger, tiredness, work and death).

“Theologically, I think everyone has the right to have whatever they need to be able to live life to the full.

So, whatever we need to live life to the full, that’s a basic right that we have. ‘To live to the full’ is different, person to person, but it is to use the abilities and gifts we have to make a contribution to the wider society in which we live. To engage with people; to have a community in which we can contribute and be supported; to have sufficient food to eat; to have relationships; and to have somewhere to sleep and rest.”

Given how much Keith has emphasised the Christian underpinnings of what Parramatta Mission does, I’m surprised that his “life to the full” definition doesn’t sound more, well, Christian.

Keith adds that “living life to the full” is not a particularly Christian concept; he nods to how ancient Greek philosophers Aristotle and Plato thought and wrote a lot about it (as have plenty of others since).

“I know that some people will have a different view and that some Christians felt like they should be allowed to stay there but I disagree. As it turned out, most of the people who were there were helped into other accommodation.” Sydney City Council and Kings Cross’ Wayside Chapel were instrumental in helping the Tent City residents find a place to stay.

HOUSING ISSUES ARE NOT BEYOND THE SCOPE OF GOD’S CARE AND PROVISION IN JESUS. RATHER, IT REQUIRES INTENTION AND PASSION TO SORT OUT HOW FOLLOWING JESUS LEADS TO AN IMPACT

is a point of distinction from all other philosophies or worldviews.

“There was a certain kind of truth the Greek philosophers were pointing to - but I think that Jesus sharpens that truth.

He’s saying that living life to the full involves relationship with the One who created the whole of creation and comes to us in Jesus.”

“What Jesus and the Bible say that is different is we, in ourselves and our own capacity, can’t achieve that [relationship]. We need someone from outside to come into the world to engage with us to enable us to do that.”

Living life to the full might seem light years away from someone who is struggling to make a home in Sydney. But as Keith and Parramatta Mission indicate, housing issues are not beyond the scope of God’s care and provision in Jesus.

Rather, it requires intention and passion to sort out how following Jesus leads to an impact upon where we live and finding fulfilment wherever that is. As long as it’s built on the strongest foundation of all, Jesus Christ himself. i

But when I ask Keith about whether Christianity offers anything different about living life to the full, he quickly references how the gospel of John quotes Jesus revealing Ben McEachen that he came so that people “may have life and have it to the full.” (John 10:10) Keith explains that that bold statement about where abundant life is found

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A camel walks into a bar...

BRINGING CHRISTMAS TO THE STRETS OF ULTIMO yahoos and then it usually gets parked outside for a while.”

WITH THREE CAMELS, sheep, a donkey, and local performers, Mustard Seed Uniting Church’s live Nativity is a spectacular performance that has brought the Christmas story to Sydney’s Inner West for the past decade.

The Rev. Dave Gore has been Minister at Mustard Seed Uniting Church for the past three years. He has previously organised two Nativities.

“It’s almost like a public or community celebration of the Nativity which involves a local choir, and a lot of the local school kids getting dressed up as angels or shepherds” Dave said.

“Since I’ve come along we’ve really simplified the story; we stay as close to the details we have in the biblical text, along with a bit of a narrative woven through it.”

Dave dresses up as an inn keeper for the event. The animals are paraded through Quarry Green from Jones Street to Bulwara Road, in front of the church.

Mary and Joseph sometimes knock on people’s doors on the village green to seek a

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room. People in the area now expect this. “They get into the spirit of things; it’s a lot of fun,” Dave said.

“We usually have a neighbourhood baby as the baby Jesus – a baby who is usually less than six months old and, if possible, the mother plays Mary.” The crowd loves the cute factor; kids shepherd actual sheep.

Three wise men (last year it was women) come in on camels. “It’s just a bit of a spectacle.”

Dave estimates that about 500 people attended the nativity in 2016 and that it has been growing over the past few years.

EMBODYING CHRISTMAS VALUES

Dave told Insights that the atmosphere is “very euphoric.” He thinks is because it’s usually warm and summery, people are getting in to holiday spirit, and “because the values that we bring out in the story are so good – the values of a God who isn’t coming in an ivory tower but is coming in a very simple form. The whole notion of subverting all the power structures which we think oppress us, and the sense of the simplicity and glory of a baby coming.”

THE WHOLE NOTION OF SUBVERTING ALL THE POWER STRUCTURES WHICH WE THINK OPPRESS US, AND THE SENSE OF THE SIMPLICITY AND GLORY OF A BABY COMING

“And at the end – this is now tradition – the camel walks through the pub. There’s a pub diagonally opposite the church; a little ‘London neighbourhood’ style pub called the Lord Wolseley.

The camel goes through one door of the pub and walks through. Everyone cheers and

Sydney’s Inner West is statistically one of the most non-religious areas in Australia. Despite this, Dave says that people know the Christmas story of Jesus and respond to it: it’s ingrained into the culture.

“Sometimes those sorts of stats are indicating that people are over the whole ‘religion’ thing and they are quite staunchly secular. But even so, there is no getting away from the fact that the values we have in Jesus are all the good values that every good person aspires to, no matter what religion they are in. So that’s the areas I focus on; the stuff that the Apostle Paul writes at one point: ‘All these really good attributes, against these things there are no laws.’” [Galatians 5:23].

“You don’t need to be protected against them.

They’re good things, so I bring out the good things that people know about [the Christian] tradition; it’s built such robust societies for so long, albeit they’re woven through with unhelpful things like [sexism] or chauvinism, and a bunch of other twisted bits. You know, it’s not all a clean argument but the bit that are essential to the story [of Jesus], they are ‘clean’.

There is no argument about those bits.”

“What people get to see is these are the universal values. These are the things that if everybody actually did hold to, we’d actually be a lot better off.”

According to Dave, people don’t tend to walk away saying “I’m going to become a

Christian” but they like what the Church is on about and feel good about being part of the event. He says that the big win is positive community recognition.

“It gives us an enormous sense of standing in the community.”

Would he like more people to respond more strongly to Jesus, from this event?

“I’m a very strong believer in Jesus, in that I think he is the saviour of the world and if people were to live the way Jesus calls us to – and he demonstrated in the stories we have in the gospels – that will save the world. If we don’t, then we are just going to kill each other. I mean, look at what we’re doing at the moment. So I don’t really mind how people get to that point; I just want them to get there.”

“We want to do everything we can to represent as

accurately as possible what we understand to be the heart of God, as it’s been told to us in the scriptures. And we want to represent that to the community. And we have this confidence that if someone then does walk through the door, and they meet us as a community of believers, they’ll appreciate us.” According to Dave, Mustard Seed Uniting Church’s worship is not fancy but the people in the church are “good people and they care about people who come in for the first time.”

ENGAGING THE LOCAL COMMUNITY

Dave told Insights that there a number of ways churches can engage with their local community at Christmas if they were inspired by the their Nativity event.

“You’ve got to know your local community and what will be a helpful way to engage with them. You’ve also got to know your Congregation and

what is an expression of what they desire to do and have a capacity to do.”

“There’s no point taking on a project you can’t actually pull off. So, think about where you are and who you are, and do the best thing you can do in that context. God never calls us to do stuff we can’t do. He always calls us to do everything we can do.” i Ben McEachen

Come gather around the story of Christmas: The live Nativity will be held at the Quarry Green in Ultimo.

Friday 15 December at 7pm Cash donations will be collected for the Exodus Foundation

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Bringing hope and healing

WHEN DID I SEE YOU HUNGRY? WHEN DID I SEE YOU SICK? WHEN DID I SEE YOU A STRANGER?

The Christmas Bowl is such a familiar part of the Uniting Church celebrations in Advent and Christmas that we almost take it for granted.

But a moment’s thought about the Bowl’s support for people trapped in poverty, or fleeing their homes, or caught up in conflict, reminds us of what a privilege it is to be part of this network of practical care.

IT’S SAYING YOU CAN ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS IT’S ONE WAY WE CAN ACTUALLY FEEL LIKE WE’RE DOING SOMETHING PRACTICAL TO RESPOND TO THAT ESSENTIAL CALL OF THE GOSPEL OF JESUS

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THE THEME for this year’s Christmas Bowl is: When did I see you hungry? When did I see you sick? When did I see you a stranger?

We talked to Rev. Dr Brian Brown, past Moderator of the Synod of NSW and the ACT, and long-time supporter of the Christmas Bowl, about what it means to take part in this much-loved ecumenical tradition to bring hope and healing to the world at Christmas.

Brian can you tell me how long you’ve been supporting the Christmas Bowl?

I came to Australia in 1978 and since then, each church I’ve been involved with, as a minister and as an individual, has participated in the Christmas Bowl appeal. So it seems like it’s always been there.

It has! What does it mean to you to be continuing this tradition?

Australia is a young country in terms of Christian faith and the Christian church.

In very practical terms, it’s important to uphold those good habits that bring us together and support the continuity of the Christian tradition.

The Christmas Bowl continues to be something that brings a healthy flow of energy through the life of the church.

Can you talk a little more about why you think it’s important to work ecumenically?

The Uniting Church is heavily committed to the ecumenical side of things and we do a lot of heavy lifting in that area. However in my experience in ministry, it’s a notoriously difficult area to see progress.

I’ve always seen ecumenism working at the grass roots. Whether its local congregations coming together for carols, school scripture or for a refugee rally, when there’s a cause that we can all get involved with, we’re no longer separated by ideology or theology.

That’s why I see the Christmas Bowl as an important movement, because it’s a cause that unites people ecumenically. It’s very basic Christian faith in action.

What meaning does the Christmas Bowl hold for you?

The Christmas Bowl puts the emphasis on giving at Christmas, rather than on getting. It encapsulates the true meaning and spirit of Christmas, and gives us a practical way to get involved and express that.

It turns the question around to, “How can you actually make Christmas happier for somebody else?” That’s the spirit and the heart of it, and where the meaning of it lies for me.

What do you see as the connection between giving and faith?

There’s a lot of emphasis in orthodox theology on ‘What do we get for having faith?’ If you believe in Jesus, you get eternal salvation.

As I read the Gospel, Jesus actually emphasised the opposite of that. He didn’t dangle carrots in front of people, but when he asked others to follow him, He was asking them to give their whole lives.

That’s where I see faith best located. The most authentic response to the call of Christ is in the giving of one’s whole life, not just making a statement of faith.

The grace that comes from following this call is not a cheap grace, it’s a costly grace, and part of the cost is giving yourself sacrificially to others. There’s many ways to do this, and giving in material ways to the Christmas Bowl is one way to live that out.

Jesus called us to feed the hungry, heal the sick and welcome the stranger. In what ways do you think the Christmas Bowl challenges us to follow this call?

For me, that is the heart of the Gospel.

If you want to be engaged in God’s kingdom, you have to look at how you are helping the weakest and most vulnerable.

It’s what Jesus called us to do.

The Christmas Bowl puts specific areas of need in front of us. It’s saying you can actually do something about this. It’s one way we can actually feel like we’re doing something practical to respond to that essential call of the Gospel of Jesus.

And part of the reason why it’s such a significant and effective way of helping others is there is strength in numbers.

When you give to the Christmas Bowl, you know that you’re doing it with thousands of others.

Christmas Bowl invites us in and reminds us in a positive way to respond to that call.

What role do churches and church members have in supporting refugees and those affected by conflict and disaster today?

The Uniting Church has the philosophy and the theology that underpins social action. Social action is a spiritual activity, and spirituality must flow into social action.

For me, it’s a case of holding together the pastoral and prophetic roles that the church is called to. Part of it is about providing practical care, giving money toward things that will help people with food, education and health benefits.

that are working to change the systems that bring about refugees, and those that fail to care for people that come knocking on our door for help.

THE UNITING CHURCH HAS THE PHILOSOPHY AND THE THEOLOGY THAT UNDERPINS SOCIAL ACTION AS A SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY AND SPIRITUALITY MUST FLOW INTO SOCIAL ACTION

We also need to address the factors that cause people to be in those situations in the first place; to be involved in activities

I am proud of the Uniting Church’s stand on what’s happening on Manus Island and Nauru, but in some ways we could be more vocal than we currently are.

Do you have a message to share with others this Christmas?

Most people are committed to the thought that Christmas is a time for families, and make a big effort to be with family at Christmas. In terms of the challenge, we need to try and broaden that understanding of family.

We need to embrace people for whom Christmas won’t be a celebration, because their physical, emotional and spiritual needs are so unmet. The Christmas message is such a critical one to them. So I ask, “Can we be a bigger family? Can we embrace and give to others who would otherwise have been excluded?” i Jess Xavier

A generous Christmas

The Christmas Bowl is the Christmas appeal of Act for Peace, the international aid agency of the National Council of Churches in Australia. It began on Christmas Day in 1949 when the Rev. Frank Byatt of Victoria placed an empty bowl on the dinner table and asked his guests to give a gift to bring relief and hope to refugees who had fled the horrors of World War II. Since then it has grown to become a much loved ecumenical tradition, each year uniting thousands of churches, across denominational boundaries, to act together in response to Christ’s call to feed the hungry, heal the sick, and welcome the stranger. Last year, churches raised an incredible $2.1 million through the Christmas Bowl. Uniting Church members across the country generously contributed over $990,000 to provide food, shelter, medicine and healthcare to some of the world’s most vulnerable people.

This year, your generous gifts to the Christmas Bowl will help to give refugee children like Achala access to life-saving medical care, and help bring hope and healing to other people around the world who are suffering as a result of conflict or disaster.

You can help to bring hope and healing to the world this Christmas by giving to the Christmas Bowl today: actforpeace.org.au/ christmasbowl

Credit: Richard Wainwright/Act for Peace

Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” Matthew 25:40

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A TRADITION OF CHRISTIAN CARE AND CONCERN

Richard & Deborah Spiteri, proprietors

FAMILY OWNED AND OPERATED FUNERALS CONDUCTED THROUGHOUT SYDNEY

MEMBERS OF THE FUNERAL DIRECTORS ASSOCIATION OF NSW

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D I G I TA L M I N I ST RY

Making Room in the Digital Inn THE STORY OF CHRISTMAS begins with a shortage of hospitality.

to travel across the digital domain on a regular basis. Digital hospitality depends on reciprocity—taking the kinds of walks, even out of our comfort zones, that Jesus called us to as disciples and which the apostles and saints modeled.”

Mary and Joseph, who travelled from Nazareth to Bethlehem for the census, cannot find a place to stay. All the inns are booked because of the census, and there is no room for a very What could this look like in digital spaces? For our churches, pregnant young woman and her betrothed. And so, Jesus is we should be gearing our websites and social media presence born in a stable and laid in a manger. In contrast to the closed toward newcomers and strangers and create what we call a doors and “no vacancy” signs Mary and Joseph encountered “digital narthex” where we are able to welcome others and throughout Bethlehem, this manger becomes a place engage with them around their comments, questions, of radical and holy hospitality, from the animals and seeking. However, we can’t just wait for that make it their home, to the lowly shepherds, people to find us, we also need to stroll the IT IS ALL TOO and, later, the Magi, foreigners from the East. digital avenues and get off our digital beaten E A SY TO REMAIN The simple stable becomes a place of God’s paths in order to encounter and connect IN OUR FAMILIAR wide welcome. with others.

This hospitality and welcome prefigures Jesus’ ministry and the ways he would go on to welcome all people—the outcast, the sick, and those on the margins of religious and civic life.

ENCL AVES AND ECHO CHAMBERS, AND TO HANG A “NO VACANCY ” SIGN ON OUR DIGITAL PROFILES

In many ways, we re-enact that Christmas hospitality in our churches in our preparations for our Christmas observance. We plan worship, publicise services times, and ready the church building for the many people that may only come to church once or twice a year. We intentionally and painstakingly prepare our churches and our hearts to welcome the stranger, just as Jesus did.

For all the ways that we are able to connect in our digital world today, it is all too easy to remain in our familiar enclaves and echo chambers, only engaging with those people that are similar to us and to hang a “no vacancy” sign on our digital profiles. However, the invitation and the promise of our networked world is that we can reach out and beyond our comfort zones in order to connect, understand, honor, and love our neighbors.

In my forthcoming book with Elizabeth Drescher, Click2Save Reboot: The Digital Ministry Bible, we write, “Hospitality is not just a matter of opening your digital door, but of being willing

Christmas time, with its spirit of reconciliation, is a great time and a great excuse to experiment with reaching out to others, wishing them well, offering hope, listening and responding to the things that give people joy and also cause them to struggle.

Again we write in Click2Save Reboot: “We are called to walk among the people, and in doing so, to progressively trample down the barriers that keep us all from knowing the Kingdom that Jesus promises us is always near.

This…possibility is richly present in social media communities when we open ourselves to the matrix of networks and relationships available there. In doing so, we claim the digital landscape as sacred space, a locale where the grace of Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit (2 Cor. 13:14) is as present as it is in our churches, our homes, our workplaces, our schools, and everywhere else in our physical communities.”

As we hear the Christmas story again this year, may we be inspired to extend God’s wide welcome and all-inclusive love to friends and strangers alike, to our neighborhoods, our countries, and our world. i Pastor Keith Anderson

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M A K I N G M O N E Y M AT T E R

Sharing the burden ONE THING I’m sure all Insights readers look forward to each year is the payment of their private health insurance premiums. Not! Like buying tyres for the car, private health insurance is one of those things that you pay for regularly, but from which you seem to get no obvious benefit. That thought doesn’t only apply to health insurance, of course. I’m sure we’ve all seen the TV ads of the general insurance company that’s established a “rewards program”. Policy-holders get entitlements to things other than what their policy is intended to cover so that they feel they’re actually getting something for the cost of their premiums. “Premiums in, rewards out,” is their catch phrase.

Private health insurance can seem like a dead weight among our expenses, can’t it?

Until, that is, you have a need to make a claim. I don’t mean the regular claims where we go to the dentist, say, and get a portion of the cost back from our health fund. I mean a decent claim for a nonroutine situation. Like the one I’ve had to make this year when what was expected to be a quick visit to the Emergency Department became a month in hospital, three operations and a lengthy recovery period. (A recovery that has gone well, for those who may be concerned.)

A few days ago I checked my statement of benefits paid. To fund me through this episode my health insurer has covered me to the tune of $30,000. When I add in the payments to cover a more routine operation I had just over a year ago, my total claims paid grows to about $36,000.

That’s about six or seven years’ worth of health insurance premiums I’ve claimed back in just over 12 months.

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It’s fair to say that I have a new appreciation for the support that private health insurance gives me! It’s doing one of its jobs, which is to smooth out bulky and expensive payments for medical treatments over many years.

and orphans, the most vulnerable in society at the time. When their husbands and fathers died a life insurance policy ensured they were financially cared for.

The change of mind was so complete by the 19th century when organisations like AMP were founded in Australia that it was Christians who were the first directors (e.g.

John Fairfax and David Jones).

However, as I reflected further, I realised that this was only part of the story of the value of health insurance.

Another way of looking at it is that in Contrary to what the advertisements tell the earlier years – most of my working us, insurance isn’t meant to be all about life - when I’ve been paying my premiums you. It’s not meant to be about premiums without receiving benefits, others who’ve in, rewards out just for you, but benefits had to go into hospital have been covered for those who suffer the misfortunes for what would have been bulky, expensive covered by the insurance policy. Yes, bills for them. That’s turned around when that misfortune comes to you, it in the last 12 months as means you’re covered, but the other policy holders, whose idea that every dollar you put health has remained into an insurance policy IT’S DESIGNED TO good, have been should be returned to SHARE ONE ANOTHER’S providing the funds to you flies in the face of BURDENS, TO LOVE pay for my treatment. the community-based OTHERS AS WE LOVE notion that insurance is To use language that OURSELVES. IT’S meant to be. we’re familiar with, ABOUT A COMMUNIT Y insurance is designed That’s not to say that WORKING TOGETHER to share one another’s every policy charges the TO LOOK OUT FOR burdens, to love others right premiums, or that ONE ANOTHER as we love ourselves. the insurance system can’t It’s about members of a be improved or made cheaper. community working together to But at its heart, insurance is look out for one another. The very first meant to about us, as a community, insurance policies were agreements in sharing one another’s troubles and ancient communities that if someone’s difficult times. house was destroyed, the neighbours I thank the many other policy holders would help to rebuild it. Modern insurance with my health fund for their support policies are meant to do that same sort of me over the past year, even though of thing. they didn’t know that’s what they were When the first life insurance policies were doing! And my hope is that I’ll think of introduced, I understand that church them, and not myself, when I pay my leaders were against the concept because premium next year. i they feared it would encourage riskWarren Bird, Executive Director, taking behaviour. However, they came to Uniting Financial Services see that it provided benefits to widows

L E C T I O NA RY R E F L E C T I O N S

December: Expectation for earth shattering news 3 DECEMBER ISAIAH 64:1-9

The expectation that God’s appearance on earth should be ‘earth shattering’ seems fair enough. How do we square that with the birth of the baby Jesus in an out of the way provincial town in fairly ordinary circumstances (aside from the obscure unofficial international interest and alleged celestial fanfare)?

Yet the advent of the Messiah creates a fissure in the history of humanity. The way the character Jesus interacts with social and religious norms, and the way those norms react to Jesus, changes everything irrevocably!

‘Awesome things we did not expect’ sums it up well!

As we come to appreciate what Christ has revealed we cannot help but be in awe of his divine unveiling of the systems of our world. And because our whole way of imagining is so conditioned by those very world systems, we could never have anticipated the disruptive and life-giving power of the humble, gentle, loving Messiah’s self-giving.

In what ways has the coming of the Messiah rocked your world? How has life changed irrevocably for you?

10 DECEMBER ISAIAH 40:1-11

After generations of struggle and the seeming absence of God’s blessing in their experience of life, the people of Israel receive Isaiah’s words as life-restoring hope.

Where things had been so tough and inaccessible, God would open a way for them.

But not only for Israel! All flesh will see it together! In/ out group identities will no longer function. All comers will be welcome to walk in this newly opened way. The more who do, the better it is for everyone!

What are the features of a way of life that brings exponential blessing to all and all the more when more and more people walk in it?

17 DECEMBER ISAIAH 61:1-11

Is there anything richer or more fulfilling than being involved in restoring life?!

There is deep joy in being strength to the broken and in helping the enslaved find their freedom. These are the things that are the clearest echo of abundance and that stand for all eternity.

Isaiah glimpses the way that would be revealed fully in the coming of Messiah. It is a way full of strength and glory - but not the strength or glory the world conceives. This is the deep strength of freedom, and the glory of abundance that flows from caring for one another without exclusion.

How much do you know of this strength and glory?

How do you make it known to others?

24 DECEMBER LUKE 1:26-38

Mary’s encounter with the angel was distressing for her. The things she was told did not square with her self-understanding or her expectations regarding how life might go for her. Mary was, by her own admission, no one in particular!

But ‘no one in particular’ becomes the servant of the eternal purposes of God when she trusts and gives herself to the purpose for which she has been called. By most standards, the whole story is impossible. Thank God Mary did not limit herself to those standards!

How has God’s call on your life challenged your own expectations of how life might go for you? Are you also ‘no one in particular’?

CHRISTMAS DAY LUKE 2:1-14

Messiah arrives. God among people on earth, not as a significant religious festival or a powerful political moment, but as the obscure and unselfconscious arrival of a baby unannounced except to fringe-dwellers.

God’s ways are not the ways of the world. There is no sign of coercion or manipulation in the advent of Messiah. Simply the quiet arrival of the person who would change everything, for everyone, forever!

has changed for you as a result of Jesus’ birth?

31 DECEMBER LUKE 2:22-40

Sometimes old people say the darnedest things. It takes a special kind of older person to speak words of life, purpose and hope to the up and coming generation - a generation they can barely hope to relate to.

Simeon’s words were not saccharine platitudes or random rantings either. He saw salvation, and he knew it would also mean disruption and upheaval. He spoke wise, purpose-filled truth with unapologetic clarity.

With Simeon’s prophetic song echoing in their ears, Mary and Joseph proceed to raise their son.

Who offered you prophetic words of life when you were younger (anyone)? What are the words of the prophetic song you are singing to the generation that are coming after you? i

Today, as you celebrate the coming of Messiah, what

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L E C T I O NA RY R E F L E C T I O N S

January: The Holy Spirit of ‘otherness’ 7 JANUARY MARK 1:4-11

The difference between the baptism of John and the baptism of Jesus is quite something. John’s is a baptism of known quantities. Water is tangible. Repentance is, likewise, a known phenomenon in the culture.

But Jesus’ baptises with the Holy Spirit. What does that even mean? The Holy Spirit is the spirit of ‘otherness’. The spirit which is not simply the human spirit. It is a spirit we are not familiar with. It is a spirit which is beyond us and who calls us beyond ourselves.

Messiah’s baptism of us with the Holy Spirit takes us places that we are not familiar with. This Spirit leads us into new ways of relating and doing things. A way beyond reciprocity. A way imbued with grace and truth.

What do you make of your own experience with the Holy Spirit? In what ways have you experienced the Holy Spirit as a spirit of ‘otherness’?

14 JANUARY JOHN 1:43-51

Jesus begins to invite disciples to follow him. There are clear signs people were hoping for Messiah to show up.

Nathanael’s initial skepticism and then polar opposite acceptance of Jesus as Messiah reminds us how easy it is to ‘believe’ based on fairly insignificant data, especially when we want to believe and doing so is not too costly.

Of course things were to get far more challenging for the disciples, especially after Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion.

When it comes to seeing the heavens open and Jesus standing at the right hand of God we cannot avoid our

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attention being drawn to Stephen’s witness just before he is stoned by a mob lead by his religion’s leaders. The journey of discipleship has different phases and many turns. Only the committed continue on.

How have the challenges you have faced in your discipleship served to refine and deepen your faith?

Are you continuing on?

21 JANUARY MARK 1 :14-20

Jesus appears to be focused and deliberate when it came to selecting disciples and challenging them to come with him. John had been arrested. The political temperature was getting warmer. Jesus knew the environment was not going to be neutral. The strategy Jesus opts for is to call a range of people - mostly fairly common in their station and experience. Jesus does not position himself within the formal religious or political institutions of his day. Neither does he pursue the highly educated or the materially wealthy.

The kinds of people Jesus called, tells us something of the nature of his call.

Jesus invites his followers into a way of doing life that is inherently essential to all humanity. It is equally accessible to all - regardless of station, education or material resources. Indeed, at times if we are too heavily invested in our station, education and/ or material resources, we can encounter Jesus’ call as a threat to our way of life. Make no mistake… it is!

When you reflect on who you are, what do you value the most? How ready are you to let these things go if you have to choose between them and Jesus’ call?

28 JANUARY MARK 1:21-28

What is it that gives teaching authority? It is quite different to teaching that references authorities or that debates various competing ‘authorities’. When Jesus taught, the people heard something that was noticeably different to what they generally heard from their regular teachers.

Jesus brought to the forefront of people’s awareness truths that they all knew to be true already. The authority the people experienced was not that of a great new idea or a clever way of saying something. It was the deep authority of truth that resonates through one’s very being. It has an almost irresistible call to our consciousness.

But of course we can, and do, resist truth. Fear and greed and the desire for safety and power battle within us against the vulnerable truth.

When teaching with authority brings that vulnerable truth to the fore, we can welcome it or we can hate the teacher for the added discomfort we experience as we actively repress it within ourselves.

Jesus encountered both responses to his teaching and his ways. One group became his disciples. The other group ensured he was crucified.

When have you heard teaching with authority? What have been your responses? i Reflections for December and January were written by the Rev. David Gore, minister at Mustard Seed Ultimo Uniting Church

N E W S F RO M U N I T I N G C H U R C H A D U LT F E L LOW S H I P ( U CA F )

Fellowship news

IT IS THE end of another year. UCAF NSW/ACT Synod Chairperson Allan Secomb thanks all for the opportunity to have served as Chairperson for the last four years. With Christmas comes faith, hope, peace and love and he wishes all these for you and your family during the Christmas Season. He thanks all who have responded so generously to the “Water Project” over the last two years. To date in 2017, $5052 has been donated. Outback Links, part of Frontier Services has been overwhelmed by the support.

HUNTER PRESBYTERY RALLY

Hunter Presbytery held their Rally at Toronto Uniting Church with over 90 attending.

The special guest was theRev. Tara Curlewis who served as General Secretary of the National Council of Churches in Australia. She shared many stories of her time in this role including meeting Pope Francis. In the afternoon, the Morisset UC Music Club entertained.

MACQUARIE DARLING PRESBYTERY RALLY

The Macquarie Darling Presbytery Rally was held at Gilgandra with 40 attending from local Churches and five other Uniting Church Centres. Theme for the day was “Past and Present in the Back Blocks”. Worship was led by the Rev. Joanne Smalbil and guest speaker for the occasion was Ayumi. She spoke on her role as SRE Teacher and School Chaplain at Gilgandra high School. Following worship, Brian Cowan spoke on Fellowship Matters.

MOREE UNITING CELEBRATES 150TH BIRTHDAY

Moree Uniting Church celebrated their 150th Birthday recently. Many gathered from great distances to attend including Moderator Rev. Simon Hansford.

Saturday evening featured a wonderful outdoor BBQ in the Community Garden and although rain threatened, over 80 shared great food and fellowship. Sunday worship saw over 120 gathered and the singing raised the roof. Rev Hansford gave the address. Two sides of the hall were filled with memorabilia and a 150th Moree Uniting Church commemorative book was available. Members of the organising committee cut the birthday cake with Rev. Hansford. A commemorative plaque was also unveiled honouring the long music ministry of the late Mrs Jean Nugent.

pulse

Pulse seeks to grow vital Christian communities where emerging generations thrive

2018 JOAN SCOTT BURSARY RECIPIENT ANNOUNCED

The UCAF National Committee has announced the recipient of the 2018 UCAF Joan Stott Bursary is Kristen Marie Furneaux from Mt. Eliza Uniting Church. Joan is studying the Bachelor of Theology.

DEDICATION SERVICE

The NSW/ACT Synod Committee Dedication Service will be held on Wednesday 14 February 2018, Level 2, 222 Pitt Street Sydney. Join us for lunch at 12 noon followed by the dedication Service at 1pm.

The Moderator will be the special guest.

If you would like to share your fellowship news or have any questions, please contact: Judy Hicks on judyh_rnh@hotmail.com

Co nne c t

uc ap ulse.o rg .au fac e b o o k .c o m / U CA Pulse tw itte r.c o m / uc ap ulse instagram.c o m / uc ap ulse

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C U LT U R E WAT C H

STUART HAZELDINE PICTURED WITH MEMBERS OF THE SHACK’S CAST DURING PRODUCTION

Going back to The Shack While perhaps this year’s most controversial film, The Shack, received a substandard critical reception, audiences loved it. To try to put some logic behind a leap of faith that, seemingly, only some audiences could take, Insights spoke to the film’s director, Stuart Hazeldine, who now reflects on how a film promoting positive messages of love and forgiveness could be so divisive, whilst still touching the hearts of millions.

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IT SEEMS STRANGE that portrayal of God as a woman — Academy Award-winner The Shack — whose creators Octavia Spencer as ‘Papa’ — set out to make a warmbut the colour of her skin too. hearted faith-based film with overarching positive “Some people find that messages and, to The Shack takes some extent, liberties,” says attempted British director to explain I N L I F E , I N FA I T H , Stuart some of the AND IN THE CHOICES Hazeldine. big faith W E M A K E , I WA N T “They can TO ENCOUR AGE questions handle P EO P L E T O B E — could God being A L I T T L E M O R E cause present OPEN - MINDED AND such a as Aslan N O T T H R E AT E N E D stir. Indeed, the lion in

BY THEIR OWN The Shack I M A G I N AT I O N Narnia, but may have God as a black flown under woman? They don’t some mainstream like it.” moviegoers’ radars, but it has Hazeldine saw his job as divided opinions so strongly staying as true to the bestin the Christian community selling book as possible, and and beyond. Why? he is quick to point out that An adaptation of author it is a work of fiction — one Paul Young’s tale of a father man’s own interpretation who loses his daughter in of his relationship with God the worst way possible and — and one that attempts is then invited back to the to tackle the issue of bad scene of the crime to meet things happening to good God, the initial backlash people. “The Shack shows a came by way of not only the papa – a father – and Jesus

who are perfectly in sync with one another, and that’s the theological position that I take, and the film takes, about who God is,” he says. “I felt that was a positive thing to say: ‘God only wants to give good things and gets involved in our suffering and suffers along with us with an ultimate plan for redemption’.”

While the mass-media critics have mostly taken a negative view of The Shack – which went on to take close to $100 million at the box office, five times its production budget — more importantly the film and its source material have touched the hearts and souls of millions. “There’s just been really no middle on this movie,” Hazeldine admits.

“From the people who made it to the people who watched it, it either really touches your heart and does something profound in you, or goes right over your head and annoys you. But I would rather do that: I’d rather change ten people’s lives forever in

MATTERS OF FAITH Insights also spoke wit Stuart in the lead up to the cinema release of The Shack this year.

WHAT ATTRACTED YOU TO DIRECT THE FILM?

It was a project that I had been offered at the point at which the book was a hit and it had sold a few million copies. It was an excuse for me to read the book as many people had been talking about it at the church that I go to. I thought the concept was cinematic and the idea of visualising God in a way that someone could ask questions was really interesting to me.

HOW IS GOD PORTRAYED IN THE SHACK?

God’s character and love is unchangeable. We all have very unique ways that we view God, person by person and the film gives us a different version of God that some are used to.

The book (and film, The Shack) definitely changes people’s view of God, regardless of what you believe.

HOW DOES THE FILM DEAL WITH TRAUMA?

“[The Shack] is a great metaphorical story about how God’s love and grace can heal us. And there’s no instant fix, love takes a lot of time and a lot of relationship. Relationship is the best vehicle for healing, when we go through pain and trauma we do tend to isolate ourselves, but it’s actually reaching out to the people around us and to God that can begin the healing process.” a positive way than make 100 people laugh for two hours and then forget about the movie. I like the idea of resonance and having a positive effect on people.

“I have seen so much fruit coming out of The Shack, so

many people’s relationships being restored, people being encouraged to forgive and let go of resentments they’ve held all their lives. They’ve come to believe that God loves them in a way they could never entirely accept, so to me that’s all positive, taking people to a place where their lives are much more marked by love than they are by fear, by hatred, or by unforgiveness.”

POSITIVITY IS THE KEY

Positivity is the key word: Hazeldine says the cast and crew all shared a passion and vision for making the film.

“Everyone working on the movie was aware that it was a deeply-loved book,” says the 46-year-old Londoner.

“We all knew it needed to be more than just another gig for us, something we all really respected. That included the people who didn’t necessarily have a particular faith. They were still moved to tears by the script and felt like it was a great message to put out in the world.”

Octavia Spencer was the first actor Hazeldine met for casting; she said the book had helped her through a difficult time in her life. “She’d already read it and loved it and she felt really positive about her ability to portray God – Papa – on screen,” he explains. “So when I met her I was really impressed by how well-read she was, about the book and the messages and issues surrounding it, and I went away from that feeling very confident that she could completely nail the role of Papa. Then we started to fit people in around her.

“Sam [Worthington, who plays Mack] had just become a father, so he was feeling that rush of paternalism. He identified a lot with Mack’s journey and was very passionate from the emotional character standpoint. Tim McGraw read the script and found it really emotional and wanted to play Mack’s best friend, Willie.

Radha [Mitchell, as Mack’s wife] also loved it. Then we found some new actors who hadn’t really done anything before: Aviv Alush who played Jesus, and Sumire Matsubara as Sarayu. It was really nice to look around on set and see Octavia, Aviv and Sumire as the Holy Trinity, just larking about and having a laugh!”

A RICH WELL OF STORIES

While films like Darren Aronofsky’s controversial mother! and even sequel Blade Runner 2049 seem to tap into Biblical subtext for their narratives – which Hazeldine puts down to the Bible being such a rich well of stories – for him The Shack is one of the first faith-based films to nail the crossover market, going beyond its religious roots.

“It started being sold in church bookshops and being passed around, and then Oprah Winfrey picked it up in her book club and suddenly everybody was reading it,” he says. “On one side of the divide you’ve got movies like mother!, Noah and Silence, and on the other there’s The Case for Christ and Fireproof.

I think The Shack tried to be somewhere in the middle – and succeeded.

“I think sometimes we have to remind ourselves to approach movies in the same way we approach faith, because we make assumptions and draw preconceptions about a film from the trailer, the DVD cover or even the name; and it’s my job as a director to ensure potential viewers invest well beyond that.

“In life, in faith, and in the choices we make, I want to encourage people to be a little more open-minded and not feel threatened by their own imagination,” he says. “Entertain the idea and run with it a bit and see if it changes your life in a positive way.”

Hazeldine is now focused on future projects – and he is keen not to be seen as just a faith-based director. Indeed, his first major feature, the dark and claustrophobic thriller Exam, could hardly be more different. While he says he’s likely to dip into that area in the future, his mediumterm projects are in the sci-fi thriller vein.

“Right now I’m working on a ghost story set during the Blitz in World War 2, with producer Gareth Unwin [The King’s Speech],” he reveals. “It’s a thriller that revolves around ghosts and supernatural metaphysical ideas against the backdrop of London during the Blitz: the bombs falling and all that.

It’s like The Third Man meets a Guillermo del Toro movie.

Fire and smoke, shadows and ghosts. And not a shack in sight!” i

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REVIEWS

Entertain me PRESS PL AY

THE SINNER (MA 15+)

The true story of disability advocate Robin Cavendish (Andrew Garfield), Breathe is a film about love and the will to live. After Robin contracts polio in Kenya at the age of 28, he is paralysed from the neck down and given three months to live. His wife, Dianna (Claire Foy) intervenes, however. Against doctors’ orders, she brings him home. Breathing with the aid of a respirator and aided by friends and family, Robin outlives his initial prognosis. Through his travels and advocacy, he transforms the lives of countless others.

A woman snaps and murders a complete stranger on the beach. She pleads guilty and offers no explanation. One detective wants to figure out why.

Jonathan Cavendish—Robin’s son and a featured character in the film—worked as one of Breathe’s producers. This, combined with the cast’s dedication to capturing the story ensures that Breathe’s portrayal of Cavendish’s life has authenticity.

Robin Cavendish’s life was one of unexpected events.

This included his paralysis, but also his ability to move out of hospital and into home care. With the help of Oxford professor Teddy Hall, he was able to become relatively mobile. Cavendish himself was an atheist, and yet, Christians may learn much from his commitment to living life in abundance and bringing this to others.

Here, the focus is on (and the film’s power lies in) the love Dianna shows Robin through his life: a Christ-like response to an imperfect situation. As Claire Foy put it in an interview, “The most important thing to get was their love for each other. I didn’t want to over-sentimentalise her; and she definitely doesn’t want to be seen as a saint, or an angel, or incredible sort of nurse. It was just actually love.”

Breathe manages to personify in Robin the struggle and desire of many people who live with a disability: he simply wants to be mobile and to make decisions for himself, and knowingly takes on a great risk in initially choosing to leave the hospital to go home with his wife.

Breathe opens nationally on Boxing Day. Jonathan Foye

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BREATHE (M)

insights

This is the shocking opening to The Sinner. A fascinating thriller that explores relationships, deception, and mental health, and it has recently arrived on Netflix.

Jessica Biel, has produced the series and stars as Cora, the woman who carries out the brutal and out-ofcharacter attack in the show’s opening.

The eight-episode miniseries progresses to unravel Cora’s motives and flashes back to her childhood, a strict, shame-oriented Catholic household. The deeper mystery has several layers and the plot twist is not what seems clear at first. As The Guardian’s Stuart Heritage puts it, the show could be best described as a “whydunnit”.

Bill Pullman (who stars in the series) commented on the idea of sin in a recent Variety interview: “People, even beyond the church-going experience, have co-opted this idea of what is right and wrong,” he said. “Sinning, whether they think of it the same way as a Catholic would, it still means that they understand that there’s some baser aspect of themselves, that they’ve broken some convenance they’re living under. We’re all doing it all the time. We’re all sinners.”

The Sinner makes for a great exploration of bad theology’s potential for destruction. The relationship between Cora and her parents contrasts with the relationship she forms with a prayer circle in the prison.

At some points The Sinner is difficult to watch, and there is a noticeable dip in the show’s middle portion.

Nonetheless, this is a series worth persevering with— and thinking about.

All eight episodes of The Sinner are streaming on Netflix now.

Jonathan Foye

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