Crosslight Novmber 2016

Crosslight No. 272 December 2016

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14

When Santa met the Mayor and how to spread the joy of Christmas.

Award-winning guerrilla gardener Shirley Johnson ‘s road to triumph

09

News Safety first PENNY MULVEY

22

What’s going on with all the young people? NCYC of course

Beyond belief – two Christian responses to the Trump ascendancy

Six-year-old Stanley Bhurasho proudly shows off a goat on the family farm in the Zaka district of Zimbabwe. Stanley is just one of the thousands of people helped each year by the generous donations to The Christmas Bowl appeal. Turn to page 8 to read more about the work of the Christmas Bowl.

11-13

Sticking to their sacred vows in opposing same sex marriage

24

Picture courtesy of Richard Wainwright

Synod Sanps brings you images from throughout the Church and beyond

Regulars People - 16

Letters - 17 Notices - 20 to 21 Moderator’s column - 23

Editorial

PENNY MULVEY

Communications & Media Services

UCA Synod Office, 130 Little Collins Street, Melbourne VIC 3000 Phone: (03) 9251 5200 Email: crosslight@victas.uca.org.au ISSN 1037 826X

of the birth of the Prince of Peace – are being replaced by jingles about Santa, consumption and gift-giving.

We cannot change the focus on mass consumption, but we can try to manage our own responses. In her column the moderator reflects on Advent as a time for slowing down so we can open our lives up to God’s presence.

“Then we, like Mary, can say ‘Yes’ to God, to God’s presence with us and in us and ‘Yes’ to giving our lives to God’s way and God’s reign,” Rev Sharon Hollis encourages us.

Six-year-old Stanley is like our own children and grandchildren – unencumbered by the burdens that adulthood brings. They renew in us a sense of gratitude in the little things. The budding rose, the ducklings darting across the surface of the pond, the smell of rainsodden earth, the stranger’s smile.

The poetic words of David in the Old Testament book, 1 Chronicles 16, call us to express our thanks to God in all things, despite our circumstances.

Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let them say among the nations, “The LORD reigns!”

Let the sea resound, and all that is in it; let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them!(v31-33) Stanley felt that jubilance over the goat that was in his field. We too are called to be thankful for God’s goodness, for “God’s love endures forever.” (v34) May you find time to slow down this Advent, to be conscious of God’s reign that is always unfolding, and to rejoice in the gift of God’s Son. We at Crosslight wish you a joyous Christmas. We thank you for your commitment to Crosslight and look forward to telling your stories in 2017.

Crosslight is a monthly newspaper produced by the Communications and Media Services unit of The Uniting Church Synod of Victoria and Tasmania.

It is published 11 times a year.

Opinions expressed in Crosslight do not necessarily reflect those of the editor or the policies of The Uniting Church.

Circulation: 21,000 (publisher’s figure).

Staff:

Deadlines: Advertising and editorial.

Executive Editor - Penny Mulvey Managing Editor - Deb Bennett Design, Digital Illustration and Print Services - Garth Jones Graphic Artist - Mirna Leonita Communications Manager - Nigel Tapp Online Content Coordinator - Emmet O’Cuana Communications Officer - Tim Lam Advertising Co-ordinator - Lynda Nel Senior Media Officer - Ros Marsden Media Communications Officer - David Southwell

Please check exact dates on our website <crosslight.org.au>.

Closing date for February – Friday 20 January 2017.

Printing: Rural Press, Ballarat Visit Crosslight online: crosslight.org.au

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under the scope of this hearing.

This hearing will be different to previous case studies as it is focusing on the whole institution, rather than the individual and particular cases.

A number of staff is committed to helping the whole-of-church improve its child safe practices. Andrea O’Bryne, executive officer of Child Safe Standards, has been guiding the Church on what is required to ensure compliance of the seven standards.

Katrina Gillies, the synod’s Royal Commission Legal Counsel, identifies incidents, reviews historic claims and prepares documents. Safe church educator Josh Woollett works alongside Sue Clarkson, the newly appointed ethical standards officer in the Culture of Safety.

Ms Clarkson, an accredited youth worker, will be ordained as a Minister of the Word this month at Church of All Nations.

The Culture of Safety unit has moved to the synod office at 130 Little Collins Street. For more information about changes to the WWCC/R processes and Safe Church training, please contact josh. woollett@victas.uca.org.au If your church is finding creative ways to embrace child safe practices, please contact Crosslight (Crosslight@victas.uca.org.au).

Stories, letters and images welcome.

ON Wednesday, 9 November, more than 300 people packed Wesley Uniting Church for the Victorian Council of Churches’ Christian Perspectives on Treaty, Sovereignty and Constitutional Recognition forum.

The evening focused on thoughtful and respectful dialogue on the path to Treaty with Australia’s First Peoples.

Noting the solemn mood – in the wake of news of Donald Trump’s election as U.S. President – forum emcee Rev Alistair Macrae led a moment of silence before the evening’s program commenced.

Keynote speakers included Rev Ken Sumner (State Director, Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress) and UCA President Stuart McMillan.

The conversation panel featured Wiradjuri man and artist Rev Glenn Loughrey, Mutthi Mutthi/ Wemba Wamba woman and former Aboriginal Catholic Ministry Melbourne co-ordinator Vicki Clark, Waka Waka descendant Brooke Prentis from the Salvation Army and Taungerong/WoiWurrung man Adam Frogley.

“When Australia has made over 2000 treaties that stand up in international arenas, why is it so hard to make a Treaty or treaties with Australia’s First Peoples?” asked Ms Prentis.

She spoke passionately of the need for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples to come together as equal partners.

Event organiser Jill Ruzbacky, from the synod’s Justice and International Mission

(JIM) unit, said she was pleased with the evening’s outcome.

“It was fantastic to see over 300 people turn out on a Wednesday night for these really important conversations for us to be having within our churches,” she said.

Rev Glenn Loughrey is the priest-incharge of St Oswald’s Anglican Church in Melbourne. He said the treaty process cannot be hurried if it is to be successful.

“As we work towards a Treaty we must do so with respect and a commitment to dialogue through deep listening. This is not to be rushed,” Mr Loughrey said.

“We have to give the process all the time it needs as the quality of the process will determine the depth and rightness of the treaty we receive.”

GARTH JONES

STANLEY and his goat present a captivating front page. His infectious happiness somehow invites us to share his pleasure. The snowy-white bundle he clutches to his chest was purchased by his mother Jesina, a conservation farmer assisted by Act for Peace partner Christian Care.

Before joining the program, Stanley’s family did not have enough to eat and he and his siblings were unable to attend school. Jesina and Stanley’s story can be found on page 8.

Stanley’s goat is more than just a pet, she is a living symbol of a better life for six children and their parents.

How often do we feel the joy and thanksgiving that are evident in Stanley’s face?

For many, Christmas has become a time of peak stress. Hymns of joy, celebration, jubilation – magnificent words telling

Advertising: Crosslight accepts advertising in good faith.

Acceptance of advertising does not imply endorsement.

Advertising material is at the discretion of the publisher.

Distribution: Crosslight is usually distributed the first Sunday of the month.

identification is being replaced by primary and secondary documents, and more cards will be accepted as proof of identity.

Australia Post no longer charges for taking a digital photo. For those who do not have easy access to the internet, or are not confident using it, the paperwork can be done at a participating Australia Post outlet. If in any doubt, seek assistance from a computer-savvy friend or relative.

From 1 January 2017 the new Child Safe Standards come into effect in Victoria.

The Uniting Church, in its commitment to best practice, is implementing these standards across the whole of the synod.

The Keeping Children Safe policy, released in July 2015, will be updated to incorporate these standards.

The UCA is one of five religious groups scheduled to participate in a Royal Commission public hearing held on 20 to 24 March next year in Sydney.

The Royal Commission is investigating how each institution has responded to allegations of child sexual abuse, including details of current policies and procedures in relation to child protection. It is also seeking to understand factors that may have contributed to the occurrence of child sexual abuse in each institution. The synod’s Keeping Children Safe policy falls

Sue Clarkson, Andrea O’Bryne and Josh Woollett

Talking Treaty: Asking for a sign

Reviews - 18 to 19

Giving thanks

EVIDENCE presented over the last three years to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has demonstrated that many institutions have failed the people they are supposed to serve.

Witnesses before the commission have told harrowing stories of betrayal, a lifetime of suffering, addictions and brokenness caused by the sexual, physical and psychological abuse by people in positions of authority and trust with respected institutions.

The Uniting Church is the subject of the last case study to be undertaken by the Royal Commission before it prepares its final report for the federal government.

The Uniting Church is committed to upholding the trust of the community and being a welcoming and safe environment for families.

Instilling trust in the Church is not just about compliance. It is about opportunity and a desire to be God’s witnesses in each local community. Some Uniting churches have recognised the opportunity and have received Safe Church recognition.

Others are holding Working with Children Check morning teas, where everyone comes together and registers for the check on the church computer, concluding with a simple shared feast.

Church members, along with volunteers and employees in all sectors of our society who engage with children, are mandated to undertake a Working with Children Check (WWCC/R).

The Victorian Government, recognising that the system has been onerous for some, has simplified the process.

For example, the 100 point system of

ucavictas

DECEMBER 16 - CROSSLIGHT

Merry Christmas

3

News All together for a good Claus

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THE UnitingCare Target Christmas Appeal received backing from Town Hall when Melbourne Lord Mayor Robert Doyle turned out to help Santa spread hope and cheer to where it’s most needed.

“It’s inspiring to see the incredible work that UnitingCare does to support communities across Australia,” Mr Doyle said.

“I encourage those visiting their local Target store to give generously by purchasing gift tags for $1 or by donating an unwrapped gift for families in need this Christmas.

“Together we can spread the joy and excitement of Christmas to those who need it most.”

Uniting Vic/Tas CEO Paul Linossier, who also was at the event in Melbourne’s CBD Target store, encouraged Australians to remember those who are struggling this Christmas. One recent report states 731,300 children throughout Australia live below the poverty line.

“Christmas is a time of great celebration but also a reminder of the shortcomings for many people,” Mr Linossier said.

“The UnitingCare Target Christmas appeal is a fantastic initiative that gives every Australian the opportunity to support those who are in need.”

The appeal is now in its 25th year and

organisers hope to raise at least $1.5 million. It is on track to meet that target, with nearly $300,000 already raised.

Funds from the appeal will support UnitingCare community service programs that provide emergency relief, crisis accommodation and food relief.

More than 2.1 million gifts have been donated to the appeal since its inception, including 45,000 gifts last year.

Supporters are invited to drop an unwrapped gift underneath the Christmas tree at the front of any Target store. They can also purchase gift tags for $1 at the checkout.

“Whether it’s financial support or that special Christmas present under the tree, these gifts enable a real difference to people’s lives,” Mr Linossier said.

All donated gifts stay in the local area and donations made at the registers are distributed throughout the state to where it is most needed.

This year, businesses, workplaces, churches, schools and community groups are invited to host their own gift collection. It can be a creative alternative to the traditional office Kris Kringle and will make a difference to the lives of those struggling this Christmas.

The UnitingCare Target Christmas Appeal website has a list of gift ideas tailored to different age groups.

The appeal will run until 24 December. www.unitingcarechristmasappeal.com.au/ 11-year-old Anton Beeby with Santa and Melbourne Lord Mayor Robert Doyle

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DECEMBER 16 - CROSSLIGHT

Merry Christmas

5

News Man with a vision

25 years of a good pud!

ROS MARSDEN

HEATHER BENNETT

Rev David Withers

THE Victorian and Tasmanian Synod has called Rev David Withers as strategic framework minister to join the team implementing the Church’s renewed vision of spiritual and strategic discernment.

Mr Withers started in the role last month and is looking forward to the diverse nature of his work as he helps the Church live out the Vision and Mission Principles. These Principles are the foundations for the new implementation strategy that supports a coordinated, intentional focus on mission.

“I am interested in new conversations in the life of the Church,” Mr Withers said. “The Vision and Mission Principles reflect a long journey of searching on the part of Synod in all its forms across church. They give beautiful expression to our core purpose into the future.”

Mr Withers’ calling as a minister in two Victorian Uniting Churches, as Mission Development Minister at Lentara UnitingCare, as well as earlier work as a civil engineer, means that he has a breadth of experience to understand the nature of the Church’s challenges.

“I actually believe the church today is the bearer of a message that remains vitally important,” he said. “I think engagement with the 21st century is an essential twoway dialogue for us as church and that we carry a message of new hope and new life.”

The experience of change is an area that

Mr Withers knows can cause anxiety.

“I understand the fear. I think it’s instinctively human of us to fear – that sense of ‘flight or fight’. We interpret it as a danger,” he observed.

“But the gospel story is an invitation to new life and that does imply change. In our vision statement we talk of walking together and the hope that community, compassion and justice become the norm in our world. To achieve this we must be open to change.”

Part of Mr Wither’s role will be developing resources that assist everyone in the church to draw on the Vision and Mission Principles in both planning and spiritual discernment.

“As I read a lot of the work that frames what’s ahead of us, I’m struck by the statements around discernment,” Mr Withers said.

“There are some lovely phrases that invite us on a journey of deep reflection.

“I think that’s a really important element and connected to that is the significance of relationships – between synod and presbyteries, between the different elements of synod life, between congregations.

“We are a pilgrim people open to this future that God calls us to. We have to engage the 21st century community with hope as we move forward.”

TWENTY-five years ago an idea for a fundraising venture was put to a Kangaroo Flat Uniting Church UCAF meeting – making Christmas puddings for sale. Profits would then be distributed between church funds, local charities and organisations under the banner of the Uniting Church.

Production of these puddings had humble beginnings in the church hall and kitchen.

But as orders increased over the years larger premises had to be sought, so on Bendigo Cup Day each year, a pupil free day at Crusoe College, Kangaroo Flat, an army of volunteers take over the college kitchens and weigh, measure, mix, stir, and boil over 250 Christmas puddings.

This year, 26 October, was no exception, with 46 volunteers enjoying another

productive day while enjoying fellowship as we celebrated these 25 years. Many of our members have participated in every pudding bake and our oldest member, 90-year-old Alice still maintains a keen interest and assists where possible.

We give thanks that our pudding bake has enabled us to contribute to so many causes over the years, that we have been able to maintain this activity for a quarter of a century. We pray that we may be able to continue to do so for many years to come.

Join us for our next adventure on an incredible journey...

Commission for Mission

“Almost without exception Uniting Journey travellers have rated the relationships developed with fellow travellers as the most important outcome of their journey” – Uniting Journeys Contact for more information of all journeys in 2017: Hank Van Apeldoorn, 0407 977 893 Email: hank.vanapeldoorn@victas.uca.org.au Website: responsibletravel.org.au

Christmas at St Michael’s

End of an Era

The festive season is a special time of year to attend service at St Michael’s Church.

Dr Francis Macnab will preside at this Christmas Morning Service and will give the address:

On Sunday, 18 December, we will acknowledge the end of an era: Dr Francis Macnab’s Ministry at St Michael’s Church.

Always Look For A Person With A Dream

For 45 years, Dr Macnab has shaped and guided St Michael’s into the unique community it is today.

All are welcome to experience this special way to celebrate Christmas; 9am Sunday 25 December at St Michael’s Church.

St Michael’s

During the service a short film highlighting Dr Macnab’s work at St Michael’s will be shown. Refreshments will be served in the colonnade after the service.

120 C O LLIN S ST ME LBOUR NE – WWW.S TM ICHA ELS .ORG.A U

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Merry Christmas

CROSSLIGHT - DECEMBER 16

News Young Indigenous artist puts her mark on Leprena NIGEL TAPP

TEENAGE Tasmanian Indigenous artist Grace Williams has been the driving force behind two distinctive pieces of artwork which have pride of place at Leprena, the southern Tasmanian home of the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress.

Working collaboratively with other young Indigenous people, 18-year-old Grace designed a mural for the back fence of the property. The mural portrays the young people’s connection to the place and reflects Congress’ aim to make Leprena a safe space for all within the community.

The mural is uniquely Tasmanian, with mutton birds in flight central to the design.

Inside the building, Grace was inspired to demonstrate Leprena’s importance as a gathering centre for her community. She chose to depict eight individual streams and a central piece, symbolising the nine nations in Tasmania prior to 1788. The

nine nations come together at a central point and the colours used represent the land, sea and sky.

The works were unveiled when the President of the Uniting Church, Stuart McMillan, visited Hobart in November.

Mr McMillan offered high praise for Grace’s efforts.

“I was deeply impressed with that work, it is a wonderful mural,” he said of the piece.

“It has a contemporary flavour but it also combines traditional elements.’’

“I imagine like most artwork, people could look at it and see lots of different things.

Certainly, though, you would not miss that the central feature is a gathering place.”

Leprena community development coordinator Alison Overeem said it was important to give the young people a say in the design of the backyard artwork. It helped to establish a sense of ownership

over the space and a more personal connection to the building and the work done inside its doors.

Ms Overeem said work would soon begin on repainting the fence mural in a longlasting paint and sealing it.

She said that over the last 18 months Leprena had become a healthy gathering space for the local Indigenous community and their families.

This was built on developing long-term trusting relationships which have led to personal, social and cultural growth and development.

“This has led to engagement of other agencies in our community and cultural development work,” she said.

“We are now able to engage in, and plan for, more formal cultural learning and sharing experiences with Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal organisations.

“This is an exciting opportunity for our community members, other organisations and indeed the wider Uniting Church.”

Ms Overeem said conversations around a range of health and well-being issues, as well as creating opportunities for participants to build on their cultural gifts had been pivotal to the planning, engagement and outcomes achieved at Leprena.

She was also pleased with the developing relationship between Congress and the presbytery of Tasmania.

“The presbytery is very welcoming. We have met some really lovely people and it is good to see that the Uniting Church is also excited about the relationship with Congress,” she said.

Mr McMillan said he was greatly impressed by the work being undertaken at Leprena.

“There is an excitement about what is happening there. The people heading this up are people who have been deeply involved in community for many years,” he said.

“It involves people who have been very much a part of the ministry, even if they have not been part of Congress per se for a long time. Now it is being gathered together in this.

“I went there to encourage them but I left very encouraged.”

Grace Williams and Stuart McMillan with back fence mural

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DECEMBER 16 - CROSSLIGHT

Merry Christmas

7

News

News

Planting seeds of hope JESS XAVIER IN Zimbabwe’s Masvingo region the ground is dry and dusty. It hasn’t rained in months. Overall lower rainfall and rising temperatures, due to climate change, mean traditional farming techniques are no longer working, and for many farmers, crops have failed for the third year in a row.

While many families rely on government food aid to survive, there isn’t enough to go around.

Zimbabwe is also experiencing a deep economic crisis and widespread unemployment, so other sources of income are hard to find. When crops fail, people go hungry and children are malnourished, with schooling often out of the question.

These were the circumstances that faced Jesina and her family.

“Before… life was very difficult for us,” Jesina said.

“We used to practice traditional farming and we did not get much out of it. I felt very bad because I could only feed my family once a day. It pained me so much.”

Jesina was visited by a field coordinator for Act for Peace’s partner, Christian Care, who offered to teach her a new way of farming much better suited to the cycle of drought and low rainfall that Zimbabwe is now experiencing.

Called conservation farming, it involves

Pic credit: Richard Wainwright

Since learning Conservation Farming, Jesina now produces enough food for her family .

techniques such as digging individual pits for each corn plant and covering the ground with mulch to keep the water from evaporating.

These simple but revolutionary techniques changed everything for Jesina.

“In the first year of practicing conservation farming I was so thrilled and happy with the yield on my small plot,” she said beaming. “I could see a very brighter future for me and my family.”

After one year, Jesina not only had enough maize to feed her family, but she was able to sell the excess and purchase a goat, which she then bred.

She has turned her plot from a barely fertile wasteland to a thriving farm. Since the

harvest from her fields has gone up, Jesina can now send her children to school.

“In the second year I worked hard and my harvest was very good,” she said.

“I managed to pay school fees for all my children and I also bought them new clothes for Christmas.

“I’m now in my third year, and I have many goats, turkeys, guinea fowl and chickens.”

Jesina said that even though this year’s crop will not be as bountiful as the last because of the current drought, she’ll be able to manage thanks to the techniques she’s learnt.

“Conservation farming helped me a lot because right now I have many livestock, even if I don’t harvest much from my plot,

I can always sell some of my livestock and buy food.”

Through her own hard work and the use of the new farming methods, Jesina has become largely self-sufficient.

“I feel very proud and happy,” she said.

“I now have my own food and means to survive. I hope my children will learn from me what I have learnt so that they have an improved life.”

It is thanks to the generous gifts of compassionate Christmas Bowl supporters all across Australia that farmers like Jesina have been trained in conservation farming.

With the methods Act for Peace’s partners teach, and the seeds and equipment they are able to provide, farmers can double the amount of food they can grow on their land, ensuring a healthy and sustainable future for their family.

“I want to thank Australians for bringing this program to us. May the Lord bless them,” Jesina said with a huge smile.

Last year, generous Uniting Church members in Victoria and Tasmania raised more than $400,000 for the Christmas Bowl, and helped to bring clean water, soap and toilets to South Sudanese refugees living in Ethiopia’s Gambella region.

This year your generous gifts to the Christmas Bowl appeal can help Zimbabwean families facing severe hunger learn conservation farming so they can always have enough to eat.

Please give to the Christmas Bowl today by visiting www.actforpeace.org.au/ christmasbowl or calling 1800 025 101.

Conventionally inspired youth TIM LAM

NCYC is a familiar acronym to many who have grown up in the Uniting Church.

Since 1955, the National Christian Youth Convention has been a central event on the UCA youth calendar.

Every three years, hundreds of youth between 16 and 25 gather to worship, form new friendships and celebrate the Church’s diversity. Approximately 1000 people from throughout Australia attended Yuróra NCYC in 2014 in Western Sydney.

Yuróra returns in 2017 and will be held from 8 to12 January at Tops Conference Centre in Stanwell Tops, 55km south of Sydney.

Yuróra, which means ‘passion’ in the Dharug language, aims to create a space for young people to share their stories and gifts in an inclusive, multicultural environment. It particularly emphasises building relationships between First and Second Peoples.

The logo for 2017 was inspired by a drawing by Joyce Waia, a young Indigenous woman from Queensland. The yellow dots symbolise Elders sharing Dreamtime stories, the blue dots represent the spirit and the central orange dots are the leaders of the next generation.

Every morning, attendees will connect with

Yurora 2014

young people from other states through daily Bible studies. The afternoon sessions offer different streams to cater to delegates’ interests. These are followed by worship rallies at night, hosted by church leaders

including Uniting Church president Stuart McMillan and United Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress pastor Ray Minniecon.

For children between the ages of 13 to 15,

Yuróra offers a program called Babanas which is a Dharug word for ‘younger sibling’ or ‘little one.’

Rebecca Swain attended Yuróra 2014 as part of the Babanas group. She is now part of the management team for the 2017 festival.

“Through Babanas I met so many great people whom I still have connections with today,” Ms Swain said.

“It was a crazy, exciting, adventurous few days and all the people were uniquely amazing, with their own individual personalities, stories, talents and experiences to share.

“I’m so keen for Yuróra 2017 – the new site is fantastic and there are so many exciting opportunities to immerse yourself in.”

Organisers have assembled a diverse lineup of artists, speakers and performers for the five days. This includes 2011 Australia’s Got Talent winner Jack Vidgen, hip-hop crew Illagroovers, Indigenous dance group Dusty Feet Mob and poet Joel McKerrow.

This year, Yuróra will introduce a multicultural festival, which is expected to be a highlight of the program.

Yuróra director Bradon French is excited by what the conference has in store.

“Yuróra offers the Uniting Church a glimpse of our future. A diverse, faithful, passionate community who worship, pray and play together,” he said.

“It’s a great privilege to see people come together, in the name of Jesus, and celebrate.”

Visit www.yurora.com to register and book accommodation.

Celebrating the joy of Christmas Uniting AgeWell wishes Crosslight readers and their families peace and happiness this Christmas and New Year.

We thank all staff, volunteers and supporters for making a difference to the lives of older people, assisting them to live and age well.

Merry Christmas

HOW YOU CAN HELP...

1. Purchase a gift tag or donate a gift in any Target store.

Host a gift collection at your church, school or

2. community group.

Victoria l Tasmania

1300 783 435 8

3. Donate online.

Visit unitingcarechristmasappeal.com.au or call 1800 060 543

unitingagewell.org Merry Christmas

CROSSLIGHT - DECEMBER 16

DECEMBER 16 - CROSSLIGHT

Merry Christmas

9

News UnitingAgeWell’s new CEO looks for the silver linings PENNY MULVEY THE aged care sector is facing testing times as providers seek to retain the quality of their service while faced with significant reduction of government funds.

However, this is a challenge that Andrew Kinnersly (pictured) is prepared to meet as he takes up the role of Uniting AgeWell (UA) Chief Executive Officer.

Mr Kinnersly joined Uniting AgeWell from Ballarat Health Services in early October, and has enjoyed visiting a number of UA facilities across Victoria and Tasmania.

He acknowledges that the aged care sector

is facing a rocky road, but he also believes there is much to look forward to.

“There are challenges, but there are also exciting opportunities,” Mr Kinnersly.

Federal government changes to the Aged Care Funding Instrument (ACFI) mean that UA is set to lose approximately 15 per cent of its revenue.

Mr Kinnersly stressed that every effort will be made to maintain the levels of service expected by UA’s clients.

“We will do whatever we can to limit the impact on our clients, but there is no doubt that when you remove that volume of funding, we’ve got to look at every opportunity to reduce expenditure,” he said.

“In terms of what that looks like at an individual client level, I think it will vary on a case-by-case basis, but we’ll do what we can to reduce costs in areas like support services such as our corporate services.”

A report commissioned earlier this year

by UnitingCare Australia, Aged and Community Services Australia and Catholic Health Australia found that the reduction in ACFI funding would “have a major impact on the care of frail older Australians”.

“The analysis demonstrates that the proposed funding cuts would have a devastating impact on aged care providers, particularly those caring for highly vulnerable people with complex care needs,” the report said.

Mr Kinnersly believes that people power is needed to reverse or reduce the cuts and urges Uniting Church members to take their protest to the federal government.

“People could lobby their local members

Emmanuel Uniting Church Enoggera is seeking a full time Minister of the Word.

Emmanuel is a contemporary, mission focused church in the inner northwestern suburbs of Brisbane. We are a congregation of 350 members, with a significant small group ministry and extensive community outreach.

After a period of intentional growth in Christian discipleship we see the next phase of our journey as mission oriented. Our recently adopted vision statement, “real people, relevant faith, our community” expresses this call.

We are seeking a Lead Minister, who will lead this exciting new phase.

They will assume leadership and overall responsibility for the developing of ongoing missional and practical operations of the church. This includes leadership of a staff ministry team of a minister, two pastors and an administration assistant. These are all part time positions.

The gifts, skills and passions we are looking for include: strong leadership, passion for discipling others, prayer and scripture. They will be Spirit led, and have a heart for mission and evangelism in contemporary society.

They will also have a passion for contemporary worship and music.

This is a full time placement, with Stipend and Allowance according to the UCA Queensland.

Applications close 30 December.

Please address your application to: Emmanuel Uniting Church – Enoggera c/- Secretary, Synod Placements Committee Uniting Church in Australia (Qld Synod) GPO Box 674 BRISBANE QLD 4001 or email to placements@ucaqld.com.au and clearly identify the role in the subject line.

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in terms of the potential impact of what the funding changes mean to local jobs, to local care provision and to sustainability of services,” he said.

In the meantime, Mr Kinnersly is working with UA’s board and executive team to develop a strategic plan for the organisation.

This will clearly articulate strategic priorities and an implementation framework for the next three to four years.

The federal government’s introduction of Consumer Directed Care (CDC) has dramatically changed the provision of home-care packages to the aged, giving clients much more say over the design and delivery of services they receive. Mr Kinnersly is optimistic about the potential this presents to both UA and its clients.

“Going to a market where our clients will have far more choice of provider and of services, means we need to be more dynamic as an organisation, more customerfocused, and more innovative with the services that UA offers,” Mr Kinnersly said.

“The importance of marketing and communicating our services, and facilitating more choice is clearly very high. Growth is also important. A stronger critical mass of services enhances our ability to invest in things such as technology that will enhance service delivery and outcomes for our clients.”

Uniting AgeWell was recently awarded the tender for 273 residential care packages with the Swan Hill Rural City Council, which Mr Kinnersly believes speaks strongly to the reputation of the organisation.

“We’re proud that we won that tender, and we

see it as a vote of confidence in the wonderful services that UA provides across Victoria and Tasmania,” Mr Kinnersly said.

“We’re looking to transition these packages into Uniting AgeWell in mid-December 2016, which represents significant growth in our community services.”

The word ‘customer’ is increasingly being used within the community services sector, which causes consternation for some who are uncomfortable with commercial language.

Mr Kinnersly had a diplomatic response to the question of whether people should be called customers or clients.

“I believe we will always have clients and residents, and I also believe we need to have a really strong customer-focus for those clients and residents,” he said “Terminology throughout Australian healthcare is very much leaning towards customer choice and customer-focused care.

“To be sustainable, UA will need to be very customer focused, but we will never lose sight of the fact that we have residents and we have clients.”

As Mr Kinnersly reflects on his first seven weeks at the helm of Uniting AgeWell, he feels humbled and fortunate.

“When you get to meet the staff, the residents, some of our clients, their families and you see the difference that we make in the lives of so many people, I feel really lucky to be part of this organisation,” he said “We’ve talked about some of the challenges, but we’ve got some really exciting opportunities to make what is a fabulous organisation even stronger, and I look forward to being part of that journey.”

Share needs your help...

NIGEL TAPP

Drawing up a Will or appointing an Enduring Power of Attorney can be a sensitive issue for many people. It is extremely helpful if the legal representative handling these matters is compassionate and clear about the client’s and family’s hopes and values.

This is why Share is seeking solicitors from within, or connected to, the Uniting Church to make up a panel of solicitors who can offer advice to people interested in leaving a gift in their Will to Share.

If you are a solicitor, family lawyer or know a legal representative with an affinity to the Uniting Church in Australia’s ideals and principles please contact Helen Beeby, Share Planned Giving Manager on helen.beeby@victas.uca.org.au or call 03 9251 5285.

Merry Christmas

CROSSLIGHT - DECEMBER 16

DECEMBER 2016 - CROSSLIGHT

Merry Christmas

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“I don’t think we have reached the point where we have strong enough relationships (throughout the Church) to have the kind of conversations we still need to have.”

- President Stuart McMillan

UCA National President Stuart McMillan and ACC National Chair Rev Dr Hedley Fihaki at the conference

THE strength of opposition to any recognition of same sex marriage was conveyed to senior leadership of the Uniting Church of Australia at the annual conference of the Assembly of Confessing Congregations (ACC) in Tasmania last month.

Around 80 ACC members gathered in the village of Poatina, which is about 60km south-west of Launceston, for the three-day conference.

They were joined during the second day by the President of the Uniting Church, Stuart McMillan, and representatives of the Assembly Doctrine Working Group.

Mr McMillan was the first UCA president to attend a national conference of the ACC, which was formed in opposition to the 2006 National Assembly’s decision to re-affirm its position allowing congregations to install gay clergy.

Speaking after the conference, ACC national chair Dr Hedley Fihaki said the group had a mission to fulfil within the Uniting Church, which was keeping it faithful to Scripture and the foundational Basis of Union document.

“I believe we play a vital role,” Dr Fihaki said.

“Not in seeking to see ourselves as independent and outside the Uniting Church but in confessing Christ as Lord of the Church and ensuring our faith adheres to the teachings of the Basis of Union.

“I think that is particularly important when the church has become so diverse that it is no longer clear what it means to be the Uniting Church.”

“We are passionate about this issue.

It is not a fringe issue but it is at the heart of the gospel.”

- Rev Dr Hedley Fihaki

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Rev Dr Richard Condie

On its website the ACC states that it exists to confess the apostolic faith, as outlined in Scripture, and oppose church teachings and practises that depart from this understanding.

Those teachings or beliefs are labelled as heresy and to condone or promote them is an act of apostasy.

The confessing movement – those who believe churches are deviating from core doctrines and need to be called back to them – is international and ecumenical.

Prominent representatives of other denominations were in attendance at the ACC conference including the Catholic Archbishop of Hobart, Rev Dr Julian Porteous, the Anglican Bishop of Tasmania, Rev Dr Richard Condie as well as Wendy Francis, from the Australian Christian Lobby.

Within the UCA, there are 155 ACC congregations nationally, including 14 congregations and four clusters (people who gather from different local congregations) in the Synod of Victoria and Tasmania.

The ACC has a strong base particularly among the church’s ethnic communities, many of which include a significant number of young people.

Mr McMillan described the ACC as a group that had to be taken account of.

“It is important for us in Assembly to give time to those significant networks in the life of the church and to listen and to understand what their issues are,” he said.

Dr Fihaki said he was concerned that sections of the Uniting Church were in danger of losing the essential defining differences of Christianity, what the Bible describes as the believers’ salt and light

(Matthew 5:13-16).

“It looks to me just like the world. The uniqueness of Christ is not being shown to the world,” he said.

Although the ACC does not consider itself by any means a single issue organisation it is clear the group has one overriding area of advocacy.

“Our concern is that the drift in the UCA towards the normalisation of homosexual intercourse and its tolerance of other nonChristian beliefs will finalise its departure from the historic and ecumenical church,” the ACC website reads.

“Our aim is to strengthen its unity with the church by encouraging it to confess Christ’s teaching about the expression of our sexuality.”

Dr Fihaki said much was at stake in the same sex marriage debate and he refused to accept it was a side issue for the church.

“We are passionate about this issue. It is not a fringe issue but it is at the heart of the gospel,” he said.

He said the ACC, like many of the church’s ethnic communities, had become “a little tired” of the constant consultation on same sex marriage from the Church’s leadership.

Among some such communities there is a belief that continuous consultation was a stealthy way of breaking down their opposition.

“It would be more honest (for those in favour of recognising same sex marriages) to say ‘we want to redefine marriage for these reasons’ rather than continuous consultation,” Dr Fihaki said.

“The UCA has a formally endorsed position on marriage; it is not a case of the Church actually looking for a position.”

Speaking separately, Mr McMillan also said that he sometimes regretted the amount of time devoted to the marriage debate from within churches.

“I do not think it is the single most important issue to us as the Christian community today… but it tends to consume people’s energies and that frustrates me at times,” he said.

Dr Fihaki stressed that Scripture should guide the Church’s position.

“Doctrine is not based on the views of society but it seems to me there are some wanting to point to the views of society as the basis for doctrinal change,” he said.

This was a theme taken up by one of the conference speakers, Max Champion.

Mr Champion, founding national chair of the ACC, challenged those seeking to alter the UCA’s current Doctrine on Marriage – as being between a man and a woman – to present a case founded on biblical grounds.

He told the conference that the meaning of marriage within the UCA was a debate which must be decided solely on theological principles.

“If the UCA’s current position should change they (supporters of marriage equality) need to be able to say what

Merry Christmas

Rev Rod James

MARRIAGE FOR CHRISTIANS is the freely given consent and commitment in public and before God of a man and a woman to live together for life. It is intended to be the mutually faithful lifelong union of a woman and man expressed in every part of their life together. In marriage the man and the woman seek to encourage and enrich each other through love and companionship.

is wrong with the current definition of marriage based on the Scriptures,” Mr Champion said.

He warned the UCA risked the dismantling of Christianity “as we have understood it through the Scriptures” by permitting ministers to conduct same sex weddings even if it became legal.

Mr Champion said while the option of providing a blessing was a way the Church might be seen to give ground on marriage without a complete change to its doctrine, he did not see this as an acceptable compromise.

However, Mr McMillan said he was aware that support existed for same sex unions to be blessed even among congregants who were opposed to any change in the Church’s definition of marriage.

In a special session ACC members met with representatives of the Assembly’s Doctrine Working Group and strongly affirmed their support for UCA’s current position on marriage.

Mr McMillan later urged both sides of the debate to build personal relationships which encouraged deep listening and respectful conversations.

“I think we are working on it. I don’t think we have reached it. Like Paul I would say we ‘press on towards the goal’,” Mr McMillan said.

“It is important that we are giving people the space to have the conversations they need to have. I think we are doing that in different places.

“I don’t think we have reached the point where we have strong enough relationships (throughout the Church) to have the kind of conversations we still need to have.”

Another issue the conference devoted time to was the perceived assault on the traditional understanding of sexual identity.

ACC national council secretary Rev Rod James warned of a deliberate campaign to break down the traditionally accepted male and female dichotomy.

Delivering a paper entitled ‘Standing Firm Together on Gender’, Mr James said he was concerned that a new view on gender – which argued that gender was simply assigned and can therefore be reassigned – was doing enormous damage to many young people.

While acknowledging that “a very small number of people” had an indefinite gender, Mr James said for most people their sex was an ontological given, therefore not something which could simply be chosen.

“Part of accepting the authority of God is accepting the gender he has given you.

God your creator has made you who you are – a man or a woman,” he said.

“There are some who feel they should be a person of the other gender and they take extraordinary steps to undergo gender reassignment.

“However each cell of their bodies retains its original chromosome make-up (which means)… such people have to be content in knowing that they have not really changed gender, but are living as a person of the other gender.”

Mr James said while teaching gender fluidity to children had the perceived short-term benefit of making a small minority of children feel better about themselves, it had led to an exponential rise in the number of children who were entering gender clinics.

He said the Royal Children’s Hospital, in Melbourne, reported only one case of gender confusion in children in 2003 and about 200 cases last year.

He blamed initiatives such as the federally-funded Safe Schools program for promoting the new view of gender fluidity among children.

“Promoted as being an anti-bullying program it contains a deliberate ideology designed to break down the male and female view of humanity,” he said.

“Society has a duty-of-care to note that wherever children are taught they can choose their gender the incidence of gender dysphoria increases enormously.”

In the marriage service: • the woman and man make a public covenant with each other and with God, in the company of family and friends; • the couple affirm their trust in each other and in God; • the Church affirms the sanctity of marriage and nurtures those who pledge themselves to each other in marriage and calls upon all people to support, uphold and nurture those who pledge themselves to each other in marriage.

In their sexual union, husband and wife seek to express mutual delight, pleasure and tenderness, thus strengthening the union of their lives together. In marriage, children may be born and are to be brought up in love and security, thus providing a firm foundation for society.

The eighth meeting of UCA Assembly in 1997 approved this policy statement regarding marriage can be found at: assembly.uca.org/docbytes

“I think that is particularly important when the church has become so diverse that it is no longer clear what it means to be the Uniting Church.”

- Rev Dr Hedley Fihaki

While the UCA has not made any public declaration on Safe Schools, the program recently received the backing of The Salvation Army.

The denomination’s Victoria State Council said that it had thoroughly reviewed the program’s associated materials in light of criticism around its agenda and had found those allegations “unfounded”.

Mr James stressed Christians who wanted to enter the gender debate needed to steer a “grace course” of understanding and compassion that was “balanced with honesty that is faithful to the biological realities and to the will of God”.

He quoted Australian Marriage Forum president Dr David van Gend who argued in his book Stealing from a Child – the injustice of marriage equality: “When we sit with a gender-confused child, gender realism (that you are the gender you were born with) sounds like tough love while gender gnosticism (fluidity) sounds compassionate.

“But it is a false compassion to affirm a gender-confused boy in his mistaken assumption that he is a girl. He is not, he is an effeminate boy – and we still love him.

“Tough love requires understanding the sources of his confusion, helping heal any emotional wounds and keeping him company as he finds his way through puberty, at which times most young people get over their confusion.”

Although the Senate’s blocking of the same sex marriage plebiscite may have quietened natinonal debate, the ACC is well aware it’s an issue the Church will continue to face. The group is steadfast and ready with the conference approving a declaration on marriage and family to be given to Assembly.

Max Champion

CROSSLIGHT - DECEMBER 2016

CROSSLIGHT - DECEMBER 2016

Merry Christmas

13

News The greatest story you’ve never heard CATH TAYLOR

Kali and her son are both healthier because of projects giving them access to clean water and medical clinics, run by UnitingWorld partners, the Church of North India.

THE halving of extreme poverty over the last two decades is one of the biggest success stories in recent human history. But chances are you haven’t heard about it.

A recent global study ‘Glocalities’, carried out by Dutch agency Motivaction, found that worldwide, only one-in-a-hundred people correctly identified that global poverty has actually halved. In Australia 90 per cent of people believe global poverty is as bad, or worse, than it’s ever been.

So why are we so oblivious? What’s behind the pessimism? Social media? An echo-chamber of bad news in a big world where we’re constantly bombarded by cries for help?

It’s hard to distinguish the wins from the losses when children still scavenge on mountains of refuse and people are blown apart by extremists.

But at UnitingWorld we see first-hand the positive impact of aid programs in places such as a north Bengali village, where freedom from poverty is far more than a statistic. We meet the children in school uniforms with smiles so wide their faces

seem to crack. We stand beside mothers cradling babies who will live beyond five years of age. Fathers proudly show us irrigation schemes they plotted themselves.

This is the hard-won reality of more than a billion people rising from extreme poverty and those who speak of life made new. These are the voices of whole communities telling the greatest stories you’ve never heard.

So how did it all happen? There’s no doubt that a lot of poverty reduction is about economic growth, especially in Asia and across Africa.

Trade and the distribution of wealth have put food in the bellies and clean water in the communities of millions of people around the world. But the economy isn’t everything, and trade won’t reach those who have little to give. For another billion people holding out against changing climate, gender injustice and disability, life is wickedly difficult.

This is where the work of UnitingWorld in places such as South Sudan is so important.

Dogged by war, these are the people who

aren’t rising on the economic tide because the wounds of conflict are still bleeding.

Travel inside the country is dangerous, petrol prices are sky-high and export prices for oil, on which the economy depends, are falling.

Rev Caleb is one of a handful of Christian leaders who has returned to the country to help rebuild. They are convinced that South Sudan’s best chance for the future lies in the creation of an enduring peace, and they’ll achieve it by caring for people’s spiritual as well as physical needs.

“This country cannot move forward unless we do the deep work of reconciliation and forgiveness, person to person, tribe to tribe, at the grassroots and at the political level,” Caleb said.

“We are re-training teachers and leaders, providing trauma counselling for women and children who are victims of war, helping families get the skills they need to earn a living. But none of this will succeed without peace as the foundation.”

The Uniting Church in Australia, through UnitingWorld and our partner the

Gardening Australia magazine’s Gardener of the Year. She also won the magazine’s community garden category for her efforts in making the traffic obstacles in her North Fitzroy street bloom with life.

“I’m still reeling I have to say, it’s such a surprise,” Ms Johnson said.

“I didn’t even entertain the idea that I could possibly have won the main prize until it was announced. I got such a shock.”

She was presented with her trophy, a golden spade, at a ceremony in Canberra during that city’s annual Floriade festival in October.

Among other prizes Ms Johnson has also won a trip for two to the Chelsea Flower Show in London next year.

When Ms Johnson retired from school teaching seven years ago she decided it was time to do something about the local chicanes – small bordered plots of earth with trees that cut into the road space to slow traffic – installed by the council about three years previously.

Ms Johnson decided to become a ‘guerrilla’ gardener – someone who gardens on land not their own.

“I just went and did it,” Ms Johnson said.

“The gardens were neglected. They looked terrible because they were weed infested, covered in rubbish. I spend a huge amount of time just picking up rubbish off the gardens.”

After starting with the bed on the street in front of her house she now has cultivated 10 gardens of varying sizes.

Gardener of the year with plenty of street cred

UNITING Church member Shirley Johnson’s award-winning gardens may not quite stop traffic but they do slow it down.

Ms Johnson, who attends the Church of All Nations in Carlton, has been named 14

Merry Christmas

Presbyterian Church of South Sudan, is on the ground in South Sudan with a vision to care for the whole person – spiritual and physical. It’s a unique difference and one that Rev Caleb and other Christian leaders believe is the key to the country’s future.

This vision for the whole person is echoed in the work of our partner in China, where economic growth has lifted millions out of poverty over the last two decades. However, those left behind are living in desperate circumstances in rural areas as rapid urbanisation takes place.

They include the elderly, the orphaned and those with disabilities.

But as Christianity grows at an astonishing pace across China, it has care for these groups firmly on the agenda. This is Christianity changing lives told in stories that cherish the Christ who transforms and touches every part of life.

“Christmas is about God taking on flesh to meet people at every point of need,” Sureka Goringe, associate director of UnitingWorld, said.

“When we support our friends in Asia, Africa and the Pacific, we’re supporting local churches who intimately know their communities. They build on their strengths to give them the tools to live with dignity and hope – from education and economic development to relationship with God and others. This is about investing in a whole person’s life.”

There are limitations, but the reduction of poverty is making better progress worldwide than most of us have dared to dream. And the knowledge that through partnerships, we’re also part of filling lives with the richness of grace and meaning is without doubt one of the greatest stories you’ll ever hear.

The Uniting Church’s ‘Everything in Common’ gift catalogue helps you give gifts that make the world of difference to lives in need of peace, hope and love.

Visit: www.everythingincommon.com.au

According to Ms Johnson they weren’t looking “too bad” at the moment.

“I’ve always got something flowering.

Right now, I’ve got lovely cornflowers.” Ms Jonson said.

All the beds are within a short distance of her home because she has to carry water to the plants.

She spends some time maintaining them every day, mostly picking up rubbish thrown from cars, but when the weather is kind and the traffic not too heavy she gets down to some proper gardening.

“It’s just a passion and I love it,” she said.

She does this despite having been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis three years ago.

“I do what I can on the day, some days I am better than others,” Ms Johnson said.

“I find it incredibly therapeutic to get out and do gardening. It’s very life-affirming.”

It seems that others might be discovering the same thing.

Ms Johnson said that she had seen evidence that other guerrilla gardeners were now at work on the street.

“I actually think it has made other people realise that ‘I could do that too’,” she said.

“I think it has created this sense of community, that we can do things for the community.”

CROSSLIGHT - DECEMBER 16

Pilgrim Reflection

People Heath continues a family tradition

House pet Jesus: A Christmas story

WITH four consecutive generations of his family having preached in Methodist or Uniting Churches, it was probably no surprise that West Moonah man Heath Cowled would be installed as a lay preacher in Tasmania.

Both Heath’s parents, Lance and Heather, are lay preachers and he follows a further three generations on his mother’s side, with only one family member being ordained.

Heather completed her training in Melbourne in 1989 and acknowledges that God can move in mysterious ways. She initially began the course as a ‘distraction’ from dealing with a toddler rather than any burning desire to preach.

But the local presbytery quickly put Heather to work only weeks after her training was completed.

Despite the family tradition, Heath said he felt no pressure to consider lay preaching as a calling.

“In fact, I was actually quite reluctant because I had noticed (from his parents) just how much work went into preparing a service,” he said.

Heath concedes that other people noticed the gift well before he had been prepared to acknowledge it.

“I did part of a sermon once because I thought it was a subject I could talk about,” he recalled.

“Several people came up to me afterwards and commented on how well I had done.

“That was when I started to consider that there might be a gift there and my reluctance in the past may have been because I was asking myself whether I wanted to be a preacher rather than if God was calling me.”

Heath began his lay preacher training in 2011 and said it had given him a greater comprehension about what makes a good Sunday service.

Lance Cowled, Heath Cowled and Heather Cowled at Heath’s commissioning as a lay preacher

I WRITE this as a vile demagogue who campaigned on the emesis of hate has become president-elect of the USA. Of all the stories to follow in the train of this disgrace, such as the rise of white nationalism, the daily reports of hate crimes, and the self-serving incompetence of the so-called ‘political elites’, one of the more striking observances is the exit polling of the religious voice.

The Pew Research Centre recorded that an overwhelming 81 per cent of white evangelicals supported said demagogue, but so did 60 per cent of white Catholics and 58 per cent of white protestants. By contrast, those of Jewish, ‘other faith’ and ‘religiously unaffiliated’ polled at 24, 29 and 26 per cent respectively. The conclusion: the white Christian vote voted in support of the basest of human instincts.

If this was not sufficiently troubling, the post-election rhetoric from the religious sector has focused on the need for ‘reconciliation’ and ‘hospitality’, to ‘turn our eyes to Jesus’. This is troubling because it is post-facto.

However pious the language, this is not a prophetic utterance in search of unity and witness; it issues from a position of control and uses religious sentiment to compel the disaffected. It reads as smug, self-righteous, and in defence of a particular Christian ‘brand’. The sincerity of belief should not be in question: as Walter M. Miller Jr, in DECEMBER 16 - CROSSLIGHT

his 1959 classic A Canticle for Leibowitz, suggests ‘Perhaps Satan was the sincerest of the lot’. In other words, the force with which you hold a belief does not speak to the truth of that belief.

While targeting evangelicals as a genus might encourage schadenfreude within one religious group, note again that a significant majority – 58 per cent – of white protestants voted in a similar vein. It is more a case of the one who is without sin cast the first stone. The point relates much more to the cultural accommodation or ‘domestication’ of the Christian gospel.

With domestication, a problem seen through Christian history, faith marries to a particular cultural norm. This norm becomes the whole of the message and is expressed through particular practices, values and modes of spirituality. To deny this norm is to deny the faith, as such.

Should this singular cultural narrative be challenged, a fear response develops, and fear turns into hate, self-defence and the need for control, and the re-imposition of the framing narrative.

Piety mirrors local values. Care for widows, orphans and strangers, the golden rule of love, of self-emptying, of giving not out of plenty but out of need equates to guns, a certain image of religious freedom, lateterm abortion, and Supreme Court judges.

What has this to do with Christmas, you may well ask?

The demonstrable event of religious domestication evident within the American election does not develop overnight. It takes time, and occurs as a religious community withdraws into set patterns and narratives and the creation of a habitus. As a consequence, though it might be easy for an outside community to observe problematic cultural liaisons, it is difficult to identify the same forces of domestication within ourselves. Enter Christmas.

One may illustrate the point in a number of ways. Consumerism and marketing is an evident problem, but not quite the focus here. We could talk of pine trees and carols remembering a lovely English pastoral scene, a nostalgic reflection for foreign cultural rhythms and artefacts unrelated to the Christian message.

This too is an issue, but more symptom than problem. Nor does the concern lie in celebration. Christmas is an occasion of joy: Emmanuel, God with us.

The problem lies with the Jesus we present. This Jesus gives us no trouble, no pause. This Jesus does not call us beyond ourselves, outside of the familiar rhythms. Quite the opposite. With this Jesus, Christmas is for the children and this leads us back to fond memories of our own childhood. We feel at home, secure. This Jesus is the house pet at our feet, present and familiar, domesticated.

Merry Christmas

Yet the biblical story of the God who comes is one of vulnerability: of a political context of empire, of economic order, of a displaced couple, of a pregnant woman forced onto the road, of being poor and without shelter, of inhospitality, of living with the animals, of persecution, of murder, of migration to a land not one’s own.

Christmas is not a narrative of family and security. Christmas is a story of God being born in the shit. It draws our focus to the widow, orphan and stranger and reveals God to be the God of the least.

This God is perpetually strange to us, a constant surprise that interrupts our closed narratives.

In an era of Herod, let Emmanuel speak.

Rev Dr John Flett Pilgrim Theological College 15

Enriching curious minds EVERY year, the Uniting Church Adult Fellowship (UCAF) supports young people engaged in theological or leadership studies through the Joan Stott bursary.

Established in 2009, the bursary provides a $1500 grant to assist people under the age of 35. The UCAF National Committee, currently based in the Vic/Tas Synod for the 2015-2018 triennium, may award the bursary to up to two people annually.

Matthew Julius is a member of ‘SPACE’, a faith community of the Banyule Network of Uniting Churches at Heidelberg. He was awarded the 2017 bursary alongside Bradley Case from Queensland.

Mr Julius had previously studied philosophy and cultural sociology at university, which fuelled his interest in theology.

“What struck me about philosophy and sociology is their propensity to engage with questions of meaning; there’s the possibility of an existential weight there,” he said.

“My pursuit of theological study grew out of this trajectory.”

Mr Julius said he always had a penchant for asking ‘difficult questions’ and theology was a natural fit with his sense of curiosity about the world.

“Theological study is a way of more fully articulating who I am,” Mr Julius said.

“But the point, then, is to see how this passion I have can aid others in their 16

own way.

“So I hope what I can contribute is giving voice to questions, validating people in their pursuit of meaning and faith, and then helping connect people to the resources that might enrich their curiosity.”

Mr Julius is now pursuing fulltime postgraduate study at Pilgrim Theological College in Parkville. He hopes to one day work in academia, with a focus on tying together interdisciplinary approaches to theology.

Matthew Julius

Concert to raise funds for dementia OPERA Su Presto will be performing at Toorak Uniting Church on 18 December to raise funds for people with dementia.

Its new show Les Liaisons Misérables is a political farce set in the court of Louis XVI. Directed by James Wright, it features period costumes and songs by Handel, Mozart, Lerner and Loewe, Rossini and Bernstein.

The concert is a key fundraiser for Music for David, Uniting AgeWell’s music therapy program.

Music for David uses an iPod or MP3 player to musically soothe and gently stimulate people who are agitated or withdrawn due to the effects of dementia.

It also supports carers by giving them short-term respite.

The program was established in memory of Rev David Hodges AM, minister at Toorak Uniting Church until his retirement in 1983.

Uniting AgeWell supported Mr Hodges and his partner, musician David RossSmith, from 2011 until his death the

Pic credit: Eva Alegre

When: Sunday, 18 December at 3:30pm.

Where: Toorak Uniting Church, 603 Toorak Road, Toorak (Tram Stop 39) Admission: $40 or $35 concession.

Refreshments provided following the concert.

Bookings and enquiries: David Ross-Smith 0429 907 908 or https://www.trybooking.com/243015

Last year’s Music for David concert, The Persian Princes at Toorak Uniting Church.

The frequent House guest

Betty Burgess with the Governer Linda Dessau

Merry Christmas

following year. Music played a significant role during Mr Hodges’ care.

The Friends of Music for David, headed by Mr Ross-Smith, organise a series of events each year to raise funds for the program.

Mr Ross-Smith said money raised from the show would allow more people to access music therapy, which research shows has positive effects on people with dementia.

“Music is not only beneficial for people with dementia, it also has therapeutic effects on healthy people as well,” Mr RossSmith said.

“My hope for this show is for people to have an enjoyable and uplifting experience and leave feeling better than they arrived.

“The show is very colourful and hilarious – great entertainment for those needing some respite from the pre-Christmas rush.”

BETTY Burgess is getting used to turning up to Government House to be recognised.

The 91-year-old from Pascoe Vale received her Order of Australia Medal from the Governor of Victoria, Linda Dessau, in October. Only 12 months previously, Mrs Burgess was at Government House receiving a senior achiever award from COTA, the peak national organisation representing the rights, needs and interests of older Australians.

Mrs Burgess, a member of the Strathmore Uniting Church, received her OAM for services to her local community, particularly the Country Women’s Association which she first joined more than four decades ago.

She said the OAM had come as a complete surprise.

“You do not get involved for that purpose.

I just got involved in things because of my children, whether that was scouts, kinder or girl guides,” she said.

“It was just what you did in those days.

Women did not work and your family was your life. I certainly would not swap it for now.”

Mrs Burgess said the installation service was a wonderful occasion.

“I suppose I was a little nervous but it was well organised,” she said.

Mrs Burgess has no interest in slowing down her commitment to the CWA and is currently busy making Christmas cakes to raise funds for the organisation.

CROSSLIGHT - DECEMBER 16

People Quiet courage in country Victoria

Pic courtesy Warragul/ Sharon Hollis, Carolyn Turner, Drouin Gazette Arfa Sararaz Khan, Tracey Gibson.

THE announcement in November that international power company Engie would close the Hazelwood coal mine in March next year shone a spotlight on the town of Morwell in the shire of Gippsland.

So it was a timely coincidence that the moderator of Vic/Tas chose Warragul Uniting Church as the venue for a lunchtime chat about the importance of resilience and courage. Titled ‘Courage doesn’t need to roar’, moderator Sharon Hollis was joined by a panel of local women who shared their experience of living and working in the community.

Panellist Tracey Gibson, UnitingCare Gippsland CEO, spoke of residents already coping with the impact of natural disasters such as floods and bushfires now having to deal with economic challenges in the forestry and farming industries. Having grown up in Gippsland, Ms Gibson also spoke of the rapidly changing demographic due to urban expansion.

Ms Gibson said that for her, resilience and courage meant the ability to learn from failure.

“I tend to look at what others see as ‘failure’ as an opportunity to evaluate what went wrong and how I could do it differently next time,” Ms Gibson said.

In her 24 years as editor of the Warragul and Drouin Gazette, Carolyn Turner has also seen first-hand the changes facing the community. She spoke of the importance of keeping the community connected through sharing local stories.

Ms Turner said courage is the ability to “keep going forward” in the face of challenging circumstances. She said longterm solutions need to be found for the area, and hopes that giving people a voice will empower locals.

The panel was also joined by Arfa Sararaz Khan, president of the United Muslim Sisters of LaTrobe Valley. Originally from Pakistan, Ms Khan is a member of the Trafalgar Community Development Association and is an active supporter of women’s empowerment and education.

Ms Khan said her work in the local community means she often witnesses the quiet courage of women to overcome obstacles, often through expectations of gender or race.

“Working with women in the local community, it is wonderful to see the process of transformation that can take place with the right support,” Ms Khan said.

“Courage can be as simple as challenging the expectations of gender or ethnicity.”

More than 70 people enjoyed a lunch prepared by the Warragul UC caterers before joining in a lively discussion that examined issues of courage, resilience, faith and community engagement.

DECEMBER 16 - CROSSLIGHT

Review

Letters Savage cuts to aged pensions IN June 2015 Scott Morrison, the then minister for social services, stated: “The current generation of aged pensioners had a deal with the government over their lifetime that if they worked hard there would be an aged pension at the other end.”

Scott Morrison has either deliberately or mistakenly decided that only single pensioners with investments of no more than $153,908 and couples with no more than $261,262 are in need of the aged pension. Above those points the asset and income tests reduce the pension by much more than the extra investments can earn.

Tony Abbott won his last election with the solemn promise that he would not touch aged pensions. The legislation imposing these savage cuts to the pensions of over 1000 retired Uniting Church ministers and their widows on 1 January 2016 and the hundreds of thousands of other aged pensioners on 1 January 2017 was clearly a blatant breach of that promise. Even worse, it will destroy the retirement plans of hundreds of thousands of the present and future retirees who were working and paying taxes in 1973 when the means-testfree pensions were legislated. There was no suggestion that the recipients had to need it - they only had to reach the retirement age.

Malcolm Turnbull should show true leadership and immediately admit Tony’s legislation was a blatant breach of an election promise as well as being grossly unfair. A prompt announcement that he will either defer the start date or, better still cancel it, is called for – before parliament starts its Christmas holidays on 1 December.

This would be the best early Christmas present he could possible give to the affected pensioners, their caring families and friends.

Robert W Parry FCA Yarrambat, VIC

ACCESS decision REV Cameron McAdam states in his email that “the changes that had taken place in ACCESS governance over the last 15 or so years didn’t allow for a Uniting Church voice to be heard”.

About that time the CEO of ACCESS changed from being a Uniting Church person to being an Anglican. The chair of the governance board was a Uniting Church person, who failed to be re-elected at the next Victorian Synod and had to step down from the board. An Anglican was elected as the next chairperson and the Uniting Church and Anglican Church each had three members who had been elected by the ACCESS council to be board members. In more recent years this was reduced to two to give other denominations a chance to participate on the board.

The Uniting Church and Anglican Church both originally had 10 people on the council. This was reduced more recently.

Whereas in earlier years all members of the council were involved in creating curriculum, a new CEO focussed on a corporate model, reducing participation of the council. This caused angst.

This person was replaced by a CEO who was an educationalist. People were employed to write the curriculum. Others were invited to contribute. The Uniting

Church is a theologically diverse church and the people who served the Uniting Church on the board and the council of ACCESS Ministries were very committed and faithful and believed that, in serving the Uniting Church on ACCESS council and board, they were being the Uniting Church voice.

Annette Blazé (ex council and board member of ACCESS Ministries).

Christian soldiers?

THE correspondence generated by the Crosslight August discussion, ‘Ministry of War’ is a timely reminder of the impact of war on us all. It prompts a reading of historians such as Peter Fitzsimons’ World War I trilogy (2015) and Peter Stanley (Saturday Age 1 November 2016).The role in war is examined by Philip Jenkins, The Great and Holy War: How World War I Changed Religion for Ever, (Lion, 2014).

The slaughter was incomprehensible. In August 1914 a French NCO reported: “Heaps of corpses, French and German are lying every which way, rifles in hand.

Rain is falling, shells are screaming and bursting… thousands of dead were still standing, supported as if by a flying buttress made of bodies lying in rows on top of each other in an ascending arc from the horizontal to an angle of 60 degrees.”

A German Unitarian declared that Christ calls soldiers into deadly strife. “Jesus would [not] shirk from or delay in seizing!

He would take bayonet and grenade and bomb and rifle.”

Although we are at war even now, fortunately we do not hear such Australian voices. Military remembrance does take place but the ceremonies marking the repatriation of a dead soldier from overseas are less public now.

Bill Freeman (Crosslight), supports military chaplaincy and funerals. He observes protocols for the draping of an Australian flag with its several crosses. I observe that Christ’s cross makes for peace.

‘Notes for the Funeral Service’ (Uniting in Worship, p. 425-430) were significantly expanded to take account of a serious controversy about the Australian flag in funerals. They make clear that the Christian funeral acknowledges a person’s life before God. In 2005, when controversy about this issue was most heated, abusive messages were received by the minister, even death threats. This presses the question of how the church is to declare Christ’s peace.

How can we proceed? I believe we must take seriously Jesus’ teaching to love enemies (Matthew 5-6). His followers are not at liberty to avoid his teaching. Remarkably, in the first three centuries of the church, nonviolence was its normal practice.

Christian ministry, shaped by peacemaking and blessing, may and must be given to all. Serious negotiation will be needed to support Christians who refuse to serve in the military forces. If a non-uniformed military chaplaincy were to be adopted, chaplains would refuse to act as military agents. That is thinkable because the cross of Jesus Christ and its message of blessing will mark out our whole life as his.

Rev Wes Campbell Castlemaine, VIC

Merry Christmas

Promotion of sin IT should be with deep concern that all members of the Uniting Church who claim Jesus as their Lord and Saviour, and in doing so accept the rules that God, our Loving Heavenly Father has given us to live by, find an edition of Crosslight (no. 270 Oct. 2016 on pages 11-13) a feature article that actively promotes homosexuality. The Scripture in many places plainly states that this practice will not be tolerated by God, it is sin and God hates sin.

There is a very real danger that those who are not conversant with God’s laws, having read this feature article in Crosslight which is distributed through the Church, may be lured into believing that this type of immorality is quite OK as there was no mention of the consequences for those who choose to disobey God’s Laws. Once this type of article that promotes sin seeps into a church then the church becomes a synagogue for Satan. Ephesians 5 verse 6 warns “let no one deceive you with empty words for because of these things the wrath of God comes on the sons of disobedience”.

Page 13 of this article goes into some detail of the overwhelming acceptance in Australia for homosexuality. This should come as no surprise to anyone who loves and serves the Lord, for Australia is proudly proclaimed now as a secular society. A secular society is a Godless society. As Crosslight sees fit to publish a feature article promoting sin, can it be expected that future editions will promote and justify murder, stealing etc? For there is no difference, all sin is of the devil.

The Church has a duty of care, and for this article to be published in its monthly newspaper with no warning, it has neglected its duty.

An urgent follow-up article is required to explain that without repenting and ceasing from sin no one can be saved.

Mark Leonard Westbury, TAS

Milk money DURING the service on 30th October, our minister dedicated the boxes for the Christmas Child Samaritan’s Purse Project.

A very worthwhile project in which many people collectively or individually participate from year to year. Great cause.

During the same service, Mr Ross Walker talked to us about the importance of the Christmas Bowl Appeal now in its 65th year. He spoke of social justice for all.

Yes! As Christians we are duty-bound/ privileged to do something for others. This year the focus is on Zimbabwe (formerly rich Rhodesia) teaching farmers new methods of working the land so that they can grow food even when the rains fall and hunger is less prevalent. Great cause!

But, what about our own dairy famers?

According to recent media reports we might soon have to import milk as prices at the farm gate are too low, lower than the cost of producing milk.

Now, if we support social justice for everyone, shouldn’t we do something for Australian famers? Ask politicians to stand up for them. Remind them that farmers also vote, don’t they?

Jantine Labsvirs Carrum, VIC 17

Shaun Micallef and Francis Greenslade

Battle with blasphemy

Building for the future

Oddly familiar

REVIEW BY TIM LAM

REVIEW BY SUZANNE YANKO

PLAY | THE ODD COUPLE

BOOK | BLASPHEMY: THE TRUE HEART-BREAKING STORY OF THE WOMAN SENTENCED TO DEATH OVER A CUP OF WATER | ASIA BIBI

BOOK | MAKING PROPERTY SERVE MISSION | FRED BATTERTON

PAKISTANI Christian woman Asia Bibi has been languishing on death row for the past seven years. A mother of five from an impoverished rural village, she has become an international symbol of Pakistan’s cruel blasphemy laws.

Her memoir Blasphemy chronicles the story of how a dispute at a well with her fellow farmhands turned into a highprofile case that captured global attention.

It is ghost-written by French journalist Anne-Isabelle Tollet with the help of Asia’s husband and an Urdu-English translator.

Forbidden from making direct contact with Asia, Tollet conducted interviews with her subject using notes exchanged with Asia’s husband.

Despite these limitations, the memoir vividly illustrates the human impact of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. Separated from her husband and children, Asia speaks of the daily torment she experiences in her derelict, windowless cell isolated from the rest of the world.

Yet she also demonstrates remarkable resilience in the face of adversity. Like many Christians, Asia had to wrestle with moments of doubt and loneliness as she struggled to find God in the dark corners of her prison cell. The strength of Asia’s faith shines through as she draws on memories of her family and her Christian conviction to sustain her.

Blasphemy calls for interfaith unity as the path towards ending violence committed in the name of religion. Throughout her memoir, Asia reiterates it is not just religious minorities who are targeted by the blasphemy laws – Muslims, Christians and Hindus are all dehumanised by them.

The story of Asia’s imprisonment is grim and confronting, but it also carries a message of hope. Asia’s case has united Christian bishops and Muslim imams together to take up the fight to change the blasphemy laws.

At only 137 pages, Blasphemy is a quick read. Be prepared to feel anger at the injustice and brutality of a system that fails to protect the innocent, but also inspired by the courage of a woman whose faith remains strong in the face of unimaginable circumstances.

THE author lays it on the line in his introduction. “My two passions are architecture and my Christian faith”. Fred Batterton’s new book Making property serve mission, subtitled “Rethinking the churches’ buildings for the 21st century” is both liberating and confronting as a blueprint for change.

Batterton asserts that “mission is the reason that the Church’s property was provided by its predecessors and mission remains the core”. This is a handbook for any congregation open to the challenge of identifying its core mission and considering what buildings would best serve that mission, regardless of sentimental attachment to the current arrangement of bricks and stones.

The first part of the book asks: “What is the church’s core business?” Of course, love of God and one’s neighbour, worship, teaching and discipleship. But what of a congregation’s particular local mission?

Part two follows with the inevitable next question: “What property do you have?” This requires an honest evaluation of the use the property. Hopefully it is not just “a religious club operating on a shoestring for the benefit of its members, locked up all week”.

Thanks to his architectural practice in the UK and in Australia, as well as his keen interest in solutions that others have found, in part three Batterton offers a wealth of case studies. His belief that “changes should be high quality examples of 21st-century architecture” should reassure the reader who fears that a beloved building might be replaced with something functional but dreary.

Phrases like “cost-effective, sustainable, reinvigorating engagement”, even “good coffee”, now come into their own. This is not hype or spin. There are the usual concerns and others besides: everything from car parking and ensuring buildings are welcoming to outsiders. Batterton has a thorough ‘how to’ list: professionals who may be able to help, processes and plans.

Above all a ‘re-purposive’ that looks to the future with hope and confidence.

Strongly recommended, not just for decision-makers on committees but for any member of the congregation facing change.

Available at: shop.abc.net.au RRP $24.99

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Available at www.barnesandnoble.com RRP Paperback $34.95 e-book $19.99

Counting blessings

REVIEW BY PENNY MULVEY REVIEW BY HARRIET ZIEGLER BOOK SET | SPINIFEX BLESSING | JULIE PERRIN

IT must be equal parts delight and terror as an actor to step into a role so familiar to the audience. Shaun Micallef and Francis Greenslade have done just that for the Melbourne Theatre Company’s latest production, The Odd Couple.

Micallef plays the uptight neat freak Felix Ungar, while Greenslade plays his slovenly generous-hearted best friend Oscar Madison. Greenslade and Micallef have an easy on-stage chemistry, having worked together on television in Mad as Hell, The Ex-PM, Micallef Tonight and The Micallef Program.

MTC director Peter Houghton has, for most part, drawn out the mannerisms and persona of his two leads, enabling them to define Felix and Oscar with integrity to the material while putting their own stamp on these much-loved characters.

Viewing the play very early in its season, in the first act it seemed the actors were seeking to find the rhythm of the playwright – staccato, fast, acerbic New York. However, the appearance of the Pigeon sisters in the second act breathed a whole new energy into the performance, and no longer were they Shaun and Francis, they had fully inhabited the skin of Felix and Oscar.

The Pigeon sisters, Christie Whelan Browne (Cecily) and Michala Banas (Gwendolyn), are great fun in their fabulously loud ’60s fashion, one minute flirting, the next uncertain and then drawn to the pathetic sad-sack Felix.

The poker playing friends were equally good. Hayden Spencer (an MTC regular) was a compelling Murray, the cop. Grant Spiro (Speed), David Ross Paterson (Roy) and Drew Tingwell (Vinnie) complete the loyal gang. Each performer brings their character’s individual emotional idiosyncrasies to life, reinforcing the depth of the ensemble, for which the prolific Neil Simon is renowned.

It is a play filled with physical humour as well as verbal banter, but there is nothing light-weight about the issues. For the playwright, humour is the best vehicle for presenting serious issues, because it is in the laughter that we can begin to inhabit the pain.

Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple Until 17 December 2016, Southbank Theatre, The Sumner

Merry Christmas

THE title of this delightful set of three booklets by Julie Perrin is both tantalising and telling.

Tantalising because we might wonder, why spinifex? An Australian plant so common we often fail to see it. Yet once our eyes are opened to it, it is beautiful in its spiky gentleness.

Telling because each essay is about the blessing to be found in our everyday lives.

In these Stories of Faith and Life, Julie opens our eyes to the faith, life and love to be found in the commonplace.

Most of the eight short essays in each volume were originally published in the Faith column of The Sunday Age newspaper. Although there are continuing threads amongst them, they need not be read in one sitting and are perfect for reading in fits and starts, as when travelling on train or tram.

Having been written for a broad audience, they deal with a broad range of subjects – the hurly-burly of daily life; song and story; birth and death; traffic accidents; even mobile phone etiquette. And whilst they appeared in the Faith column, they often admit Faith’s companion, Doubt.

In no way does Julie romanticise or simplify the complexities of life or faith.

In writing about a guitarist/song-writer terribly injured in a terrorist attack in Peru, she says: “Some things don’t heal. There is a respectful knowing that doesn’t try to force healing or hope on people.”

There is no force in these stories – but a gentle invitation to see the hope that may be found in following the way of Jesus and the hope to be found in the goodness of humanity.

Every essay declares the presence of God, whether explicitly or implicitly. Closing line of the three volumes quotes theologian Graeme Garrett saying “the world is the solid speech of God”. In these essays, Julie shows the solid speech of God, the solid speech of love, in the extraordinary and ordinary world as she sees it.

Buy a set for yourself – and for the Christian and the curious alike on your Christmas gift list.

Published by Tellingwords. RRP: $15 for the set of 3 plus $3 postage and handling for postal orders. Order from: spinifex@tellingwords.com.au.

CROSSLIGHT - DECEMBER 16

Review Working class hero REVIEW BY EMMET O’CUANA FILM | I, DANIEL BLAKE | MA 15+

DIRECTOR Ken Loach opens his latest cinematic polemic with a simple title sequence against a black screen. We hear two voices speak. Their conversation, initially stilted and formal, slowly becomes frustrating for both parties. The speakers are an assessment officer for the UK government’s Employment and Support Allowance and Daniel Blake (Dave Johns), a construction site joiner who has recently had a serious heart attack.

The spareness of the film’s opening and the escalation in emotion is instantly compelling. Blake has been medically certified as unfit to work but, in order to qualify for financial support, he needs to prove his case during this interview. The officer asks him a series of questions about his ability to raise his arm, reach into a pocket, stretch his fingers – “We’re getting further and further away from my heart!”

Blake exclaims, with typical mordant humour. These are all questions he has already answered on an application form.

His claim rejected, Blake is required to seek work, despite being medically unfit, just so he can claim jobseeker’s allowance.

In addition to the confusing series of assessments and vagaries around when he will be able to speak to someone, he is unfamiliar with computers. The system’s focus on paperless filing effectively freezes Blake out of the appeals process.

Standing strong REVIEW BY PENNY MULVEY BOOK | CHILD, ARISE! THE COURAGE TO STAND. A SPIRITUAL HANDBOOK FOR SURVIVORS OF SEXUAL ABUSE | JANE N. DOWLING

JANE Dowling is a member of an international Catholic missionary community, serving within the community in prayer and Ministry of the Word. A consecrated member of this community for 23 years, Jane leads spiritual retreats, introducing people to a relationship with God through the Bible.

Jane is also a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, initially by a relative, and then by DECEMBER 16 - CROSSLIGHT

Dave Johns, Hayley Squires, Dylan McKiernan, and Briana Shann in I, Daniel Blake

Blake witnesses Jobcentre staff threaten a single mother with being forcibly removed for ‘causing a scene’. He adopts the family of Katie (Hayley Squires) and her two children Daisy and Dylan, giving him some purpose and them the help they desperately need.

Performing jobs around their council house and acting like a father to the kids gives Blake some small measure of happiness.

But with no income, Katie is forced to take desperate measures and Blake takes a stand against the system that robs ordinary people of their dignity.

Loach and screenwriter Paul Laverty are not interested in subtlety. At least two scenes

verge on diatribe. Such diatribe is necessary as the characters we meet – trapped in the system that surrounds the working poor – speak plainly about their circumstances. In a culture where you are either a ‘striver or skiver’(think Joe Hockey’s ‘lifter or leaner’), there is no room for people who fall outside those terms. Blake demands respect, but is treated like an ungrateful child.

There are a number of scenes in I, Daniel Blake that confirm Loach’s ability to captivate an audience with emotional honesty and simple tragic circumstances.

This is a film picked clean of staginess or inauthentic tub-thumping. A sequence in

a food bank plays out with tear-inducing inevitability. Squires in that scene is a revelation, conveying a mother’s deperation to provide for her children.

This is a film for the families on the breadline with no more options; the socalled ‘bludgers’ who simply need help; the women and men crying out for dignity, yet treated like an unwelcome statistic.

a Catholic priest. Like many victims of child sexual abuse, Jane had repressed the memories until, as an adult, she began having nightmares, flashbacks and physical sensations associated with the abuse.

In August, Jane’s book, Child, Arise!

The Courage to Stand, was named 2016 Australian Christian Book of the Year.

Jane has given Christians an extraordinary gift. Described as a spiritual handbook for survivors of sexual abuse, Child, Arise! is a daily devotional, written in two parts.

It is a book of hope and light. Jane guides readers using her own personal daily struggles into seeing God in new ways – not as punishing and angry, but as loving and faithful. She reminds the reader that prayer is a dialogue with God: we speak to God, God speaks to us, we speak to God. Her style is invitational, vulnerable and powerful.

The Foreword is written by Fr David Ransome of Sydney College of Divinity. He says this book is challenging the church to consider the next part of the difficult journey of royal commission hearings, remorse, redress and compensation.

“What might happen if we were now truly prepared to ‘sit with’ and listen deeply to the pain of stories and to wonder in the midst of such pain, how such trauma acts as the catalyst for theology, and our self-understanding as church?” Fr David Ransome writes.

“How does people’s pain in this instance shape our sense of God, of Christ, of the church, of redemption?”

The first part of the handbook is titled ‘Listening to our personal story from a loving God’. The daily readings have headings such as ‘God has loved us first’, ‘God doesn’t abandon us’ and ‘Through the gift of Jesus’. In Part II, ‘Working through our issues with a loving God’, Jane uses her struggles and experiences to potentially take the reader into their own story of pain and abuse, and find God in that space.

For example, in ‘Walking through fire’ Jane recounts the day she told her story of abuse to a private hearing with the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. She couldn’t get out of bed that morning as the same fear she had experienced all those years ago flooded over her again.

“Even though it was more than 25 years since the abuse had taken place, the fear that this priest instilled in me was overpowering me again,” she writes.

“This is part of the reason why it is so difficult for victims of sexual abuse to tell someone about what has happened to them and to speak out publicly.

“The only way I could get out of bed and start getting ready was by listening to Jesus repeating the words from Scripture again and again, ‘Don’t be afraid, I am with you’ (Matthew 28:20).”

As Jane prepared herself spiritually for the public hearing, she recalled and prayed through a passage in Isaiah 43, in which God promises that no matter what happens, be it floods or fire, God will not

abandon his children.

She invites the reader to read the same passage, to substitute their own name into the reading, and to reflect and pray over the words. The questions she poses are relevant to all of us, but particularly poignant for a survivor to ask “What will stop me from getting burned God? How is it possible that I will not be consumed?”

Jane concludes the devotion by taking us back to the outcome of that event, and how the Scripture reading had impacted her ability to manage it.

“There was a brief moment in the session when I thought, ‘I’m not going to make it out of this alive’, and I paused. Right at that time, these words from Scripture came to me, ‘When you walk through fire, you shall not be burnt, the flames shall not consume you, for I am the lord, your God, the Holy One, your Saviour!’ I found the strength to continue telling my story to the end.”

As a church, we are seeking to give children a voice about what it means to be safe. Jane reminds us that for survivors of child abuse, the child is still trapped within the adult body. As we seek to be a child-safe church, we also need to create safety and openness for the adults who are living daily with the long term effects of such abuse. This book is a powerful tool for all of us to walk in each other’s shoes.

Merry Christmas

In Australian cinemas nationally 17 November, 2016

David Lovell Publishing 2015 RRP $29.95 19

Placements

Notices

CURRENT AND PENDING PLACEMENT VACANCIES AS AT 16 NOVEMBER 2016

MINISTRY MOVES

PRESBYTERY OF GIPPSLAND Nil

PRESBYTERY OF WESTERN VIC Nil

Sue Clarkson, Ethical Standards Officer commenced 1 November 2016

PRESBYTERY OF LODDON MALLEE Dunolly (0.5) Sunraysia (UCOS) (0.5) Tyrrell Parish

PRESBYTERY OF YARRA YARRA Ashburton Church of All Nations** Croydon North – Gifford Village (0.5) Kew East Melbourne (St Michael’s)

PRESBYTERY OF NORTH EAST VICTORIA Mansfield (0.3) Rutherglen (Rutherglen/Chiltern-CorowaHowlong) (0.5) Upper Murray (Corryong, Walwa) (0.5) PRESBYTERY OF PORT PHILLIP EAST Oakleigh (St David’s), Balkara Parish (0.5) Beaumaris (0.6) Bentleigh Dandenong (Trinity)** Frankston (High St) (0.5) – Monash University Peninsula Campus Chaplain (0.5) Korean Church of Melbourne – English Christian Fellowship Korean Church of Melbourne – Korean Speaking Minister** PRESBYTERY OF PORT PHILLIP WEST Altona Meadows – Laverton (0.4) and Lara (0.5) Essendon (St John’s) ** St Albans/ Caroline Springs – Sydenham Sunbury PRESBYTERY OF TASMANIA Ulverstone – Sprent (three year term) Kingston South Esk

SYNOD Nil ** These placements have not yet lodged a profile with the Placements Committee, therefore they are not yet in conversation with any minister. There is no guarantee that the placement will be listed within the next month.

(P) These placements are listed as also being suitable for a Pastor.

A person may offer to serve the church in an approved placement through a written application to the Synod.

Further information on these vacancies may be obtained from the Secretary of the Placements Committee: Ms Isabel Thomas Dobson.

Email: placements.secretary@victas.uca.org.au Formal expressions of interest should be put in writing to Isabel.

The Promised

Messiah

SUNDAY 18 DECEMBER AT 6.00 PM

Bruce Crowle, Narre Warren North to commence 1 January 2017 CONCLUSION OF PLACEMENT

John Clarke, Uniting – Director of Mission to commence 1 January 2017

Peter Wiltshire to conclude at Wesley College – St Kilda Road campus on 31 December 2016

Ros McDonald, Eltham – Montmorency commenced 1 November 2016

RETIREMENTS

Kharis Susilowati – Mitchell River – Paynesville to commence 1 January 2017 Tony Johnson, Traralgon District to commence 16 January 2017 Denise Naish, Wodonga (St Stephens) to commence 20 April 2017

Ken Dempsey, Williamstown (St Stephens), to retire on 30 November 2016 Francis MacNab, Melbourne (St Michaels), to retire on 31 December 2016 Lorraine Saultry, Bright Alpine Parish, to retire on 30 June 2017

Kevin Kim, Brighton (Trinity) to commence 14 January 2017

COMING EVENTS THE RICHARD MCKINNEY MEMORIAL ECUMENICAL ADVENT LECTURES FOR 2016 Lecture 3 at 8pm on Tuesday, 6 December Mother of God Catholic Church, 63 Wilfred St, Ivanhoe East.

Speaker: Fr Denis Stanley, Episcopal Vicar for Ecumenism and Interfaith Relations on the topic ‘The temptation to build new walls - commitment to dialogue’.

Admission by gold coin.

Fellowship and supper at 9.15pm.

Enquiries to Ann on P: (03) 9459 1898.

CLOSURE OF TOOLAMBA UNITING CHURCH, PARISH OF WARANGA 2PM, SUNDAY 4 DECEMBER 575 Toolmanba-Rushworth Road, Toolamba West.

The Final Service, a Service of Closure, will be conducted by Rev Brian Spencer with afternoon tea provided after the service.

All past members & clergy are warmly invited to attend.

Enquiries & RSVP to Secretary B. Cross on P: (03) 5826 6353 or E: williamsbnb@bigpond.com.

A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols by Philip Ledger

The Ad Hoc Singers The Choir of Auburn Uniting Church Organist: Margaret Pettitt Conductor: Bruce Macrae

CALLS AND APPOINTMENTS FINALISED

BURWOOD UC ‘FOLLOW THE STAR’ - A SIMPLE JOURNEY through the CHRISTMAS STORY THURSDAY 1 DECEMBER TO SATURDAY 23 DECEMBER (except Sundays) Burwood Uniting Church, cnr Warrigal Road and Hyslop Street, Glen Iris.

The annual ‘Follow the Star’ at Burwood Uniting Church will be open daily to the public from 1 December (except Sundays) until Saturday, 23 December. The displays present the story of the first Christmas and are accompanied by a Christmas Tree Forest with trees decorated by local schools and organisations. There is opportunity to donate to the Gift Tree non-perishable foods in support of Camcare and Hotham Mission food hamper programs.

Opening times are Mondays 10am to 3pm, Tuesdays 12.30pm to 3pm, Wednesdays 10am to 3pm, Thursdays 12.30pm to 3pm, Fridays 12.30pm to 3pm and Saturdays 10am to 12.30pm. Other times may be available by appointment especially to groups (children or adults).

Please contact: Felicity Fallon on M: 0449 751 402 or Anne Campbell on M: 0487 750 442.

Further information can be found at www.burwood.unitingchurch.org.au.

AU B U R N U N I T I N G C H U RC H OX L E Y ROA D H AW T H O R N

Administration Assistant

Photo credit: Richard Wainwright

An exciting role is now available for an experienced administrator with a passion for team support. Working with the Property Services unit, this is a great opportunity for an organised person who thrives on variety and people contact.

To secure this role you will have: · · · · ·

Applications close 7th December 2016 Obtain a position description and apply online today at https://ucavictas.mercury.com.au/ For further information contact: People and Culture (03) 9251 5917

1800 025 101 or actforpeace.org.au/christmasbowl The Christmas appeal of Act for Peace, the international aid agency of the National Council of Churches in Australia . ABN 64 493 941 795

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The UCA is proud to be an inclusive employer.

The UCA is committed to keeping children safe.

A willingness to work within the ethos of the Uniting Church in Australia is essential.

Merry Christmas

THE LABORASTORY 7PM, WEDNESDAY 7 DECEMBER St Michael’s on Collins Uniting Church, 120 Collins St, Melbourne.

An evening dedicated to the stories of science: the heroes, the egos, the breakthroughs and the mistakes. From forgotten history and lonely laboratories, science and scientists quite literally take centre stage.

For bookings: www.thelaborastory.com.

CHRISTMAS MORNING TEA at THE HUB. 10AM – 12 NOON, THURSDAY 8 DECEMBER Glen Waverley Uniting Church, corner Bogong Avenue and Kingsway.

Bring your family and friends. All ages welcome. All donations to help families in need in our community. This will be the last day of The Hub for 2016, finishing at 12 noon. For information and group bookings P: (03) 9560 3580.

COMMUNITY CAROLS IN THE VILLAGE - MT WAVERLEY CHADSTONE CHURCHES 6.30PM – 8PM, FRIDAY, 9 DECEMBER Carpark, Hamilton Place, Mt Waverley.

The fifth Community Carols in the Village will be held on Friday, 9 December from 6.30pm to 8 pm. Everyone is welcome, admission is free and seating is provided.

Join in the community singing led by various community choirs and musical groups. Children’s activities including dressing up to join in a nativity scene with ‘Mary and Joseph’. For more information contact Margery at E: mbkennett@bigpond.com or P: 03 9870 4084 or Ros on E: rosf44@gmail.com or P: 03 9807 0236.

THE PROMISED MESSIAH, A FESTIVAL OF NINE LESSONS AND CAROLS, BY PHILIP LEDGER 6PM, SUNDAY 18 DECEMBER Auburn Uniting Church, 81 Oxley Road, Hawthorn. Sung by the Ad Hoc Singers and the Choir of Auburn Uniting Church directed by Bruce Macrae, with organist Margaret Pettitt. Philip Ledger was the Director of Music at Kings College, Cambridge from 1974 to 1980 and based his Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols on the traditional Service held each Christmas Eve in the College Chapel.

The Promised Messiah includes new carols by John Sanders, Ian Hare, Francis Jackson and Philip Moore, with additional arrangements by Philip Ledger himself. All welcome to this inspiring Festival service.

Enquiries to Bruce Macrae E: brucemacrae44@gmail.com or see www.auburnuc.org.au.

Q4CONNECTION CONVENTION 9AM - 5PM, MONDAY 27 FEBRUARY 2017 Grand Ballroom, Manningham Club, 1 Thompsons Rd, Bulleen.

Q4CONNECTION LUNCHEON 12.30PM - 2PM, WEDNESDAY 1 MARCH 2017 The TailRace Centre, 1 Waterfront Drive, Riverside, Launceston, Tasmania.

Q4Connection is an initiative of CMA (Christian Ministry Advancement) to equip Australian Christians to impact their world in their fourth quarter of life. Q4 is designed for those in or approaching retirement. The convention and dinner will feature input from international speakers and electives for those seeking to discern the shape of the next phase of their lives.

Bookings: www.cma.net.au/q4/events.php Contact: Paul Arnott on E: paul@cma.net.au or M: 0468 605 617.

OPERA SU PRESTO SHOW TO RAISE FUNDS FOR DEMENTIA 3.30PM, SUNDAY, 18 DECEMBER Toorak Uniting Church, 603 Toorak Road, Toorak (Tram Stop 39).

Opera Su Presto, a group of talented singers, actors and dancers, will perform this entertaining show devised and directed

by James Wright. A fun-filled political farce, Les Liaisons Misérables, featuring baroque and classical music mixed with songs from music theatre, the concert is a key fundraiser for Uniting Agewell’s music therapy program, Music for David.

Admission: $40 or $35 concession.

Refreshments provided following the concert. Bookings and enquiries: David Ross-Smith on M: 0429 907 908 or www.trybooking.com/NVMT

CONTEMPLATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY NETWORK 2PM – 4PM, 1st Saturday of the month Centre of Theology and Ministry, 29 College Cres, Parkville.

Are you interested in photography/ videography as a spiritual practice? The network gatherings will offer a time of reflection, a place to enhance technical skills (whether newly acquired or wellseasoned) and a forum for discussion, support and encouragement.

RSVP essential at E: peter@chalice.org.au or call Rev Deacon Peter Batten on M: 0419 255 585.

LAUNCH OF SPINIFEX BLESSING – A Collection of Stories

Julie Perrin’s collection of stories Spinifex Blessing is being launched at several UC locations in November and December. The three small volumes contain 24 of Perrin’s stories, previously published in the Sunday Age faith column. Spinifex Blessing can be purchased by emailing E: spinifex@tellingwords.com.au and including your postal address.

The three booklets are sold as a set for $20 plus postage.

THE JEAN SUTHERLAND MEMORIAL FUND

The Jean Sutherland Memorial Fund was established in 1971 by the Presbyterian Kindergarten Council, now known as UnitingCare Victoria and Tasmania’s Early Childhood Services.

The award is applicable within Australia and overseas to promote opportunities for studying to gain an early childhood degree.

DANCE CLASSES FOR MATURE WOMEN 1PM – 2PM, THURSDAYS Habitat Canterbury, cnr Mont Albert Rd & Burke Rd, Canterbury.

Join this gentle, joyful space for movement and self-expression.

For more information contact Susan on M: 0433 259 135.

COME AND VISIT THE HUB The Hub at the Glen Waverley Uniting Church, corner Bogong Avenue and Kingsway, is a welcoming and friendly meeting place for people to enjoy some company, a cuppa and a biscuit, to relax in a busy day or to practise speaking English in an informal setting.

The Hub is open Tuesday and Thursday 10am - 2pm, and Wednesday 10am - 12 noon. People of all ages are welcome.

The last day of The Hub for 2016 will be Thursday 8th December, finishing at 12 noon.

For information P: 03 9560 3580.

DEATH NOTICE

Eligibility

Demonstrated skills in a varied administration role Good skills in MS Word, Outlook, Excel and PowerPoint Experience in Outlook and assisting a team in diary management Reception/switchboard experience Note taking and report writing skills

Give seeds of hope this Christmas

ADVENT RETREAT 10AM – 3PM, TUESDAY 6 DECEMBER Habitat Hawthorn, 2 Minona Street, Hawthorn.

We all seem to be waiting for something.

All sorts of things present themselves as worthy of our attention. What are you really waiting for, what is your deepest longing? Advent is a time of preparation and anticipation. We ready ourselves for the birth of hope, peace, joy and love.

For more information, visit the Habitat website www.habitatforspirituality.org.au.

CROSSLIGHT - DECEMBER 16

The applicant must hold an early childhood diploma and qualify in one of the following: • be a member of the Uniting Church; • be currently employed on a Uniting Church Early Childhood Program.

Present Award Up to $10,000.

Application Details For further information contact: Vaso Howard (03) 9251 5262; Marie Howardonon (03) 9251 5267 marie.howard@victas.unitingcare.org.au email: vaso.howard@victas.unitingcare.org.au

EULOGY for JUDITH WISBEY, PLENTY VALLEY UNITING CHURCH It is with deep sadness that the congregation of Plenty Valley Uniting Church acknowledge the passing of Judith Wisbey on 2 November 2016. Judith has been an integral part and valued member of both this Church and the Thomastown/ Lalor/Epping Church in earlier years. Rest in God’s loving care Judy.

CLASSIFIEDS CALOUNDRA, Sunshine Coast, Queensland: Beachside units, from $400/ wk. For details contact Ray P: 0427 990 161 E: rayandjean@hotmail.com.

CAPE WOOLAMAI, Summerhays Cottage. Sleeps three. Tranquil garden.

Stroll to beach. Discount for UCA members. www.summerhayscottage.com.au.

Ring Doug or Ina P: 0403 133 710.

GRAMPIANS WORSHIP, When visiting The Grampians, join the Pomonal Community Uniting Church congregation for worship each Sunday at 10am.

KALGOORLIE-BOULDER UNITING CHURCH, WA is without settlement.

The manse has been transformed into motel style, fully equipped three bedroom accommodation, available free of charge to ministers (retired or current), and lay preachers, in return for them taking Sunday worship whilst staying.

Enquiries to Dora Rogers at E: dordor.rogers@gmail.com or P: (08) 9021 2360.

LORNE: Spacious apartment, breathtaking ocean view, open fire, peaceful, secluded, affordable.

P: (03) 5289 2698.

PSYCHOLOGIST: Sue Tansey, BA (Hons), MPsych (Counselling) MAPS. Individual and relationship counselling. Bulk billing for clients who have a referral from their GP and have a low income. St Kilda.

P: 0418 537 342 or E: suetansey@yahoo.com.

QUALIFIED CHRISTIAN PAINTER: handy-man, interior/exterior work, available outer eastern suburbs.

P: (03) 9725 6417.

SENIORS’ SPECIAL: Enjoy a break in luxury surroundings. Three days and three nights, dinner, bed and breakfast for $450 per couple (including GST). Jindivick Gardens. P: (03) 5628 5319.

TWO BEDROOM INDEPENDENT LIVING UNITS (OVER 55s): St Andrew’s Close, Stratford. www.ucgipps.org.au. Phone: 03 5144 7777.

WANTED TO BUY: Antiques, second hand/retro furniture, bric-a-brac and collectables. Single items or whole house lots. Genuine buyer. Contact Kevin P: 0408 969 920.

SHARE ACCOMMODATION: In a three bedroom house in Heidelberg Heights. $150.00 per week + bills. Contact Bob on M: 0406 314 373.

ANTHEMS: Free to a good home.

Anthems no longer required at Bamawm Uniting Church. The list of anthems can be emailed to anyone interested.

Contact Beryl Marshall E: lbmarshall@bigpond.com or P: 03 5486 2353, M: 0428 862 353.

Closing date Closing date:for 31Applications March 2016 29 January 2016.

DECEMBER 16 - CROSSLIGHT

Merry Christmas

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Moderator’s column

Opinion The US election from an expat’s perspective

God’s sense of Christmas time

REV LAUREN MOSSO I WAS invited to write this piece on the morning of 9 November, when the election result was still unknown.

I had visions – no, fantasies! – of writing about what it felt like to have the first female President.

The result feels like a ‘sucker punch’ that has knocked the wind out of me. And the taste of humble pie is not sweet.

As someone who spent the Reagan years becoming apoplectic every time I opened my New York Times, this result is truly disheartening. And I’m speechless.

I asked one of my Canadian colleagues about where to even begin. She said “well, you could start with ‘Sorry!’”

I have had the privilege of living in Australia since 1988, and as a dual citizen since 1992. I love it here mainly because of the people.

Life here is different – to begin with, those who are fortunate to be in permanent employment are entitled to four weeks annual leave. In the US employees are generally expected to work for an entire year before taking the one week of annual leave they will receive. Generally you have to work for five years before you reach four weeks’ annual leave. No wonder people are so stressed!

Health insurance is tied to your job (if you have one) and, until the recent ObamaCare initiative, those who lost their jobs, even through no fault of their own, also lost their insurance. This is a serious problem in a country where the cost of health care is very high.

Some of the most disgruntled Donald Trump supporters are manufacturing workers from the automotive industry who enjoyed great benefits thanks to a strong union, until the jobs dried up.

The reach of the United Auto Workers union extended to my administrative role at Columbia University, where we were all members of their District 65, so I have enjoyed some of those benefits myself.

When jobs with such benefits disappear, anger is understandable.

Many ‘white collar’ professionals also lost their jobs during the GFC. Some spent years out of work, only to find a way back in at a position of lower pay and status.

They are angry too.

And now the other half of the country is angry and many are protesting the election result. Yet so many did not ‘get out and vote.’ That’s the scary part.

Voting is compulsory in Australia. We still get our ‘clunkers’ but most people make

an effort to keep up with what is going on.

The system is far from perfect but at least it’s sane.

Ironically, my fellow Americans would rail at the thought of compulsory voting because it would impinge on their freedom.

Personally I have tried (very hard) to refrain from engaging in personal attacks about the appearance of a candidate, or their family, or issues that are not relevant to governing the country.

But I have been shocked and, as my sister says, ‘shaken to the core’ by the behaviour of Americans toward one another during this long and sorry tale.

Why did it come down to a choice between two candidates who both have the unfortunate effect of polarising public opinion and distracting the electorate from the main issues?

And how did the one with no experience in holding public office manage to defeat the one with extensive experience?

Commentators have had much to say about this, but at the end of the day it just goes to show ‘anyone can be President!’

My father has been writing poetry on Facebook throughout the campaign.

Each poem ends with “God bless America – please!”

The country is hurting, and people don’t know what to believe anymore.

There was a spiritual issue at the heart of the election campaign, and neither candidate was going to be the Messiah.

The passions that underlie the angry behaviour need to be redirected into some form of constructive engagement that will allow the country to flourish and wounds to heal.

I hope this election result will galvanise people into taking a more active part in resistance: writing letters to their local representative, standing with the vulnerable, participating in demonstrations, actively seeking peace in their own relationships, holding fast to that which is good, and turning the tide at the grassroots level.

It’s only politics. It will last for a season and the pendulum will swing back. It has happened before and it will happen again.

I take heart that the younger generation – my children and their friends – are much more accepting of difference as they grow up in one of the most successfully multicultural places in the world.

Rev Lauren Mosso is the chaplain at Epworth hospital

CHRISTMAS is fast approaching.

Every Christmas-countdown calendar, every new Christmas product on the shelf, every Christmas catalogue mocks my lack of preparation and fills me with an evergrowing sense dread about what I still need to do before Christmas.

In the popular imagination and the life of the church, Christmas is the pinnacle as the year comes to an end. It increasingly dominates our thoughts and conversation as December goes along.

Into this lobs the season of Advent, the New Year of the church.

One of the functions of the liturgical calendar is to shift our perspective of time.

The liturgical calendar helps us to focus our sense of time around the life of Jesus Christ so that we might shape our life to reflect God’s way and God’s priorities.

Advent invites us to a season of waiting, slowing down, and keeping our eyes open.

We slow down in order to see the many places God’s life is being born in us, in our world, and in the church. The stories of Advent show us the ways this happen and invite us to become participants in these stories.

The stories of Advent point us to God coming among us in the words and actions of the prophets who call us to love

Pic credit: elPadawan via flickr

God by doing justice, seeking mercy and valuing kindness. The prophets remind us that if we want to keep our eyes open to God’s coming we should seek it in the places neglected by the world. God called a forgotten people to be his own and be a light bearing witness to God and God’s way. God continued to call his people to his way of justice through the prophets.

The prophets invite us to justice that slows us down enough to care for the vulnerable, the outcast and the outsider.

God still comes to places and people that are broken, poor, and suffering. God’s reign is with us and still coming. Advent calls us to slow down enough to notice and to commit to joining with what he is

already doing in the world.

John the Baptist goes out into the desert to seek God’s reign and invite others to join in. It is no accident that John goes to the desert. It is a place both empty but full of life. It exposes us, our frailties and hubris so that we can see more clearly God’s ways.

There John calls for repentance, the radical reorienting of our lives to God’s vision of wholeness of life.

Advent invites us to slow down enough to pay attention to where God is calling us to turn from that which is bad and turn to towards goodness. We do this in the company of other Christians, searching Scripture and reading the world around us, eyes open to the ways of God. Together we

discern what in our own life, the life of our church and the life of our nation needs to be scraped away and turned from, so that life can flourish and God is alive in our hearts.

Mary’s wholehearted ‘yes’ to bearing God in her body reminds us that birthing the life of God in us requires patient gestation.

Advent invites us to open our lives up to God’s presence, to slow our lives down through prayer, worship and reflection so that we might pause long enough to test what is of God in our lives and what is not.

Slowing down in a thoughtful way helps us turn our hearts and our lives towards the things of God. Then we, like Mary, can say ‘Yes’ to God, to God’s presence with us and in us and ‘Yes’ to giving our lives to God’s way and God’s reign.

We do not know what tomorrow will bring, but the waiting of Advent trains us to trust that the reign of God is always unfolding, always with us, always inviting us to slow down enough to see what God is doing and where God is working. And then, with Holy impatience, we join with God to usher in the Advent of God’s reign.

Sharon Hollis Moderator

Giving is living Donkey tales TIM LAM

Does power trump real Christianity?

DEB BENNETT

“TRUMP preached xenophobia, racism, sexism, Islamophobia, homophobia, and more, and the white evangelical base said ‘Amen.’.” - Deborah Jian Lee, author of Rescuing Jesus.

The decline of Christianity has been the topic of much conversation and concern for mainstream churches throughout the Western world.

Nearly 20 years ago, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, told the BBC that Christianity had been “all but eliminated” as a source of moral

22

guidance in people’s lives.

In Australia, church leaders have watched with dismay as once thriving congregations dwindle to a few elderly stalwarts on a Sunday morning.

However, last month in America, Christians reclaimed some political relevance when more than 80 per cent of white evangelicals voted for Donald J Trump to be the next president of the United States of America and leader of the free world.

White Christian voters chose a racist, xenophobic, misogynist reality TV host who has never claimed any active religious affiliation over a politically experienced former Sunday school teacher who is a member of the United Methodist Church.

Just how this happened has been the topic of much discussion as people throughout the world try to come to terms with the reality of a Trump presidency.

In February, when the prospect of Trump in the Oval Office was still the punchline of a joke, religious sociologists Christopher Pieper and Matt Henderson wrote an article titled ‘10 Reasons you can’t be a Christian and vote for Donald Trump’.

Alarmed at Trump’s increasing popularity among evangelicals, they stated “one

cannot really love Jesus and wish to follow him and also vote for a person who so clearly embodies the opposite of everything Christ taught, died for and demands of us”.

Pieper and Henderson go on to list 10 reasons, complete with biblical references, why Trump should not be president.

In March this year, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat suggested that part of the appeal of Trump for Christians lay in their increasing sense of marginalisation from mainstream politics.

Describing Trump as a “boastful adulterer and a habitual liar, a materialist and a sensualist, a greedy camel without even the slightest interest in squeezing through the needle’s eye”, Douthat felt Trump’s leadership style appealed to American Christians who felt let down by their own religious leaders.

Throughout the presidential campaign, Trump exploited the fear and anger of groups who feel disenfranchised from the political process. Middle-aged, white, blue-collar workers in particular have felt let down by their leaders. Just as Trump has exploited this sense of disillusionment in the general population, he has effectively manipulated similar sentiments

Merry Christmas

among white Christians.

“The lure of the strongman is particularly powerful for those believers whose theology was somewhat Trumpian already — nationalistic, prosperity-worshiping, by turns apocalyptic and success-obsessed,” Douthat wrote.

The view that Christians have used Trump to reassert their relevance is backed up by the comments of the president of the Southern Evangelical Seminary, Dr Richard Land.

Land was part of Trump’s evangelical advisory committee and told The Huffington Post that Trump’s election is “a divine intervention” and proves that “accounts of the death of the Christian evangelical right are premature.”

Land’s Faustian statement suggests that just as Trump has used evangelicals, evangelicals have used Trump in their quest for power.

As the world looks on with horror some people are asking – has Christianity quite literally ‘sold its soul’?

This article was published on Crosslight online on 11 November: crosslight.org.au CROSSLIGHT - DECEMBER 16

THE humble donkey is an iconic animal in many religious traditions. Jesus entered into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, a symbol of peace. In Muslim tradition, donkeys were among the preferred mounts for people of significance, with the prophet Muhammad often riding his trusty steed Ya`fūr.

During October, Uniting Journeys led a tour to Mannar in north-west Sri Lanka.

Mannar was once known as Donkeytown because of the large donkey population that roamed the area. Many households had a pet donkey and a close-knit relationship existed between humans and the animals.

But the civil war (1983-2009) turned many of these animals feral and stray donkeys are now a common sight on the streets of Mannar. Many hobble along on broken legs and graze on street refuse. What was once a proud mascot of the district is now perceived by many as a public nuisance.

Mannar is a Tamil-speaking area in Sri Lanka and was particularly hard hit during the civil war. The Uniting Church has been working with the Mannar community for the past few years through Bridging Lanka, an organisation that supports war-affected people on Sri Lanka’s west coast.

The organisation helps unite Muslims, Christians and Hindus behind a common goal – nursing donkeys on the island DECEMBER 16 - CROSSLIGHT

is

GIVING

LIVING and restoring them to prominence. This interfaith collaboration helps overcome some of the lingering tension from the war.

During the UnitingJourneys tour, articipants met leaders from Bridging Lanka and assisted various community projects.

One of their programs is Donkey Assisted Therapy (DAT), which involves donkey training as a way to improve the physical and mental health of children, the elderly and people living with a disability.

Uniting through Faiths project manager Larry Marshall was one of the conversation partners who led the tour to Mannar.

Mr Marshall is a Sri Lankan Burgher who migrated to Australia as a teenager.

“We met children from MARDAP (Mannar Association for Rehabilitation of Differently Able People),” Mr Marshall said.

“There is real therapeutic value in these young people grooming, feeding and be80% friending these gentle animals.”

Bridging Lanka also aims to rebuild Mannar’s economy through eco-tourism, education and community development.

“Sri Lanka is both comfortable and quite modern, especially in the capital Colombo, but still war-damaged and struggling in the very hot arid north where Mannar Island

Merry Christmas

sits on the western coast, at the closest point to India,” Mr Marshall said.

“Another highlight was our visit to a new rice mill which a small farming community had planned and built together with support from Bridging Lanka.

“This mill now saves the people money and hours of walking. Now they can husk and polish their rice for sale as well as grinding and selling rice flour and spices like chilli and turmeric as well.”

Visit the Uniting Journeys website at: responsibletravel.org.au/ for more information on upcoming tours.

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Synod Snaps

“For me, the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity.”

- Henri Cartier-Bresson

Merry Christmas

The Uniting Church Adult Fellowship visited the Melton Uniting Church Op Shop as the final stop of their annual tour.

Artwork by TicTac (Totally Inclusive Children Talking About Church), the kids group at Weeroona Uniting Church.

NaranaFest returned to Geelong in November for a day of Indigenous culture, music and dance. This year’s headline act was hip-hop duo A.B. Original.

Assembly Standing Committee and Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress (UAICC) National Committee gathered to discuss what sovereignty and treaty means for the church.

Lara Uniting Church hosted an All Saints service in November.

The Synod’s Victorian Archives in Malvern East held a reunion morning tea to enable its past and present volunteers to meet up again. It’s hoped this may become an annual occasion to recognise the contributions of all those involved in supporting the work of the Archives. If you are interested in volunteering please contact the Archives on (03) 9571 5476. (Photo by Graham Hawtin).