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Tag Archives: young adults

True faith on display at Easter Madness

This year’s sponsored candidates from outside the south east corner. Photo: Steve Molkentin

What do you get when you add over 170 energy-filled young people with games, worship and minimal sleep? The answer is Easter Madness 2017. Ben Tupou reports. A week before Easter, young people from across the state gathered at the Sunshine Coast Recreational Centre to worship, express their creativity, and learn more about God and faith in today’s society. An ...

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Diversity on show at NYALC

Members of the Uniting Aboriginaland Islander Christian Congress at NYALC 2016. Photo taken by the Uniting Church in Australia, National Assembly.

Over one hundred young adults from across Australia attended the 2016 National Young Adult  Leaders’ Conference (NYALC) where the church’s multicultural identity was on full display. Journey reports. While there’s often talk of ageing within the Uniting Church, NYALC demonstrated that a new generation of culturally-diverse young people is coming through to enrich the identity (and grow the congregations) of ...

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Christians awake

Stephen Longbottom, Kauvaka Tupou, Gamuchirai, Jemma Whittaker

Young leaders talk about faith Four emerging leaders in the Uniting Church talk to Journey about their passion for living out the gospel. Stephen Longbottom, 29, lives in Toowong, Brisbane and has a background in corporate accounting and finance. At Toowong Uniting Church I participate in a leadership residency program, coordinate our English as a Second Language program and help ...

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Melanie Minichiello: My grateful story

Build the Future managing director Melanie Minichiello in The Change Room community hub in Keperra. Photo by Holly Jewell.

Build the Future managing director Melanie Minichiello talks to Dianne Jensen about her passion for helping young people re-connect with society. Gratitude. It’s as old-fashioned as a hand-written thank-you note, but youth advocate Melanie Minichiello says being grateful is a key ingredient in happiness and wellbeing. “Gratitude allows us to look beyond ourselves and to gain perspective and balance,” says ...

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Gone camping: Time out for young Christians

Summer Madness brought camping to a new generation

Remember looking up at the stars at midnight, talking about God and faith and wishing that you could always hold worship in a bush chapel or on the beach at dawn? Dianne Jensen finds out why youth camps still play a pivotal role in faith development. Youth camps are a tradition in the Uniting Church, drawing on the legacy of ...

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Rachel Held Evans: Busting myths about millennials

Rachel Held Evans. Photo was supplied.

A millennial’s reasons for staying, leaving and returning to church are as rich and complex as the generation itself. Ashley Thompson speaks with New York Times best-selling author Rachel Held Evans about why Generation Y isn’t as shallow as you might think. A self-described introvert and “doubt-filled believer” from the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, Rachel Held Evans writes with ...

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Connecting congregation and community

Rev Peter Lockhart (M) with Kate Brazier (R) and Lwanda Kahongo (L) at St Lucia Uniting Church. Photo by Ashley Thompson.

St Lucia Uniting Church minster Rev Peter Lockhart speaks with Ashley Thompson about the Uniting Church’s place in the crowded ministry of university chaplaincy. A mere five minute drive from the University of Queensland’s main campus, St Lucia Uniting Church is perfectly situated to minister to nearly 1200 young adults residing in Uniting Church–affiliated colleges: Emmanuel, Grace, Kings, Cromwell and ...

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In search for a community of Christ

Searching for Sunday by Rachel Held Evans, Thomas Nelson Publishers (2015) $19.99.

Rachel Held Evans is a young, thoughtful, hyperconnected woman of faith—and she has a troubled relationship with church. Having grown up in, then left, an evangelical nondenominational church, she is broadly representative of a generation of millennials that have grown up in churches but now in adulthood struggle with the baggage heaped upon them by their received traditions. Research suggests ...

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Letters March 2015

Letters to the editor graphic by Uniting Communications.

Thanks for the hard truth I want to commend Journey and particularly Rohan for the article about young adults in the February edition of Journey. I thought it had some really good points and feeds into a critical conversation we have to have in the church around how to nurture young adults in their faith and how to build young ...

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Who are the 7%?

(L–R) Queensland young adults Alieta Molitika, Joyce Waia and Talahiva Taufa at the National Young Adult Leaders Conference in Sydney. Photo by Rohan Salmond.

It’s much easier to be a young person in a church full of other young people, and it’s no secret that some Uniting Church members are gravitating to younger, cooler denominations—or leaving church altogether. Rohan Salmond talks to some young people who have made the choice to stick around. It’s a statistical oddity that one of Australia’s youngest denominations—the Uniting ...

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