Residents and visitors to Brisbane’s inner western suburbs looking for a friendly, accessible place to meet for breakfast on a Saturday morning now have a new option. The recently refurbished Jay’s Café, the food heart of Raymont Residential College and the Uniting Church Centre at 60 Bayliss Street, Auchenflower, has opened its doors to the public and will extend its ...

Whenever two or three people gather to eat and drink together as part of worship, café church is happening. Dianne Jensen talks to three Queensland congregations exploring fresh forms of this ancient model of being church. It’s family friendly, low key, and a lot harder to slip into the back row unnoticed. Café church is a contemporary reimagining of a ...

Australians were glued to their screens last December during the Lindt café hostage drama. What can we learn from the way the tragedy unfolded? Dianne Jensen reports. We all remember those first images of hostages holding up a black flag with white Arabic writing in the window of the Lindt café. The crisis in Sydney’s central business district absorbed our ...

Elanora Uniting Church secured a Disaster Recovery Grant from the Synod to aid their food pantry initiative, ensuring access to food for those in need. Over a year ago, the congregation observed the struggle of many individuals in the area to meet their financial needs, prompting them to establish an outlet providing groceries at significantly reduced prices. Andrew Koczanowski, a ...

By Andrew McKaysmith, Synod writer and content creator.  Jays Café stalwart Jason Salway is a committed philanthropist, amassing a noteworthy contribution exceeding $27,000 since 2010. Jason’s father fought against prostate cancer and ultimately lost his battle to melanoma. In tribute to his father’s memory, Jason created a fundraising page through the Melanoma Institute Australia and actively participates in the Melanoma ...

By Andrew McKaysmith, Synod Writer and Content Creator Australia is home to a wonderfully diverse society, and finding a community that embraces this diversity is always refreshing. That’s what you’ll discover at the Logan Central Multicultural Uniting Church. Church elder and worship leader Judy Hunter offered insights into what makes this church unique and why they are committed to serving ...

Below is a summary of the Synod Standing Committee (SSC) meeting—held on Thursday, 2 December 2021—to inform the wider Queensland Synod community of the discussions, deliberations and decisions arising from that meeting. This meeting was held at Wesley House. COVID-19 Vaccination Policy A draft policy was presented to the meeting for approval and the SSC resolved by consensus to approve COVID-19 ...

This report is adapted from Uniting Church in Australia Assembly media sources with additional information by Journey writers in the Queensland Synod. Heartbreaking images and stories of the unfolding bushfire crisis were the backdrop to late spring and summer across Australia. Many of the affected communities and properties in Western Australia, the southern states and Tasmania, and up to New ...

Ahead of the day of prayer for the bushfires on 1 December, Rev Kaye Ronalds reflects on the impact of the recent events in Stanthorpe. I was away on one month long service leave when the fires arrived in Stanthorpe but the Supply Minister was a great help in the immediate aftermath, visiting families and dealing with the offers of help ...

Felipe Beltran reflects on our wonderful Uniting Church bush chaplains who minister to those living in remote Australia. I caught up with Frontier Services bush chaplain Pastor Cain Hartigan and his wife Jacki at the Birdsville Races earlier this year. We talked about the needs of people in the Cunnamulla-Burke and Wills Remote Area, where rural communities are losing key ...