As the Uniting Church celebrates its 40th birthday the question of who will lead the church in the decades ahead has become increasingly urgent. Journey reports on the Next Gen Arise initiative, which may just hold the answer. It’s Saturday afternoon at Kangaroo Point Uniting Church, and inside the talk is of faith and leadership as Mike Hands from Newlife ...

Your church archives may be filled with priceless historical documents and photos but preserving them for future generations is a serious challenge. Journey offers seven tips for ensuring your memories don’t disappear. Seek out treasure Locate historical material onsite and ask members to search through their collections for photos, scrapbooks and so on. The Synod Congregation Document Preservation Policy spells ...

The youth will inherit the future but they are also a vital part of the present. Have our churches done enough to meaningfully transition leadership and responsibility from one generation to the next? Scott Guyatt writes. “Young people are the future of the church,” as the saying goes. Sometimes the implication is that we have to get the youth involved ...

As the Uniting Church celebrates the 40th anniversary of Australia’s first home-grown church, Journey explores three different examples of innovation and renewal in Queensland congregations. Dianne Jensen reports. Ripley Valley: a season to begin A new town is rising in south east Queensland. Ripley Valley will have a bigger downtown area than the nearby Ipswich central business district and house ...

Carolyn Kitto’s fourteen-month trek around Queensland to take the pulse of presbytery life has produced a wide-ranging report which doesn’t pull any punches about what lies ahead. Journey talks with Carolyn about what she discovered. Uniting Church member and mission consultant Carolyn Kitto doesn’t mind being on the road. Her three-decade career in youth work, Christian education and strategic planning ...

Mobile phones, the internet and video games may seem like an inseparable part of the lives of our youth but engaging them in the digital realm is critical if we want to emotionally and spiritually connect ourselves to the next generation. Steve Molkentin, the Queensland Synod’s new Digital Youth Discipleship project officer, writes. “I’ve come up with a set of ...

There’s more to creating a new congregation than adding a new time slot to the church sign and putting out the tea and biscuits. Dianne Jensen talks to Duncan Barlow, pastor at Toowong Uniting Church, Brisbane about what it takes to build a healthy Christian community. After seven years with the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in Indonesia, Duncan Barlow and ...

When we use the term “youth”, to whom are we really referring? I’ve had discussions with people in the church who would consider those under 40 as “youth”, others seem to think the under 20 brigade best fits the term. For what it’s worth the United Nations defines “youth” as those persons between the ages of 15 and 24. Whatever ...

An app challenging age discrimination and a series of video stories to celebrate the lives of Indigenous men have taken out the 2017 Wesley Mission Queensland Campaign for Change initiative. In a tightly contested field of five finalists, Kate Perry from Ipswich, and Dean Gibson from Brisbane’s north have each been awarded a $25 000 grant to kick-start their own ...

As the Uniting Church celebrates its fortieth anniversary Ben Rogers revisits the excitement, challenges and hope behind the historic union of Congregationalists, Methodists and Presbyterians in Australia in 1977. For younger members of the Uniting Church in Australia who have only ever known its current incarnation, the period surrounding church union in 1977 is past history. Visiting Wikipedia’s rundown of ...