The Pray for Our Pacific campaign from 3–11 September is encouraging Australian faith communities to host a special service or event to highlight the region’s ongoing challenges of climate change and environmental damage. Pacific Island nations, which are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, face a range of environmental threats such as cyclones, floods and droughts. Thousands have ...

When it comes to divisive Australian Christians, they don’t get much bigger than Ken Ham. Ben Rogers interviews the Queensland creationist who is grabbing news headlines for his $100 million Noah’s ark replica. The recent public unveiling of Ken’s Ark Encounter attraction in Kentucky, North America, brought the kind of media attention you’d expect from building a faith-themed mega-structure 155 ...

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 ...

I didn’t think I’d have to write this review because I was so sure everybody else would. But with an extremely generous Rotten Tomatoes score of 73 per cent and Mediacritic rating of 60 per cent, it is clear many Ghostbusters (2016) reviewers have assessed this film purely on its political merit and without regard for its forgettable narrative, tacky ...

When you construct a gargantuan $100 million Noah’s ark replica in the heart of America’s “Bible belt”, chances are you’ll gain attention. Lots of it. Ken Ham is the controversial driving force behind the Ark Encounter and sure enough, the media has flocked to Kentucky, North America to cover his impressive feat of taking the specifications in Genesis 6:15 and ...

Right before Australia hit the polls on 2 July, Ashley Thompson asked under 30s at Newlife Uniting Church’s Heartbeat Conference what policy decisions they would champion given the chance. Let them stay The plight of refugees and asylum seekers is a contentious issue in the Australian political arena but in the eyes of Grace (13) and Iram (12) it’s simple: ...

Singles make up more than half of the people in churches, yet they are often sidelined when it comes to ministry and outreach. Dianne Jensen asks singles how we can change things. Many people go to church alone. While some have a spouse tucked up in bed with the Sunday paper or doing the soccer run, others attend by themselves ...

White South Africans continue to leave their home country in droves, many unwilling to share their stories as the pain of leaving lingers on. Ashley Thompson talks with three South Africans about how they have been affected by escalating tensions in the post-apartheid nation. As first-hand observations of race-based university protests fill my Facebook newsfeed with statements like “cloudy with ...

As one of Australia’s largest providers of aged care services, the Uniting Church has a huge investment in ageing … and rightly so, given our demographic profile. John Harrison talks to an 84-year-old Uniting Church elder out to make a difference. His febrile Twitter handle says it all: @EVERALDATLARGE. At 84 years of age, Aspley Uniting Church elder Everald Compton ...

Ten years after the Close the Gap campaign began, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians still die younger and are less educated than non-Indigenous Australians. Mardi Lumsden reports. The eighth annual Close the Gap report (released 9 February) shows only two out of seven health, education and employment targets are on track. While halving child mortality by 2018 and better ...