Over the Christmas and New Year period, five members of Toowong Uniting Church embarked on a short term mission trip to Thailand. Grace Branjerdporn reflects. The mission trip was called Thai’d Together to represent the sense of collaboration and cooperation that the team wanted to have with the local churches in Thailand. With only 1.2 per cent of the population identifying ...

Former South Sudanese refugee Maria (Nyaluit) Phalpang belongs to the Uniting Church Nuer faith community in Brisbane. She tells her story to Dianne Jensen. Maria (Nyaluit) Phalpang has travelled a long way from her childhood home of Bentiu in Unity, a predominantly Christian state in war-torn South Sudan. Faith, family and a passion for education have sustained her on the ...

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 ...

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 ...

Every young person reaches the point where they decide to sign up to their faith community or to drift away. Dianne Jensen talks to Heather Watson, former chair of UnitingCare Queensland, whose service to the church was shaped by the opportunities she received as a young Christian. Heather Watson has a clear recollection of when she made a personal faith ...

Churches must tackle their own demons if the scourge of domestic violence is to be overcome, writes Dianne Jensen. The chilling stories take time to trickle down through the years, but the tragedy of abuse at the hands of family lingers across the generations. We all know this to be true. Domestic violence is not a fancy term for marital ...

What is postmodernism and what does it mean for the life and witness of the church? Rohan Salmond explores how to live and share the gospel in a rapidly changing cultural landscape. Forget everything you think you know; we no longer live in the modern world. We’re over it, or beyond it or whatever. Anyway, the Age of Reason is so ...

On the centenary of the Gallipoli landing, take time to honour the Christian witness of those who took a stand against war. Dianne Jensen reports. Thomas Roberts was only 16 years old when he was sentenced in 1914 to solitary confinement on half rations in the Queenscliff Fort for refusing to attend military drill. The Quaker was among thousands of ...

If there’s one principle that religion and quantum physics agree on, it’s that the search for truth requires an open mind. Physicist Dr Joel Corney talks to Dianne Jensen. Consider this: The only thing we can be sure about is that uncertainty is fundamental to the universe. University of Queensland (UQ) Senior Lecturer in Physics Dr Joel Corney is a ...

The problems facing the Uniting Church are common to many denominations around the world, and there is much we can learn from how they are responding, writes Rev Orrell Battersby. At the 31st Synod we received some sobering statistics—attendance in the Uniting Church across Australia is in sharp decline. The prediction: continued decline. The problem: failure to attract young families. ...