ERIC IS a tradie. He’s an intelligent 35-year-old bloke with a successful business in a complex and dynamic industry. In the fourth pew from the back, Eric is reminded of the apprenticeship lectures at TAFE college and he’s falling asleep twenty minutes into the Sunday sermon at River Gum Ridge View Estate Uniting Church. According to Redcliffe Uniting Church’s Rev ...

FROM TIME to time, I find myself troubled by various throw-away comments certain people make about the church. The common element in all these one-liners is cynicism and negativity. They all express a particular criticism or infer an element of blame for some situation or other in the life of the church. The statement I hear most frequently is that ...

It’s Sunday afternoon, you’ve had lunch and settled on the couch, feet up with Journey. We’ll be spending the next three editions together, so allow me to introduce myself. I’m helping hold the fort while Bruce Mullan takes a break and Mardi Lumsden takes the wheel. My CV: husband and father, UCA member, journalist and broadcaster, occasional elephant hunter. Rather ...

A WOMAN once confided that she wished her husband would come to church with her. He was a farmer and there was always something to do when you are on the land. She died unexpectedly. After that her husband attended worship every Sunday. The style of worship hadn’t changed. The farm still needed attention. Central Queensland Presbytery Minister Rev Kaye ...

The answer is energy, enthusiasm, excitement, expressions of joy, ecumenism. The electric atmosphere was contagious as approximately one thousand mostly Catholic young adults crammed into the Albert Street Uniting Church on Saturday morning, 12th July for the Brisbane Days in the Diocese Prayer Time.  It was one of five ecumenical church venues in the World Youth Day Heart of the ...

Elsie Gillbard (nee Dennis) was born in 1904 and lived in the Loganlea/Beenleigh area.  With her parents and younger sister, she attended the Loganlea Methodist Church as a young girl, and began playing the organ for services in her mid teens.  With very little tuition on the organ, she began by selecting hymns she could play.  After more experience she ...

The Free Wesleyan Church of Tonga, a partner church since the first Australian missionaries went there in the 1820s, is the largest church in Tonga. Uniting Church President, Rev Gregor Henderson, attended their annual conference in June. Mr Henderson described the opening days of the conference as celebratory with a focus on feasting and long worship services including 14 choirs ...

IN JANUARY 1970 I arrived in Renmark, a vibrant community in the Riverland of SA, to commence my first ministry placement. At that time the town congregation met for worship both Sunday morning and evening and the church was full on both occasions. TV arrived in the Riverland some time in 1971. Within six months, while attendances at morning worship ...

When I was a very small child growing up in a very Presbyterian home, once each year the Moderator would come to visit to congregation. I remember it being something akin to a visit from Santa Claus. He (and it was always a “he”) didn’t bring presents, but he wore a particularly distinctive outfit that made a huge impact on ...

Leading academic Peter Horsfield says Christianity doesn’t just use communication. Everything that Christianity is and does is an act of communication in a form available in the wider culture. When that wider culture of communication changes, Christianity itself is changed. THE QUESTION we ask about the effects television has had on Christianity are no different from questions that can be ...