Queensland Synod News

The Uniting Church, through our overseas development and emergency relief organisation, Uniting Church Overseas Aid, has received $A.2,413,000 in donations to assist tsunami affected areas. These funds are being distributed as follows: Sri Lanka: $A.115,000 was provided during the fi rst six months of 2006 to provide emergency relief through our partner, the Church of South India Diocese of Jaffna. ...

Uniting HealthCare’s St Andrew’s War Memorial Hospital received a national award in recognition of their excellence in cardiac outcomes. Benchmarked against the best in the world, St Andrew’s cardiac results earned them an Australian Private Hospital Association Award for excellence. An annual review of cardiac services has shown St Andrew’s to have a cardiac surgery mortality rate of 1.51%, indicating ...

The National Council of Churches in Australia (NCCA) Christian World Service (CWS) has launched an Emergency Appeal for Pakistan/Afghanistan Earthquake Victims.  NCCA CWS is coordinating the appeal with Action by Churches Together (ACT) International, its ecumenical partner for emergency responses. ACT member, Church World Service-Pakistan/Afghanistan, is monitoring the situation there through its offices in Kabul and Jalalabad. CWS-Pakistan/Aghanistan has already ...

O God, we pray for those in the Islamabad region who are still trapped beneath shattered buildings, those desperately searching for relatives or friends, those in grief for those they have lost, the hundreds of thousands suffering deprivation as they look on in shock at what the quaking earth has done to their homes and community. We pray for those ...

A Central Queensland group of about 15 "blokes" meet over an October weekend to drink coke, play cards and eat baked beans in good ol’ fashioned harmless christian fellowship.  Rev Andrew (Gunto) Gunton lead the group in discussions about the changing role of the christian Aussie bloke.  Meeting at a beach house in Zilzie (near Yeppoon) the blokes had a great ...

Moderator of the Uniting Church in Queensland Rev Dr David Pitman has responded to a new study which claims that more Australians trust the country’s defence force than its churches, agreeing that Christian Churches have, to a large degree, lost contact with the wider Australian public. He believes the Queensland University of Technology research, which reported that only 35 per ...

A Christian brochure called Faith Family, distributed quarterly to more than 20,000 families, is being positively received by church communities across Australia. Faith Family is a collaborative project involving the Queensland Youth and Children’s Ministry Unit and family workers in the South Australian Synod, as well as the Lutheran and Anglican churches. The colourful four-page brochure is designed especially for ...

Four Desert Spirituality trips took Uniting Church members deep into the red centre during July and August. Holland Park St David’s minister Rev Heather Griffin attended the “Feeling the desert” trip which travelled from Birdsville to Alice Springs. After spending time with the Frontier Services Padre from Charleville and organising their supplies, the group met local Birdsville families with large ...

Rev Mathius Sampe Ritti from the Tanah Toraja region of the Indonesian island of Sulawesi has won the Uniting Church Assembly multicultural song writing competition.  Mathius is staying in Adelaide while his wife Ibu Martina Bangalino completes post-graduate tertiary study in educational management at Flinders University. Mathius is a minister of the Torajan church and has served in churches in both ...

The Youth and Children’s Leaders Ministry Training Day held at Park Church Tongan Congregation in August proved to be an inspirational event for young leaders. Teams of leaders from eleven different churches attended, with people from The Granite Belt through to Redcliffe. Tom Kerr said YACMU sees training events such as this a “great way to resource congregations in their ...