JourneyOnline
Uniting Church President, Rev Gregor Henderson, visited South India in January, together with Rev John Barr, Asia Executive Secretary, Uniting International Mission (UIM).
The two met with new leadership in the Church of South India and attended the biennial CSI national synod meeting, held in the city of Vishnakapatnam, a large coastal port city.
Mr Henderson and Mr Barr visited dioceses in which the Uniting Church continues to have a presence through program and projects funding.
Uniting Church Overseas Aid supports tsunami relief in the South India area, as well as a vocational training project and an integrated tribal development project. UIM supports children’s ministry by training Sunday school teachers.
The Uniting Church also supports lay training in the Madras diocese and has volunteers working in a theological seminary and on an agricultural project.
During their visit, Mr Henderson and Mr Barr came across members of a Ringwood congregation in Melbourne who were working with local people in Sholinghur to renovate a children’s hostel, of particular significance because Sholinghur was the site where Australian Presbyterian Missionaries once worked.
The partnership between the Church of South India and UCA focuses evangelically on the Dalit population of South India, which makes up the majority of the membership of the CSI.
Otherwise known as “untouchables”, Dalits are outcasts — people who fall outside the traditional Hindu caste system. They are highly marginalised throughout South India.
Mr Henderson was asked to preach at the opening service of the synod meeting and he also preached at St Johns Church in Vishnakapatnam, affirming the strong, historical and committed relationship between the Uniting Church in Australia and the Church of South India.
Photo : Uniting Church President Rev Gregor Henderson with a young man who lost all of his famiy in the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, Machilpatnam, in the Diocese of Krishna Godavari.
