Tag Archives: fiji

The Journey team selects stories that got us talking this week.   Nice cold brew to go with the pew The Christian Post reports on a California church who has added beer to the menu for congregants who aren’t too interested in temperance while they get their weekly dose of the Bible. Chris VanHall, leader of the Greater Purpose Community Church in Santa ...

As the Uniting Church celebrates 40 years, we recall the legacy of love and respect between the Fijian church and the Australian missionaries who served there. Dianne Jensen reports. Viti Packer’s room at Parkview—Wesley Mission Queensland’s Wheller Gardens aged-care community in Brisbane—is a cheerful space full of family photos from across the generations. For 93-year-old Viti and her sisters (Bethe) ...

Gratitude has poured in from Rakiraki, Fiji as communities rebuild their lives after Cyclone Winston—thanks to goods donated by various groups within the Queensland Uniting Church. Journey reports. It claimed the lives of 44 people and destroyed the family home of Fijian native and Brisbane Congress Congregation minister Rev Saimoni Davui, but those affected by Fiji’s strongest tropical storm on ...

Fijian-Australians and Uniting Church congregations across Queensland have opened their hearts to communities in cyclone-devastated Fiji. Journey reports. Fijian-Australians could only watch and wait over the weekend of 20 February as news filtered through about the impact of Fiji’s worst cyclone. Particularly hard-hit by Cyclone Winston were the north and north western coast of Viti Levu, the south coast of ...

The award-winning film Spotlight left viewers wondering why the voices of those who were systematically abused by priests in the Boston archdiocese were not heard for so long. This is a reminder that mainstream voices can easily shout down those who do not fit our preconceptions of what is normal and desirable. This edition has a lingering theme of acknowledging ...

Pacific Island women are challenging a culture which excludes them from leadership in church and society. Dianne Jensen talks to education advocate Lisa Meo. Fijian-Australian Lisa Meo has been knocking on the doors of the male-dominated Pacific Island churches for a long time. The retired educator and academic has been a leading voice in challenging the theological and cultural institutions ...

This is the story of young missionaries Don and Olive Boorman, who left Brisbane in the 1930s to serve in Fiji with the Methodist Missions and their momentous decision to leave in 1940, as researched by their daughter Noela Boorman. In times past, in missionary biographies, faith conquered all, and missionaries were venerated as superhuman. In Tala Tala (Fijian for ...