Tag Archives: moderator

At Christmas, we celebrate an interruption to our ordinary existence and to what we had planned for life. The birth of Jesus was a disruption for Mary and Joseph: a challenging one that threatened their relationship and their standing in their community. Yet it was a disruption that gave them purpose, hope and fulfilment like they had not known, nor ...

October, the month the jacarandas come out, when students see the signs and start studying for exams, when storms roll across the land. It’s the month when we start planning for the end of the year and look forward to what we will focus on in the new year. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse will ...

Generally, in Australia anyhow, Father’s Day seems more important to automotive goods stores and Harvey Norman than anyone else. And fathers don’t seem too upset about that. A pat on the back, and a “Thanks, Dad” is enough for most; we’re mainly low-key about fathers. In a lot of television sit-coms since the 1960s they’ve pretty much played the standard ...

In the July 2016 edition of Journey, we explored the issue of religious instruction (RI) taught in Queensland state primary schools. It was a hot-topic following various media reports on RI and a school principal suspending the program at a Brisbane state school. A state government review into the management of RI in state schools and the Connect RI curriculum ...

For anyone interested in the wider world, the windows we have to it each has its own perspectives. In terms of the mass media, the press and TV and radio channels all bring their own proclivities to their choices not only of what we see and hear, but their interpretations of what it means. The narrower, pervasive views that are ...

Journey’s recent focus on smashing the glass ceiling in the church has forced many to confront how issues of gender, equality and theology coexist in the church. Rev Dr Geraldine Wheeler reflects on her past brushes with prejudice before Queensland inducted its first female moderator in 2011. In the Journey article “Seven ways to smash the glass ceiling” (July 2016 ...

Each week hundreds of Christian, Baha’i, Buddhist, Jewish and Muslim volunteers provide religious instruction to students in Queensland state primary schools. Should objections to one particular program lead to unprecedented intervention from Education Queensland? Mardi Lumsden explores. In early June, religious instruction (RI) at Windsor State School in Brisbane’s north was suspended for the third time since 2014. Principal Matthew ...

A big thank you to all those who participated in the 32nd Synod. One of the things you learn when being a follower of Jesus is the capacity to be surprised. So when about 120 people gathered during Synod to talk about contemplative prayer with Dr Neil Preston, who delivered the Norman and Mary Millar lecture, I was a bit ...

As you read this it’ll be one month to go. I’m writing this over two weeks before 5 June, on 16 May, and already there’s a sense of boredom and “let’s get this over with” in terms of the federal election. That’s sad really, as in the course of human history and even in the world today, to be able ...

Enriching dialogue and diversity reigned at the 32nd Synod meeting (20–24 May) while future directions were confirmed. The Journey team was there to cover the event. The Alexandra Park Conference Centre on the Sunshine Coast was packed with hundreds of Uniting Church members from across Queensland. The tea urns were switched on and the blue and orange cards were ready ...