"I was proud that the Uniting Church has such a wide agenda," she said. "We were able to focus not only on the Uniting Church, but on people who face tremendous problems like the Christians of places like the Moluccas and Sudan.

"Our agenda was sometimes blown away by partnership agreements and the greetings from the overseas guests from our partner churches. I thought it was stunning.

"As chairperson of the business committee I felt pretty worried because we kept running out of time. But it was just fantastic to see it happening. And coupled with that was the fact that our partner churches were so keen to be there with us. I reckon that is pretty special.

"It’s refreshing that we can spend so much time considering the Indonesian, the East Timorese and Sudanese and Korean churches. In a way, their problems don’t really affect us. We could ignore them. In another way they affect us all deeply because they affect other members of the Christian family. We must respond.

"Our president, James Haire, is helping us in this because of his passionate interest in social justice and the problems of persecuted Christians."

Jan feels the church must find a way find a way to take these concerns back to the congregations. "How do we do that?" she asked. "I think we need to encourage congregations to have people from places like the Sudan to speak to them. That makes the problems real to the people who meet them. It would be great if that could be a major focus of the church for the next two to three years."

Jan said that the assembly has asked congregations, synods and presbyteries to do many things. "All those requests are admirable in themselves," she said. "But it could be overpowering. Some folk at assembly were saying that their congregations are concerned about their local community ¾ and, they asked, how does this fit into their mission?

" I think of my congregation and I really wonder. They’re really excited because we have a kids’ club. And they’re really excited about the ecumenical happenings with other churches in our community. But I'm not sure how well some of these recommendations, that they haven’t been involved in, are going to work."

Jan said that one of the most positive things to come out of the assembly was the way in which people at assembly could talk to each other through the sexuality debate. "We did that well," Jan said. "We were able to have a discussion without being derisive of others. It’s a big issue that every church is struggling with."

Another positive thing was the networking. "There’s that sense of family and seeing each other again," she said. "I think it was fantastic. It brings a special quality to the church."

Jan was also proud of the SA contingent who put so much into making the assembly work. "I though we did a really first class job."

"I was also pleased that Uniting Care was launched and given a bit of a razzle. One of the things we don’t do enough in the church is celebrate how good we are at looking after the disadvantaged and the poor within the community."

Jan was also frustrated by some things at assembly. "The thing that frustrated me most was that we didn't always use our time wisely," she said.

"We would get bogged down on a word. If we’re a church of inter-related councils, why don’t we trust each other? Why do we get all fussed about the wording that’s being brought to us by another council of the church which has been through all the issues?

"We white anted our selves too much, nitpicking over words instead of looking at the larger picture, instead of saying, ‘This is a great concept, let’s work towards it. This meant that we just didn’t get to a lot of really important stuff in the social justice report. We looked at the asylum seekers and mandatory sentencing. But a lot of the other stuff was really significant, worthy of good healthy discussion. But we didn't get to it.

Jan was concerned about me the way the president-elect is elected. "I thought it was unfortunate that the four nominations in the first round of balloting meant that one person was dropped off," she said. "I thought it was pretty harsh on that person. If we’d had six nominations three would have been dropped off and it wouldn't have been so bad. And then we had to do it all again with the other three.

"Why not have a straight presidential election the way that we do for our synods, electing our moderator? I know there is a history behind it, but I think it should be looked at again."