What will the Uniting Church be like in another 10-15 years from now? Will we exist at all? Will we have joined with other denominations in response to the ‘uniting’ in our name? Will we continue to be the only truly Australian church, reflecting the multicultural nature of Australian society and being seen as relevant to the issues Australian people face in their daily life and work? Or will we be much as we are today, just smaller and older and slowly dying?

While the church is God’s Church, we also have a responsibility to be the Church God and Jesus Christ intended us to be. How will we ensure that we are faithful to God’s intention that the Church be the visible herald of God’s Realm (Kingdom of God) in the present and the future? What challenges lie ahead of us in the next decade? What is God calling us to be?

It is important that all of us in the Uniting Church, individually and in our congregations, presbyteries, synods and Assembly, are intentional and proactive in living out the Gospel in a changing world. In order to do this, we need to think ahead to what the world is likely to be in the foreseeable future, and to think critically about how this compares with God’s vision for the whole creation. We need to discern what God is challenging us to be, do and say as we convey the Good News of love, reconciliation, justice, freedom, mercy and peace, not only in our words, but also in our whole being, our structures, our worship, and our actions wherever we live and work.

The Assembly Standing Committee established the Strategic Planning Unit (SPU) to help the Church respond to these challenges. The mission statement given to the SPU asks it

The Strategic Planning Unit alone cannot create a vision for the whole Church. Our task is to provide visionary direction. Beyond what we can accomplish, congregations, presbyteries and synods have a responsibility to develop and implement visions and goals of their own.

We believe that what we have done so far provides a challenging and creative context in which that work can be undertaken. We would emphasis, however, that we have had little more than a year to date to do our work and believe this to be a report in process rather than a final or definitive statement. The nature of our task means that we are responding to constant change, in both church and society. Both our vision for the life and witness of the church, and our engagement in the fulfilment of that vision, will engage us in an ongoing and dynamic journey. We are a pilgrim people.

What we offer to the Church derives from intensive reflection on:

This is undergirded and informed by our faith and the call of Christ.

The vision statement we therefore offer to the Uniting Church is…

We offer some guiding principles and some examples of strategies that we believe will place the Uniting Church in a position where we can be intentional and proactive in our mission. We hope and pray that as we, the whole people of God, form our vision for the future, we will ask how our themes and strategic directions connect and inform what we are doing and aiming to do. Have we taken the big picture into account?

These strategic directions will only be realised as they are integrated into the activities of the various groupings of the Church in every sector and location. We invite the Church to join us on the journey.

As we responded to the challenge given to us by the Assembly Standing Committee, we knew that we needed to listen carefully to voices from both church and society that would help us identify and understand the emerging social trends that will continue to impact on our lives over the next 5-10 years. As we share the insights gained from this process with the whole church, we believe we will be better prepared to hear what the Spirit is saying to us.

In our work, we have been much encouraged by the word God speaks through the prophet Isaiah (43:19) to the people of Israel in the midst of their struggle and pain in exile, in order that they might have hope for the future and vision of what they yet might be.

We have reflected at length on who we are as the Uniting Church in Australia, taking the Basis of Union as our starting point. We believe that any reflection on the life and work of the church, including the specific task of strategic planning, must be set in the context of our biblical and historical faith.

Having listened to these various "voices", we have been able to identify a number of strategic connections between church and society that offer us vital opportunities to share with God in transforming the world.

However, we need to be cautious about projections into the future. We can only do the best with what we know. Our main aim is to work out ways the Uniting Church can be an integral part of Australia’s future, rather than becoming reactive and sidelined because of a failure to go ‘forward together’. It is better to try to engage with the future and be ready for it than just react when it arrives.

The Basis of Union describes who we, the Uniting Church in Australia, are in terms of our understanding of the church and who we are called to be as the only truly national church in Australia.

The Uniting Church in Australia lives and works within the faith and unity of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church (Basis of Union, para 2). The faith and unity of the church are built on the one Lord Jesus Christ and our primary task is to preach Christ, the risen and crucifies One and to confess him as Lord to the glory of God the Father (Basis of Union, para 3).

This is the basis from which we dream of the future of the Church. We have summarised what that Basis tells us in the following words.

As we move forward, we must not forget our tradition and history. We cannot shape a new future with reference to the present alone, nor by assuming that we actually can know all that the future holds and prepare accordingly. We must never lose touch with our tradition and all the wisdom accumulated through so many years of crisis, struggle and change.

Every Christian needs a sense of history. Jesus began with a handful of ordinary people blessed with the gift of extraordinary good news. Down through the centuries, the temporal situation of the Church has varied enormously. In every generation there have been those who have predicted its demise. From place to place, culture to culture, circumstance to circumstance, time to time, the story of the Church is a kaleidoscope of infinite complexity. Humanly speaking, the church could have died a number of times. But is never has, because it belongs to Christ and is empowered by the Spirit! Faith, hope and love are the gifts of the Spirit in every age. The life and work of the Kingdom is so much bigger than our limited capacity to understand or even to believe.

During the last nine years, the Assembly has called on the Church to move ‘Forward Together- Risking the Way of Jesus’. At the last Assembly that theme was expanded into ‘Forward together:- Moving with God’s Spirit.’

As we experience rapid change in society, we must never forget that God’s love for all people remains constant. However, God’s will for the church and society is that we ‘truly act justly one with another…do not oppress the alien, the orphan and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place…and…do not go after other gods to (y)our own hurt’. Then God’s promise is that God will dwell with us in this place. (Jeremiah 7:5). Even though God’s love is constant, God created a cosmos that is in the process of constant change. We are reminded that the whole of creation, created by God, is groaning towards perfection (Romans 8:22), and ‘waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God’ (Romans 8: 19). Society is changing. Societies are created by people and are changed by people. Our society may be changing in ways that will not bring in the new heaven and the new earth. We are called to discern what God is asking us to do, say and be, to reveal what it means to be the children of God.

The issue of diversity in our unity is such a central and vital principle for the UCA, clearly affirmed in most of the responses sent to the Strategic Planning Unit. In the prayer of Jesus recorded in John 17, the unity for which Jesus prays is not a unity of organisation, structure or doctrine. It is a unity of the heart and mind, spirit and purpose. It is not personal sympathies, common aims, particular approaches to Scripture, charismatic experience, or special interests that constitute our unity, but only the Christ who lives in and through us. In that sense, every one of us is both gift and demand for every other person. Gift, because we share with one another all that Christ has shared with us. Demand, because the active presence of every other Christian calls upon us to transcend our personal differences in order to bear witness to our unity in the love of Christ.

It has become a truism to state that we exist in a time of rapid and significant social change. It has been helpful for the Strategic Planning Unit to hear that the task of discerning possible trends is not simply a case of 'shooting in the dark'. Instead it is useful to locate possible trends within a broader social framework.

One such view locates our current context within an Information Revolution, comparable in significance to both the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions. Thus, the dynamic or cutting edge of society is located in the ownership and control of knowledge, as opposed to the growing of food or the production of manufactured goods. Not that these areas cease to exist, but rather they assume less central or dominant roles in our economies, as employment areas and as the prevalent mode of life for large sections of the population. For example, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) estimates that in 1901, 23.4% of the total population was employed in agriculture. By the mid-90's this figure was less than 5%. It was suggested that 1975 was perhaps significant in that for the first time in America, white-collar workers outnumbered blue-collar workers.

The importance of this period of change is not relegated to employment alone, but represents a broader shifting in:

Within this framework it is possible to make a more coherent attempt to envision society five to ten years ahead, and to focus upon specific points of change within the whole.

As worldwide migration continues, and increases from Asian countries, Australia will continue to be a multi-faith society. We can no longer claim to be a Christian country, as people of other faiths have the freedom to worship according to their own traditions. Increasingly, the various faiths will continue to communicate with and relate to each other.

"Here we are" conveys a strong sense of availability and readiness to respond to whatever is discerned as God’s will for us at a given time in our life as a church. Isaiah 6, from which the theme is derived, depicts an encounter with God that changes Isaiah’s life forever. We, too, have to be willing to respond out of our encounters with God. As we meet together in the Assembly, we will have an encounter with God. How we respond will be critical.

We do not have to be told that we live in a time of rapid change, where the world and life is becoming more complex almost every minute. Many of these changes are creating great stress for people and for communities as well as for the whole of society. Many of them do not seem to be consistent with what God wants for humanity. The world needs the transforming power of God. God calls the church to be a transforming force in society, inspired by God’s Spirit… to proclaim in word and deed the good news of Jesus Christ. If we are to be faithful to this call, we need to understand the social context in which we exist, and find new ways to connect with and share the Gospel with those outside the Church. We will not do this as ‘outsiders’, but as those who are ‘insiders’ with those who are not seen in our churches. We will identify with their pains and joys as people who experience the same pains and joys. We will stand in solidarity with them, and at the same time offer in our lives and witness other ways of being that offer hope in the future.

The focus of this section is the Uniting Church into the future. We know that we have much in common with the church universal and with other mainstream denominations in particular, but we do not presume to speak for other than the Uniting Church in this document. In order to envision the Uniting Church into the future, the Strategic Planning Unit invited over 200 visionary leaders to write a statement outlining their vision for the Uniting Church over the next ten years, telling us what they believe are the issues we face as a church, and suggesting strategies we might use to achieve the vision and address the issues. We used the responses of over a hundred of these leaders who shared their ideas with us, together with the information dealing from the Church Life Survey dealing specifically with the Uniting Church.

As we reflected on the responses received and the data gathered, we were able to identify a number of significant areas of strength in our life as a church. We believe we should continue to maximise these strengths, summarised as follows.

Through consultation, reading and research, the Strategic Planning Unit gathered together a number of comments and proposals about the future of the Uniting Church, to assist us in discerning how the Church might engage with the future. The insights gained from these sources are detailed in Appendix A. In summary, they show that, in this time of rapid change, the Church could convey a sense of hope and explain what is happening, providing a valuable meeting place, where worship services are culturally appropriate, many options are available, and the evident interest in spirituality could be nurtured. The Church could focus on building community in a post-traditional society, and congregations could reach out to people of ethnic minority groups in an inclusive way. All the councils of the Church, congregations, presbyteries, synods and Assembly, could place a major focus on a vision for mission, with priorities for reaching out to the younger generation, and those in our world who suffer. The leaders and people of the Church could be equipped for mission and outreach, to share their faith in new ways. We could find new ways to organise congregations other than on a geographical basis, and encourage regional congregations, where we could offer a broad range of religious resources to people outside the Uniting Church. On the whole, we need to accept that we will be a smaller church, if the current trends are not reversed.

What do we believe God is calling the Church to be and do in the next 10 years, in order to be faithful to the imperative to proclaim the Gospel in every age, and in ways that will enable the people of God’s world to know, love and serve God?

The call to share with God in transforming the world is for each person. The challenge is for every Christian to live out the gospel in their context in daily life.

In developing these ideas about how we might connect society and Church, addressing the issues that are real for us today, the members of the Strategic Planning Unit discerned some major principles to guide and resource us while thinking and planning our mission directions. In setting these out, we give some examples of strategies that are being used across the Church in relation to these principles or major future directions. However, we recognise that these are only starting points, and that we are called to be creative and take risks, in obedience to the call from God to share in the process of transforming the world.

If we believe that "in our changing world, in response to the imperative of the Gospel and our experience of God’s grace, we are called to share with God in transforming the world", it is also imperative that we, the people of God, have an outward focus. We need to reach out to those outside the Church, because they need to know God loves them and stands with them in their pains and joys. We need to be with them in these pains and joys, if they are to hear this good news in ways that are relevant for them. And we need to listen.

One rural congregation is ministered to by a Lay Ministry Team of nine elected members. During the past three years of ministry, the team and congregation have taken steps to reach out to the community in a number of ways. Annually, they hold a Service of Thanksgiving and Dedication for Emergency Services, prior to the bush fire season. The venue is the fire shed where the fire trucks are housed. Members of the emergency service groups participate in the worship. On the first Sunday in Advent, the congregation initiated an Ecumenical Advent Lunch in the local pub. Invitations were sent to other denominations. The guest preacher in 1999 was a lay Catholic person. Worship in the pub was followed by lunch in the same place. The same congregation holds a fortnightly Kids Club for children of the community, including the unchurched. The expenses and leaders are provided by the UCA congregation. Over 90% of the primary school children attend this club! The participation of congregation members and Lay Ministry Team on community councils and committees is a point of celebration and witness.

The Minister and a congregation group from a city suburb have established connections with unchurched people in the 25-40 age range in the community, where they meet in the Church buildings as a group to share their own spiritual quest, and to support each other in dealing with life issues. The group has grown to the point where they are now a ‘faith community’ recognised by the Presbytery. The Synod supported this mission initiative with funds for a part-time coordinator for two years. The same congregation has also established links with families of people with physical and intellectual disabilities, and integrated them into their worship.

If a congregation only focuses on maintaining what already exists, it is inevitable that eventually that congregation will cease to exist as people increase in age. However, if we develop a focus on reaching out, the congregation may well grow.

A suburban Parish spent three years understanding their local community. They discerned that they were not meeting the needs of people outside their (5) churches in the worship and activities. They decided to bring the congregations together in one Congregation under the new Regulations, but to NOT sell off the properties. These were to be open to the people of the surrounding areas, all of which are different in their population make-up. In this process, they changed one of the churches into an open, flexible space. An over-eighty year old, removing the pulpit and panelling at the former front of the church discovered that there had been three different positions for the pulpit since the church had been built. He saw this as a symbol that the church had regularly changed, and this was just another change. Recently, a naming ceremony for a child adopted by a couple living in the area saw the church full to overflowing with their friends and families, together with the regular attenders. This building is also used for the Late Late Service for youth.

One suburban congregation connects with the fringe people in their community by conducting a café every Friday, where healthy and cheap meals are provided for those who live alone. These people have made new friends through this regular gathering. The same congregation conducts an op shop during the week, beside the space that houses the café, where people can purchase quality goods at an affordable price. The proceeds of the op shop support the work of the café and local community charities.

Lay people are responding to this awareness by attending courses in ‘Gossiping the Gospel’ in seeming droves! How does this impact on their faith sharing?

Every local community faces a social justice issue from time to time, if not constantly. The congregation can work together and/or with a local group of people who are the victims of injustice, to identify the causes of the injustice, who holds the power in this situation, plan and take action in solidarity with and guided by those who are suffering.

In one city suburb, the Housing Commission decided to demolish and sell a large number of blocks of flats and to destroy a remnant native vegetation, together with the community built and run Fun Factory, to make money from a private subdivision. The local congregations stood beside their neighbours not only in helping to represent their case, to mitigate some of the impacts and argue successfully for modifications to improve the outcome for the current and remaining population, but also individually as they had to cope with removal, re-location and, sometimes, return.

One suburban congregation worked with the Synod Social Justice Consultant to identify as a major issue in their community the needs of people with mental illness. They discerned that these persons were not adequately supported as they were discharged from Psychiatric Hospital into the community. The congregation developed ways of supporting these people with friendship and also took action politically to urge the local Municipality and State Government to provide more adequate resources. The working group educated the whole community, so that they would not discriminate against those with mental illness when they attended the Community Activity Program conducted by the congregation.

The Church is not just the local congregation. It is all congregations working together, and it is also the regional, national Church, and international church. We can widen our vision of ‘joining God in transforming the world’ when we understand a global issue and see its relevance to the local situation.

A Southern Sudanese refugee family arrived in a Congregation’s worship service two days after arriving in Australia. They told their story of experiencing war, famine, and religious persecution in their own home country, and of their wanderings through refugee camps in several African countries, before being granted asylum in Australia. The congregation was moved, through the relationships built, to work to find them housing, to raise funds to help repay their airfare costs to the government, to provide transport to worship. They also supported the State Chapter of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement in political action to lobby the Federal Government to take international action to stop the genocide in their country. The congregation grieved with the Sudanese families of the group, when they discovered that 15 of their family members had been killed over the previous two years, but they had only just received the news. A service of celebration of the lives of these relatives was held in the church, as a joint activity of the congregation, their and the Synod’s Social Justice Committee, and the members of the Sudanese community. The Synod found the funds to pay part-time an African Minister (also a refugee from Rwanda) to minister to the African families in that city.

In these and other ways we can develop an outward focus to our ministry and mission.

Unless each congregation, presbytery, synod and the Assembly develop a sense of vision and directions for the future, we will not be faithful to the command of Jesus to ‘go into all the world and preach the Gospel’. The Church Life Survey has demonstrated that one of the key characteristics of vital congregations is that they have a sense of vision and directions for the future.

This directs us to the importance of engaging in mission planning. We note that the document "20-20" encouraged parishes to engage in visioning and mission planning before deciding on the structure of their (new) congregation. When a placement becomes vacant, Congregations are required to engage in a mission study (another name for a mission plan) as the basis for determining what kind of person they would like for the placement, and for the profile they present to the Joint Nominating Committee and the Placements Committee. These changes were not introduced for the sake of change, but because we know how important it is to have a vision and to know the major directions that will guide our life as the Body of Christ.

Many presbyteries have established a mission planning facilitation group to work with congregations as they develop their visions and mission plans.

The Commission for Mission staff in one Synod, and equivalent staff in other Synods, work in teams with local congregations as they engage in visioning and mission planning processes. These teams commit themselves to work for a year or more with each congregation, and to see the plans come to fruition in action. Over the past three years, more than 30 congregations in one Synod have been assisted in this way to develop clear visionary mission plans. Presbyteries and the mission teams cooperate in these initiatives.

We need to develop new ways of being Church, if we are to be faithful to God’s vision for the Church that we will join with God in transforming the world. We have to reinterpret the Gospel for every new age, even though it is the same Gospel we proclaim.

Christ told us that it is not wise to ‘put new wine in old wineskins’. We don’t throw out the old, but we have new vehicles for new means of communicating the faith. So, alongside what is already working for the existing members of our congregation(s), we need to think of how we can plant new congregations for those outside the Church, how we can establish groups with common interests that might then become ‘faith communities’ within the UCA, and what other new initiatives we need to take to connect with those in our community and world.

We need to introduce a greater variety in our worship styles, to cater for those for whom the more traditional approaches are not attractive, and develop different forms of expressing the faith in ways that take account of different cultures than those that we find in our congregation.

Networks are a powerful way of reducing isolation, and of building support communities. Regional congregations, alternative worship congregations, rural ministry teams, cluster ministry approaches all are based on network building. These can also offer more options for people, from which they can choose. In this way, people can find a place which matches their spiritual needs, rather than leaving the church when they cannot connect with the one approach offered.

We need to discover new ways of providing leadership in these new ways of being church. For example, we need to look for opportunities where the ordained and/or lay leadership can be not just full-time, ordained. The old concept of ‘worker-priest’ is again a possibility, where the leader continues in or undertakes part-time employment, and is part-stipended to work with a congregation or faith community. Synods need to dedicate funds to enable these part-stipended leaders to have some financial security while they build up a new congregation or faith community to the point where they can be self-supporting, perhaps eventually with full-time leadership.

One Synod has dedicated 30 per cent of funds available from their investment fund and from surplus property earnings to support new initiatives in mission, by providing funds for a half-stipended leader with the associated on-costs for up to three years. Their aim is to have at least $100,000 available annually for this new direction. In this way, the Synod affirms Ministers and lay people who feel called to establish new congregations and faith communities.

The whole Church needs to place more emphasis and provide resources to equip Ministers and lay people for these new ways of leading the Church. Ministers need to be equipped to in turn equip the lay people for engaging in mission where they live and work, and to see their witness and faith sharing as a full-time calling.

Where the UCA has neglected the teaching ministry in the past, we need to place a renewed emphasis on and provide resources for this part of our mission. The whole people of God need to be equipped for our ministry and mission, and in a way that enables us to grow in our faith. We need to be able to understand and use the Bible as the basis for testing our perceptions of our mission, and to become a lifelong learning community of faith.

One Synod has a mission priority to equip people for mission. The Ministerial Education Board (equivalent) has re-organised its life in response to this priority. They now have a Ministry Development Committee and a Lay Ministry Education Committee, ready to focus time, effort and vision on how they can support presbyteries and congregations in the teaching ministry. These committees will act to ‘broker’ courses and other learning activities to meet the identified needs of congregations, as well as discerning new directions.

Coolamon College and other theological colleges around the Synods offer distance mode education opportunities to equip people for their ministry and mission. These agencies also offer intensive learning opportunities, and group learning in congregations where these are requested. Such events are offered to neighbouring congregations as joint learning opportunities, where College staff can offer this in a local congregation or regionally.

We need to develop new ways of being Church through the work of chaplains, as we connect with organisations, and connect them with congregations.

A suburban congregation in a capital city saw the need to relate to the regional Police Headquarters in the area, located in their district. They encouraged the Minister to negotiate with the staff of the office for providing a chaplaincy to them, and for some small remuneration to the congregation for this service. They released the Minister for part-time work as the Chaplain, and used the new funds to provide lay support for part of the ministry.

Another suburban congregation, with a long-established accommodation program for students at the local University campus, increased their giving to enable the part-time Minister in the Ministry team to provide University Chaplain services to the students and staff.

The overall message here is that we do not need to ‘throw out the baby with the bathwater’. We need to continue what are doing well, and continue to minister to those already in our congregations in ways that meet their needs. ALONGSIDE this, however, we must develop new ways of being Church. And this needs the cooperation of Congregations, presbyteries and Synods to ensure that we make the best use of our (

When we talk of making space, we mean not just physical space. In addition, spiritual space, emotional space, and financial space are important for the new directions and new ways of being Church. New groups and congregations need places to meet and worship. They need support for their spiritual growth. They need to feel that they are affirmed by the Church generally, and by any associated congregation in particular. These new initiatives for mission need financial resources if they are to be successful, especially to provide leadership and cover other expenses. They might need access to technology, phones, photocopiers, and computers to communicate with each other and with the wider community. Synods and presbyteries need to plan ahead for how they will provide these financial resources, and not just wait for congregations or Ministers to approach them for assistance.

The culture needs to support risk-taking, and to affirm that we will sometimes make mistakes or that these approaches might ‘fail’. This is all part of the learning process. It is OK to fail. Some may feel that the only way we will not fail is to do nothing. Yet to do nothing is absolute failure. Additionally, we will never learn by just engaging in experience. We need to reflect on our experience. That means identifying what we did and why, what worked well and why, what did not work so well and why, and planning how we will move ahead, building on our successes to overcome the dilemmas we face in the future. This should be a continuous process. In addition, we need to share our stories of risk-taking with others, along with what we have learned from the experiences, so that the whole Church will grow in our understanding of and skill in ‘joining with God in transforming the world.’

In this section we share with the Church the thinking we did in the Strategic Planning Unit, starting with each of the major issues facing society. We said,

Then we worked on the connecting links that would enable us to achieve the vision (above) to share with God in transforming the world

Church engaging society:

We have the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress, our agency for ministering to, with and by Aboriginal people and our covenant with the Congress.

As part of the covenanting process, one Synod is implementing a policy to ensure that 1% of the Synod’s workforce are of Aboriginal or Islander descent by the end of the next four years, and have obtained Government funding to add to the Church’s financial commitment to this project.

Communication on the Internet, through Web Sites and pages is being developed by Synods and Assembly, as well as by some presbyteries and some congregations. These are usually linked with each other, so that people can follow up interesting leads. The Internet offers many sites from this and other countries where people can engage with spiritual matters.

At least one of our theologians has a web site offering commentary on the lectionary readings for each week.

Church engaging society:

We live in exciting times. We live with many challenges in our lives and in our Church. We have been charged with the thrilling responsibility to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ in these challenging times, where most of the community does not know Christ, crucified and risen, as the embodiment of God in the world.

The Strategic Planning Unit will bring more specific wording for its proposals in the final mailing to Assembly representatives.