who we are

The Uniting Church is an Australian Christian movement. It shares with Australian people in the search for meaning, purpose and community in life. It is committed to justice and reconciliation between people. Through worship, sharing the story of Jesus, and service in the community, we witness to the belief that life is most fully found in God.

Born in 1977, our movement is a result of the union of three older traditions – Congregational, Methodist and Presbyterian. People from these three Christian traditions were captured by the vision of a new Australian Christian community, one that could better witness to Jesus by being together rather than separate. This vision was so compelling and so exciting that they were willing to leave the traditions and ways of being in a church they loved, to establish the Uniting Church.

So we are both old and new. We are Australian, yet we share a faith in God that is held by people throughout the world. We seek to reflect the love, care and grace of Christ as the church has sought to do for two millennia, yet in a truly Australian way.

justice and community services

Our social justice advocacy work and community welfare services express our belief that God is committed to life now. It is our response to the Bible’s call to care for and protect the marginalised and vulnerable. Issues addressed include the environment, the rights and dignity of asylum seekers, the treatment and care of prisoners, inadequate gambling legislation, religious intolerance, multicultural/cross-cultural issues, fair employment practices and much more.

The UCA is also the largest non-government provider of community services in Australia. We achieve this through our community services arm, UnitingCare. This is an umbrella of more than 400 agencies, institutions, and parish missions throughout Australia. Areas of service include aged care – children, youth and family – disability – employment – emergency relief – drug and alcohol – youth homelessness and suicide.

A leading edge in our justice work is the UCA’s efforts to bring indigenous and non-indigenous Australians together and to support the indigenous community generally. Reconciliation, land rights and indigenous leadership training are among areas in which we are engaged.

We do this primarily through the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress (UAICC). Established in 1985 as the indigenous arm of the UCA, the UAICC is dedicated to seeking the spiritual, physical, social, mental and emotional wellbeing of indigenous Australians.

The Uniting Church recognises the pain and damage caused to our country’s native people through settlement and beyond. In 1997, recognising its past mistakes, the Uniting Church made a formal apology to the Stolen Generation. We participate each year in National Sorry Day.

frontiers

Another clear focus of the UCA is its vast work and presence in remote and outback Australia. This is particularly true of Frontier Services personnel and our rural congregations. Frontier Services is an extensive network of community services and pastoral ministries that has ministered to people in some of the most isolated places since the early 1900s.

The Uniting Church recognises most people in Australia live in cities and towns, where they face a range of complex challenges. We are as engaged in sharing life with people in urban frontiers as we are in the more high profile outback ministries.

international

Although we are truly Australian, we have an international conscience, particularly for people struggling in developing world situations. Our international mission personnel help us to share our faith on a global basis. We work primarily with partner churches in regions such as the Pacific, Asia and Africa. We share together in a variety of ways including Bible translation, theological education, prison ministry, evangelism, empowerment of marginalised groups, justice advocacy, exchange of personnel and speace-building initiatives in areas of conflict.

in the spirit of uniting we . . .

• are committed to dialogue and cooperation with other
  churches and to participation in state and national
  ecumenical bodies and international bodies such as the
  World Council of Churches
• are willing to explore the implications of being in a community
  with people of many faiths, and what this means for the way
  we express and share our faith
• accept women and men as equals in ministry, including
  ordained ministries, and encourage women in leadership
• embrace diversity and are open to discuss controversial
  issues and what it means to be inclusive of all people and
  to respect differences
• involve all people in oversight and governance, seeking to
  make decisions together rather than being hierarchical. We
  rely on consensus decision making
  

our congregations . . .

                                   many faces . . .
                                            many places . . .
                                                            many forms

Uniting Church congregations throughout the country are caring communities to which all people can belong. There are more than 2,200 of these congregations with 243,000 members and adherents.

A congregation may have hundreds of members or be a tiny community of a dozen people . . . be found deep in the heart of our cities, or in most isolated and outback towns.

They have many faces. There are older people and young, families and single people, people of one culture or many. At least forty different languages are used in worship in the Uniting Church each week.

There are congregations that have existed for many years, and new and very different ones – café style churches, groups that find it better to worship on Wednesdays than Sundays, or who minister across a region rather than a local area.

While our congregations can be vastly different, each aims to embrace all people . . . to unite them with each other and with God. This is expressed in part in our having an open table for Holy Communion to which all baptised people are invited, welcoming children for baptism and being willing to marry those who are divorced.

Our congregations are communities in which people seek to follow Jesus, learn about God, share their faith, care for each other, serve the local community, and seek to live faithfully and with real joy. This is the kind of engaging church to which we belong.

our calling

As a people journeying together we affirm our calling under God:

• to preach Christ the crucified and risen one and confess him as Lord
• to bear witness to the unity of faith and life in
  Christ, rising above cultural, economic,
  national and racial boundaries
• to engage in fearless prophetic ministry in
  relation to social evils which deny God’s active
  will for justice and peace
• to act with God alongside the oppressed, the
  hurt and the poor
• to accept responsibility for the wise use and
  conservation of the finite resources of this
  earth for the benefit of all
• to recognise, treasure and use the gifts of the
  Spirit given to all God’s people for ministering
• and to live a creative, adventurous life of faith,
  characterised by openness, flexibility, hope
  and joy

(based on a statement from the inaugural worship service of the Uniting Church in Australia June 1977)

For information on The National Assembly please Click Here

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