The following links are to the Revised Common Lectionary commentary pages of Howard Wallace and Bill Loader, and are suggested as preparation for hearing the readings in worship for the Sunday indicated above.
Acts 1:15-17. 21-26 see also By the Well podcast on this text
Psalm 1 see also By the Well podcast on this text
John 17:6-19 see also By the Well podcast on this text
These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.
Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.
John Flynn (1880-1951) was a Presbyterian minister, missionary, and founder of the Australian Inland Mission. He was born in Moliagul in Victoria, Australia. In 1902, after four years with the Education Department of Victoria, Flynn joined the home mission staff of the Presbyterian Church, working amongst remote communities.
First, through his successful publication, Bushman’s Companion (1910), and then through the Oodnadatta Nursing Hospital, Flynn began a long career of developing services and ministry to bush dwellers. He was ordained in 1911 when he was assigned for two years to what was known as the Smith of Dunesk Mission based at Beltana, South Australia. In 1912 he reported on the needs of remote Aboriginal and white communities in the Northern Territory, presenting a vision of the church’s mission to the sparsely populated areas of inland Australia.
For the next 39 years, as superintendent of the Australian Inland Mission, Flynn was guided by the motto “For Christ and the Continent” and by putting need before creed. In 1928 he founded the mission’s Aerial Medical Service at Cloncurry, Queensland, later known as the Royal Flying Doctor Service. This fulfilled his dream of a “mantle of safety” for outback Australians. From 1939 until 1942 Flynn was moderator general of the Presbyterian Church of Australia. His image is on the Australian $20 note and there are many memorials to Flynn around Australia. At Moliagul there is a memorial with the inscription, “Across the lonely places of the land he planted kindness and gathered love.” The John Flynn Memorial Church in Alice Springs is his official memorial.
William Emilse
The following links are to the Revised Common Lectionary commentary pages of Howard Wallace and Bill Loader, and are suggested as preparation for hearing the readings in worship for the Sunday indicated above.
Acts 10:44-48 see also By the Well podcast on this text
John 15:9-17 see also By the Well podcast on this text
“Building democratic participation in a connected, but disillusioned world”
JD Northey Lecture
Visiting South African Senior Professor Gerald West will deliver a JD Northey Lecture at Pilgrim Theological College from 7pm on Thursday May 3. He will speak on the topic of “The Bible as a Site of Struggle in South Africa, from Apartheid to after Liberation”. Find out more here.
Please bring a gold coin donation and RSVP by Monday 30 April. To RSVP E: info@ctm.uca.edu.au.
Prof West will also conduct a two-day workshop at Pilgrim Theological College on Contextual Bible Study as a Resource for Systemic Social Transformation. The workshop runs from 9.30am to 4pm on May 4 and 5. Find out more here.
Cost is $20. Please register by Monday 30 April 2018. Register by E: info@ctm.uca.edu.au.
See other intensive courses and events coming up at Pilgrim here.
These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.
Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.
In 1905 Japan annexed Korea as a first step as a first step in establishing a Japanese Empire in Asia. As time went by, the Japanese insisted that all Koreans should engage in acts of allegiance to the empire. This included in participating in rites in which they were required to engage in acts of obeisance at the Shinto shrines erected in each centre across the country. Many Korean Christians and most missionaries interpreted these acts of obeisance as worship of the Japanese Sun-god, and therefore as a breach of the First Commandment. They therefore resisted either passively or actively the Japanese demands. Co-incidentally this pressure from the Japanese attracted many Korean nationalists to the Christian Church.
Joo Ki Chul was born in Changwon in 1897, and grew up and learned the Gospel from the Australian missionaries who worked in the South-eastern province of the country. He became a Christian and was later trained and ordained as a Minister of the Gospel in the Presbyterian Church of Korea. He served in two major churches in the Province, and became an outspoken critic of the Japanese demand that all people do obeisance at the Shinto shrines. He was then called in 1937 to a large church in Pyong Yang, where his outspoken refusal to comply with the Japanese demands came under closer scrutiny. Over the next decade, Joo Ki Chul was imprisoned four times, the last time never to be released. He was tortured and abused, and finally died a martyr to his faith, in 1944. He could have compromised. He chose to follow his Lord, who had also refused to compromise.
Many other Korean Christians suffered imprisonment or death at the hands of the Japanese imperial authorities, or suffered in other ways in order to keep their worshipping communities together.
Five years after liberation from the Japanese in 1945, the North Korean army invaded the South. Many more leading Christians were murdered by the North Korean forces, or their sympathizers in the South, simply because they were Christians.
Of these, perhaps the best known was another Presbyterian Minister, Rev Son Yang-won. He had spent time in the Kwangju prison under the Japanese, inspired by the story of Rev Joo Ki Chul. He also wished for martyrdom but was released from prison at the end of the Japanese War, and became the pastor of the large leprosarium at Soonchun. Before the outbreak of the Korean War there were very active insurgents in the region. A group of them carried out murder and mayhem among the local Christian leaders. Two of those whom they murdered were sons of Pastor Son. Having been denied martyrdom himself, Pastor Son adopted the young man who had played the key role in the murder of his sons, rescued him from the hands of the anti-communist authorities bent on executing him, and raised him as his own son.
by John Brown
LitBit: …the basic and primordial intuition which not only expresses itself in worship, but of which the entire worship is indeed the phenomenon—both effect and experience—is that the world, be it in its totality as cosmos, or in its life and becoming as time and history, is an epiphany of God, a means of His revelation, presence and power.
Alexander Schmemann
from Mark Zirnsak, JIM
The Justice and International Mission Unit mourns the loss of Jill Ruzbacky who died on Sunday night from complications relating to heart surgery that took place eight months ago. Jill had been in hospital since the surgery.
Jill was well loved across the Uniting Church and ecumenically. She joined the JIM Unit in 2008 and her main areas of work involved running the AboutFACE program (which placed Uniting Church members in First People communities), campaigning for more humane treatment of people seeking asylum in Australia, managing the relationship the Synod has with the United Church of Christ in the Philippines and the relationship between the Synod and the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress.
JD Northey Lecture
Visiting South African Senior Professor Gerald West will deliver a JD Northey Lecture at Pilgrim Theological College from 7pm on Thursday May 3. He will speak on the topic of “The Bible as a Site of Struggle in South Africa, from Apartheid to after Liberation”. Find out more here.
Please bring a gold coin donation and RSVP by Monday 30 April. To RSVP E: info@ctm.uca.edu.au.
Prof West will also conduct a two-day workshop at Pilgrim Theological College on Contextual Bible Study as a Resource for Systemic Social Transformation. The workshop runs from 9.30am to 4pm on May 4 and 5. Find out more here.
Cost is $20. Please register by Monday 30 April 2018. Register by E: info@ctm.uca.edu.au.
See other intensive courses and events coming up at Pilgrim here.
Dear Friends,REQUEST FROM UNITINGWORLD
I am writing to you with the approval of the Moderator and the General Secretary of the VicTas synod to raise a concern with you as a chairperson UnitingWorld, the Assembly agency that has responsibility for our partnerships with churches overseas, especially in the Pacific and Asia.
As you may have heard there are credible reports that in the next federal budget the government will reduce even further Australia’s foreign aid budget, possibly by as much as $400Million. Our foreign aid budget already stands at historically low levels at just over 0.2% of our GDP making Australia one of the least generous of the developed nations. In UnitingWorld we know that assistance through partnership can make an enormous difference to poor communities overseas. Assisting people to thrive in their own communities seems a better way to enhance security for everyone, including Australia.
I recognise that there may be some in the Australian community who would welcome a further reduction in Australia’s assistance to poor nations on the grounds that it will be used to help the poor and needy in this nation. However, even the poor in this country are rich by the standards of these poor nations.
The government seems to be testing the public mood. Unless there is very significant public response urging the government not to cut the foreign aid budget it seems highly likely that it will be reduced. If you feel that Australia has responsibilities to some of the poorest and most vulnerable citizens in the world and that in our relative wealth we can do better I urge you to write to your local MP, the Minister for International Development Cancetta Fierravant-Wells and the Prime Minister. I have attached draft letters that people may wish to use, adapt or discard as you see fit.
Thank you for taking the time to read this email and for your thoughts and actions.
Blessings and Peace,
Dr Andrew Glenn
Chairperson, UnitingWorld
The following links are to the Revised Common Lectionary commentary pages of Howard Wallace and Bill Loader, and are suggested as preparation for hearing the readings in worship for the Sunday indicated above.
John 15:1-8 see also By the Well podcast on this text
The following links are to the Revised Common Lectionary commentary pages of Howard Wallace and Bill Loader, and are suggested as preparation for hearing the readings in worship for the Sunday indicated above.
Acts 4:5-12 see also By the Well podcast on this text
Psalm 23 see also By the Well podcast on this text
REQUEST FROM UNITINGWORLD
Dear Friends,
I am writing to you with the approval of the Moderator and the General Secretary of the VicTas synod to raise a concern with you as a chairperson UnitingWorld, the Assembly agency that has responsibility for our partnerships with churches overseas, especially in the Pacific and Asia.
As you may have heard there are credible reports that in the next federal budget the government will reduce even further Australia’s foreign aid budget, possibly by as much as $400Million. Our foreign aid budget already stands at historically low levels at just over 0.2% of our GDP making Australia one of the least generous of the developed nations. In UnitingWorld we know that assistance through partnership can make an enormous difference to poor communities overseas. Assisting people to thrive in their own communities seems a better way to enhance security for everyone, including Australia.
I recognise that there may be some in the Australian community who would welcome a further reduction in Australia’s assistance to poor nations on the grounds that it will be used to help the poor and needy in this nation. However, even the poor in this country are rich by the standards of these poor nations.
The government seems to be testing the public mood. Unless there is very significant public response urging the government not to cut the foreign aid budget it seems highly likely that it will be reduced. If you feel that Australia has responsibilities to some of the poorest and most vulnerable citizens in the world and that in our relative wealth we can do better I urge you to write to your local MP, the Minister for International Development Cancetta Fierravant-Wells and the Prime Minister. I have attached draft letters that people may wish to use, adapt or discard as you see fit.
Thank you for taking the time to read this email and for your thoughts and actions.
Blessings and Peace,
Dr Andrew Glenn
Chairperson, UnitingWorld
JD Northey Lecture
Visiting South African Senior Professor Gerald West will deliver a JD Northey Lecture at Pilgrim Theological College from 7pm on Thursday May 3. He will speak on the topic of “The Bible as a Site of Struggle in South Africa, from Apartheid to after Liberation”. Find out more here.
Please bring a gold coin donation and RSVP by Monday 30 April. To RSVP E: info@ctm.uca.edu.au.
Prof West will also conduct a two-day workshop at Pilgrim Theological College on Contextual Bible Study as a Resource for Systemic Social Transformation. The workshop runs from 9.30am to 4pm on May 4 and 5. Find out more here.
Cost is $20. Please register by Monday 30 April 2018. Register by E: info@ctm.uca.edu.au.
See other intensive courses and events coming up at Pilgrim here.