Author Archives: CraigT

July 30 – William Wilberforce

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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.

William Wilberforce, renewer of society

Born on 24 August, 1759 in Hull, Wilberforce was the son of a wealthy merchant, who died in 1768. Brought up by an aunt, he attended Hull Grammar and then St John’s College Cambridge in 1776.  In 1780, he became member for Kingston upon Hull. He was a close friend of William Pitt and an important independent, because of his eloquence and membership of networks. In 1784 he moved to the influential constituency of Yorkshire and travelled round Europe during 1784-85 in the company of Isaac Milner, who guided him into a deeper commitment to Christ and persuaded him to see a parliamentary career as a Christian vocation. He had two priorities – the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners, setting up a society for that purpose in 1787.

Wilberforce married Barbara Spooner in 1797. They had two daughters and four sons, brought up in Clapham, where he was part of an influential network of Christian activists. Concerned about the nominal commitment of many Christians, he wrote a best- selling book of 500 pages in 1797 to challenge their limitations. Entitled A practical view of the prevailing religious system of professed Christians of  the higher and middle classes of this country contrasted with real Christianity, it went through many editions.  Wilberforce wrote passionately about the need for recognition of humanity’s sinful nature, the need for redemption and the importance of holiness, based on total commitment to the crucified and risen Lord. He thus outlined the main features of 19th century British Evangelicalism and its implications.

In addition, Wilberforce actively supported bodies such as the Church Missionary Society and the Bible Society, as well as assisting Hannah Moore’s work. He worked with Thomas Clarkson to achieve the abolition of the British slave trade in 1807, after a wide-ranging combination of debate and publication. Initially supportive of Catholic Emancipation, he became more cautious on this after observing the results of the French Revolution. He helped to open India to Christian missions and was a strong ally of those working for comprehensive Sunday observance.

From 1823, he and his allies worked diligently for the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, a goal achieved just three days before his death, 29 July, 1833. Not always sensitive to social injustice in Britain and becoming more conservative in his later years, he nevertheless contributed to many changes which benefited the poor. His example continues to inspire Evangelicals worldwide to work for spiritual renewal and social justice.

by Rev Dr Ian Breward

 

 

Posted in LitBits, LitBits - People to Commemorate

Migrations of the Holy – Study Series August and September 2017

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Our August 2017 Study Series will look at William Cavanaugh’s, Migrations of the Holy.

Wednesdays August 9 – September 13, 7.30-9.00pm, Mark the Evangelist, North Melbourne (venue TBA) [Note: no group August 16]

Fridays August 11 – September 15, 9.30-11.00am, Habitat Uniting Church (Augustine) [Note: no group August 18]

In order to confirm the viability of the groups, please register your interest for a group here.

As the book is too long to treat in 5 weeks, we’ll only look at a selection of the chapters, as outlined below. The order of these selections is intended to give us an easier induction into Cavanaugh’s argument.

Week 1 — Introduction and Chapter 6 “The Liturgies of Church and State”

  • [The intrepid might find the long Chapter 1 a useful complement to the set readings for this week, but we’ll not assume that anyone has read Chapter 1]

Week 2 – Chapter 7 “The Church as Political”

  • [Chapter 2 might be a useful complement to this reading, for those with the extra time and interest]

Week 3 – Chapter 3 “Migrant, Tourist, Pilgrim, Monk”

Week 4 – Chapter 8 “The Sinfulness and Visibility of the Church”

  • [for those with the extra time, Chapter 9 might be a helpful complement to Chapter 8]

Week 5 – TBC

  • [Depending on how we’ve gone in the preceding weeks, and what from the remaining chapters of the book group would like to look at in the remaining week]

Sourcing your copy of Migrations:

Kindle [instant electronic]
Book depository [Usually within a week from the UK]

 

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MtE Update – July 21 2017

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Friends,

the latest MtE Update!

  1. TONIGHT July 21: Church of All Nations is sponsoring a “Conversations that make a difference” series, the first event of which will feature Andrew West (ABC Radio National), and Janet McCalman (UniMelb) discussing the place of religion in public discussions. See here for more info.
  2. Our next study series begins in a few weeks – on Wed August 9 (Nth Melb) and Fri August 11 (Hawthorn), and there may yet be another group. These groups are a great opportunity to spend some time together thinking about Christian faith and practice. First you read and then you join to discuss. We learn heaps together in the groups! The next book – “Migrations of the Holy” – is a study in “the political meaning of the church”, and looks into the relationship between the church and contemporary Western culture. You can read more about the book in a brief account by the author here. Plan to join one of the groups if you can!
  3. There will be a congregational meeting on Sunday August 6 following worship; the main item of business will be considering proposed focuses for mission and ministry for the next 18 months.
  4. Brunswick UCA the Palestine Israel Ecumencial Network are presenting on “Peacemaking in the Modern World” next Tuesday July 25; details.
  5. The August Pilgrim College news is here.
  6. The most recent Presbytery update is here.
  7. For those interested in some background reading to the readings for this Sunday July 23, see the links here. We are presently hearing the Series II OT readings on Sunday.
Posted in MtE News, UCA News and Other Upcoming Events

Lectionary Commentary – Sunday/Ordinary 16A; Proper 11A

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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.

Series I: Genesis 28:10-19a and Psalm 139:1-12, 23-24

Series II: Isaiah 44.6-8 [No link] and Psalm 86.11-17 [see Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17]

Romans 8:12-25

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

 

 

 

Posted in Lectionary Commentary

MtE Update – July 14 2017

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Friends,

the latest MtE Update!

  1. Our next study series begins in a few weeks – on Wed August 9 (Nth Melb) and Fri August 11 (Hawthorn), and there may yet be another group. These groups are a great opportunity to spend some time together thinking about Christian faith and practice. First you read and then you join to discuss. We learn heaps together in the groups! The next book – “Migrations of the Holy” – is a study in “the political meaning of the church”, and looks into the relationship between the church and contemporary Western culture. You can read more about the book in a brief account by the author here. Plan to join one of the groups if you can!
  2. Church of All Nations is sponsoring a “Conversations that make a difference” series, the first event of which will feature Andrew West (ABC Radio National), and Janet McCalman (UniMelb) discussing the place of religion in public discussions. See here for more info.
  3. An invitation to service on the new Synod committees…
  4. For those interested in some background reading to the readings for this Sunday July 16, see the links here. We are presently hearing the Series II OT readings on Sunday.
Posted in MtE News, UCA News and Other Upcoming Events

July 17 – Daniel Thambyrajah (D. T.) Niles, faithful servant

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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.

Daniel Thambyrajah (D. T.) Niles, faithful servant

 Daniel Thambyrajah Niles (affectionately known as “D.T.”) was a gifted Ceylonese (Sri Lankan) Methodist minister who became internationally famous as an ecumenical leader, prolific author and public speaker. He delivered the keynote address at the First Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Amsterdam in 1948 and also spoke at the Second Assembly held at Evanston (USA) in 1954 and the Fourth in Uppsala, Sweden, in 1968. Niles was a giant of the ecumenical movement, holding high offices in the World Council, the National Christian Council of Ceylon and the East Asian Christian Conference (EACC). Though an ecumenist of global significance, he firmly believed that those involved in ecumenical work should maintain firm roots in the local church. At the time of his death when he was both a President of the WCC and the Chairman of EACC, he was also the Superintendent minister of St Peter’s Methodist Church (Jaffna) and Principal of Jaffna Central College.

Niles is probably best known today for the large number of hymns that he wrote, including the popular, “The great love of God is revealed in the Son” and “Father in heaven, grant to your children”, both of which are included in the Australian Hymn Book and Together in Song. Perhaps it is less well known that he was the author of many popular aphorisms: “Evangelism is witness. It is one beggar telling another beggar where to get food.” And then there is his startling challenge to complacent congregations: “The answer to the problems of our world is the answer that Jesus Christ provided, which is the Church.”

Niles lived simply and always considered his primary calling to be that of an evangelist and preacher—a witness to the living Christ as saviour. He challenged those who doubted that evangelism by the spoken word could still find a response and insisted that those who minister must judge their success not by how much service they have rendered but by how many have been led to God. He was explicitly Christocentric in faith and practice, insisting that those who speak about Jesus must learn to keep quiet about themselves. “The object of evangelism is conversion”, Niles declared, “conversion to Christ and personal discipleship to him.” Also involved in Niles’ understanding of conversion, was conversion to the Christian community and conversion to Christian ideas and ideals. The normal order of mission priorities, he explained, was threefold: a welcome to community, an invitation to discipleship and a transformation of values. “The pilgrimage of the individual Christian”, he insisted, “is held within and nurtured by the pilgrimage of the Christian community.” It is not surprising, therefore, that Niles quoted approvingly Karl Barth’s familiar pronouncement, “One cannot hold the Christian faith without holding it in the church and with the church.”

In one of Niles’s first books which he titled, Whose I Am and Whom I Serve (1939) he wrote “One of the primary needs of the Church today is to rediscover this mood [of hopefulness], not merely to rediscover our faith as such, but to re-discover it in its original mood of exhilaration, of challenge and high adventure, of expectant hope and triumphant deed.” Niles lived such a life of joyous commitment. In one of the last sentences he penned before his death in his memoir, The Testament of Faith (1972), Niles expressed this fundamental characteristic of the Christian life, “I rejoice in the Holy Spirit, His power, His assurance, His guarantees, His teachings, His fellowship, His guidance and His mission; we live by His gifts.” Perhaps the real measure of the man was his humility. It is best expressed in his book, Preaching the Gospel of the Resurrection (1953), “The work we do, during our life on earth is always that which somebody else has done. We begin where they have left off…There is a placard with the sign, ‘Move on’ which hangs over all our work.”

William W. Emilsen

Posted in LitBits, LitBits - People to Commemorate

LitBit Commentary – James K A Smith on Worship 2

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LitBit: One of the things that should strike us about Christian worship is how earthy, material, and mundane it is. To engage in worship requires a body—with lungs to sing, knees to kneel, legs to stand, arms to raise, eyes to weep, noses to smell, tongues to taste, ears to hear, hands to hold and raise. Christian worship is not the sort of thing disembodied spirits could engage in…The rhythms and rituals of Christian worship invoke and feed off of our embodiment and traffic in the stuff of a material world: water, bread, and wine, each of which point us to their earthy emergence: the curvature of the riverbed, the shimmering fields that give forth grain, the grapes that hint of a unique terroir. It does not take much imagination for these in turn to evoke an entire environment: The gurgling water in the riverbed calls to mind the reeds and pussy willows along its edge, muskrats slinking quietly from the edge under the water’s surface, as the water wends its way to twist the crank of a gristmill or a hydroelectric turbine, both providing sustenance for a civilization of culture. The bread evokes images of Kansas wheat fields or of parched African expanses that have failed to yield grain for years. The bread has not made it to this table without much labor, without hands (and machines) harvesting, sometimes toiling and despoiling in the process. The wine in the cup has its own rich history of grapes drooping on the ground, rescued from rot by caring hands of husbandry, perhaps also just escaping an early frost that threatened their ripe skins. So right here in Christian worship we have a sort of microcosm of creation—the “world in a wafer.”

James K. A Smith, Desiring the Kingdom

 

How to use LitBit Features and Commentaries.

Posted in LitBits, LitBits - Commentary

MtE Update – July 7 2017

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Friends,

the latest MtE Update!

  1. Church of All Nations is sponsoring a “Conversations that make a difference” series, the first event of which will feature Andrew West (ABC Radio National), and Janet McCalman (UniMelb) discussing the place of religion in public discussions. See here for more info.
  2. The latest Synod eNews is here.
  3. The latest Pilgrim College News is here.
  4. One-day on-site exploration: ‘Pathways to Union and Beyond’ — Monday 17 July 2017, 9:00-5:00pm, Uniting Church Centre & city churches Join this one day exploration of the faithful journey of three denominations towards union, and the formation of the Uniting Church in Australia. Visit St Michael’s Uniting, Scots’ Church, and Wesley Church Melbourne, and hear key people involved in helping to forge and lead the Uniting Church. A fantastic opportunity to witness living history on one day, through three sites, three traditions, and one God. Registration: $45 includes lunch and refreshments
  5. Uniting Church public forum: ‘A people of God on the way’ — Sunday 16 July, 2:00-5:00pm at Centre for Theology & Ministry, Parkville
    • Dr Deidre Palmer, President-Elect of the national Assembly, will explore the current and future shape of the Uniting Church
    • Rev Dr Geoff  Thompson, systematic theology teacher at Pilgrim Theological College, will address the Basis of Unionas our continuing theological compass.

    Registration: $10 includes afternoon tea and your own copy of the Basis of Union

Other things potentially of interest:

2017 Sugden Fellow Lecture: The ethics of doping in sport; Professor Julian Savulescu

Julian Savulescu holds the Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford. He also directs the new Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities and the Institute for Science and Ethics. He is editor of the Journal of Medical Ethics, and has written over 250 publications and is a recognised world leader in the field of practical ethics, particularly moral bioenhancement. No stranger to controversial topics, he has written on topics including performance-enhancing drugs in sport, genetic screening, sex-selective abortion, embryonic stem cell research, hybrid embryos, saviour siblings, therapeutic cloning, genetic engineering, and organ markets. His most recent monograph is: Unfit for the Future: The Need for Moral Enhancement, co-authored with Ingmar Persson.

Monday 14 August 2017, 7:00 pm to 8:00 pm, Junior Common Room, Queen’s College. RSVP: masterspa@queens.unimelb.edu.au

 

 

Are you strong in your faith, yet unsure how to share it with others? You’re not alone in the Uniting Church!

Uniting Church people are known to be good at putting their faith into action. The most recent National Church Life Survey confirms again that Uniting Churches are confident as welcoming and faithful communities who are committed to gathering for worship, serving their local community and to social justice. But Uniting Churches are less confident about sharing their faith in everyday ways, and less sure about inviting others to discover the good news that faith in Jesus can bring to life.

‘Makes You Wonder’ training helps people to find their own voice for their own faith in their own situation. It does so through authentic friendship, prayer, respect and caring. This training is for people who want to learn to share their own faith in everyday ways, and for leaders who will train others in the Makes You Wonder resources.

The Makes You Wonder exercises truly, slowly, strongly empower people. It is a unique, international resource, going where no other faith-sharing course goes. It includes resources for leaders and for small groups. Download the free MYW smartphone app which suggests a daily reflection question and conversation starter that will help you share your own faith.

11-13 August 2017 at North Ringwood UC, Friday evening to Sunday afternoon, $40 catered

14-15 August 2017 at Hoppers Crossing UC, 9:30am-3:00pm both days

For more information including videos of Ian Robinson: https://ucavt.goregister.com.au/myw2017

The Centre for Theology and Ministry are pleased to be able to offer and to sponsor this training opportunity in partnership with North Ringwood UC and in collaboration with the Presbytery of Port Philip West.

Posted in MtE News, UCA News and Other Upcoming Events, Uncategorized
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