Building Bridges
The Uniting Church, as a multi-cultural church that recognizes the existence of various cultures and languages, also encourages good and genuine relations between different groups.
The Building Bridges material contains coverage of the true stories and struggles of some of the congregation's lives who are 'reaching out to those who are different' to build a relationship together as members of the Body of Christ.
The Church hopes that through these Building Bridges Resources, more and more church members will enable us to truly become a church that accepts, builds and celebrates together differences in unity.
Complete Building Bridges Study Book
The Booklet below provides a series of six general discussion sessions as well as discussion questions related to a series of seven video clips, to enable a small group to think about being Church in a multicultural context.
Download Study Booklet:
Building Bridges Study booklet
Building Bridges Videos
The Study Booklet references a number of DVD segments. These videos can be found below. If you wish to download the videos to show in your group or church, click on the 'Vimeo' button in the lower right of the video and you will be taken to a page where you can download the video.
Building Bridges Translations
Some parts of the Building Bridges Study Booklet have been translated into a variety of languages to aid discussion.
Friendship in the Presence of Difference
Friendship in the Presence of Difference was a paper developed as a follow up to the paper received by the 9th Assembly (2000), " Living with the Neighbour who is Different: Christian Vocation in Multi-faith Australia". Study Guides were developed for both of these key documents.
Download:
Living with the Neighbour who is Different: Christian Vocation in Multi-faith Australia (Summary)
Living with the Neighbour who is Different (Study Guide)
Friendship in the Presence of Difference - Christian Witness in Multifaith Australia
Meeting Across Cultures
Assembly Associate General Secretary Rob Floyd has written a helpful article about issues and approaches in holding meetings within an Intercultural Church.
Read the Article:
National Property Policy
The Uniting Church believes theologically that all of the Church’s property belongs to God and is entrusted to Councils of the Church to be a stewards of it. The church is committed to the idea that all of the Ghurch’s property should be utilised as a tool for the ministry and mission of the whole people of God. Property is a tool in carrying out our acts of love to serve the wider community.
The National Property Policy is a guideline for regulating the use of Church’s property with the aim that all members have access to the Church’s property in a way that reflects our theology. This policy also reflects the Church’s commitment to justice, the Covenant relationship with First Peoples through the UAICC and our life as culturally and linguistically diverse communities in a multicultural and multi-faith Australia.
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Language Resources
Language is one of the most important and fundamental aspects of a multicultural church.
The Uniting Church as a multi-cultural church recognizes and gives freedom to each member to use the language of their choice in community life, worship and growing in faith and obedience to Jesus as the head of the church. Inter cultural relationship encourages the Church’s members to engage with one another and to share the richness of faith in different cultures and languages.
Our Language Resources are a practical action demonstrating the Uniting Church's commitment to its calling as an inter-cultural church. Hopefully they will enable us to grow in understanding and use of the diversity of languages and cultures.
The Assembly Resourcing Unit is attempting to build up our collection of language resources. Our current hub collecting such resources can be found in our 'illuminate' document portal. If you have Uniting Church resources translated into different languages which we should add to this collections, please contact us on aru@nat.uca.org.au