'For the Future'

The Act2 Project Unit commissioned this illustration for the cover of the Act2 report from talented Melbourne-based illustrator Cat MacInnes. In her signature bright and whimsical style Cat offered this image to fulfill the brief, ‘For the future – the Uniting Church in a flourishing future’.

At the centre of the image, like at the centre of our life, stands the cross of Christ.

This cross is adorned with native Australian flowers, challenging us to grapple with how the good news of Jesus’ ministry, death and resurrection is lived out in our time and place.

At the front are First and Second Peoples together, central to being an Australian Church.

The doors of the church are flung wide. While a place of love and welcome, the church building is only one expression of the church’s life and of God’s presence.

There are traces of the work of our agencies: a car heading off to remote places; the care of our community services and chaplains; the goodness, justice and peace being carefully tended in Australia and overseas.

The marching group stands in for thousands in our past and present who have proudly displayed the Uniting Church name as they’ve rallied in the streets for creation, refugees, disarmament, reconciliation, peace.

A version of the Uniting Church dove hovers over everything. It is not captured within our emblem but is the unchained, untethered Spirit of God, brooding over and among us who can see across to the horizon when we cannot.

The illustration does not say everything, but speaks to the heart of our life; to the story, symbols and practices which nourish and sustain us and have given us our purpose and meaning for almost 50 years. It speaks to the fruit of God’s Spirit alive among us.