The Act2 Project is a process of imagination and discernment about the kind of future into which the Uniting Church is being called. We find ourselves in new contexts, with new challenges, and these offer us an opportunity to reflect on our life and consider the way forward together.

Last month President-Elect Sharon Hollis, General Secretary Colleen Geyer, and President Deidre Palmer, held conversations with Uniting Church members from across Australia as part of the Act2 Project. Here, participants spoke about the challenges facing the UCA. Leadership was a clear emerging theme.

 Participants voiced these kinds of concerns and issues:

• Raising new leaders – how to respond to unclear pipelines and pathways for future leaders. Will we need to look outside the UCA?
• Relevancy in the public sphere – if the traditional institutional part of church continues to struggle with leadership and corporate knowledge, there may be an impact on our relationship with other sectors like community services
• Our people – recognising the risk that among the current leadership of the UCA, capacity, heart and energy may be dwindling
• Lay leadership – how best to support, encourage and foster lay leadership
• Re-energising ourselves – how do we re-enchant people, and what is the role that leaders can take in encouraging and engaging people, and in leadership development of others?

 Do you agree? What challenges do you think the UCA is facing?

Read more in our Introduction to the project and take the survey for yourself.