Humans of the Uniting Church

What’s your Uniting Church story?

I didn’t grow up going to church, but I’ve always been surrounded by Christians and felt like faith in Jesus was part of my worldview. Prayer and scripture was part of my practice, as well as occasionally attending youth groups, although I was a bit of an alternative child who thought that games and movies weren’t a very productive use of my time!

In high school, I started attending an Anglican church, where I found a wonderful community, although a lot of the theology which restricted women’s roles jarred with the Jesus I’d encountered. My great-grandmother had attended a Uniting Church, and I was actually baptised as a baby in a Uniting Church, where my grandmother’s best friend, Aunty Ruth, attended.

I knew it was a place of welcome, so when I was 18, I decided to go along to the local Uniting Church. The sanctuary was much emptier than in my previous church, but the service was led by a woman, and that representation convinced me that I’d found my new church home.

What are you looking forward to in your new role?

I’m honoured to have this opportunity to work with the Communications team. It’s an exciting time in the lead-up to the Assembly meeting in July and I want to learn more about the Uniting Church across the country. It’s a wonderful way to spend my ‘gap year’ after finishing full-time study last year.

What enlivens your faith?

Being in faithful, justice-seeking community is so encouraging to me. I’ve always had an innate sense of faith, but at the same time, the idea that my relationship with Jesus could be exclusively personal and internal rankles with me. There is so much beauty and goodness in God’s creation, and so much holiness we bathe in when we partner with the Divine in making all things new.

What’s one thing you're passionate about?

I’m fascinated by the connections between the Eucharist and feminine embodiment. While there’s a rich diversity in experiences of having a body and being a woman, whenever I take Communion and hear those words, ‘This is my body, broken for you. This is my blood, shed for you’, it affirms the experience of being mothered and connects that love to the love of Jesus.

What's one thing you love about the Uniting Church?

It’s an Aussie church! To me, that’s most reflected in the Covenant with First Peoples and seriously thinking about and living out what it means to follow Jesus on these lands. My faith has been immensely enriched by the witness of Aboriginal Christian Leaders.

What’s one thing you hope for or would like to change?

Often within Christian spaces, there’s a set script for our lives, where you’re a baby, then a Sunday school kid, then in the youth group, then once you’re an adult, you get married and have your own babies and start that whole cycle again. There’s lots of beauty within that path, but it’s not everybody’s story, whether by choice or by circumstance.

I’m grateful for churches in which young adults are taken seriously and hope that it will continue to be the case that those in the twenties, thirties and beyond who aren’t married and aren’t parents won’t always be seen as ‘grown-up kids’ or like they’re deficient in some way, but instead be integral to communities of rich belonging.

What's one thing you would like the rest of the Uniting Church to pray for?

Pray that we will walk in the footsteps of Jesus, loving one another as God loves us. I am a deep, deep worrier, which sometimes seems antithetical to being a believer, but I trust that God has given us these big hearts and big minds to wrestle with the complex challenges we face, so I pray we will use these gifts.