By Andrew Johnson

Two years ago, I stood before the 17th Assembly of the Uniting Church in Australia and accepted the call to serve as General Secretary. I spoke of the commitments I hoped would shape my leadership: our Covenant with First Peoples, our calling to become a genuinely intercultural Church, our grounding in the faith of the one holy, catholic and apostolic Church, and our willingness to travel lightly as we follow Jesus Christ. 

Two years on, those commitments remain as important as ever. They have also taken on greater depth and meaning through the life we share as a Church. 

One of the great privileges of leadership in the Uniting Church is encountering the extraordinary breadth of our common life. 

Over these two years, I have been welcomed into communities, listened to leaders and encountered expressions of Christian faith shaped by histories, cultures and circumstances very different from my own. 

These encounters have encouraged and challenged me. They have reminded me how partial our own experience of the Church inevitably is, and how much we have to learn from one another. 

The greatest significance of our diversity is not simply that we are a Church of many cultures, languages and traditions. It is that God has given us to one another, and through these relationships the Holy Spirit continues to form us as disciples of Jesus Christ. 

This is both an extraordinary gift and a profound challenge. 

The gift is already among us 

When Act2: The Gift of the Spirit was received by the 17th Assembly, it was grounded in a fundamental conviction: the Holy Spirit has not abandoned the Uniting Church. 

Amid institutional decline, financial pressure and changing patterns of participation, it can be tempting to imagine that our future depends primarily upon managing diminishing resources or finding new organisational solutions. 

These things matter. We have significant responsibilities for the resources entrusted to us, and the ordering of our life must serve God's mission. 

But our future begins somewhere else. 

It begins with the conviction that God continues to call, gather and equip a people to participate in God's mission, and that the gifts we need are already being given among us. 

One of the central proposals of Act2 was to cultivate a flourishing theological culture — the network of practices, institutions and texts that expands, critiques and disciplines the theological imagination of the Uniting Church. 

These three words continue to challenge us. 

Our theological imagination must be expanded through encounters with expressions of Christian faith that stretch our understanding of God. 

It must be critiqued, recognising how culture, history, power and privilege shape our theology and sometimes obscure the Gospel. 

And it must be disciplined. Our theological exploration is not without a centre. Jesus Christ, the living Word of God, reveals the truth and grace of the triune God, and our theological understanding must continually be tested against him. 

The Basis of Union provides a foundation for this work, calling us to engage with Scripture, receive the faith witnessed to in the historic creeds and the Reformation, and remain attentive to the Holy Spirit. 

Our openness to theological exploration is not an absence of conviction. It arises from our confidence in Jesus Christ, even as we acknowledge that our understanding remains incomplete. 

The task of theology is not simply to question inherited understandings of God. It is also to deepen our knowledge and love of the God revealed in Jesus Christ. 

There is a particular challenge here for those of us shaped by progressive expressions of Christian faith. At its best, progressive Christianity has helped the Church confront injustice, challenge inherited assumptions and recover dimensions of the Gospel obscured by power and exclusion. 

But in seeking relevance to the contemporary world, we can gradually lose confidence in the Gospel itself. We risk reducing Jesus Christ to an inspiring moral teacher, the Church to a community of shared values, and Christian mission to social outcomes that could be pursued without reference to God. 

The Gospel is more than an affirmation of our ethical commitments. It announces God's reconciling work in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

If our theology only confirms what we already believe, whether progressive or conservative, we have ceased to allow the Gospel to do its work upon us. 

Theological critique and deconstruction are necessary, but cannot sustain the Church alone. We must also attend to theological reconstruction, nurturing prayer, worship, biblical engagement and discipleship through which faith is formed and renewed. 

Our commitments to reconciliation, justice, inclusion and human dignity are not substitutes for Christian identity. They arise from it. The challenge is not to become less committed to these things, but more deeply grounded in Jesus Christ, whose Gospel both inspires and judges our pursuit of them. 

Becoming a genuinely intercultural Church 

Our commitment to becoming a genuinely intercultural Church is central to theological renewal. 

The wisdom and witness of First Peoples, our National Conferences and culturally diverse communities, and Christians across the global Church are not simply expressions of diversity to celebrate. They are gifts through which our understanding of the Gospel may be expanded, critiqued and disciplined. 

No cultural community possesses the fullness of Christian understanding. Every expression of faith, including our own, is shaped by history and circumstance and needs the gifts of others. 

This matters for a Church whose institutional life and theology have been significantly shaped by Anglo-Australian Christianity. 

There is a form of Christianity that challenges the cultural imperialism of earlier traditions while remaining surprisingly unaware of its own assumptions. When the faith of culturally diverse communities is dismissed as unsophisticated or conservative, we risk repeating the cultural superiority we claim to reject. 

The assumptions of educated, predominantly white, middle-class Western Christianity are no less culturally situated than those of any other community. We must resist imagining that one community’s theological development represents the destination towards which all others must travel. 

Equally, no expression of Christian faith is beyond critique. Theological learning and accountability must be mutual. 

To be intercultural is more than inclusion. It is a willingness to be changed through our relationships, recognising that the fullness of the Gospel exceeds any single culture's understanding. 

It also calls us to look beyond inherited borders. 

The body of Christ is not defined by boundaries drawn by colonising powers. Across this continent, the Pacific, Asia and beyond, peoples and relationships have histories that precede modern nation-states. 

Our recognition of First Peoples' sovereignty and self-determination, and our relationships with the global Church, challenge us to see beyond these inherited boundaries. 

We are the Uniting Church in Australia, but belong to a body of Christ that no nation or empire can contain. 

This does not diminish our responsibilities in Australia, particularly those arising from colonisation and our Covenant with Congress. It places them within the wider life of the one holy, catholic and apostolic Church. 

The question is whether we are prepared to receive one another's gifts, not simply as diversity to celebrate, but as invitations to be transformed. 

A shared calling 

The National Assembly Strategy for 2026–2031 builds upon Act2 and gives expression to our shared calling. 

At its centre is our identity: Uniting in Christ. 

From this foundation flow three interconnected goals: Flourishing Faith, Thriving Communities and Liberating Justice. 

These are not separate ambitions, but dimensions of our participation in God's mission. 

Flourishing Faith speaks to our calling to be disciples of Jesus Christ: deepening our relationship with God, nurturing Christian practices and forming communities of deep theological reflection, imaginative worship and courageous witness. 

It asks us to prioritise the formation of disciples, not simply the maintenance of institutions. 

Thriving Communities expresses our aspiration to be a truly national Church, working together so that local communities can thrive. 

These dimensions belong together. We seek to deepen our common life not for a stronger national institution, but to participate more faithfully in God's mission where we live. 

As a conciliar Church, we are called to discern together, recognising that no part possesses all the gifts or wisdom needed for our common life. Yet we can become preoccupied with institutional boundaries, responsibilities and resources. 

Act2 challenged us to reconsider how we share our common life and wealth. Becoming a truly national Church requires recognising that our gifts, resources and responsibilities are held in common, and that the thriving of one part is bound up with the whole. 

It also means recognising that the Church's future may emerge from places where we have not traditionally concentrated resources or authority. Mission from the margins calls us to ensure that overlooked voices can shape our common life, not simply find inclusion within existing structures. 

A truly national Church is not one that draws power towards the centre. It is one whose shared life strengthens communities to discern and respond to God's calling in their own contexts. 

But institutional strength is not our ultimate purpose. 

The Church exists to participate in God's mission in the world: building relationships, responding to human need, seeking reconciliation and contributing to the thriving of the communities in which we live. 

Often faithful discipleship means investing in a community without expecting our own institution to grow. 

We seek to become a truly national Church so that, through our shared life and witness, local communities might thrive. 

Liberating Justice calls us to confront injustice, stand alongside those who are marginalised and bear witness to God's reconciling love. 

Justice is not separate from our Christian identity. It expresses our discipleship and participation in God's mission. 

This includes living more faithfully into our Covenant with Congress, confronting the consequences of colonisation, advocating for justice and recognising injustice within our own common life. 

These three goals are shaped by six foundational commitments: cultivating our theological culture, reviving our Covenant with Congress, accompanying the global Church with purpose, ordering our life for God's mission, promoting mission from the margins, and speaking prophetically in the world. 

They are not additional programs. They must infuse all we do, shaping our discipleship, relationships, public witness and the stewardship of our resources. 

This makes the strategy more than an organisational plan. It gives practical expression to our understanding of what it means to be the national council of the Uniting Church. 

Renewal will not come from treating discipleship, theological culture, interculturality, justice and institutional reform as separate tasks, but from recognising how deeply they belong together. 

What are we prepared to let go? 

At the 17th Assembly, I spoke of seeking to travel lightly, letting go of what no longer served God well so that I might follow Christ more faithfully. 

Two years on, I have come to appreciate how demanding that commitment is. 

It is easy to affirm change in principle. It is harder when change asks us to relinquish a familiar institution, a cherished practice, an established responsibility or a way of exercising authority. 

The challenge is not simply whether we will change our structures, but whether we are willing to be changed ourselves. 

Our theological convictions, our commitment to becoming genuinely intercultural, and our aspiration to share our common life and wealth have consequences. They ask us to surrender assumptions and attachments that have shaped the Church we know. 

This is not a rejection of our inheritance. We have received extraordinary gifts from those who have gone before us and must steward them faithfully. 

But faithfulness cannot mean preserving everything we have received. 

The question is not simply what we want the Uniting Church to become, but what we are prepared to relinquish to follow Jesus Christ more faithfully. 

That is a question I must ask of my own leadership, as much as of the Church we serve together. 

No longer our own 

At the conclusion of my acceptance speech, I invited the Assembly to pray the Wesleyan Covenant Prayer. 

Its opening words have stayed with me: 

“I am no longer my own, but yours.” 

It is a prayer of surrender to God's purposes, and a prayer for the whole Church. 

We do not belong to ourselves. We belong to Jesus Christ. 

Our calling is not to preserve the Uniting Church for its own sake, nor defend the assumptions of any generation. It is to be formed and renewed by the Holy Spirit, united in Christ and sent into the world to participate in God's mission. 

There is much for which to be grateful. Across our Church, people continue to bear faithful witness to the Gospel amid extraordinary diversity and complexity. Communities are discovering new ways of sharing faith, building relationships and responding to human need. The gift of the Spirit continue to appear in unexpected places. 

Much also remains unfinished. Act2 has given us a foundation for renewal, and the National Assembly Strategy offers a shared direction. But neither a report nor a strategy can substitute for the Holy Spirit's continuing work of forming us as disciples. 

That is our shared calling. 

Our future will not be found in becoming less distinctly Christian, nor in retreating into the familiar certainties of our past. It will be found in allowing the Holy Spirit to form us more deeply as disciples of Jesus Christ, receiving the gifts God has placed among us, and offering ourselves wholeheartedly to God's mission in the world. 

May we have the faith, humility and courage to receive that gift and follow where the Spirit leads.