A View of Churches  

in Australia and New Zealand

                                                         ~Gary Holloway

God is doing great things through his churches in Australia and New Zealand. My wife Deb and I just returned from visits with Christians there. The blessings we received are too numerous to tell, but here are some highlights:

· Twenty-four year old Nathan Want eloquently expressing his appreciation to ministers at the Victoria-Tasmania Conference while also urging them to "pass on the baton."

· Penny Galbreath urging those in that conference to imagine what God can do.

· The work of Global Mission Partners, led by John Gilmore (a class teacher in Goiania), in mission with churches in Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Vietnam, Southern Sudan, Zimbabwe, Vanuatu, Fiji, and India.

· The revisioning of church and mission in a secular culture, broadly based in the churches, and led by able facilitators like Paul Cameron of the Victoria-Tasmania Conference, Andrew Ball in New South Wales, and Brent Liebezeit and others at Christian Churches New Zealand.

· The healthy theological training provided by the Church of Christ Theological College, led by Andrew Menzies (a plenary speaker in Goiania), and by the Australian College of Ministries, led by Stephen Smith.

· Vibrant, hospitable churches such as Ringwood and Southern Community in the Melbourne area (Southern Community's ministers include World Convention board member David Brooker and former Executive Director Jeff Weston), McGill church in Adelaide (where I was honored to give the Gordon Stirling Lecture), North Turramura Church near Sydney, Annesbrook Church in Nelson, Unite Church in Nelson, and the Montueka Church.

· The leadership provided by the Australian committee of the World Convention.

· Ray Blampied sharing his memories of past Global Gatherings, including 1947 in Buffalo, New York.

· The generous hospitality of Pat and Bruce Greig, Marj and Colin Dredge, Rea and John Saxby, and Lorraine and Lyndsay Jacobs.

· The resilient courage of the people of Christchurch.

· Not to mention the divine beauty of the Southern Cross, Dandenong Mountains, Bondi Beach, kangaroo, koala, seals, the New Zealand coast as well as the human beauty of Mozart and Mahler at the Sydney Opera House.

For all this we give thanks, looking forward to the blessing of seeing the Australians and Kiwis at our Global Gathering in Goiania, July 25-29, 2012.

The Women's Desk

                           Global Women Connecting

I am fortunate.  A woman with the ability to think and choose, earn a degree, receive the love of my family,  avail myself of health care, yes I have been blessed with enormous mercy and opportunity.  So when I think about empowered women, I sometimes fail to remember the predicament of hundreds of thousands of women globally who are not so blessed. What I short-sightedly (and selfishly) remember is that because I have been enabled, I am on my way to gender equality. 

Thankfully, there are those with broader scopes than mine.  The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has identified six fundamental values for sustainable human development - equality, solidarity, freedom, shared responsibility, tolerance and respect for nature.  They began study, then set in place the Millennium Development Goals (MDG's) in 2000 to address human development on a global scale.  Gender equality is number three on the list of eight goals to be achieved by 2015. 

Here's why.  There has been significant study that shows that "when girls and women are enabled to be fully contributing community members entire societies develop."  (UNICEF-Gender Equality).   But time and again there are statistics like this from a UNESCO  article dated May 26, 2011 that say, "Globally, some 39 million girls of lower secondary age are currently not enrolled in either primary or secondary education, while two thirds of the world's 796 million illiterate adults are women. Only about one third of countries have achieved gender parity at secondary level."  Or this from a March web article from UNDP that says, "Today, more women than ever before are participating in the work force, yet almost two-thirds of women in the developing world work in the informal economy with no labour rights or social protection. Globally, women are more likely to be jobless, bearing the worst setbacks of the economic crisis.  Seventy percent of the world's hungry people are women and girls and 45 per cent of women in developing countries suffer from anemia and malnutrition. Across the globe, every day about 1,000 women die because of complications related to pregnancy or childbirth."

The issue is not that we women want to be recognized for our abilities, the issue is that God's world is suffering in part because girls and women are not reaching their potential.  Like the servant with the unprofitable talent, I can only imagine how disturbed God is to find that the gifts we've been given are misused by the power hungry who insist on controlling rather than developing people.

Global Women Connecting has a responsibility in active conversation about the world we are living in and how God needs us to interact with it to bring about God's Kingdom.  It is our goal to share with you forums for discussion, newsletters to inform and web sites full of resources to assist all of us in reconciling this issue to God's heart.   

So, thank you, Edwina Blair for connecting me with the Australian Fresh Hope Women and their two newsletters "Women in Ministry" and "Pastor's Wives".  Contact www.freshhopewomen.org.au to read current issues, and to request an email subscription.  

And thanks to you, Ed Dodds, from all of us with an interest in mobile technology for important new research on the ways cell phones are changing women's lives in low and middle income countries.   You can learn more about this study at www.mwomen.org. 

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Robert Welsh on Christian Unity   

From Disciples News Service:

The Rev. Robert Welsh, ecumenical officer for the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), challenged participants at the 2011 National Workshop on Christian Unity to name and claim unity as essential to the credibility of the church's witness to the gospel in today's society and world.

In response to this keynote address the Workshop issued a statement, Christian Unity is our Calling, addressed to the leadership in all the churches represented acknowledging that, "Christian disunity is a scandal before the world that jeopardizes our shared mission and is a source of confusion to interfaith neighbors and friends. In short, our disunity today is an obstacle both for ourselves and for our emerging interfaith relationships."  

For more on the meeting and a transcript of Welsh's remarks, visit:  www.disciples.org/tabid/58/itemid/907/Welsh-Keynote-Address-Prompts-a-National-Call.aspx  

Join us in thanking Erik Tryggestad and The Christian Chronicle for recent profile research that will enhance our Latin American articles.  You will find more coverage on the Global South in their July, 2011 issue.