Who We Are & What We Believe

The Uniting Church in Victoria and Tasmania seeks to be a living Christian faith community across Victoria and Tasmania; faithful to God, seeking ways of love, peace and justice for all people. We have journeyed in faith through organic church union since 1977 from Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregational backgrounds to be a part of a truly Australian church: moved by the Spirit and inspired by the Gospel of Jesus. We are a church that has acknowledged that we live and work on Aboriginal land. In the year 2000 our church agreed to live within and share a common call.

The Uniting Church is an Australian Christian movement. It shares with Australian people in the search for meaning, purpose and community in life. It is committed to justice and reconciliation between people. Through worship, sharing the story of Jesus, and service in the community, we witness to the belief that life is most fully found in God.

Born in 1977, our movement is a result of the union of three older traditions - Congregational, Methodist and Presbyterian. People from these three Christian traditions were captured by the vision of a new Australian Christian community, one that could better witness to Jesus by being together rather than separate. This vision was so compelling and so exciting that they were willing to leave the traditions and ways of being in a church they loved, to establish the Uniting Church.

So we are both old and new. We are Australian, yet we share a faith in God that is held by people throughout the world. We seek to reflect the love, care and grace of Christ as the church ahs sought to do for two millennia, yet in a truly Australian way.

Justice and Community Services

Our social justice advocacy work and community welfare services express our belief that God is committed to life now. It is our response to the Bible's call to care for and protects the marginalised and vulnerable. Issues addressed include the environment, the rights and dignity of asylum seekers, the treatment and care of prisoners, inadequate gambling legislation, religious intolerance, multi-cultural/cross-cultural issues, fair employment practices and much more.

The UCA is also the largest non-government provider of community services in Australia. We achieve this through our community services arm, UnitingCare. This is an umbrella of more than 400 agencies, institutions, and parish missions throughout Australia. Areas of service include: aged care, children, youth and family, disability, employment, emergency relief, drug and alcohol, youth homelessness and suicide.

A leading edge in our justice work is the UCA's efforts to bring indigenous and non-indigenous Australians together and to support the indigenous community generally. Reconciliation, land rights, and indigenous leadership training are among areas in which we are engaged.

We do this primarily through the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress (UAICC). Established in 1985 as the indigenous arm of the UCA, the UAICC is dedicated to seeking the spiritual, physical, social, mental and emotional wellbeing of indigenous Australians.

The Uniting Church recognises the pain and damage caused to our country's native people through settlement and beyond. In 1997, recognising its past mistakes, the Uniting Church made a formal apology to the Stolen Generation. We participate each year in National Sorry Day.

Frontiers

Another clear focus of the UCA is its case work and presence in remote and outback Australia. This is particularly true of Fontier Services personnel and our rural congregations. Frontier Services is an extensive network of community services and pastoral ministries that has ministered to people in some of the most isolated places since the early 1900s.

The Uniting Church recognises most people in Australia live in cities and towns, where they face a range of complex challenges. We are as engaged in sharing life with people in urban frontiers as we are in the more high profile outback ministries.