Meet the Mission Catalysts

Uniting Mission and Education has announced that Rev. Dr Graham Hill, Rev. Dr Karina Kreminski and Linda Barclay will serve as Mission Catalysts in the Mission, Growth and Innovation team.

Rev. Dr Hill told Insights his role will be to focus on church planting and bringing renewal to established congregations. He brings a wealth of experience to the role, having previously worked as a minister, author, professional supervisor, and scholar of World Christianity, intercultural theology, and mission studies. He was formerly Associate Professor of the University of Divinity and principal of a theological college.  
    
“Over the last 30 years, I’ve been involved in church planting, pastoring, theological education, professional supervision, and training people for ministry and mission,” he said. 
 
“I’m the author of thirteen books and have four more coming out in 2024. My writings have been translated into Chinese, Korean, Arabic, Spanish, and Portuguese.”  

“I love spending time with ministers and congregations, exploring new opportunities for mission, growth, renewal, and innovation. I also love planting new initiatives, and I’m excited about facilitating the planting of five new Uniting Church congregations in the next few years. It’s a wonderful privilege to serve with a passionate and gifted team and to see congregations serving people, experiencing renewal, planting initiatives and churches, and glorifying Christ.” 

Rev. Dr Karina Kreminski said her role will focus on formation and faith communities or missional initiatives. Her permanent appointment comes after a year working as a consultant for the Synod.

“I am hoping to work closely with UTC on missional formation as well as refreshing the Missional hubs which we have been running for three years already,” she said.

“It will make formal what I feel my call has been for twenty years now- that’s to equip the churches for mission.” 

Rev. Dr Kreminski said she was excited about putting into practice the blended ecologies paper presented at the 2023 Synod meeting, “Especially the focus on creating more faith communities as defined in the paper and unearthing the pioneers and creatives in our churches.” 

“I’m keen to listen and learn in my first year primarily as well as pepper my role with a little bit of provocative  thinking as a missiologist.”

Linda Barclay has joined the team in the role of Mission Catalyst-Strategic Support & Research. Her role provides support to new and existing missional activities across Synod. It involves working collaboratively with congregations, Presbyteries, and the UME team to gather information that can help inform growth activities and projects. This includes local and regional data, National Church Life Survey (NCLS) reports, and internal Synod resources.

“Bringing together various clusters of information can help shape and give focus to endeavours such as Growth Investment Fund applications, and I will be working alongside congregations and Presbyteries to support these submissions,” she said.

“The role also involves developing and implementing tools to carry out and evaluate missional initiatives, so we can continue to learn, share and discern together.”   

“What I’m really looking forward to is getting to know many different congregations and Presbyteries that make up our Synod. Every context is different. Every congregation is different. Every person within those congregations is different. I’m looking forward to supporting our different congregations to tap into the nuances of their own context to explore what new missional opportunities might look like for them.” 

Tash Holmes has joined the team on a permanent basis as Mission Catalyst – Uniting Creative and Rev. Ann Perrin will continue her work in Rural and regional ministry in a new role as Mission Catalyst – Rural and Regional.