Uniting Church members head to Adelaide for 13th Assembly

Uniting Church members head to Adelaide for 13th Assembly

More than 300 Uniting Church members and dozens of national and international guests will meet in Adelaide next week for the Church’s triennial Assembly.

“We will celebrate the life that overflows through our congregations wherever they are across Australia, as well as the work of our many agencies,” said incoming President, the Rev. Professor Andrew Dutney.

“I’m very proud to lead this church, whose members put their faith in action every day through their own actions and through their support for our agencies providing care and community development.”

The 54 year-old Flinders University theology professor will be installed as President in a ceremony at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre on Sunday.

Professor Dutney, a specialist commentator on bio-ethics, is renowned as a champion of the church’s founding principles, the Basis of Union.

For the next three years he will lead a diverse church of two-and-a-half thousand congregations that, according to the recent Census results, has a support base of just over one million people.

The theme of the week-long Assembly meeting is “Life Overflowing” — a reference to the gospel verse John 10:10.

“Jesus said, ‘I have come that they have may have life and have it abundantly.’

“The next three years are an opportunity to really focus attention on the life into which Christ invites us and to see how this overflowing life heals, reconciles and renews broken lives and communities in this generation and this country,” said Professor Dutney.

The 13th triennial Assembly meeting begins on Sunday afternoon July 15 at Adelaide’s Grand Chancellor Hotel and will continue until July 21.

The proposals agreed to at the meeting will guide the direction of the Uniting Church between now and the next triennial Assembly in Perth in 2015.

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