UnitingWorld is the international aid and partnerships agency of the

Uniting Church in Australia The Uniting Church in Australia (UCA) was founded on 22 June 1977, when most congregations of the Methodist Church of Australasia, about two-thirds of the Presbyterian Church of Australia and almost all the churches of the Congregational Union ...

, based in Sydney Australia. As a partner of the

Australian Government The Australian Government, also known as the Commonwealth Government, is the national government of Australia, a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Like other Westminster-style systems of government, the Australian Government i ...

, UnitingWorld receives funding to implement development and poverty alleviation programs in the Pacific, Asia and Africa.

History

The Uniting Church in Australia was established when most congregations of the

Methodist Church of Australasia The Methodist Church of Australasia was a Methodist denomination based in Australia. On 1 January 1902, five Methodist denominations in Australia – the Wesleyan Methodist Church, the Primitive Methodists, the Bible Christian Church, the United ...

, the

Congregational Union of Australia The Congregational Union of Australia was a Congregational denomination in Australia that stemmed from the Congregational Church in England as settlers migrated from there to Australia. Congregational Churches existed in all states and territo ...

and most of the

Presbyterian Church of Australia The Presbyterian Church of Australia (PCA) is the largest Presbyterian denomination in Australia. (The larger Uniting Church in Australia incorporated about two-thirds of the PCA in 1977.) History Beginnings When captain James Cook lande ...

united in June 1977. Each of these Churches had established their own overseas mission board by the 1850s: the Methodist Overseas Missions (MOM), the

London Missionary Society The London Missionary Society was an interdenominational evangelical missionary society formed in England in 1795 at the instigation of Welsh Congregationalist minister Edward Williams. It was largely Reformed in outlook, with Congregational miss ...

(LMS) and the Presbyterian Board of Ecumenical Relations and Mission (BOEMAR). At the time of union, these mission boards merged to form the Commission for World Mission, which eventually became Uniting International Mission (UIM). In July 2000, Uniting Church Overseas Aid (UCOA) was established as a separate aid and community development agency of the Uniting Church in Australia. UCOA and UIM worked in tandem, but under separate mandates; UCOA to deliver development projects and humanitarian aid alongside partner churches; UIM to support church leadership, advocacy and Christian discipleship within partner communities. In 2008, these agencies merged under the name ‘UnitingWorld,’ and the twofold mandate remains. Today, UnitingWorld works in partnership with 18 overseas church denominations to support more than 180,000 people a year through sustainable

community development The United Nations defines community development as "a process where community members come together to take collective action and generate solutions to common problems." It is a broad concept, applied to the practices of civic leaders, activists ...

projects.

Partnership

The three denominations that united to form the Uniting Church in Australia each brought their own historic links with overseas churches and these connections have continued. Uniting Church members were still working in partner churches up until the 1970s but the decolonization of Oceania and the Asia Pacific and shifts in the theology of mission began to reshape how people engaged with partner churches. The various churches often decolonized even before national independence, with founding denominations coming to prefer independent indigenous churches over a traditional missionary approach. This allowed relationships between the Uniting Church in Australia and churches overseas to mature from dependency (for leadership, resources and funding) into interdependence and partnership.

Mission and program areas

UnitingWorld's mission is to drive collaboration with the global Church to strengthen its shared ministry and address the causes and consequences of poverty, violence and injustice. It focuses on five areas: Poverty alleviation, gender equality, leadership, climate change and disaster risk reduction, and emergency response. Recently UnitingWorld has been supporting partner churches in the Pacific to develop contextual theologies for development in the areas of gender equality, disaster resilience and climate change, and child protection.

National Director

Dr Sureka Goringe has been the National Director of UnitingWorld since July 2017.

References

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External links