Recently we have shared in the week of Prayer for Christian Unity and Refugee Week. 

Next week is NAIDOC Week.  

These ‘weeks’ provide opportunities to focus on themes that are vital to our integrity as faith communities in the context of Australia. The welcoming of the stranger, seeking reconciliation and deeper grace with Australia’s First Peoples and respecting the difference and commonalities are so important.  

At the same time as it is NAIDOC week, the Australian Catholic Church will gather in the Second Plenary Council and the Quakers will hold their Yearly Meeting. The Uniting Church in Victoria has been meeting and recently it was the Anglican General Synod.  Many other meetings are taking place. 

In the complexity of our environment we know that that no one person, church or tradition is complete on its own. 

We need each other and rely on each of playing our part in the context of our being together ‘the Body of Christ’. 

Wrote Paul in Ephesians 4: 15-16:

‘But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love’. 

This is such a complete image of the Body of Christ – the body growing up, each part connected and working, and building itself up in love.

We look to the future with hope and expectation – never pretending that there will not be challenges, uncertainties and difficulties. Our hope and expectation is that as we all play our part the result will be more than we can ever imagine or anticipate. 

Rev. John Gilmore

NCCA President