Julie:
An excellent two day ecumenical conference was held in Geelong in June. There were representatives from Anglican, Catholic, Baptist, Salvation Army, Lutheran and Uniting churches there from all over Australia - so much discussion on different ways of doing ministry in the bush. I very much enjoyed talking to others who were trying innovative ways of bring the message of hope to the rural areas.
There was some very interesting research presented on rural congregations, as well as a presentation on the rural context by Prof John William, and then time with those there to share with each other in small groups.
On the second morning I participated in a session where 6 different models of ministry were presented. We heard about ecumenical parishes run jointly by the Anglican and Uniting church, area team ministry with multiple congregations, resource ministry, lay lead ministry, itinerant ministry and integrated ministry with "op shops". I talked about the model of rural chaplaincy that we use in NSW.
Following the session we broke into small groups and it was a good exercise for me to discuss some of the issues around our model with others from other denominations and other states.
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