JENSEN UNITING CHURCH - What can Lay Stakeholders know?

by Robyn Leversha

Hi! This is my story as shared with Peter Mitchell when he came to Jensen Uniting Church for a building Audit this month.
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My name is Robyn Leversha who in my retirement has taken on the role of church council/congregational chairperson, which is a very grand title for a very small faith community in the rapidly growing Northern Suburbs of Townsville.

My story starts:  I was in the Uniting Church before it began.  Living on Yorke Peninsula, our local Maitland circuit of 11 churches worked very closely with the Maitland Congregational Church, youth group camps and pulpit swaps were common from about 1967. In 1968 I was sent for my secondary education to PGC, a Presbyterian boarding school in Adelaide, so I picked up the theological flavours of all three denominations prior to Union.

While at university studying Physiotherapy I joined a very large, active Christian community at Dulwich Rose Park which had a thriving youth group, netball, tennis teams, Sunday school for children and adults held separately after morning worship in 3 centres, one Methodist, one Congregational and a Church of Christ. When the Uniting Church in Australia was formed, initially church councils were to consist of at least 1/3 women, 1/3 under 25 and 1/3 men, ministers and others with very specific financial or business skills could be appointed. Being under 25 and female, I got to be on church council.  At the time I had been teaching Sunday School and really wanted to return to adult class, not teach children. Since the Church of Christ did not at that time enter the Uniting Church but was part of our untied parish, we had to write a compromise constitution to be approved by both governing bodies so, yes, I do know what is in The Basis of Union and the high ideas set down there, as well as the Act of parliament that brought the Uniting Church in Australia into being. Many meetings went from 7pm to 11pm on a weeknight fussing over the correct adverb or adjective - 15 minutes extensions became common occurrences.

I moved to southwest Sydney in 1981, married, and as Sunday School superintendent, young mother, a clinical supervisor of physio students, and also on Bankstown church council, occasionally got to go to the then Georges River Presbytery. It was a very daunting experience dominated by white over-forty men, a few women also mostly over forty and very few female ministers or first generation or immigrant ministers. I did not persist in attending.  Thirty years later I attended as a congregational rep to find a much more diverse cross section of gender and cultural background, albeit mainly over 40s. It was a far more pleasant place to be, but still very much dominated by factional ministerial politics.

After much separation and heartache which was the covid experience of 2019, ‘20 and ’21, and being unable to travel interstate to visit my children and grandchildren and my ageing parents, it was time to move. My arrival in Townsville meant that I could be an involved and doting grandparent. Leaving work life behind I needed to connect with a new local Christian community.

North Queensland was a culture shock - bible studies were gender specific, much of the multi-cultural integrated worship and fellowship and sharing of my Revesby Uniting church fellowship were missing. Presbytery happens over two days - yes, we do sing in more than one language, share a very diverse diet and hear some triumphs and failures, but much time is spent receiving information from Synod agencies. I had come from two years of Zoom Presbytery meetings, so if you were interstate or on holidays one just logged in and voted on Presbytery matters with little Synod involvement, the meetings lasting max two hours, four times a year.

Thank you to Peter for coming north from Brisbane for the audit and I look forward to Peter Rose confirming when the Asbestos audit will occur.

Stakeholders are volunteers, committed to their God and Lord and have a lot of stories to share - the spirit works though us all in different ways, should anyone wish to listen.