Church partnerships Tag

A reflection from Tacloban

Rev Cyrus Kung, Church Engagement Manager (SA & WA) at UnitingWorld reflects on his recent visit to Tacloban:
“I sat in a humid room in Tacloban City, Philippines, listening to Filipino theologians speak about what it means to follow Jesus in their context.”

I was there with Rev Philip Gardner, General Secretary, SA Synod, and Dr Sureka Goringe, UnitingWorld National Director, representing the Uniting Church in Australia at the 13th Quadrennial General Assembly of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP).

Tacloban knows something about resilience. Many will remember its name spoken in the same breath as the devastation of Typhoon Haiyan in 2013*. To sit there, more than a decade later, among Christians full of faith and fire, was itself a kind of sermon.

The Assembly gathered under a theme simple and demanding in equal measure: “Walking with Jesus: Journeying with the Anawim”.

Anawim is a Hebrew word referring to the bowed-down ones, the poor, those who have nothing left to lean on except God.In Mary’s Magnificat, the Anawim are the ones God lifts while the proud are scattered. And in Jesus, God doesn’t send the Anawim a message from a safe distance – God becomes one of them, entering the story from the bottom.

I had read of this theology before, but I was struck when I heard it spoken by people for whom it isn’t academic.They weren’t reflecting on poverty from a comfortable distance. They were reflecting on it from within and finding, in Jesus, a living reason to keep going. I thought of the communities we walk alongside in Australia: the newly arrived, the isolated, the ones for whom Sunday morning is the one place they feel truly seen. Different context, same gospel. The same Jesus who moved toward the least and the lost calls us to do the same.

This is what partnership through UnitingWorld means. We may be far away, but we are walking the same road. When we support our UCCP sisters and brothers, through prayer, through giving, through showing up, we are not offering charity from above.

We are joining a journey already underway, toward a world where the hungry are filled, the bowed-down are lifted, and no one is left behind.

* In 2013 Typhoon Haiyan, also known as Super Typhoon Yolanda in Philippines, caused over 6000 deaths in Philippines. Because the Tacloban area has a high population in low-lying areas, it was a major centre of devastation and loss of life.

Learning together with a Pacific perspective

When Antony McMullen, Church Engagement Manager for Vic/Tas, visited Bacchus Marsh Uniting Church, the congregation experienced a shared act of learning, listening and reflection, exploring climate justice from the perspective of communities across the Pacific.

Antony facilitated a simulation game that invited people to think about unequal power relationships and the very different impacts of climate change.

The room was divided into two teams: one representing Pacific Island communities and one representing Australia. A children’s colouring activity brought brightness and creativity into the room. The simulation helped show, in a clear and practical way, that those who have contributed least to climate change are often among those who face its sharpest effects.

This is not an abstract issue. For UnitingWorld’s partner churches across Asia, Africa and the Pacific, climate change affects homes, livelihoods, food security, safety and the future of whole communities.

Our partner churches are at the heart of local responses, walking alongside people through change, loss and hope. The activity did not try to offer easy answers. Instead, it opened space for deeper awareness and care, using gentle humour to help the congregation engage with a serious topic.

The visit reflected something central to UnitingWorld’s work: partnership begins with listening. It grows through mutual respect, prayer, learning and shared responsibility.

Australian congregations have a role to play by standing with our partner churches, supporting locally-led work, and keeping climate justice before our communities.

It reminded us that our relationships across the Pacific are not distant or symbolic. They are part of who we are as a church.

UnitingWorld gives thanks for congregations who continue to learn, pray, give and act in support of partner churches across Asia, Africa and the Pacific.

Weaving stronger partnerships in the Pacific

We recently hosted our Annual Pacific Partners Forum in Nadi, Fiji, bringing together delegates from ten Pacific church partners from across the region with a focus on climate resilience and ending gender-based violence.

We asked delegates about the challenges they’re facing, what “abundant life” looks like in their communities and what partnership means to them.

Below are some of their answers and messages to you!

Pacific Partners gather in Fiji to share knowledge, strengthen solidarity

20–24 April 2026 | Nadi, Fiji

Church and community partners from across the Pacific came together in Nadi, Fiji this week for UnitingWorld’s Pacific Regional Forum 2026, a week of listening, learning and renewing commitment to shared mission.

Participants joined from Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Tonga, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Kiribati and Samoa, alongside UnitingWorld staff, and representatives from the Pacific Conference of Churches and Pasifika Communities University.

Confronting the climate crisis together

The forum brought into sharp focus the devastating human and environmental toll of climate change across the region. With tears and honesty, participants shared the lived reality of rising seas and saltwater intrusion across low-lying atoll nations like Tuvalu and Kiribati, where the threat is not distant but existential.

“The rising seawater is contaminating water sources, degrading agricultural land, and deepening uncertainty for families in Kiribati,” said Uniting Church in Kiribati Secretary for Mission, Rev Maleta Tenten.

“We are now forced to import most of our food, because it is so hard to grow in our soil now. The heath impacts are a crisis. Our islands are disappearing. We urgently need to work together to save Kiribati.”

A community visit brought these realities home. Forum participants travelled to an inland village that had been forced to relocate after deadly landslides destroyed their homes and buried a family alive. It was a sobering, powerful reminder of why disaster risk reduction and community preparedness are central to the church’s work in the Pacific.

Hope, action and equitable leadership

Alongside these difficult stories, participants heard powerful accounts of hope,  churches across the region working together to transform lives and communities. Forum sessions also explored how gender-equitable leadership and participation are essential to building communities that are resilient, prepared and sustainable.

In solidarity with these commitments, forum participants marked Thursdays in Black, the global campaign standing with victims and survivors of gender-based violence, and challenging the cultures of silence that allow it to continue.

Walking together

“UnitingWorld’s Pacific partnerships are built on relationships of mutuality, respect, and shared vision,” reflected National Director Dr Sureka Goringe.

“This forum is one expression of that, a space where Pacific church partners lead, share and strengthen the work they are already doing in their communities, and that we are blessed to support.”