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 of Australia united under the Basis of Union. According to the church, it had 243,000 members in 2018. In the , about 870,200 Australians identified with the church; in the , the figure was 1,065,796. The UCA is Australia's third-largest Christian denomination, behind the Catholic and the Anglican Churches. There are around 2,000 UCA congregations, and 2001 National Church Life Survey (NCLS) research indicated that average weekly attendance was about 10 per cent of census figures. The UCA is one of Australia's largest non-government providers of community and health services. Its service network consists of over 400 agencies, institutions, and parish missions, with its areas of service including aged care, hospitals, children, youth and family, disability, employment, emergency relief, drug and alcohol abuse, youth homelessness and suicide. Affiliated agencies include UCA's community and health-service provider network, affiliated schools, the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress, Frontier Services and UnitingWorld. Organisation The UCA is a national, unincorporated association of councils, each of which has responsibility for functions in the church. The councils are congregations (local), presbyteries (regional), synods (state) and an assembly (national). The membership of each council is established by the constitution. Each council includes Women and Men, lay and ordained. The offices of president of assembly, moderator of synod (who chair these councils) and other offices are open to all UCA members. The UCA is a non-episcopal church, with no bishops. Leadership and pastoral roles are nominally performed by presbyteries, but in reality by individuals. Assembly The UCA assembly meets every three years, and is chaired by the president. The 14th Assembly met in Perth from 12 to 18 July 2015. The 15th Assembly, hosted by the Synod of Victoria and Tasmania in Box Hill, met in July 2018. Assembly business between meetings is conducted by the Assembly Standing Committee, which meets three times per year (usually in March, July and November). Membership is drawn from throughout Australia, with 18 members elected at each assembly. President The current president is Reverend Sharon Hollis since she was installed as president in the online meeting of the 16th Assembly on 17 July 2021. She replaced Deidre Palmer, who had succeeded Stuart McMillan at the start of the 15th Assembly on 8 July 2018. Palmer was the second woman in the role, following Jill Tabart (1994-1997). Palmer was the moderator of the Presbytery and Synod of South Australia from November 2013 to November 2016. Hollis was moderator of the Synod of Victoria and Tasmania at the time of her election in 2018 as the president-elect and became president at the beginning of the sixteenth assembly, which was to be held in Queensland in 2021. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the meeting was moved to a shorter, online form. Synods Synods are UCA