Project Plan and our work
Between now and the 17th Assembly in July 2024, the Act2 Project is seeking to engage the whole Church in exploring and discerning about our future together.
This project is grounded in prayer and attentive to the leading of the Holy Spirit. We are guided by the faith and the unity of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church as described in the Basis of Union. We are also shaped by our core identity markers as the Uniting Church, expressed in the Basis of Union and in the foundational commitments that have defined and shaped our life together over many decades.
The Act2 Project is led by the national Act2 Steering Committee and a staffed Project Unit, established following the decision of the 16th Assembly. The Steering Committee is made up of people from across the Uniting Church. Meet them all here.
There is now an approved Act2 Project plan, running over three phases, focussed on four workstreams.
The work of the project through until the 17th Assembly will be in three phases.
-
This is a time for us to explore ideas and possibilities.
From late 2022 until May 2023 we are exploring all the possibilities of where God may be leading us. We are reaching out to every congregation and faith community right across the country. We are deepening our engagement with key leaders across our Church. This is to help shape the key insights, issues and contexts to shape the options we offer the Church.
We hope to generate and explore ideas, think about how we could shape our life differently, and prepare ourselves to participate in the next phase - an intensive period of shared discernment across the Uniting Church.
This will culminate in a whole of Church period of prayer and reflection between Pentecost 2023 on 28 May and the 46th anniversary of the Uniting Church on 22 June.
-
This is a time when we will engage in an intensive period of shared discernment.
From June to November 2023 we will be asking the Church to discern where you believe God is leading us. We will participate in as many meetings of Presbyteries and Synods as possible along with other key governing bodies. We will seek to offer the Church possible options and directions to assist this process.
All parts of the Church - congregations, church councils, agencies, schools, presbyteries, synods ministers, colleges, conferences, and networks - will be invited to consider specific ideas.
To find solutions for our life we will need to find ways of finding common directions not only within councils but across our councils and governing bodies. This will be a period of intense prayer and deliberation essential to the success of the project.
-
This is when we will make choices about the recommendations to be put before the 17th Assembly for action.
This will involve consideration of the insight and wisdom drawn from our collective discernment.
It has always been the hope of this project that it would lead towards concrete action and change, inspired and informed by the reflection and discernment of the Church. We anticipate that the change arising from this process will begin to take place across the triennium of the 17th Assembly.
