The Inner North
Introduction
The Inner North Canberra congregations of
• City Uniting Church
• O’Connor Uniting Church
• St Ninian’s Uniting Church
• St Margaret’s Uniting Church, and
• St Columba’s Uniting Church
have been meeting together in the last 18 months to consider new ways
of being church in the new century.
We have been considering the changing nature of the church in the
21st Century, the changing nature of the Inner North region of Canberra
as epitomised by the advent of light rail, and the changing nature of the
congregations.
As part of this process we employed the Rev Steve Coster to prepare a
report for us about the changes occurring in the Inner North, and possi-
bilities for the inner north congregations.
These few pages are a summary of Steve Coster’s report.
Steve’s full report is available from the church office as a paper copy, or
you can email me at [email protected] and I will send you an
electronic copy.
Summary of Steve Coster’s report ‘Inner North Uniting Church
Community Building/Alternative Expressions of Church’
Steve noted in his report that ‘One of our early findings, affirmed by ex-
perience from the wider church, quickly tells us that there is a distinct
and significant difference between a city ministry and what we might
somewhat clumsily call a suburban ministry.
City Ministry typically includes characteristics that include meals pro-
grams, a strong diversity of attendance, a very wide ‘drawing area’, of-
ten more an ‘intellectual approach’, university ministry, the significance
of place e.g. a city’s cathedral. Cities have been called places that are
“dense, intense and diverse”1 and you can add transient and globalised
to such a list’.
St Margaret’s News
10
December 2018