National Gathering has come and gone, and I have been left feeling filled, grateful and hopeful for the future.
During our first worship of the weekend, we were asked a simple question: What do you hope will come out of this weekend?
As I spoke with a partner, my answer was simple: hope.
I wanted to leave the weekend with a sense of hope for the future of the church in Australia, and I wanted that for everyone else attending, too. And I hoped we would return home carrying something with us that we could share with those who were unable to be there.
Hope can sometimes sound vague, but over the course of the weekend it began to feel much more tangible, tied to a growing sense of what faithful action might look like.
There was a strong focus on the strategic direction of the Australia Mission Centre, Following the Spirit into a Shared Future. Through the sessions, small-group discussions, walks around the grounds, conversations over meals and time spent simply being together, I felt a growing sense of possibility around that shared future.
Not a hope that we suddenly have all the answers or know exactly where every next step will lead. Rather, a hope that there is space for possibilities and freedom to act on them. That faithful ideas can be explored. That new ways of being church can be imagined. That each step can be listened to, learned from and supported. And perhaps most importantly, hope that none of us is doing this alone.
That connects closely with something I often share when people ask about my role as Communications Coordinator. A large part of my job is to find the wonderful things happening across the Mission Centre and share them with the wider church.
Every good-news story I have the opportunity to share gives me hope. Each one paints another small part of the picture of who we are becoming: a church with deep compassion, a willingness to serve, and a desire to become more fully the Community of Christ we proclaim ourselves to be.
National Gathering brought many of those individual stories into one place.
For me personally, one of the greatest gifts of the weekend was finally meeting so many people I have emailed, spoken with or worked alongside from a distance over the past year. There is something very different about sitting across the table from someone, laughing together, sharing a meal or simply having a conversation in person.
Each morning began with a hymn sing led by Geoff Ivers, and I loved the way it set the tone for our time together. For so many of us, hymns hold memories, theology, comfort and connection. Singing familiar and newer hymns together, accompanied by Geoff’s joyful spirit, felt like more than simply a way to begin the day.
In some ways, it became an image of the weekend itself: old and new voices together, familiar foundations alongside new possibilities, each person contributing to something larger than themselves.
I went into National Gathering hoping for hope.
I left with it.
Not because the future is perfectly mapped out, but because I was reminded of the people with whom we are walking, the stories already unfolding across our church, and the Spirit we continue to trust as we move into a shared future together.
Calee Loughran
Communications Coordinator