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Wesley Mission is a name used by three independent Uniting Church groups which are a part of the Uniting Missions Network of UnitingCare Australia. These predominantly grew out of inner city Central Methodist Missions of the Methodist Church of Australasia. Most of the Methodist City Missions of that era later joined together to form Mission Australia.
Wesley Mission operates out of over 200 centres and employs over 2,000 staff with a budget of $160 million.
Methodists began doing welfare work in Sydney in 1812. This work became Sydney's Central Methodist Mission in 1884. In 1946 it opened a psychiatric care facility, now known as Wesley Hospital in Ashfield. It later opened another mental health hospital in Kogarah.
In 1963, while led by Reverend Dr Sir Alan Walker, it established Lifeline, now Australia's largest national phone support service and operating in 19 countries.
In 1977, it became known as Wesley Central Mission when it became part of the Uniting Church at its founding. In 1978 Gordon Moyes became Superintendent, and it started producing the nationally broadcast TV show Turn Around Australia (now Wesley Impact! TV ) on the Nine Network. In 1979, Edward Eagar Lodge opened, extending on earlier homeless housing work started in 1866. In 1989, it established the Wesley Institute, an educational organisation that is now known as Excelsia College (and left the organisation in 2013). In 1994, the organisation's name changed to Wesley Mission. In 1995 it established Wesley LifeForce, now Australia's largest provider of anti-suicide training.
Rev Dr. Keith Vincent Garner became Superintendent in 2006.
In 2021, the Mission called Stu Cameron, a Uniting Church minister who had grown several churches on the Gold Coast, to become the CEO and Superintendent. [1]
Newcastle City Mission was founded in 1940 by a group of Newcastle business people with the aim of assisting those in distress and poverty throughout Newcastle and the Hunter Valley. In 1999, Newcastle City Mission merged with Wesley Mission Sydney to become Wesley Mission Newcastle.
Wesley Mission Newcastle services the Newcastle and Hunter region. Services delivered from the Newcastle offices include gambling and financial counselling, youth services, a seniors living centre, vocational training, home and community care, emergency relief, a retail furniture store, family services and chaplaincy. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
Queensland's Methodists began in Brisbane in 1847, Albert Street, Brisbane, doing a variety of welfare work. This work grew into the Brisbane Central Methodist Mission, offering a broad range of services to Brisbane's poor. In 1936 Queensland's first aged care community, it opened the Garden Settlement (now Wheller Gardens), in Chermside. They changed their name to Wesley Mission Queensland in 2016.
By 2017, it was providing services for 100,000 people each year, including childcare for 1338 children and 13 aged care services and retirement living for more than 4000 older people, over 600 free meals pre provided each week from Emergency and Hardship service. [7]
Wesley Mission Victoria (previously Wesley Mission Melbourne) provides a range of community services that help people improve their quality of life and increase their social and economic participation. It works across a range of service areas including aged care, children youth and family, crisis and homelessness, disability, and employment. [8]
Wesley is the organisation behind some of Melbourne's best known and most valued community services, including the Lifeline Melbourne telephone counselling service and Wesley Do Care – a social support service helping older people stay socially active and participate in their community.
Wesley Mission Victoria was established as the Melbourne Central Methodist Mission in 1893, [9] next to the Wesley Church in Lonsdale Street, Melbourne. At that time, the area was known as the 'back slums' of Melbourne and was notorious for opium dens, gambling houses and places of ill-repute.
Wesley's heritage is founded on the response of Wesleyan Methodists in Victoria to the severe economic depression and associated inner city poverty of the early 1890s.
Today the organisation employs over 800 staff and receives the support of over 1,600 volunteers who help to deliver more than 50 services across metropolitan Melbourne. [10]
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 2016 census, about 870,200 Australians identified with the church; in the 2011 census, 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 Anglican Church of Australia, formerly known as the Church of England in Australia and Tasmania, is a Christian church in Australia and an autonomous church of the Anglican Communion. It is the second largest church in Australia after the Catholic Church. According to the 2016 census, 3.1 million Australians identify as Anglicans. As of 2016, the Anglican Church of Australia had more than 3 million nominal members and 437,880 active baptised members. For much of Australian history since the arrival of the First Fleet in January 1788, the church was the largest religious denomination. It remains today one of the largest providers of social welfare services in Australia.
Sir Alan Edgar Walker was an Australian theologian, evangelist, social commentator, broadcaster and activist, and the Superintendent of Wesley Mission.
The Wesleyan Methodist Church of Australia is a Christian denomination with its origins in Wesleyan Methodism. It is the organisational name for contemporary The Wesleyan Church in Australia.
The Presbyterian Church of Australia (PCA), founded in 1901, is the largest Presbyterian denomination in Australia. The larger Uniting Church in Australia incorporated about 70% of the PCA in 1977.
Mission Australia is a national Christian charity that provides a range of community services throughout Australia. It has its roots in the Brisbane sector of The British and Foreign Bible Society’s sub-committee, The Colporteur Society (1869), and Sydney City Mission (1862), but was only officially established in 1996, bringing together a number of city missions across the country. The organisation specialises in the areas of homelessness and housing, families and children, early learning, youth, employment and skills, substance abuse, disability, mental health, and strengthening communities. Sharon Callister has been CEO since March 2022.
Wesley Church is a Uniting Church in the centre of Melbourne, in the State of Victoria, Australia.
Alfred Harold Wood OBE was a 20th-century Australian Christian minister, educator, writer, hymnologist and advocate of church union.
Christianity is the largest religion in Australia, with a total of 43.9% of the nation-wide population identifying with a Christian denomination in the 2021 census. The first presence of Christianity in Australia began with British colonisation in what came to be known as New South Wales in 1788.
The National Christian Youth Convention (NCYC) is a national conference for people aged 16–30 years held by the Uniting Church in Australia every second January. It is held in a different Australian city each time in the long summer school and university holidays. It has attracted over 3,000 delegates from around Australia plus visiting delegations from overseas countries. It is one of the biggest events for youth on the Uniting Church's calendar.
Australian non-residential architectural styles are a set of Australian architectural styles that apply to buildings used for purposes other than residence and have been around only since the first colonial government buildings of early European settlement of Australia in 1788.
Wynnum West and Lindum are outer eastern suburb in the City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. In the 2016 census, Wynnum West including the locality of Lindum had a population of 12,292 people.
Philip Leslie Freier is an Australian Anglican bishop. He has been the 13th Archbishop of Melbourne since 16 December 2006. He served as Primate of Australia from 28 June 2014 until 31 March 2020. Previously, he served as Bishop of the Northern Territory between 1999 and 2006.
Ruth Beatrice Fairfax was a founding member of the Australian Country Women's Association and the first President of the Queensland Country Women's Association. The federal electorate of Fairfax is named in her honour.
Keith Vincent Garner AM is an ordained Methodist Minister, granted permission by the British Methodist Church to serve the Uniting Church in Australia as Superintendent of Wesley Mission in Sydney, Australia from February 2006. In that role, he had responsibility for more than 2,400 staff and 6,500 volunteers in 180 different projects engaged in social and community work with a wide range of community groups throughout NSW.
Responsible gambling awareness week is held annually in May and focuses on the promotion of responsible gambling and services that assist people with problem gambling issues throughout Australia.
Ipswich Uniting Church is a heritage-listed Uniting church at Ellenborough Street, Ipswich, City of Ipswich, Queensland, Australia. It was designed and built by Samuel Shenton in 1858. It is also known as Ipswich Central Mission, Wesleyan Chapel, Ellenborough Street Methodist Church, and Ipswich City Uniting Church. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992.
The Queen's Birthday Honours 2008 were appointments Australian honours system to recognise and reward good works by citizens of Australia and other nations that contribute to Australia. The Birthday Honours are awarded as part of the Queen's Official Birthday celebrations and were announced on 8 June 2008 in Australia.
Blue Care is an agency of UnitingCare Queensland, the health and community arm of the Uniting Church in Queensland, Australia. Originally established as the Blue Nursing Service by the Methodist Church in 1953, it has grown into one of the largest not-for-profit providers of residential aged care, community care and retirement living in Queensland and northern New South Wales. In 2009 on Queensland Day it was announced that Blue Care was the recipient of the Queensland Greats Awards.
Stuart MacNicol Cameron is an ordained Minister in the Uniting Church in Australia. Since 2021 he has served as the CEO and Superintendent of Wesley Mission, the largest parish in the denomination, and one of the largest Christian not-for-profit organisations in Australia. Previously he had been the lead minister at Newlife, the largest Uniting church in Queensland.
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