The UC are closing Sunnybank Uniting Church.
I'm quite negative about this although I must say that I don't worship there and effectively it's not actually my business.
The service included speeches from several people. Most reminiscing positivly about their lives here as a child or young adult. One fellow (Grant) gave a forthright description of recent [shitty] events.
I'll have to ponder my opinion on this.
I think the UC has some real systemic problems. I've obviously got my biases. I consider the UC was totally unprofessional in the way I was not followed up when my marriage failed. But I digress.
This lot have about 30 worshipping regularly. If they were young people, the church would be over the moon but because they are old, the church decides they are not worth anything. These are people who have given their lives to the church. The church fucks them over.
On the building side, it feels like higher levels of the church are fixated on demolition and safety is being used as an excuse to close it. This was hinted at when one speaker said that the remnants of the congregation were not allowed to get their own engineering assessment. Politics all the way.
It feels like the UC is top heavy. Financially naive. Make bad investments at high levels and appropriate property to pay their bills. The difficulty being that so few people go to church these days. A few really big essentially independent churches are doing well and they attract the people while small local churches struggle and gradually fade.
It's a pity that community seems to have evaporated.
