Common Grace invites all Australian Churches to: Journey alongside Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples by holding an Aboriginal Sunday service in your church or faith community on Sunday 19th January 2025.
Annually, Aboriginal Sunday is celebrated the
Sunday before January 26, as an opportunity for individual congregations and faith communities to reclaim William Cooper’s Aboriginal Sunday, a call to the Australian Church to stand in solidarity and pray for justice and the flourishing of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Aboriginal Sunday is an important opportunity for your church community to go deeper in listening, learning, and being led by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Christian Leaders.
In 2025, Common Grace will again be providing you with Aboriginal Sunday
Church Resources developed by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Christian Leaders, with a focus on the theme of ‘Defiant Hope’.
In the journey of walking together for healing and justice in these lands, there are times when hope is something we have to courageously dare to believe and cling to. A year on from the Voice referendum, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and non-Indigenous allies are still feeling so much grief and sadness, and hope for change feels hard to find with continued injustices
including a lack of closing the gap, children as young as 10 being locked up, lack of treaty and truth telling, high rates of deaths in custody, and children in out of home care. It is in moments of darkness, sadness and heaviness, when hope is not easy to imagine, that we activate hope and our faith in our Creator God’s promises that are true and faithful. This defiant hope is one of
confidence and courage, bringing people together to build each other up, believing that our God of justice will carry us through these moments. We are all invited to participate in God’s story of healing, reconciliation and flourishing.
This Aboriginal Sunday we will take inspiration from Aboriginal Christian
Leaders of the past, and commit to walking together in this hope, turning our voices of sorrow into songs of praise.
Through a divinely-inspired co-incidence, our parish had earmarked Sunday 19 January 2025 as a great opportunity for our parish to have a service and picnic at our last rural centre, St James, in support and celebration of the worshipping community there. It has recently been pointed out that it is also
the date for marking Aboriginal Sunday, and we will find ourselves worshipping at our church on Jacksons Track – which is also the name for the Indigenous community that thrived further on up the Track for many decades.
Christ Church continues to be used regularly for the Sorry Business of descendants of that community.
Who or what is Common Grace?
Common Grace began in 2014 as a story of prayer and conversation from around Australia and the world, woven together by the power of God’s spirit.
Throughout Australia, a number of Christian changemakers were questioning why they were looking outside the church in order to take action on issues of justice. They believed that pursuing justice is a core part of the Christian faith and tradition but were not seeing it lived out in their communities. As
conversations evolved, they began asking broader questions about the type of change that God desires – for individuals, for societies, and for the world.
Common Grace emerged to fill a gap in Australian society, where there appeared to be a lack of both positive Christian action platforms and gracious public Christian voices.
Common Grace seeks to not only encourage followers of Jesus to act on issues of injustice, but also to provide them with tools and training so they have an effective voice in the public sphere. This is a movement of people coming together to pursue the justice, beauty and generosity we see lived out
abundantly by Jesus, helping to positively transform Australian society.
We have come together as those from different Christian traditions who stand
in the continuity of the historic Christian faith, centred on the life, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ as witnessed to in Holy Scripture:
× We have read the scriptures and heard God’s call to seek justice and love
mercy (Micah 6.8).
× We have been loved by Jesus, and therefore must love our neighbours and our enemies (Matthew 22.39).
× We have received the Holy Spirit and are empowered to be salt and light (Matthew 5.13-14).
× We’re on about ‘doing good’ (Matthew 5.16).
Given these scriptural mandates, we want to be a faithful presence united for the common good.
Together for the common good, discovering common ground and sharing in common grace.
At the centre of what justice means in an Australian context is truth-telling about our history and therefore Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Christian leaders are fundamental to all our work