Ray Gormann

I have been a Uniting Church minister for 35 years, mostly in the inner city suburbs of Melbourne. This has given me a keen interest and involvement in urban mission and how the church engages with the bewildering but wonderful cosmopolitan mix of cultures living in the often gritty environment of inner Melbourne.

I grew up in Ashburton and after a desultory secondary school experience, and a slightly more successful cooking apprenticeship, a profound spiritual experience in my late teens years saw me candidating for the ministry, much to my surprise, in my early twenties.

I was ordained in 1985 and have had congregational placements in Geelong, St Kilda, Brunswick, mental health ministry at Sunshine hospital, then back again to congregational placements at Sunshine and now Church of All Nations.

I am committed to the pursuit of a life within the church that focuses upon a creative and thoughtful expression of the tradition of the church in a contemporary setting. This commits the church to an intelligent critique of both the culture it finds itself occupying and the gospel that carries the theology and mind set of the church.