Welcome to the GWIK!

The GWIK (Glen Waverley Interactive Kerygma) is up and running.

This is your Home Page, the first page you see when you access your wiki.

The first steps you might want to do:

1. Register an account. The very first account is an admin account which is able to configure the wiki.
2. Check the configuration of your wiki. You can change its name, configure the permissions necessary to view and edit pages or upload attachments.
3. If you require users to confirm their email address (recommended), make sure that you will configure and test your Email Preferences.
4. Edit your Home! Do not like the change? Visit the page history and revert any change ever made.
5. You can attach images and other files to any page and then display them and link to them inside the page.
6. Create new pages! If you need help with the Markdown syntax, check out the Markdown guide.
7. Read the user guide and learn about An Otter Wikis features.

If you have any suggestions, feature requests or run into any issues, please reach out and report them via github.

What is the GWIK for?

Well you may ask. The hint is in the name: Glen Waverley Interactive Kerygma. "Kerygma": the essence of the Gospel teaching (Macquarie Dictionary). The GWIK is an initiative of the Faith Development Group, and it is proposed as a "peer to peer instruction and faith enrichment tool".

How does it work?

We all have faith beliefs that we can share. Sharing these beliefs has two immediate advantages: a) both you and the person(s) you share with get to know what others believe, and b) hearing others beliefs give us insight in the depth and perceptions of faith, and makes us all aware of the intrinsic spirituality of others.

But do we share that much? Yes, at church we can participate in what is usually a one-way sharing from leaders to the congregation, and that is itself intrinsically good. But if the congregation is (say) 100 people, then there are 99 other people to share with, and each of those sharings can work in both directions. So there is a total of 198 possible sharings!

I suppose you might say "But I can't possibly talk to 99 other people about my faith. I just don't have time to do that!" Enter the GWIK. You share once with the GWIK some of your faith understandings and beliefs, and immediately 99 other people can gain an insight into your perceptions of your relationship with God, and with Christ.

Russell Crawford and Susan Karoly, in their leadership of 10am worship on Sunday 19 Jan 2025, spoke of each of us discerning the gifts of the spirit that we each might perceive. I have made a start on mine in my home page, John Hurst.

How is it different from the Psalter?

While the GWIK is also a wiki, it is not meant to replace the Psalter. To be fair, the Psalter did have much the same motivations as this GWIKi, but it has become much more, and the uses that people have found for it now outweigh the Psalter's original motivations. This GWIKi is intended to be much less formal, much more casual, and a much more welcoming place to share conversations with other parishioners. It is a place for sharing, and not a church repository. That is boring meeting stuff, and we don't want that here. We hope you see it the same way.