Sydney Anglican news

Are we seeing a global, cut-price Christian publishing network being inadvertently birthed out of a former missionary’s home in a sleepy South Coast town?

Volunteers from Turramurra’s Anglican church have helped make a silver-service lunch a hit with residents at a nearby retirement village. Natasha Percy found that the local clergy are surprised by the doors that have opened.

Depression sent Paula Vouris on a spiritual journey. Paula tells Judy Adamson how she ended up outside a church praying that someone would invite her in.

Judy Adamson goes inside a very unusual Sydney church, meets tough, hard-living surfers who have had their lives radically changed, and discovers how a whole suburb is being transformed.

Andrew ‘Fishtail’ Fisher loves motor racing but he also loves Jesus Christ. In 2007 he found a way to bring his two passions together and formed the Jesus Racing Team. However, amid the thrill of being a race car driver Andrew has had to endure some extraordinary challenges on top of the mishaps of racing. Joseph Smith went to interview him at Oran Park.

Food drives in partnership with Sydney Anglicare offer churches a great reason, and not just a great excuse, to go out and connect with the local community.

I am glad that the good old fashioned ‘Giving your testimony’ kind of talk has died out. I became a believer back in the late 1950's! My question is, “Why are you still a Christian?”

I re-read the recommendations on the back of the book for the twentieth time, wondering whether I had read something quite different by accident...

Mission amongst Muslim peoples is one of five strategic areas of ministry that CMS Australia is emphasising in Vision 2012. This Vision outlines the blueprint for how CMS will do mission over the next five years. As thousands gather for CMS Summer School in Katoomba this week, CMS Federal Secretary John Thew is highlighting the importance of mission in Muslim areas and hoping to see CMS have at least 65 workers in the Muslim world by 2012 – an increase of 50 within the next four years.

I think the best way to begin an article like this one is with some friendly advice: do NOT be afraid. Digital television may be the best technological development for Christians in a decade, and though it involves lots of cables, you can cope with its arrival.

Attracting many new community contacts, Mowbray Anglican Church successfully launched a new event in their church’s calendar in 2008: the Christmas Night Market.

As the financial crisis deepens, Sydney Anglican organisations are working to cut costs.

In the quiet Austrian town of Amstetten in the balmy spring of April 2008, a truly horrifying vision of hell was discovered by police in the cellar of a normal suburban home.

This summer Crusaders are supplementing their traditional ‘offline’ methods of reaching students with the gospel with a new ‘online’ strategy.

Without a shadow of doubt Seattle-based church planter Mark Driscoll was the most newsworthy person of the year for Sydney Anglicans. His evangelistic talk to 10,000 people at the Sydney Entertainment Centre was newsworthy in its own right, but it was his criticisms of local ministry that really shook up our news cycle. So what lessons can we learn from those stories that were popular, as well as those many worthy stories that failed to find an audience?

I laughed out loud when I first read Elizabeth Gilbert’s description of her and a friend eating a margherita pizza with double mozzarella in Naples, Italy. But there is a seriousness to this book.

Just when I thought the National Church Life Survey team had gone quiet, along comes another outstanding report that raises two serious concerns for Sydney Anglicans seeking to connect to youth.

Sydney churches have seen good attendance this Christmas season with St Andrew's Cathedral using a seating reservation system for Christmas Eve carols for the first time.

When popular surveys were conducted for the best book of the last millennium and of the last century The Lord of the Rings was at the top much to the dismay of many a literary critic. It was indicative of the popularity of the fantasy genre of which Tolkien is a founding father and perhaps also of the movies that had captured the popular imagination.

Archbishop Dr Peter Jensen has delivered his Christmas message, stressing that commitment, compassion and 'generous care' will be needed in the year ahead.