Pilgrimage Spirituality

feet

Steve Taylor recently lead a session at the National Rural Ministry Conference in Barmera, SA. The session was exploring Festival Spirituality and other ways that people in the Hebrew Scriptures would gather as faith community, worship or participate as a member of a community of faith. His framework categorised 5 ways that described how people [...]

The fear of others has corrupted the Australian soul

An important and timely piece by Rev Andrew Dutney, President of the UCA on the ABC website. Amnesty International has confirmed that conditions for asylum seekers that Australia has sent to Nauru are wretched. There is poor sanitation, inadequate accommodation, overcrowding, and the mental and physical health of detainees is deteriorating. Uncertainty and loss of hope [...]

Ultimate Uno

Uno

So… Uno becoming a bit boring? Here’s a few ideas to spice it up a bit… It really depends on how silly you want to make the game… When a yellow card goes down everyone has to snap the pile and last person to do that either a) gets the pile or b) picks up [...]

Conversations… the way I wish they would happen

devo

I’m regularly asked for suggestions of good/great youth ministry resources and I’m happy to oblige with a referral to one or 100 different ideas, I have after-all been in this gig for many years and have an incredibly large library of resources and ideas from all over the place. But many of the conversations rarely [...]

An Open Letter to the Church on FairTrade

FairtradeLogo

The last couple of weeks have been “Fair Trade Fortnight.” Now, Fair Trade has been a bit of a hobby horse for both my wife and myself over the last few years and forgive me if you’ve heard all of this before, but please continue reading because while many of us have heard this before [...]

This Advent – Stop The Donkeys

Stop The Donkeys

We’d like to invite you to think a bit harder this Christmas. It seems to me that there’s a part of the story of Jesus’ birth that we seldom dwell on, and we’d like to help your community enter into it. If you’re willing. A few weeks ago I participated in a conversation that gave [...]

When The World Is Reminded That All We Are Is A Bunch of Munchkins

wizard-of-oz-munchkins

I can’t help but thinking of the scene where Dorothy enters Oz, her house in tatters, (having been picked up and thrown through the air by a tornado) she climbs out of the house to find that she’s killed a woman, her house has landed smack dab on the body of someone wearing some remarkably groovy slippers.

If I were a refugee

If I Were a Refugee

Adrian re-posted a reflection by Michael Leuinig from this weekend’s Sunday Age It says what no-one in the media or anyone in our political leadership seems to be saying at the moment, and oh how much it needs to be said… If I were a refugee What a nice one I would be. Not in [...]

The iPhone as a self-imposed artificial burning bush…

U2 360

Standing in the “inner circle” under the claw at the second Melbourne as Bono walked past (no, not bragging, just projecting an image heh heh) I looked around at the sea of iPhones and cameras around me, everyone had one, a couple of people never seemed to put it down, many pulled them out every [...]

Rory’s Storycubes

Rory's Story Cubes

Steve Taylor and Rob Hanks have mentioned these little cubed pieces of goodness before on their blogs but I’ve been wanting to talk about them for a while now.  I’ve got a few fantastic resources to help with creativity, and the Story Cubes have been a great addition to the collection.  The Creativity Hub sent [...]