Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games gold-medallist Deborah Lovely knows all about commitment.

The opportunity to witness through sport should not be restricted to events like the World Cup and other high profile sporting fixtures. Sydney Anglicans are using their regular sporting commitments as an opportunity to witness to Christians locally and worldwide.

On June 3, Network Ten National News Editor and member of Chatswood Baptist Church, Steve Wilson takes a trip that no journalist has made in over 30 years – following Australia in the FIFA World Cup, the world’s largest sporting event.

Can evangelicals afford to write off the emerging church? asks CAMERON MUNRO.

Events between June and August 2006.

I have just returned from a three-week visit to North America, speaking at conferences on expository preaching in Spokane, Calgary and Wheaton, sponsored by the Charles Simeon Trust.

Each month Southern Cross reports on the major decisions of the diocesan Standing Committee.

It’s ‘business as usual’ for Barney’s but a massive effort is underway to ensure its lamp continues to burn brightly. Report by MADELEINE COLLINS and JOSEPH SMITH.

Blacktown’s diversity offers enormous challenges to a changing church.

Aiming to improveWhile traditionally a blue-collar area, white-collar workers are moving in to take advantage of relatively affordable home prices and close proximity to railway and fast road links to Sydney. The church has a Mandarin-Cantonese-speaking Chinese congregation and an Arabic-English-speaking Sudanese congregation, in addition to three English-speaking congregations. The parish also runs a child care centre and an Adolescent and Family Counselling Service.

How God is working in our lives.

Read this month's letters to the editor.

The Vatican and the World Council of Churches (WCC) will create a ‘code of conduct’ for evangelism in the wake of heightened religious tension and new anti-conversion laws.

The Palestinian Bible Society’s bookshop in Gaza has reopened after a forced closure. Masked gunmen threatened to blow up the bookshop if it did not close by February 28. It is the only place in Gaza where people can freely buy Bibles and Christian books.

New Zealand evangelicals have sought encouragement from a visit from the Archbishop of Sydney over the homosexual row splintering the worldwide Anglican Communion.

Treated recently for prostate cancer, JOHN PIPER urges others to use their condition to throw off the shackles of self-reliance and the stupor of worldliness.

PETER STAVERT calls for active prayer lives shaped by the power of God.

For over two years, Toongabbie Anglican Church members Ben and Tammy Stanley have been active supporters of Moore College both prayerfully and financially.

One hundred and fifty years ago – to be precise, on 1 March 1856 – three young men met, in the former home of the late Mr Thomas Moore of Liverpool, with William Macquarie Cowper. Cowper had been appointed the acting Principal of the brand new College that was gathered before him. The College’s first Principal, William Hodgson, was on his way from England.

Two people died and nearly 20 others were injured following an attack on three Coptic churches in Alexandria, Egypt, on Good Friday. Copts have rejected the Egyptian Government’s claim that the attacks were simply the act of a mentally unbalanced individual.

Eyes will be on California this month to see if local Anglicans have been convinced not to elect one of three homosexual candidates as their bishop.

The meeting between US President George W Bush and Chinese President Hu Jintao was not merely overshadowed by a lone Falun Gong protester, but also an indepth report by four human rights organisations into the torture of Chinese Christians.

How God is working in our lives.