There’s nothing like raising boys to make you reflect on your own childhood. As you seek to help them fill their leisure hours, you reflect on those activities you used to engage in.

Ross Cobb, Music Director of St Andrew’s Cathedral, convinces JEREMY HALCROW that his belief that contemporary music is always the best option for gospel ministry is a myth. There is some evidence that traditional hymns resonate more with the unchurched.

The rise of the ‘kidult’ requires a re-think of how we do evangelism.

In recent years the link between Christianity and US foreign policy has become a topic of increasing global interest. Historian Mike Thompson gives us a historical perspective.

Australians love mobile communication. In 2005 mobile telephone penetration of the Australian population had reached 94 per cent with 19 million subscribers nation wide. In 2007 alone Australians bought just over ten million new handsets.

We Christians should make common cause with Western secularism. When the Nazis invaded Soviet Union, Churchill defended his support of the communist Soviet Union saying, “If Hitler invaded Hell I would at least make a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons”. Churchill recognised the greater danger. So should we.

Not in living memory has a riot seemed so media-generated. Front page headlines about Aussie Pride. Radio chatter about violent Lebanese youth and counter-talk about the Bra Boys surfers fueled an already incendiary situation.

As Lucy approaches the wardrobe in the film of C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the camera lingers on a dying fly on the window sill. I had wondered why the fly received a three second close-up, but then forgot all about it until Ivan Head, Warden of St Paul’s College at Sydney University, sent me his intriguing paper.

How can The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe help us to talk about the gospel with friends and family? GREG CLARKE, Director of New College’s apologetics centre, CASE, offers a few starters.

It should be no surprise that the Sydney Morning Herald will take an overly Sydney-centric view when analysing news events. That’s why Julia Baird’s argument in her October 20 column ‘Numbers rule as Team Sydney muscles up’, likening recent decisions of Sydney Synod to George Bush’s foreign policy should be taken with a grain of salt.

Could relationships in the Anglican Communion be worse?

What church hasn’t been adversely affected by Sunday sport and Sunday trading? But these are so entrenched, that talk of resisting the Government’s new industrial relations (IR) laws on the basis that Sunday is sacred just seems like rehashing an argument we lost years ago.

It’s not only in Australia that there is unfounded fear and misunderstanding of evangelicals – things seem worse in Canada, says the Anglican Church League, publishing an article from Michael Davenport that helpfully clears up the confusion between evangelicals and fundamentalists.

The Review Committee for key federal legislation relating to human embryos is calling for submissions from members of the public with an interest in these issues. It is important that the Christian Community make their views known to the committee so that they can be taken into account when the committee decides whether the acts should be altered in any way.

There’s nothing new about the MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game) it’s a concept well over a decade old. But with computing power achieving new milestones every month, and broadband becoming increasingly common, MMORPGs have taken off in a big way these past few years. There are now many tens of thousands of players across the world questing, looting and fighting in virtual communities. How then do we play a MMORPG in the name of Jesus? I offer a simple list of strategies which I have found helpful based on personal experience.

Marriage has taken a beating over the last 30 years. Divorce, de-factos, more people marrying later or not at all. ANDREW CAMERON and TRACY GORDON argue for a return to relationships with God at the centre.

Think of a smoky pub and Christian music is not the first thing that springs to mind, but 26-year-old member of St Andrew’s, Wahroonga, Richard Beeston, is attempting to reverse the stereotype. “My primary goal is to engage non-Christians through music,” says Richard. “I aim to write, record and perform songs that have popular appeal and a strong Christian message behind them.”

I sometimes think that writing is a kind of a sickness. I don’t exactly know why I do it. It must be a sickness. It isn’t exactly easy to know why you do it. Books don’t stay in print for long and you certainly wouldn’t do it for the money. Even books by great ones are superseded fairly soon.

Life is a gift from God so it’s OK to play and to cry – living in this way would help Australian Anglicans better connect with the humanity around us, said a leading US theologian in Sydney recently.

All study of history in the classical era is at the same time a study of the geography of the people and events. I remember seeing an exam question, ‘Comment on the statement “Geography is latent history” in relationship to the rise of the Greek city states in the classical era.’ The Greek peninsula consists of a series of river valleys separated by hostile mountainous terrain. This explains the development of autonomous city states, the maritime skills of those states and the creation of colonies around the Mediterranean. It might also indicate that Paul’s north-south travels within Greece would typically have been by ship.

There is a problem with the Prodigal Son: it is too familiar. We can miss the real significance of what’s going on here because we know the story all too well. So, let’s try to look at the story in a new light, by hearing it told in a fresh way.

Even in the so-called “Christian West” there is a crisis. Whether in the United Kingdom, where the Church is established, or in the United States, where it is not, Christianity is in decline. The continental shelf has tilted under the weight of secularism, affluence, multiculturalism, political correctness and a sequence of clergy sex scandals and disclosures of abuse in church run institutions.

Some time ago I was sitting next to a colleague listening to a very persuasive speaker. His arguments were clear, logical and appeared valid. At the end of the talk my colleague commented that while he thought the arguments were good and he could not find fault with them he nevertheless intuitively felt they were wrong. I was puzzled by his remarks. If the arguments were valid then how could they be wrong? Were one or more of the premises wrong? Perhaps they were and my colleague’ intuition told him so. Lately I have come across false arguments that look very persuasive even though one of the premises is false. The persuasive force appears to come from the way the argument is structured.

LIZ HOGARTH chats to Ken Duncan about his awesome God, digital jigsaws and an old school mate called Mel Gibson

The 'James Ossuary', originally hailed as a remarkable find last year, is now being widely reported as a forgery.