Sydney may be in danger of forgetting the victims of Boxing Day’s tsunami, but not so staff and parents at Tara Anglican School where students' Christian commitment is driving them to get creative for a good cause.

Barry McGrath, chaplain at Tara Anglican School for Girls, loves his job even when students ‘quite bluntly’ challenge him.

The success of the Katoomba conventions has encouraged Western Sydney’s men to start their own blokes-only conference on September 3 at Tyndale Christian School, Blacktown.

The region has welcomed three new rectors from the Northern, Wollongong and Georges River regions.

Christianity is booming in the Western Region, with 40 per cent of parishes seeing growth. Here Southern Cross continues its series on a strategy of reform.

Caringbah are a community church making a special effort to care for seniors. Philippian Friends has been a growing seniors’ fellowship for over a decade and last month they increased their outreach with a seniors’ mission.

Moore Theological College broke new ground with its annual mission this year. While most of the 300-plus staff and students served with Sydney parishes, a team also travelled to Christ Church Bangkok to work with former Sydney Anglicans Andrew and Suzanne Dircks. Mr Dircks is vicar of the large expatriate church.

Evangelicals have condemned an agreement between Anglicans and Roman Catholics on Mary saying it forces the Anglican Church back 500 years

The world’s first translation of the complete Bible into an Aboriginal language is now complete.

Fewer Australians now favour teaching religion in Government Schools, Roy Morgan Research has found. Although still a high majority, the number of people who think religion should be taught in Government schools (62 per cent) has fallen four per cent since the March 2000 quarter.

A jailed paedophile who describes himself as a witch has joined a growing list of people suing Christian groups in Victoria on the grounds of religion.

Christians campaigning to reduce the number of abortions have welcomed new research showing most Australians think the abortion rate is too high.

Just 18 months ago few residents of the three retirement villages near St Stephen’s, Belrose were coming to church or receiving any Christian teaching.

Letters from the June 2005 edition of Southern Cross newspaper.

Ministry Moves June 2005

Many people, viewing the tiny, frail, elderly deaconess speaking often in the Sydney Synod may not have realised that they were listening to one of the most extraordinary female ministers in the history of the Diocese of Sydney. It may be some time before her like is seen again.

Sometimes being in an organisation while holding strong views can be uncomfortable. At the end of a Moore College lecture on women’s ordination I caught up with a fellow student outside. “I wanted to ask a question,” she said, “but my husband is a Sydney candidate”. For her, holding strong opinions was definitely uncomfortable at that time.

Many people don’t bother with locks. Recently I spoke to a friend who, with his wife was travelling next day to Indonesia on behalf of a missionary society. When I said, “Lock your case,” he answered, “I won’t bother, I never do.” That is the confidence of someone who has made the same trip many times before, as well as perhaps a certainty that no one will find anything to steal in the average clergyman’s suitcase.

The Diocese now has a ‘God-sized’ goal. We will fail to see this eventuate unless church-goers stop considering themselves the centre of their lives and see Jesus and his church as the central focus.

St Mark’s, Picton may not have all the creature comforts but believers are thirsty for growth.

Dangerous as it is to talk about martyrs, there is also much danger in Christians forgetting the stand they took against Papal authority, writes ARCHBISHOP PETER JENSEN

Seldom have I seen a program get so many television reviewers hot under the collar. Super Nanny, Nine’s parenting reality show, has them steaming from coast to coast. Is it the clichéd English inclusions? The strict instructions? The liberal use of the infamous ‘naughty step’? I think not. It’s something far more basic than that. Morality has entered the picture and someone has dared to tell parents that children – sweet, innocent children – can be bad.

In the battle of good versus evil there’s a need for a bit of comic relief. At least there is when you’re in a world of George Lucas’ making. In the Star Wars saga Lucas conceived and contrived a grand epic with grand themes; love and hate, friendship and betrayal, freedom and slavery. Yet the smirk factor of exploring such themes against a backdrop of alien planets and peculiar life forms makes it all a little hard to swallow.

Struck down with an utterly debilitating ‘mystery’ illness, Sydney Anglican and Sky News presenter Leigh Hatcher falls from the high-flying, adrenalin fuelled life of one of Australia’s best known TV journalists to an anonymous welfare recipient in a matter of months.