In just two months Andrew Lewis has gone from running Australia’s naval operations for tsunami-ravaged South Asia to deciphering ancient Greek in a Newtown library.

October 23 started off as a typical Saturday morning for 21-year-old Meredith Walker. As she prepared to spend the day out with friends, she was not to know that she would be fighting for her life in the intensive care unit of Nepean Hospital a mere 24 hours later.

Church-planting guru the Rev Ed Vaughan is set to see if the green fields of Ireland are as fertile for the gospel.

Judith Murray was initially sceptical when the new minister of St John’s, Glebe started talking about engaging with the local community in a new initiative based around assistance and partnership. That was 18 months ago – now Judith is an enthusiastic volunteer in the Glebe Assistance Partnership Program (GAPP) run by St John’s under the guidance of the Rev Geoff Broughton.

JOSEPH SMITH meets the region’s four new rectors and asks: What have you learnt over the years?

“We offer something not common to Sydney,” says the Rev Adrian Stephens, rector of Christ Church St Laurence. And he’s right. The church’s great emphasis on liturgy, sacrament and music means that parishioners from as far away as Penrith, Katoomba, Hornsby and Wollongong are drawn to the historic church opposite Central Station. Four years ago Mr Stephens realised these parishioners generated a need for a pastoral visiting strategy, so a monthly Saturday service in Mittagong was started. In June last year, another service began in the historic Blue Mountains town of Leura.

In 2005 Stuart Robinson will uncover new ideas for mission and outreach. In this issue, Tim Foster from All Souls’, Leichhardt, says being a visible witness to Christ in your local community is the best first step.

Anglicans across Sydney are uniting in the first major prayer movement for the Diocesan Mission. Forty Days with the Risen Lord is a call for focused prayer from Easter Sunday, March 27 to Ascension Day, May 5. It has been taken up by over 70 parishes who are rallying congregations in prayer for everyone to respond to God in repentance and faith.

Chris McGillion has made a sincere attempt to understand the ‘Sydney Anglican’ phenomenon and wrap it within a ripping political yarn. Some might be shocked at what they perceive as ungodly political machinations and harden their hearts against the church leadership. Others, sensing the book is alien to their experience of church life, will dismiss it as a web of lies. Neither response, I believe, is healthy.

Has Chris “Scratchie” McGillion, a mild-mannered ginger-bearded reporter, formerly of the Herald newsroom morphed into Superman? Has he written a superbook able to topple Anglican dioceses in a single bound? Well, no.

Jake and Natasha have became the first couple married in Sydney’s newest parish...and its first converts.

Newcastle Diocese’s first cafe church is bringing people to Christ.

Irish eyes are smiling on Sydney as Christians on both sides of the globe forge closer links for the gospel. And an informal prayer group for Ireland that began several years ago at Moore College has been somewhat of a catalyst.

In 1998 Donna and David Ballard and their children were homeless and stretched for cash. They turned to Anglicare’s street outreach centre in Parramatta, which helped them to budget, find a place to stay and gave them counselling.

Chronic housing shortage in Sydney linked to youth mental illness

The Roman Catholic Church says the trend towards personalised funerals is undermining Christian liturgy. How best can Christians respond to the trend to ‘individualise’ funerals?

Starting a new service in a different suburb was never going to be easy, but a group of Anglicans from North Sydney have pulled it off.

Sydney Anglicans have joined a religious coalition calling for a radical overhaul of abortion.

The Roman Catholic Church says the trend towards personalised funerals is undermining Christian liturgy. How best can Christians respond to the trend to ‘individualise’ funerals? asks JEREMY HALCROW.

Are the demands lay people place on clergy too high?

The politics ‘exposed’ by The Chosen Ones has helped improve congregational life, writes Bruce Ballantine-Jones.

Why do so many Sydney Anglican ministers find it difficult to encourage their members to share their faith, let alone attend church every week? The answer to this question – which cuts to the heart of our Mission – is complex.

Many people think the ideal youth leader is someone who wears the latest clothes, listens to the latest music, sports the latest haircut and body piercing… but most importantly, is young. Yet one of the main reasons we have a preference for young leaders is due to the flawed mission strategy that expects adults to be the main agents in building bridges with non-Christian youths.

It is important to recognise the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Without this reality, resurrection is merely a dream.

Over the last year media commentators have been busy burying the Seven Network as the latest and greatest victim of the commercial ratings war. TEN was consolidating its hold on the under 35’s; Nine had all but captured the nation’s baby-boomers. But Desperate Housewives suggests 2005 will be the year of Seven’s second coming.

At the heart of the biopic is a filmmaker’s quest to recognise and often honour the life of a specific individual. It’s an enormous undertaking given the complexity and messiness of life and the limitations of the cinematic form. Martin Luther is certainly given the hero’s treatment in the German and American production, Luther. Joseph Fiennes – who is more at home in the 16th century than any other it seems – stars as a very handsome Luther. But despite his leading man looks, Fiennes is suitably intense, impassioned and even contemptuous as the religious revolutionary.

In her epic novel, Jonathon Strange and Mr Norrell, English writer Susanna Clarke has recreated England in the early 19th century. Echoing the literary styles of Jane Austen and George Eliot, Susanna Clarke reconstructs England with her thorough and engaging prose. But more than that she reimagines English history as if magic were a fundamental part of existence.

This book is an entertaining and informative critique of the Australian media’s treatment of women who are prominent in politics. Former Sydney Anglican Synod member and Sydney Morning Herald writer Julia Baird is well aware that she has now joined the ranks of the very press that is under her microscope. But this doesn’t hold her back in her quest to discover why, by and large, Australia’s female politicians of all have promised much and delivered little. In part, Baird surmises, this is because of unrealistic expectations and invidious comparisons with figures like Margaret Thatcher.