Features

TENS OF thousands of Christians united in Toowoomba over the Easter weekend to worship and celebrate at Easterfest. After 13 years the annual event, held at Toowoomba’s Queens Park, remains the largest drug and alcohol free festival in Australia. Fans were eager to see headlining bands Switchfoot, Naturally Seven and Newworldson as well as Australian Christian music favourites the Paul ...

Eco-justice in body, mind and spiritThe call for Christians to be stewards of creation is an ancient one. Synod Green Church advocate, Rev Dr Clive Ayre, said the need to care for creation plugs into some of the key doctrines of the church. “For example a doctrine of grace, the whole idea of covenant is all involved,” he said. “James ...

DR ELIZABETH Boase and Dr Vicky Balabanski hold almost 30 published works between them, have two Bachelor degrees apiece and PhDs in their respective Testamental theologies: Dr Boase in Old Testament, and Dr Balabanski in New Testament. Though the Co-Directors of Biblical Studies at Uniting College for Leadership and Theology in South Australia have both proven to be extremely successful ...

WHAT STARTED as planning a simple conference for the Assembly agency The Commission on Women and Men (later renamed Gospel and Gender) turned into a gathering that shook the foundation of what it meant to be a Christian woman in Australia. The 1996 gathering, Women Clothed with the Sun, held during a steamy Brisbane January, is still remembered fondly as ...

OVER THIRTY years ago I began to study the stories of women told in the Bible. I was not the first. In the nineteenth century Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of the American classic Uncle Tom’s Cabin, wrote Woman in Sacred History. Nor will I be the last, as each generation seeks to understand how various women have played a role ...

FOR NEARLY 30 years Peter Rowe could communicate only on a very restricted level because his speech is severely affected by Down syndrome. All that time, his family and those who knew him believed he had very little understanding and comprehension. But Mr Rowe’s life changed dramatically in 1994 when he was introduced to Facilitated Communication, a strategy which may ...

Women’s rights in a post-feminist world AUSTRALIA WAS one of the first countries in the world to give women the right to vote and sit in parliament (federally in 1902). Yet according to the Australian Government Office for Women, it was not until 1943 that the nation elected women to Federal Parliament. Until 1966, women working in the federal public ...

The Queensland Synod, in association with Paradigm Studios, has produced a video to complement the 2011 Easter postcard theme ‘Hungry? Satisfy your sweet tooth and your soul this Easter’.   The video is for use in church, school and agency meetings and gatherings and worship services in the lead up to Easter. It encourages discussion on the meaning of Easter ...

MEET AMI (not her real name). She goes to school. For many reading this, going to school would not be part of a usual introduction. But for this Indian child it is a chance not every girl in her village gets. For a five-year-old, she has seen more than her share of life. She is one of three children and ...

THE COUNTDOWN is on for thousands as Easterfest 2011 draws near. The Queensland city of Toowoomba started the year by making international news when an ‘inland tsunami’ crashed through the centre of the city. However, as Easter approaches, the city is getting ready to once again make international news, but for very different reasons. Each Easter Toowoomba hosts Easterfest, the ...