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 ...

The 28th Synod affirmed a five line Call for the Uniting Church in Queensland in discerning the future of the Church. This edition we look at the fourth phrase: Witnessing in faith. IN MY current ministry role I am working to make connections between our church and a growing suburb on the south side of Brisbane. The first day I visited the ...

LAST OCTOBER Rev Sue Pickering led a small group to Chennai, South India, to put their faith in action. Ms Pickering’s local community in Wilston also got behind the trip with local businesses donating money to projects supported by the Church of South India. “The aim of the visit was to be challenged by the idea that we believe God ...

Following the popularity of a bus advertising campaign in Britain saying God "probably" does not exist, a Canadian group is planning a similar campaign on Toronto’s buses. One Christian denomination is, however, responding by using the advertisements as an invitation to a dialogue about the existence of God. The Freethought Association of Canada – a group that embraces various secular ...

Wakefield Press 2008 This fascinating book gives the reader a unique road map to Melbourne’s culinary history. Its ten chapters lead you through from The Indigenous Pantry to the modern era entitled Olympic Appetiser. We read of early Melbourne (which Charmaine quaintly calls “the town that mutton built”) through the fabulous gold rush days when the Chinese, the first significant ...

Blue Care is modernising residential aged care living by launching a new service that rivals franchises like Starbucks, the Coffee Club and Gloria Jeans. Freshly brewed coffee, baked cakes and gourmet style sandwiches are just some of the menu items residents, their families, visitors and staff can enjoy at the new café at Pinewoods Aged Care Centre at Lawnton. “You ...

Advertising blogger Duncan Macleod asks what we should do about Christmas marketing JUDGING BY the amount of paper coming through our mailboxes and Christmas-related advertising on the radio at the moment, the Christmas season is good news for advertising agencies. Some of the advertising takes the standard line of “buy your presents from our store”. But there are exceptions. The ...

Hamish Hamilton RRP $32.95 Pat Barker is the sovereign of restraint. Her latest novel is a vivid book about artists and lovers in a time of war. Set in the build-up to, and early years of, World War 1, Life Class describes the intriguing characters of Paul, Elinor and Kit, students at the Slade School of Fine Art in central ...

Almost one week after the new archbishop of Warsaw resigned after admitting contacts with Poland’s communist-era secret police, commentators in Rome said the church was reeling from the implications of the affair. The Rome-based La Repubblica newspaper reported that Pope Benedict XVI was "furious" about those who had withheld information from him about Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus. In Warsaw, leaders of ...

Brian Mclaren recently gave a lecture at Princeton Thological College on “Mainline Theological Education and the Emerging Church/Conversation”.  It is available as an mp3 file for download HERE and following is a summary by Darren Wright from his planet telex blog site. There are a number of points that Mclaren makes in the lecture which I found his questions to be ...