Tag Archives: Ashley Thompson

I didn’t think I’d have to write this review because I was so sure everybody else would. But with an extremely generous Rotten Tomatoes score of 73 per cent and Mediacritic rating of 60 per cent, it is clear many Ghostbusters (2016) reviewers have assessed this film purely on its political merit and without regard for its forgettable narrative, tacky ...

This edition brings profiles of two Christian Queenslanders who offer radically different perspectives on faith: Ken Ham (page 6) and Val Webb (page 10). While Val emphasises the importance of questioning in faith and brings an unmistakable progressivism to Christianity, Ken has an intense certainty in the Old Testament as literal history and is getting people around the world talking, ...

The Bible presents some uncomfortable depictions of women, particularly in the Book of Revelation. Ashley Thompson speaks with North American Biblical scholar, Dr Tina Pippin about what to do with the duality of the “women of the apocalypse”. In June, Grace College hosted Dr Tina Pippin as keynote speaker for their second annual Women’s Theology Conference—a gathering of over 40 ...

Ten of the eleven victims slept soundly as fire engulfed their Slacks Creek home on a cold winter’s night in 2011. Five years on, Ashley Thompson visits the Lale family of Sunnybank Uniting Church to remember their loss and celebrate their future. Often described as Australia’s worst house fire, the exact cause of the blaze, which ripped through the Lale ...

The Uniting Church in Australia may be a leading light when it comes to gender equality in leadership but we still have some way to go. Ashley Thompson talks to five key church leaders at UnitingWomen 2016 about how we can fully annihilate the glass ceiling. Shift your thinking  Colleen Geyer is the newly appointed general secretary of the Assembly, ...

At the tail end of a two-month speaking tour of Australia, Ashley Thompson catches up with British author and poet Adrian Plass to reflect on his last 29 years of unintended ministry. It’s been almost 30 years since Adrian Plass broke through the silence of church niceties with brutal, hilarious honesty. Bracing for “evangelicals with pitchforks” upon the release of ...

Brisbane Taiwanese Uniting Church youth mentor and Trinity College Queensland alumni, Jack Shao is encouraging the next generation of youth to undertake lay education. Ashley Thompson writes. Immigrating with his family to Australia at 14, Jack Shao has been attending the Brisbane Taiwanese congregation for 25 years. A Brisbane Boys’ College old boy, he was baptised at 17 and has ...

White South Africans continue to leave their home country in droves, many unwilling to share their stories as the pain of leaving lingers on. Ashley Thompson talks with three South Africans about how they have been affected by escalating tensions in the post-apartheid nation. As first-hand observations of race-based university protests fill my Facebook newsfeed with statements like “cloudy with ...

Blatantly biblical or subtly current—Easter themes of sacrificial love, redemption and resurrection are being told and retold in modern cinema. Ashley Thompson explores. Undertones, analogies and parables—not all Biblical retellings of the Easter story are as obvious as The Passion of the Christ (2004) or The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005). In fact, if evangelism is the goal, ...

Redcliffe Uniting Church’s Conor Kikkert can juggle in one hand while solving a Rubik’s Cube in the other; but it’s not this talent alone that has garnered him national media attention.  Ashley Thompson writes. You may have been surprised last November to find Conor, a conscientious and unassuming 12-year-old, busking at the Redcliffe markets and outside his school, The Lakes ...