One of my friends commented that the week at Summer School was a taste of heaven – eating good food, worshipping God in song, standing along our brothers and sisters of different colours and cultures, and having our perspectives refreshed by God’s.

Of all the mental images that are conjured at the mention of a goat, do you imagine a wealthy so-called Christian too miserly to help the poor?

Genuine Christians are always going to look a little weird. It’s not normal to spend your hard-earned cash on or your precious time praying for people in obscure countries that you’ve never even met. It’s certainly not normal to leave everything you know for potential frustration and deprivation somewhere else. But it all makes senses when you’re following a king who did that and more...

It's summer again in Jo'burg. The streets of the northern suburbs are awash today with fragments of leaves, pummeled ruthlessly from the trees in yesterday's hailstorm.

A question that’s big in South Africa at the moment is this: which language should we do our Christianity in?

A question that’s big in South Africa at the moment is this: which language should we do our Christianity in?

I was very surprised to arrive home this week to find that my house had burnt down.

"So, you're a missionary then?" People often asked me this question back in Australia, and I was never quite sure how to answer. It's a loaded term...

I recently spent a week on holiday with some friends in a small house across the Umzimvubu River from the little town of Port St Johns. It was an incredible place: the quickest way into town was a walk along the beach to the river’s mouth, then a quick ferry ride across the river into town.

Often because South Africa seems quite similar to Australia on the surface – glittering shopping malls, freeways, detached houses, gum trees and barbecues – you forget how different it is.

I have given myself a new title: job creator. Well, attempted job creator.

Andrew Robinson, recently graduated as a journalist from Sydney Uni, is spending this year as a ministry trainee at Melville Union Church in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Andrew Robinson, recently graduated as a journalist from Sydney Uni, is spending this year as a ministry trainee at Melville Union Church in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Andrew Robinson, recently graduated as a journalist from Sydney Uni, is spending this year as a ministry trainee at Melville Union Church in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Andrew Robinson reflects on his first week of short-term mission in Johannesburg - the trees, the kids, the gun-safes.

John Ryan is an outspoken evangelical Christian, but raised the ire of other Christian politicians for supporting ‘safe injecting rooms’. Here he tells how he came to know Jesus, and what it means to be a Christian politician.

A new Australian Technical College run by the Sydney Anglican Schools Corporation is set to change the widespread perception that Anglicans are ‘middle class’.

By the time you read this I’ll have swapped the gum trees and gullies of the Blue Mountains for the jacarandas and razor wire of Johannesburg, South Africa.

I was part of a group of young people planning a month-long trip to southern India, but when I added up the combined cost of the trip - $20,000 – a heavy, guilty weight had settled on my heart. Were we kidding ourselves? Was this short-term mission thing just a junket? A baptised adventure holiday?

“At the moment the future seems quite bright: there’s been four people ordained this year on Groote Eylandt,” he says. In five out of the six parishes people who have been ordained or who are on track to ordination.

Of 100 congregations [in Chile’s Anglican Church], there are only three people with training equivalent to any Sydney clergy. That’s the same numbers as in the parish where I’ve been working in Sydney.

CMS missionaries Martin and Julie Field will leave Sydney in February to help grow future Latin American church leadership.

Negotiating military checkpoints and the threat of suicide bombers, 400 members of the new Mother’s Union group meet each month at St George’s Anglican Church in Baghdad. Now the new group which formed in April 2006 has been linked with Mother’s Union (MU) Sydney for specific prayer.

Key Sydney Anglicans agree that reading the Bible is more important than ever, but the latest Australian Church Life Survey (2001) says that only 31 per cent of us manage to read it more than once a week. As 2007 kicks off, we ask Archbishop Peter Jensen and other key Sydney Anglicans whether it's time for a mission-minded church to make a New Year's resolution to reconnect with God in daily Bible-reading and prayer. Keen to get your 'quiet times' back on track? Chat about what's been helpful or not and get some advice from Gordon Cheng at the discussion forum.

The violent death of a Sudanese Christian man in Parramatta last week is the latest in a string of events that has left Sydney’s Sudanese population feeling increasingly insecure.