It’s a long way from the town of Cheng Du to Sydney, but the journey has been the most important one of Wendy Weng’s life.

No need for Chinese whispers - CMS New South Wales' top executive has announced he will be relinquishing the position he has held for more than a decade to return to Hong Kong's mission field.

Archbishop Peter Jensen, chairman of Anglicare Sydney, has delivered a frank response to assertions the diocese's welfare arm is facing the prospect of service cuts as a result of a $3 million operational deficit.

After years of operational deficits, Anglicare in Sydney needs parishes to put significant resources into good works partnerships, if the charity is to avoid either financial collapse or becoming just another Government service provider.

St John’s, Ashfield is preparing to light up its suburb for its 165th birthday bash with plans to launch a new era in the life of the parish.

An analysis of the Sydney Diocese relationship with social works by Jeremy Halcrow

On paper, Anglicare is marginal to the Diocese’s main game of church planting. Jeremy Halcrow investigates the implications.

Parish councils and Synod representatives across the Diocese have had their chance to ask questions about the New Capital Project. A series of 17 meetings were held to give information on the first stage of the project, which involved the gathering of information in a database of all parishes and some properties in the Diocese.

The Rev Vanessa Bennett became the new chaplain at the Meriden School on August 1, an opportunity that she says will bring together her ministry and school teaching skills for the first time.

Southern Cross concludes its series on the new model of parish life cycles by looking at the reinvention unfolding at the parish of Strathfield.

The pastor of the Asian Bible Ministry (ABM) at St Andrew’s Cathedral says the high density, isolated living conditions of the city make it difficult to connect with people by knocking on doors, but he is finding ways to introduce people to the gospel.

Whatever your personal views on the issues that divide the worldwide Anglican Communion, surely we can agree that it is impossible to call someone whose views are so solidly on one side of the most contentious debate in the Anglican Church a moderate. After all Dr Aspinall was a theological advisor to a 2003 conference of Gay and Lesbian Christians in Manchester.

Ministry Moves August 2005

Read the letters to the Editor from the August 2005 edition of Southern Cross.

St Paul’s, Castle Hill is one of the largest parishes in Sydney, but even they have had to deal with closing down a church plant. However, a new outreach to young families is growing as a result, finds JOSEPH SMITH.

Anglican leaders were blocked from protesting against the controversial Anglican-Catholic agreement Mary, Grace and Hope in Christ at the recent Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) in Nottingham, while the document itself received a tepid response.

The Australian Christian Lobby claims a peak Islamic body is doing one thing and saying another by defending the rights of Muslim clerics to say they support Osama bin Laden but not respecting the right of Christian pastors to discuss the Koran.

A national program to tackle chronic decline in church attendance is not feasible or desirable, according to the Anglican Church of Australia, who has asked a number of evangelical leaders to form a taskforce aimed at helping Anglicans at parish level get more people back into church.

Stephen Gray says from the time he decided to be a missionary six years ago, he always wanted to go to Indonesia.

A Gymea couple, Anna and Brad Ware, have left their jobs in Sydney and their church at St Paul’s to live in the country NSW town of Brewarrina. Their aim is to build relationships with the Aboriginal population in the town and share the gospel.

Sydney Anglicans are being urged to help Christians fight the brutal cleansing campaign of Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe.

Ordinary Christians from Sydney’s South-West are leading the way in planting the new generation of school-based churches.

After years of operational deficits, Anglicare needs parishes to put significant resources into good works partnerships if the charity is to avoid either financial collapse or becoming just another service provider for Government.

On paper, Anglicare is marginal to the Diocese’s main game of church planting. JEREMY HALCROW investigates the implications.

From the earliest days of the Sydney colony, Anglicans have been involved in ‘good works’. Anglican Chaplain Samuel Marsden established schools for orphans and training institutions for convict mums. These became the forerunners of the Church of England Homes.

As matters stand with the Victorian legislation, introduced to promote religious harmony, we can say without fear of contradiction that the government has managed to set Muslim against Christian, Christian against Muslim, and even Christian against Christian. Is this what the government wants?

On the tough, broken streets of the inner city shines a beacon of hope. Stuart P. Robinson talks to the Rev John McIntyre, Rector of St Saviour's Redfern.

Much modern Christianity neglects the law, leading to a weak doctrine of sin and a diminished trust in Christ, writes PETER JENSEN.

What do the fictional characters Dr Who and James Bond have in common? British ancestry? A penchant for witty one-liners? How about a drastic reworking for the sake of political correctness?

What would you do if you found hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash? If it simply fell from the sky and landed in your lap? Spend it? Save it? Give it away? That’s the dilemma facing seven-year-old Damian (Alex Etel) in Danny Boyle’s Millions.

The baddie in The Island is a well-dressed scientist (ok you’ll have to suspend disbelief) named Merrick (Sean Bean). He runs an immaculate facility populated by survivors of a catastrophic toxic spill. Apart from their sterile environs there is only one pathogen-free place left on earth – ‘the island’, a place each inhabitant longs to see. But you can only go if you win the lottery.

The phrase ‘child abuse’ kept winding itself around my mind as I read Velocity, the early childhood memoir of Australian author, Mandy Sayer. The book is a prequel to Dreamtime Alice, the account of Sayer’s adventures as a young adult, and is valuable in explaining the way Sayer’s life has unfolded thus far. It is also a good read; compelling, uncomfortable, vivid.

The coexistence of predestination and freewill is a difficult concept and finds little expression in fiction, yet intriguingly it forms a key part of the drama and the thematic concerns of the sixth JK Rowling novel, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (HBP).