Safety is central to our wellbeing. Our sense of safety has an immediate impact on our physical health, emotional stability, social harmony, economic viability, psychological growth, as well as our spiritual maturity. Even the slightest glance at the news or social media today reveals a dramatic increase in instability resulting in a corresponding decrease in a sense of safety, psychologically if not physically.
In April 2024 NCLS Research in Australia released the findings from their 2021 National Church Life Survey (NCLS) related to how well churches prepare to receive disabled individuals. “Whether in facilities or in an active culture of inclusion,” the NCLS looked at how welcomed disabled individuals feel and how well they are provided for.
The text for this month is 1 Corinthians 1:9-10 (NLT), “God will (keep you strong and free from blame), for he is faithful to do what he says, and he has invited you into (koinonia) with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. I appeal to you, dear brothers and sisters, by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, to live in harmony with each other. Let there be no divisions in the church. Rather, be of one mind, united in thought and purpose.”
The 16-year-old boy who allegedly knifed Eastern Syriac Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel in Australia on April 15 was part of an extremist group of teenagers, and authorities arrested seven of them on Wednesday (April 24), news media reported.
Galatians is widely accepted as Paul’s first epistle. It emerged in response to a radical disruption of the Jewish faith following the resurrection of Jesus. Almost 2,000 years on, we can too easily gloss over the shocking nature of this shift, which became a schism, and then an entirely independent religion with unbroken spiritual roots in the history of Israel and Judaism.
An Eastern Syriac bishop and at least three others were stabbed as he presided over a worship service in a suburb of Sydney, Australia that was being livestreamed on Monday evening (April 15).
Two Australian Pentecostal megachurch pastors have temporarily lost their ministry credentials following allegations that the pair engaged in an adulterous relationship. Corey Turner, the global senior pastor of Neuma Church, confessed to having an affair with Stacey Hilliar, a female pastor within the megachurch, which has branches in Thailand and the United States.
In December 2022, the National Church Life Survey (NCLS) in Australia asked Australians what they would do if they were invited to church during Holy Week. The results reveal positive attitudes toward Christianity in the country.
We are there to build relationships. An issue is that so much of what is taking place online tends to be individualist: individual speakers or presenters as representatives of Christianity. But what if we were to come as a group, as a cluster, as a community online, and create a space within spaces rather than trying to create our own space external to these spaces.
“The state of orphans and vulnerable children was improving for decades, then suddenly one crisis hit after another,” says Karmen Friesen, principal coordinator of World Without Orphans (WWO), a global movement that seeks to mobilize the Church to respond to the needs of vulnerable children in every nation.
But when reading Matthew 28, where Jesus said in the gospel of this kingdom will be preached in all nations, to all the earth, I see that as a promise that God will fulfill, not a task that we need to achieve. But many times, we have focused on it as if it were merely a task. The difference there is if we focus on it as a task - this is that whole “industrialized” perspective of missions - then we are required to use our own agency to fulfill it. And as a result, if anything gets in the way or i
Following the Fourth Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in Incheon, one hundred mission leaders from Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America gathered in Busan, Korea from September 30 to October 1 for COALA 2.5, an emerging movement focusing on Global South-led missions. Recognizing the shift away from the primarily Western-led “Christendom” era of missions, COALA – which stands for Christ over Africa, Latin America and Asia – seeks to introduce new paradigms for today’s “polycent
