The Australian Parliament is debating religious freedom. There are two parallel parliamentary inquiries taking submissions at the moment. Michael Stead is ‘taking point’ for the Sydney Anglican Church on this issue.

January is the key time of the year for welcoming newcomers in the southern hemisphere. In the northern hemisphere it’s August/September.

But how do we best follow up new people who are moving into the district and looking to join a church?

Someone visits your church, but what’s next. What sort of ‘visitor pipeline’ should you have?

It’s time to review what’s happened this year and have robust informed conversations about what we will do next year? What won’t we do again? How we will do things differently? And why?

To make realistic decisions, we need to know what’s helpful to measure? And what isn’t?

Not everything that’s measurable matters. And not everything that matters is measurable.

South Australian Ryan Williams had been a Christian for five years and campus pastor at Mars Hill Everett for twelve months, when Mars Hill’s founder and senior pastor Mark Driscoll resigned and the church collapsed in 2014.

Christianity Today’s podcast account of the rise and fall of Mars Hill has just concluded.

Ryan is now senior pastor of City on a Hill Albuquerque and shares on how he and the other ex Mars Hill Staff and Members are processing the pain of the past and the issues raised by the podcast

There’s a new move to multi-campus churches within the traditional denomination, with a growing argument that this is a potentially better way to mission effectiveness.

There’s a shift in thinking going on to encourage a different approach to doing church… shifting from solo campus to multi campus.

Antony Barraclough is the senior minister of the newly merged North Light Anglican Church on the North Shore of Sydney.

We explore how to reach the subcultures of the coast.

We talk liturgy of the surf, liturgy of community, the impact of a missional faithful presence, and more intentional discipleship.

Senior Pastor of Seaforth Anglican Rich Wenden has just completed a Doctor Ministry project researching missional strategies of churches attempting to reach coastal areas.

How might Australia and other countries take advantage of the united evangelism campaign being arranged for the UK and Ireland?

Can the campaign be used to give us a needed evangelistic shot in the arm?

Mission Pastor Elliot Temple and Senior Pastors Jodie McNeill and Tom Melbourne have been reviewing the material and bring their review.

How are we going as a network of complementarian churches at raising up women for ministry?

How do you develop a culture in your church that is really positive to women exercising their gifts and hence stepping forward for full time ministry roles?

What should our vision be for raising up women in ministry? What progress has been made? What are next steps?

We talk, how do we plan for Christmas when we’re just waking up from the COVID lockdown?

Senior Pastor of Lower Blue Mountains Anglican Church Ken Noakes, joins Mission Pastor Andy Bootes from Hope Church Leppington and Missions Pastor Jess Brouwer.

We talk from first principles, demographics, what activities will work in this context, how COVID changes things, Christmas themes, strategy for events and follow up plans.

Plus what have they done in the past that they are not going to do this year? And what to do about Boxing Day on a Sunday.

We are joined by the authors of Two Ways to Live, Phillip Jensen and Tony Payne, to talk through the changes they have made to the iconic gospel outline.

Plus how do they respond to recent criticisms of the Two Ways to Live outline?

How we can improve our competency leading the church from the books of leadership, business and management?

Archie Poulos teaches at the Centre for Ministry Development at Moore Theological College in Sydney.

Churches will be free to open for vaccinated and unvaccinated people a week earlier than had been expected in New South Wales.

With 80% of NSW adult population fully vaccinated, a new Public Health Order comes into force from Monday 18 October 2021.

What happened to the idea of Christian Australia?, so long and widely held and so quickly abandoned?

How did evangelical leaders respond to the end of Christendom?

How have Australian evangelicals appraised their relations with other national cultures?

How has the end of Christendom led to a reconsideration and reconfiguration of the movement’s own internal culture?

How do you welcome all while keeping the vulnerable safe? But on the other hand how to avoid overfunctioning and blocking people from taking risks they are willing to take?

How to have difficult ‘front door conversations’ that you never expected to have? Plus how do you encourage ‘church workers’ to present vaccination certificates?

A model of what to do when the pastor’s kids catch COVID.

Australian businessman Tony McLellan describes his pride being broken, feeling wretched and desperately alone, talking openly about things bottled up for years, much of it shameful, in the company of Atlanta pastor Michael Youseff.

Tony goes on to describe turning to Christ, to the mercy and redemption won through the sacrifice of God’s son. And his response, first sobs, ‘then with an enormous flood of tears, entirely involuntary.’

Michael Youseff: ‘You’re in a mess … You need Jesus.’

Tony McLellan: ‘No. I need help. I don’t know what the heck is going on.’

Michael Youseff: ‘Let’s start by praying together.’

How to preach sermons which are hospitable + have a good reputation with outsiders?

The former principal of Melbourne’s Ridley College Peter Adam says the bible’s call for us to be hospitable should impact how we preach.

Childrens’ ministry leaders who have not been vaccinated will be asked to temporarily stand down from their ministry roles in NSW Churches.

South Sydney Anglican Bishop Michael Stead expects a vaccination certificate to be required for kids ministry, in the same way a Working with Children Check is required.

Dr Stead says churches will be required to submit updated COVID safe plans. The plans include questions about ventilation and checks to ensure active steps are being taken to ensure church staff and key volunteer personnel have been vaccinated, especially those involved in ministries to children.

How could we build back better after COVID? Could evangelicals unite together to rebuild the church with a national co-ordinated evangelistic campaign?

COVID has created an unprecedented opportunity for evangelism, but churches and church leaders are feeling fragile and weary.

In Great Britain, churches are getting set for a national campaign leading up to Easter 2022, under the banner ‘Find life that lasts. It’s closer than you think.’

What will happen in churches after the third wave of COIVD as the freedoms return to Australia over the next two months?

When vaccination rates reach 70% venues, including places of worship are likely to be reopened, and even more when the rates reach 80%.

Governments are planning more freedoms for those who are double vaccinated. But will they impose restrictions on who can attend worship?

What are the consequences if euthanasia is legalised? And how do we fight the issue?

Legislation is before the Queensland Parliament and is about to come to the parliament in the UK and in New South Wales to allow euthanasia.

And laws permitting euthanasia have already been passed in Victoria, Western Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand… there’s a bit of a sense that even if the conservatives succeed in holding out this time… at some stage it feels like it will happen.

Euthanasia is illegal in most of the United States, although significantly it is legal in the more progressive Washington, D.C. and seven states.

Andrew Errington is Senior Minister of Newtown Erskineville Angican Church. Megan Best is a palliative care doctor and associate professor with the Institute for Ethics and Society at the University of Notre Dame.