Writing

For all but seven years of my 40-year working life I’ve served in roles in the Uniting Church in Australia - as a lay person and as clergy, in four states and in denominational and congregational settings - and now a congregation/agency role at Wesley Mission. It’s been a wild…

Happy New Year! Almost a month into 2024, with the summer holidays drawing to a close, that greeting almost feels redundant now. But given this is my first ‘Soft Hearts’ newsletter for 2024, and my first opportunity to share something of my heart with you this year – it still…

I’ve just finished reading Andrew Robert’s magisterial biography of Winston Churchill, a 982-page account of a life so astonishing I had to remind myself repeatedly it wasn’t fiction, but true history. There’s so much to learn from the story of this remarkable, complex man – especially for those of us…

This past year I (re)discovered the beauty and power of well written biography, autobiography and memoir. It began with Philip Yancey’s ‘Where the Light Fell’, a bracing and refreshingly unsentimental articulation of especially the childhood of one of my favourite Christian authors. Then it was the astonishing, ‘Faith, Hope and…

Not many love the Christmas season more than Sue. Our house is adorned with the obligatory Christmas Tree, but also not simply one, but four nativity scenes, as well as assorted reindeer, stars and other decorations. We’ve come into the city to see the lights in Martin Place, and the…

The sights and sounds of the Christmas season are all around us. The giant Christmas tree is up in Martin Place, decorations adorn our shopping precincts and I even stumbled upon a ‘pop up’ digital radio station that plays only Christmas music. Seriously, there is only so much Mariah Carey…

Three years since we moved, people still ask us how we like living in Sydney. Well, we love it – acknowledging we are blessed beyond measure with a wonderful, roomy home and a big garden for Sue to keep our local Bunnings in business with. Our lawn is big enough…

This coming New Year’s Eve Sue and I will celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary. It’s our Coral Anniversary apparently, which makes buying an appropriate gift a bit tricky. New Year’s Eve is a strange day to get married (friends had pinched the Saturday a few weeks before to tie the…

Every week I read, write, speak and listen to a lot of words. Reports, books, podcasts, my journal, social media, streaming services, radio news, sermon manuscripts, emails, connect newsletters... Words spill over and from me, most of them inconsequential and so soon forgotten, prosaic words that serve a short-term purpose.…

One of my favourite Jesus stories is, when in the middle of the wilderness, he miraculously feeds 5000 with five bread rolls and two dried fish – the packed lunch of a small boy. Let me tell you how the story unfolds and then why its been on my mind…