Dear Friends, It’s been a little while since I last wrote to you. Saying this, I have a really important ‘ask’ for you. Gambling reform is Wesley Mission’s primary advocacy goal, in part due to the feedback we receive from our staff who were seeing the large scope and scale…

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…

My first paid job was riding the streets of Camperdown, Western Victoria in the cold, pre-dawn light, delivering papers stacked on the back of my three-speed bike. At twelve years of age, I would finish by visiting the local bakery and stuffing down an icing-slathered Boston bun as a pre-breakfast…

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…

One of history’s most beautiful, if haunting poems is around three millennia old. Written by a king named Solomon, a leader with extraordinary wisdom, with bracing honesty it recognises the ebb and the flow, the give and take – the seasons traversed by every human life. He begins: There is…

Our first year in Sydney (2021) was an eventful one, to say the least, particularly the extended COVID-19 lockdown we all experienced in the second half of that year.

Life can be tough, really tough, and the ability to persevere through setbacks and disappointments is critical, especially for a leader.

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...

Tim Costello describes Australians as ‘the world’s biggest losers’ because we suffer considerably more gambling losses per person than every other nation in the world – and more than half of those losses are on poker machines.