EFAC Australia
The Story of TIMA: Planting New Life in Old Pots
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- Written by: Ben Wong
The Story of TIMA: Planting New Life in Old Pots — The Vision and Practice of "Church Repotting"
In Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, there is a developing Anglican parish — TIMA Anglican Parish. TIMA is composed of three churches: St Timothy’s Bulleen, St Mark’s Templestowe Lower, and St Stephen’s Greythorn. Across three locations and five services (two English, two Mandarin, and one Cantonese), congregants of different languages and generations are being reconnected under a single vision: not to give up on traditional churches, but to replant the "new life" of the Gospel mission within the "old pots" of existing churches.
I. BACKGROUND: WHEN ANGLICAN CHURCHES FACE DECLINE, IS "CLOSING DOWN" THE ONLY OPTION?
Over a decade ago, God began to show Ben Wong and a small team of coworkers a clear reality: many traditional local churches were facing structural dilemmas. This was not a problem unique to a single site, but a widespread phenomenon.
Book Review: Repackaging Christianity: Alpha and the Building of a Global Brand
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- Written by: Peter MacPherson
Repackaging Christianity: Alpha and the Building of a Global Brand.
Andrew Atherstone
Hodder & Stoughton, 2023
Reviewed by Peter Macpherson
This is an easily readable account of Alpha’s origins and development over the past thirty years. The title might suggest it is a polemic but in essence it is a history. Andrew Atherstone, after all, is a serious ecclesiastical historian. He is Professor of Modern Anglicanism, Tutor in History and Doctrine at Oxford University and Latimer Research Fellow at Wycliffe Hall. He lists his major research interests as “Anglicanism and Evangelicalism between the 18th and 21st centuries.” Although this is not a long book it concludes with 53 pages of endnotes, detailing Atherstone’s reliance on archives, diaries, interviews and parish magazines.
Alpha began in the late 1970s as an in-house discipleship course at an Anglican church in London called Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB). It was described as “a course on Christian foundations … designed to help those who want to go on in the Christian life” and had six sessions. The curate, Charles Marnham, ran the course in his flat above the church hall and food was provided because those attending were often coming straight from work.
Read more: Book Review: Repackaging Christianity: Alpha and the Building of a Global Brand
Book review: The Body God Gives: A Biblical Response to Transgender Theory
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- Written by: Tim Collison
Robert S. Smith
Lexham Academic February 2025
Reviewed by Tim Collison
Debates about ontology should be nothing new to Anglicans. Fifteen (depending on how you count them) of the Articles of Religion deal with the nature of what a person or an element is. The Articles’ concerns about how we see God, humanity, and what the sacraments are (or are not) demonstrate that trying to understand the nature of what things are is central to our understood identity.
We should then be equipped one, would think, to be able to participate in discussions about transgender issues. I suspect the reality is that most of us struggle with this. Either because we are concerned what people will think about what we might say, or we are unsure what we ourselves might think about it. It may even seem like it is not an issue we need to wrestle with. I doubt that there are many people in our congregations who are transitioning. Yet most of us will either need to provide pastoral care to enquirers about faith who are transitioning or answer the questions our congregations might have about this issue.
Read more: Book review: The Body God Gives: A Biblical Response to Transgender Theory
The Story Of The Bridge Church
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- Written by: Paul Dale
“I will build my church” says the Lord Jesus, and in His extraordinary kindness that’s exactly what He has been doing through The Bridge Church in Sydney.
It was in August 2004 that a group of 10 people gathered to pray and envision what a new church might look like. We never imagined that 21 years later we’d be a church with 4 different campuses (Kirribilli, Neutral Bay, Macquarie Park and Rozelle), with 13 gatherings every Sunday and around 2000 people worshipping our Lord Jesus Christ.
There were 3 foundational truths that shaped the foundation of The Bridge Church, and these continue to be our ‘distinctives’. They are:
In God's Image – A Confession About Human Nature
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- Written by: Michael F. Bird
I’ve long argued that theological anthropology is the # 1 issue that Christians must wrestle with today. Whether we are talking about sexuality, gender identity, transgenderism, transhumanism, artificial intelligence, disability, or even the soul, it is all comes down to “what is a human being?” What follows below is my Beta-Test of some ideas on theological anthropology.
Now, this is spectacularly hard and I might be spectacularly wrong, because some of these issues are very complex, they defy simplistic analyses or resolution, and they involve a combination of biology, psychology, and sociology. Or else, many theologians within the Christian tradition might legitimately dispute the validity or cogency of the various assertions I make below. But these are the issues that we simply must address today in the second quarter of the twenty-first century.
I’m using a format of we confess, we affirm, we deny, and we commit. I hope it reads well - but remember, it is only a first draft!
THE IMAGE OF GOD
We confess that all human beings are created in the image of God, bearing inherent dignity, worth, and value that cannot be diminished or destroyed (Genesis 1:27-28).
We affirm that by God's grace, this image is present in every person from conception to death.
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