Was the Garden Paradise?

From Phillip Jensen:

“Peter and I love gardens but hate gardening. However, all the good things about the garden are set out in Genesis 2.

In today’s podcast, we explore God’s generous provision symbolised in the Garden of Eden. To what extent was the garden paradise that we need to regain? To what extent is the paradise promised to the thief on the cross something greater than the Garden of Eden?”

– Listen at Two Ways News.

Related:

Two Ways Ministries’ 2025 King’s Birthday Conference is coming up at Moore College next Monday 9th June.

“From Feminism to motherhood, from animal rights to toxic masculinity, from racism to euthanasia, Australia is in an ethical turmoil on many issues. Christians often feel in the crossfire of these culture wars. Do Christian ethics apply to non-Christians?

This year at the King’s Birthday Conference, Phillip Jensen is going to look at how becoming a Christian takes us back to the universal morality of Creation.” …

– See the details, and register before it’s too late!

75 Years of Church Society

In the latest Church Society podcast with Ros Clarke:

“Church Society is celebrating 75 years since its formation from the Church Association and the National Church League in 1950.

In this episode of the podcast, we hear from Andrew Atherstone, Gerald Bray and Lee Gatiss about the history of Church Society before 1950, in the past 75 years, and into the present day.”

– Listen here. 35 minutes.

We are on mission with Jesus

“ ‘Jesus is in the midst of his people as we pursue the mission on which he has sent us,’ Archbishop Raffel has told church leaders and evangelists from 57 countries and territories who gathered in Berlin last month. …”

– Russell Powell at SydneyAnglicans.net has this report on the European Congress on Evangelism in Berlin – organised by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

We understand that the Archbishop’s address will be published in the next Southern Cross.

Photo courtesy Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, with thanks to Russell Powell.

Church of Uganda celebrates Archbishop Janani Luwum’s legacy

From NTV Uganda –

“Forty-eight years ago, Archbishop Janani Luwum was reportedly assassinated on the orders of the former President Iddi Amin Dada.

Luwum was at the time the leader of the Church of Uganda. But his legacy lives on after Uganda declared the 16 of February a public holiday to celebrate the life of Luwum. Daniel Kibet brings us the tales from the Northern Uganda Diocese of the Anglican Church, where Luwum once served as the bishop, and how people there remember him.”

– The 5 minute report includes comments from Moore College graduate Bishop Alfred Olwa.

A Psalms ‘taster’

“Friends in Christ, recently a younger new friend has started reading the Bible, and had read some New Testament books, some of the Gospels, and some of the Letters. He’d also begun in Genesis. But I wanted to encourage him to read the Psalms. After all, the Psalms are really the song book of Jesus. That’s what all Jewish people in his era would have grown up knowing, and often singing.

But there are 150 of them! And although there is structure to the chapters, and some important themes and groupings, they don’t have an unfolding narrative that’s necessarily obvious.

So for better or worse I decided to pick just 15, 10% of the total, as a kind of introductory highlights orientation tour for my friend to read over a few times, before hopefully going on to read all 150 later on. …”

– Dean of Sydney Sandy Grant writes in the Cathedral newsletter.