jodiemcneill.com

In all of today’s major daily newspapers there is a sea of letters about abortion. It is a divisive issue, and not without reason.

On the one hand, there are those who claim that it is a woman’s choice, and that men have no right to preach morals. On the other hand, there are people like me who believe that the epidemic of 100,000 abortions per year is shocking evidence of an enormous social evil.

In response, I submitted this letter to the SMH, The Age and The Australian:

“I predict that by the end of this century our society will hang its head in shame at the slaughter of our unborn children from abortion. Like slavery and genocide, our children’s children will struggle to comprehend how a civilised society such as ours could have allowed such a crime against humanity.”

It’s hard hitting… but it’s how I feel. Furthermore, I know it is how God feels about the killing of his created children.

PS: Letter was published by The Australian on 4th November.

Many of you would be aware of the recent media coverage of Philip Jensen’s talks in the UK. It started with a report in The Guardian, with the headline “Evangelicals call Williams a prostitute” (13 Oct), which formed the basis for a spate of media reports throughout the world, for example this article in the SMH.

Since his return from the UK, Philip has given his own perspective on the events during a speech at the Sydney Anglican Synod.

Last night this story was featured on ABC TV’s Media Watch program. However, it seems that even this self-appointed media watchdog is not without its own bias.

It was perhaps reasonable for David Marr to say to Philip that he “hasn’t produced a shred of evidence that you were misreported by the Guardian”, since transcripts of the talk have not been published. Yet, viewers were left with the impression that this absence of evidence damned Philip and exonerated the journalist. Indeed, David Marr ended his piece by saying to Philip: “to get yourself out of a pickle, you defamed the journalist, denounced the Australian media and set out to bamboozle synod.”

Clearly, the Media Watch was biased against Philip and towards the journalist. The fair and balanced way to end the piece would have been to acknowledge that the lack of a transcript leaves the truth inconclusive. Yet, unfortunately, the journalist was treated as innocent until proven guilty, whilst the priest was considered guilty until proven innocent.

For further reading, view the discussion on sydneyanglicans.net here

Last night I attended the Nathan Tasker concert in Chatswood. What a great night! Nathan has come an incredible way since he first started playing songs in front of his school mates in the early 90’s!

I had the privilege of managing Nathan’s music career during the time he launched his first two CDs. It was an exciting and rocky road, especially with the mega concert at the Homebush State Sports Centre in 1997 that turned out to be a little less mega than we had hoped!

Nathan continues to write wonderful songs that present the gospel of Jesus in a way that is both faithful to scripture and musically outstanding. His band last night was excellent, perfectly capturing the CD arrangements, whilst adding a great ‘live’ feel.

For more details on Nathan’s music visit http://www.nathantasker.com/

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of speaking at the Hurstville Chinese Baptist Church. It was my first ever translated sermon! I spoke one phrase in English, and my interpreter translated it into Cantonese.

It made me understand many things about the body of Christ. It showed me that language and culture may make fellowship difficult at times, but it doesn’t change our unity in Christ. I saw this clearly as we celebrated the Lord’s Supper together. This enacted word brought our diverse backgrounds together in a profound way, having already heard the Lord speak to us through his word.

It was wonderful to enjoy the fellowship and love of doing on earth what we are already doing as gathered disciples in heaven. Thanks to my brothers and sisters at HCBC… see you again soon!

This weekend I had the privilege to attend the Club 5 Conference at Stanwell Tops Conference Centre. Although I have been attending these conferences for many years, I am thrilled to see youth and children’s ministry becoming an even more significant part of the focus of ministry training and recruitment.

My role over the weekend was to lead a small group, interview a candidate for ministry, and to participate in the program. In particular, I led a seminar group on youth and children’s ministry, in which I was joined by many of the the other Youthworks advisers in showing the importance of youth and children’s ministry, and the options available.

To find out more about the great ministry of Club 5, visit http://www.mts.com.au/club5/index.htm