Dear Members and Friends of South Darebin parish, Last Sunday we had a happy and uplifting choral Eucharist to mark St James Day and the one hundredth anniversary of St James, Thornbury being made a parish. My sermon reminded us that in the Kingdom of God everyone is as important as everyone else – there…
Why do people start coming to church? What should we do at South Darebin to encourage new worshippers? The 2020 National Church Life Survey indicated that around four in ten Australians are open to being invited to church if invited by a family member or close friend. However, about a third of Australians said they…
Dear friends, I am writing this message from Cambodia, where I have been meeting with representatives of a number of poor communities among whom my charity, Australian Collaboration Cambodia, works. Yesterday I visited a very poor village in Ratanaki Province where the people are from a minority group called the Jarai people, who have their…
A message from the Rev’d Stephen Delbridge Today we celebrate the Martyrdom of St Peter and St Paul. Tradition holds that Peter and Paul were martyred during the persecution of Nero in 64 to 68 AD. By the sixth century there were 25 credible references to the deaths of Peter and Paul during Nero’s persecution….
Today we celebrate the birth of John the Baptist who was a cousin of Jesus. Both John and Jesus had miraculous births heralded by an angel. Little is known of John up to the start of his ministry, not long before Jesus’ ministry began. The commemoration of John’s birth is distinct from the birth of…
My wife and I enjoy watching ’The Repair Shop’ on TV. The Repair Shop is a place where highly skilled furniture restorers, horologists, metal workers, ceramicists, upholsterers and all manner of skilled craftsmen and women restore for people objects that hold a special place in their hearts. It is wonderful to see the transformations of…
Somebody once said: “You can never look into the eyes of someone that God does not love. Always be kind.” How true this is! Every person is loved by God. Every person is made in God’s image. Every person should be loved as they are – as a child of God. This is certainly how…
Light is an important theme in the Bible. In Genesis Chapter 1 we read that God said, ‘Let there be light’, and there was light. Jesus declared himself to be the light of the world and said that those who are his disciples are also lights in the world. In our second reading today, St…
I want to share with you some statements from Reconciliation Australia and the Healing Foundation concerning National Sorry Day. In 2020, Reconciliation Australia wrote: “Every year on 26 May, National Sorry Day remembers and acknowledges the mistreatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who were forcibly removed from their families and communities, which we…
Today we celebrate Pentecost Sunday. The description in Acts 2 of the amazing event of the Holy Sprit being given to the disciples 50 days after the resurrection, is steeped in mystery. There was a sound like the rush of a violent wind, but there was no wind. There was what looked like divided tongues…
