We should be thankful for the democratic blessings we enjoy, but we should not take them for granted.

A young, professional couple in their early 30s with a baby daughter, Greg and Suzie Atkin were first drawn to St Martin's Killara as they were looking for a church to get married in. Greg had a Christian background but had never really committed to Christianity, while Suzie had grown up in a non-Christian environment and had never attended church.

Parish in focus. In upper North Shore Killara, Christians are being encouraged to break old ways of doing things, embrace change and move outside their comfort zones to bring the gospel to more local people.

It's a long way from a small settlement in outback Tanzania, where people struggle daily with the reality of poverty, disease and death, to the glitzy Eastern Suburbs and the parish of Vaucluse right in the middle of the ‘insular peninsular'.

George Conger, a conservative minister and journalist from Florida, reports for Southern Cross from Niagara, Canada.

Archbishop Greg Venables, Primate of the Southern Cone (South America), speaking on behalf of 22 Primates of the Anglican Communion called last month for the expulsion of the Anglican Church of Canada from the Communion.

The Rector of Adelaide's oldest church expects evangelism to be much more difficult and said there is much work to be done in caring for survivors in the wake of an independent report into mishandling of child sex abuse.

At its annual general meeting in June, the New South Wales branch of the Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican Communion (EFAC) farewelled its retiring Chairman, Bishop Ray Smith, Sydney Diocese's former Georges River Regional Bishop. He was replaced by Bishop Peter Brain of Armidale.