A new Privacy Act introduced by the New South Wales state government is pulling some Anglican chaplains and hospitals apart, but pushing others closer together. How individual hospitals interpret the Act is drastically affecting the number of patients being referred on to chaplains.

Bibles are being handed out hand-over-fist in Sydneys south-west thanks to the vision of an Anglicare worker and her Macarthur-based church. Eighteen months ago Wendy Estall, Anglicare manager for Macarthur / Liverpool region, began developing a deep conviction that her clients needed to come face to face with the Bible.

A Sydney congregation is using the latest technological 'must have to transport the Gospel to new ears. Inner-city parish, St. Barnabas Broadway, is converting all of their sermons to the MP3 format so that they can be played through iPods and other digital audio devices.

The Sydney Diocese has taken the lead in the national Anglican Church by becoming the first diocese to adopt stringent new measures to protect children from sex abuse.

Remote schools in north eastern Argentina are benefiting from the word of life, thanks to the efforts of a CMS missionary.

New privacy laws passed by the New South Wales government are proving to be serious barriers to chaplains providing crucial support in the states overburdened health system.

There is a growing desire on the part of leading figures especially in the predominantly evangelical Diocese of Sydney, in particular, to authorise lay presidency, or "lay administration" as they term it, of the Holy Communion. We should actually be grateful to those in the Diocese of Sydney who have raised the question, since it forces all of us to re-examine our inherited tradition. The real opportunity for most of us in this debate is not to fulminate about what we are against but to remind ourselves of what we are for, and to ask how well our teaching and our practice represent truth, charity and the demands of the Gospel, and whether and how we might all need to consider changes.

As with his earlier novel, Captain Corellis Mandolin, de Bernieres throws the detail of village life against the dramatic backdrop of a world war and its attendant catastrophes. Birds Without Wings takes us to a small village in Anatolia, now Turkey, in the turbulent years leading up to WWI and beyond.