We have reached this day a moment of decision for us as a Diocese, as a community of Anglican Christians: to help us make the decision, I believe we are going to need above all the perspective of the cross. At the Synod last year (2001) I explained the Mission Statement and goal that had been commended to us by the Diocesan Executive Board and the Standing Committee. I warned members that the call to mission is ‘a call for sacrifice, for change, for unremitting effort, in dependence on God's Spirit… If we are going to take the challenge of this mission statement seriously, we must be ready to commit ourselves to it by this time next year'. I went on to say this: ‘In effect, it gives us the next year to analyse, to consult, to plan, to pray before we come back to Synod and decide not merely on the budget, but on the mission. I am proposing that at the Synod in 2002 we deliberate on both these connected issues. October 2002 is when we decide to enter the race and respond to the starter's gun - or we decide that this is not the race we want to enter.'

Ministry at St John's, Darlinghurst is under threat of being drastically scaled back, with the Church's proposed property development being opposed by the City of Sydney Council.

Introducing friends to God through telling Two Ways to Live ‘as a long, intimate story' is the basis of a new evangelistic course launched in Sydney this month. Billed as ‘a new way of introducing the true and living God to a post-Christian society', the 12-week Introducing God series aims to tell ‘the Bible's big story' by drawing on popular evangelistic tools. The theology of the Two Ways to Live tract is presented in ‘relational' terms using the Alpha concept of a meal, video presentation and discussion. Sky News reporter Leigh Hatcher hosts the series, written and presented by Dominic Steele, pastor of Annandale Anglican Church and Christians in the Media. The video series is produced by Anglican Media.

Sara Haddleton, who took her own life last month, may have been a ‘streetie', but she was certainly not homeless.

For St Paul's, Carlingford, the decision to start new congregations on someone's ‘home turf' – a local primary school hall and university lecture theatre – is attracting new people each week who are eager to hear the gospel. Many of the newcomers to congregations at North Rocks Primary School and Macquarie University were not Christians before the churches were planted earlier this year.

If we do not undertake the work of reforming our diocesan organisations and culture, we may find ourselves entirely by-passed in the society in which we live and unable to speak in a contemporary way.

Alan Cole, who died in Sydney on 7 August following a stroke, aged 80, was a classical and biblical scholar, a teacher at Oakhill Theological College London, Moore College Sydney, St Peter's Hall and Trinity College Singapore, a missionary with both the China Inland Mission and Church Missionary Society in South-East Asia, Founding Master of Robert Menzies College at Macquarie University, and Federal Secretary of CMS (Australia). He was an Honorary Canon of St Andrew's Cathedral Sydney from 1979, and during his last nine years living in the parish of St Clement's, Mosman, in addition to numerous speaking engagements both in Australia and overseas, he was devoted to ministry in Chinese congregations in Sydney.

Stunned amazement greeted the voice on the phone from Western Australia, when the rector of St John's, Parramatta received a call telling him he had just been elected bishop of one of the largest Anglican Dioceses in the world.