Anglican Youth, Children and Families

The heading above is one of the most frequently asked questions we receive in our office. Although there are still some priests out there who maintain the view that church is not something which is meant to be enjoyed - that's why it's called a 'service', they say - the vast majority are pragmatic enough to realise that if families don't enjoy coming to church, they won't come! As a rule, Anglicans in our Diocese are bound by the Prayer Book (the most recent of which is the 1995 A Prayer Book for Australia ) in terms of how we are allowed to conduct services, especially those with Holy Communion on offer, and there are plenty of good reasons for having some rules - for example, I had a serious conversation with someone recently on whether Communion for a young congregation could be done with chips and Coke instead of bread and wine.  (In case you're wondering, no, I didn't think that one would fly...) So what follows is a collection of the most popul...

Senior Ichthus ran in the first week of July, and it was an amazing week away for both our campers and our leaders. Senior Ichthus this year was a time of new ideas and changes, a place where we wanted to start to explore how we could challenge and engage our high school seniors in new ways. It was also an exciting time of change in the leadership, with Isaac and Mel directing for the first time and bringing their own fresh ideas and experiences to the camp.   What resulted was a week of great fun, great conversations, and a real sense of community full of love and friendship that was built over the week. We explored the book of Ephesians with the wisdom and guidance of Rev Ian Dredge and Elizabeth Greentree as our Spiritual Directors for the week. And in the week we explored some of the big ideas of Christianity and of being part of the many who follow Christ. Our campers alongside their leaders unpacked the ideas of pre-destination, the power of prayer (does it work?...