The final voyage PLUS new blog: Alison and the whale!

To my beautiful faithful shipmates who still turn up here from time to time and wonder if there will be ever be another voyage:

Now Sanctuary's finished up, I'm finally admitting the blogger platform is a decade past its use-by day.

So I've moved across to a new site, to alisonandthewhale.com (here).

There you'll find you'll find ... not much at all yet! But I've kicked things off with a conversation with Simon Holt at Collins Street Baptist about one of my favourite topics, Jonah, and will slowly add posts. Some will be old and barnacle encrusted; others, fresh as a new-bubbling spring. I'm thinking prayers, sermons, thoughts, conversations: whatever gets caught in the net. 

But I won't be cross-posting here anymore.

May you have fair winds and following seas. 

Love, alison x

Farewell Sanctuary, my beautiful beloveds

Once upon a time, nearly eight years ago, some of us did something very foolish. A bunch of people who had mostly drifted away from church or were burned by church or had been rejected by church bumped into a quirky minister on holiday, and wondered if they might try again ... Read here or listen here.

Matthew | Who profits? Who pays?

Once upon a time, there was a billionaire who was rather fond of cage fighting. But what with the collapse of an overseas stock market, and a royal commission, and a great deal of lobbying to protect his interests, he’d had a hard year. He needed to take some me-time, and chillax. But before he went away, he called in his chief investors ... a story and a hermeneutic. Read here or listen here.

Matthew | Ten foolish bridesmaids, embraced

Ten bridesmaids. We may hear this story as a Boy Scout lesson: Be prepared! Then we find some sick hungry homeless people, in order to earn our service badge and win the approval of our scoutmaster-king. But some of us are less confident about our belonging, and hear the story differently. Tonight from Sanctuary ... read here or listen here.

Matthew | Authority in the church

Look for leaders who love. Beware any setting, structure or dynamic where pastors don’t have external supervision, power is unchecked, accountability is opaque, or judgement, fear or shame are being deployed. Jesus came to bring truth and transparency, healing and wholeness, love, life and peace: so seek out those who radiate these qualities with good humour, humility and grace ... Read here or listen here.

Matthew | The demands of love

Perhaps you’ve seen About a Boy, which is really about two boys, or maybe more. One is twelve-year-old Marcus, growing up in precarious circumstances. The other is the beautifully named Will Freeman. Will is a man-child whose wealth has insulated him from other people, and from life itself. Yet through one of his most selfish decisions, he’s thrown into the path of young Marcus; and Marcus begins to make demands on him ...

Read here or listen here.

Philippians | In the depths of anguish, joy

In these days of terror and sadness, in this time of myriad personal and public griefs, in the bleak and terrible NO from the Australian electorate, in the anguish of many First Nations people, in the wounds of the earth and the worries about climate and the cries from Israel and Palestine and everywhere else, we can still know joy.

Read here or listen here.