Migration numbers for Australia are at a record high.
The number of permanent and long-term migrants arriving in Australia has soared to more than 500,000 a year.
Record numbers of migrants, temporary workers and overseas students are piling into the lucky country.
There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence that migrants from all over the world are responding to the [...]
Category Archives: Trends
Why wouldn’t you want to migrate to Australia?
1 January, 2010 – 9:18 PM
A cold wind blows in China this Christmas
24 December, 2009 – 5:55 PM
It has been six weeks since worshippers at Beijing’s Shouwang House Church were abruptly shunted out of their long-time home in a nondescript low-rise building.
A week after their landlord succumbed to pressure from authorities and turfed them on to the street, more than 500 church members gathered outside the east gate of Haidian Park.
The icy [...]
Jesus number one in Oz
27 November, 2009 – 10:37 PM
New research reveals that a majority of Australians (54%) rank Jesus as the number one most influential person in history.
Albert Einstein came in at second place (16%).
83% responded that Jesus was a real figure from history. Of these believers 43% believed Jesus had miraculous powers and he was the Son of God.
2 in 5 [...]
Mapping the Muslim world
10 October, 2009 – 10:05 AM
Pew Research has just released a report on the size and distribution of the world’s Muslim population.
A summary of the findings. . .
A comprehensive demographic study of more than 200 countries finds that there are 1.57 billion Muslims of all ages living in the world today, representing 23% of an estimated 2009 world population [...]
The state of church planting in Australia
5 October, 2009 – 12:43 PM
Last week in Sydney I was asked for my impressions of the state of church planting in Australia.
Here are a few thoughts on how the various overlapping groups are doing.
Liberal
It was all over at least a generation ago. Attendances have halved in that time. The average age is over sixty. Churches are being closed [...]
What if America is not the exception?
1 August, 2009 – 12:53 PM
Here’s a few salient points from an interview with the Economist’s editor in chief John Micklethwait on his new book – God is Back: how the global revival of faith is changing the world.
On Western Europe, not the US, as the exception to the rest of the world. . .
I think, if you look around [...]
God is back (again)
25 June, 2009 – 9:21 PM
The millennium issue of the Economist published God’s obituary. Now the Economist editor John Micklethwait and Washington bureau chief Adrian Wooldridge have written a new book, God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith Is Changing the World.
It seems that America, not Western Europe, is the norm. Outside of Europe, the very things that [...]
We’re all going to die — eventually
4 May, 2009 – 8:02 PM
I flew into Asia during the SARS outbreak in 2003. So many people told me I was crazy. I just figured if our workers were in the field I shouldn’t be concerned about visiting them. I also had my suspicions about the level of anxiety over the epidemic.
On that trip I was in Thailand for [...]
Australian Christian Churches: Growing and Slowing
2 May, 2009 – 3:54 AM
Since 1977 under the leadership of Andrew Evans, and for the last twelve years Brian Houston, the Australian Christian Churches have been one of the fastest growing movements in the land.
The ACC has released its 2009 report. A few observations. . .
Since 1997 there has been an 85% growth in the number of constituents, from [...]
The Reformation of Machismo
29 April, 2009 – 1:59 AM
The conventional wisdom is that Christianity reinforces the oppression of women.
Elizabeth Brusco, a feminist Marxist scholar conducted fieldwork in Columbia from 1982-1983, and found that pentecostal conversion transformed traditional gender relations by giving women a moral authority in the home to challenge their husbands’ drinking, gambling, or adultery.
She wrote up her findings in “The Reformation [...]
