Toxic positivity - the belief that 'being positive' is the best and only way to live - is nothing new. But what happens when it gets confused with Christian hope?

What does Gospel-empowered Social Transformation look like in these times of great disruption and change? How can we equip Christians for this task? Richard Niebuhr's reflections on the relationship between Christianity and culture are a helpful place to start.

Ordinary, faithful and small acts in local spaces can emit the fragrance of a new reality, the reign of God in our neighbourhoods. This is, I believe, what we’ve had a glimpse of during the pandemic.

Now that church is all online, it might be time to consider how well we are going. How do we encourage and facilitate church participation and experience in online church gatherings?

How does Paul’s idea of equipping the saints for service relate to the ‘Great Commissions’ of Genesis 1 and Matthew 28? The creation narrative is key to how we understand ministry, human flourishing, Christian maturity and the glory of God.

Social isolation during a global pandemic makes good public health sense, but should the church seamlessly migrate to an on-line ‘space’? What does this say about our understanding of the gospel, our bodies and the way we gather?

With COVID-19 restrictions, 'bubbles' became the word that held our collective, yet uniquely individual, sense of fears and experiences of limits and fragility. Yet limits invite kindness, as the Book of Ruth shows.

We don’t resist by silencing and banning and prohibiting, or by creating an atmosphere of reactive fear in which people self-censor. Rather, we should follow Jesus’ example, who resisted his detractors through argument and debate.

For a long time, we’ve pretended we are ‘disembodied workers’. Maybe a global pandemic is what it will take to abandon the harmful idea that the 24-hour work cycle is healthy for anyone.

As churches we have been so cowed by the abuse crisis that we barely raise a peep when we are regarded as an ‘inessential service’. Yet on Anzac Day we can honour the dead and draw on the Easter imagery while also opposing war and critiquing the idolising of national identity.