The Ugly Duckling Company

From left: Paul, Joh, Ian and Sharon meet in the Church of Christ division office.        Paul, Sharon and Sarah continued working with Church of Christ connections this morning in Sydney. John and Ian from the Church of Christ office were interested in what Paul had to say about training and supporting lay evangelists. Garden party attendees enjoyed some Australian sunshine and conversation.        This week also has us heading all over the suburbs and neighbourhoods of the city, and this afternoon was no exception. Rick Mumford, pastor at Wentworthville Baptist Church, took us out to Wentworthville so that Sharon and Sarah could participate in a women's garden party. We bonded over cake disasters, Sharon shared her story and we ended the afternoon tea with a thought-provoking round of Table Talk for Women. Sharon demonstrates the Table Talk app over a round of refreshments.        We f...

       This is it: our last day in Adelaide for the trip! Our time here flew by (sometimes literally, if you consider the winds rolling off of the ocean this week). Because we needed to prepare for Sydney, Paul, Sharon and Sarah spent the morning ironing out details for our final stop and continuing to tweak Resolve.  Who knew the standard 52-card deck could tell you so much about the Bible?        We changed gears to speak with Geoff, who works with Church of Christ's CareWorks as a community-builder in several settings. We told Geoff about Puzzling Questions, Table Talk and The Happiness Lab and, in return, he told us the story of the prodigal son using a standard 52-card deck. It was a productive meeting for all of us.         After lunch, we met with another set of Church of Christ leaders to get an even broader sense of Australian contemporary church context.  Mark (left) and Paul say goodbye ...

Paul discusses potential uses for Table Talk in ministry context with a group of Sydney area Church of Christ pastors.        Thanks to the invitation of our Church of Christ friend Mark Riessen, we spent the morning at Adelaide's Tabor College, a Christian college whose offered degrees include various ministry-related ones. Our first session involved a discussion with current Church of Christ ministers surrounding the challenges and joys of their ministry contexts and how evangelism operates both in and out of these contexts.        For the afternoon, Paul led another discussion on the role of evangelism in today's culture, this time with ministry students currently attending Tabor College. Both groups were sharp-minded and engaged as we worked together toward a new understanding of evangelism and evangelism resources.        We then used our afternoon to review new Resolve videos our producer sent over. Ea...

       Today, Paul and Sharon returned to the Churches of Christ conference. The theme for the Churches of Christ conference was Living Hopefully. Paul was interviewed about the various resources we have created and then asked to take a session outlining how we see the world.

       We were on the road again today, this time by bus. After a conversation with the Horsham Church of Christ leadership team, Simon saw us off at the bus station for our five hour trip through the golden countryside. Sharon and Sarah were also pleased to see their first wild kangaroo through the bus window as we crossed the border between the states of Victoria and South Australia. Tomorrow starts our first official day in Adelaide, and we’ll be busier still this week!  Sharon and Paul walk through the Glenelg neighbourhood.

       Today we said goodbye to Melbourne and officially drew a close to our first week in Australia. It's hard to believe how much such a relatively short period of time can hold; we talked, laughed and prayed with so many wonderful people in that week!  This koala is 14 meters tall! From left: Paul, Sarah, Sharon, Simon However, we're looking ahead toward even more of the same. For today, that meant a train trip to Horsham. Our new friend Simon is a Churches of Christ pastor there, and he ensured that it was a day of incredible hospitality.  Sharon and Sarah with their lovely host, Joan (right) The three of us were hosted overnight by different church members. Joan, who hosted Sharon and Sarah, had all three of us over for a delicious dinner and joined over 50 others at a local church for Paul's evening seminar.  Horsham community churchgoers gather to play and critique the Table Talk games. This time, the attendees had a chan...