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...

       For our first official day in Adelaide, we spent the day outside of Adelaide. Australia was kind enough to give Sharon permission to drive during our time here, and we had to take advantage of the chance to meet even more people!  Meeting members in Gladstone We drove through what a local described as South Australia’s serious farmland to a town called Gladstone. There, we met John Stead, bishop of the huge geographical district of Willochra (it’s approximately 90 percent of South Australia, to be exact). This diocese serves several rural communities in South Australia and heads up the coast from Gladstone in the general direction of the mammoth state that is Western Australia.  We returned to Adelaide in time for the opening of Churches of Christ annual conference. Paul and Sharon were interviewed as part of the general program of the evening, and all three spent the remainder of the evening making connections with local church leaders a...

       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...

Creative Ministries Pastor Abrahm Gunn hops in front of the camera in the spirit of Christmas.       Monday was the first of two days set aside for our Table Talk for Christmas filming project. We had a few brave takers, and we can't wait to see who else will be willing as the trip continues! Sarah loves these filming sessions because they provide a chance for us to get to know a little bit about the individuals that frequent Cross Culture, the congregation we've reached out to film. We can say with certainty that she knows more about snowboarding, dogs and Japanese food than she did when the day began! Bert, a theology student and gem aficionado, helps us out with our Table Talk video project.        In true UDC style, Monday was fast-paced and conversation-heavy. In addition to the Table Talk interviews, our team spoke with various clergy to better understand where the Ugly Duckling Company fits in Australian culture and to collaborate on ...

After yesterday's slight lull, we went full tilt today. The morning began with a trip to Kew for a celebration of Kew Baptist Church's 160th anniversary celebration. Paul shared the message, and by the end of his talk about the power of prayer he had a quarter of the church down front, pretending to be their favourite Biblical characters in a demonstration of the "crowd of witnesses." Paul illustrates the crowd of witnesses with a crowd of witnesses at Kew Baptist Church Festivities continued with a BBQ in the church hall. Because of the special occasion, church members from all three services (the youth service, the traditional service and the Vietnamese service) and members from years past all gathered together. We got caught up in conversation with people from all of these groups, and Paul was so pleased to stumble into the pastor of the Vietnamese-speaking services. We're looking forward to working together to translate the Table Talk apps into Vietn...

        Two planes later, Paul, Sharon and Sarah have made it safe and sound to Australia and have successfully made it through days one and two in Melbourne. Because of our location for the month of November, prepare for us to refer to ourselves as the UDCDU contingent (the Ugly Duckling Company Down Under).   Cross Culture We are so fortunate to be set up with an office right along Swanston Street, which features a downtown hub for dining, the stunning architecture of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, and access to the river that flows right through the city. Nestled into the midst of this, right across from the Queen Victoria Library, is Cross Culture, and therefore us! Cross Culture is a congregation of roughly 600 with services that cater to Australia's English and Mandarin-speaking populations, and they are serving as our office hosts and for the week. Resolve We've been sure to make the most of it today. Together with our ...

We are all sat in a half-horseshoe like shape, waiting for the night to take action. Having just eaten, the atmosphere is almost comfortable, but for the blaring lights: firing on all cylinders to discomfort the eyes in the room. This is it; not the first official week, but an important one nonetheless. In these few seconds alone, we await the introduction to the six week journey we are about to embark on together. The pursuit of true happiness is about to come to life this evening as we prepare ourselves for ‘The Happiness Lab’ course (funded by the ‘Ugly Duckling Company’). Starting from the 9/9/2015, this course will run every Wednesday until 14/10/2015, where all of us in this room will learn the secrets to true happiness. Largely inspired by The 8 Secrets Of Happiness (Paul Griffiths, director of the ‘Ugly Duckling Company’, & Martin Robinson), the course will be filmed, with a subsequent DVD planned for release. The main aim of this course is to unpack six kinds of be...

Some great feedback about Table Talk for Easter We thoroughly appreciate it when someone writes to tell us what is wrong with what we have created or takes the time to list the many ways that something can be enhanced. Life is too short to let our egos get in the way of listening to people who might have a valuable contribution to make. Every now and then we receive an email that is an overwhelming encouragement, what follows below is one such correspondence... Message:  Dear Team I just wanted to thank you for making your Easter Table Talk app freely accessible.   We have just used it a Good Friday Messy Church session and it started some really profound conversations. It definitely sparked our small number of teenagers - they launched straight into some amazing conversations and involved their parents too, which was great to see.   However what moved me most was how younger children could really engage with these questions in a surprisingly...