St Mark’s Director Rev’d Dr Andrew Cameron invites you to a series of free seminars, sharing common tools and knowledge we can use in our ministries to help others.
He’ll also be on hand to answer your questions on how distance learning through St Mark’s could help you.
Each seminar is free and you’re welcome to attend any and all!
Program for the day
| 8:45am | Coffee and settle in | |
| 9:00am | Welcome! An introduction. | |
| 9:10am | Seminar 1: Knowing God in the Bible: an overview | Have you been going to church for years, but still struggle to see how the parts of the Bible connect? Sometimes even God can seem contradictory in its different parts. This seminar will give an overview of what theologians call ‘salvation history’: how the Bible fits together, and where we fit in. |
| 10:30am | Morning tea | Morning tea is provided |
| 11:00am | Seminar 2: Helping each other more: pastoral care through better listening | It is easy to be at church for years, yet still to feel alone. In this seminar we will experiment with some tips and tactics for the kind of focussed, understanding listening that builds close, caring relationships. |
| 12:30pm | Lunch | Have a wander around the area and enjoy your lunch at a local eatery. |
| 1:30pm | Seminar 3: Laughing at the future: a look at ageing well | We’re constantly told to ‘stay young’, as if growing old is some kind of mistake. But the Bible strongly affirms our later life and gives many clues in how to do it well. This seminar will buck the trend that says only youth is good, and offer some Christian clues on being older. |
| 3:00pm | Afternoon tea | Afternoon tea is provided |
| 3:15pm | Seminar 4: Of jungles and gardens: running churches better together | Local churches are notoriously hard to run well! This seminar will look at what makes churches ‘creaturely’, not only ‘spiritual’, and overview church admin and ‘governance’. While we can never make any church perfect, we can each contribute to making them less like jungles and more like gardens. (This seminar will borrow from practices of Anglican governance.) |
| 4:30pm | Last words and close |
About Rev'd Dr Andrew Cameron
Director, St Mark's National Theological Centre
Andrew is the Director of St Mark’s National Theological Centre, Barton, and Associate Professor in the School of Theology, Charles Sturt University. He teaches in the relationship between Christian theology and ethics. His academic interests are in ethics and theology, and he teaches in the Ageing and Pastoral Studies program with the Charles Sturt University School of Theology. He is the author of Joined-up Life: A Christian Account of How Ethics Works (2011). Andrew is married to Mary-Anne. Their first grandchild arrived in mid-2019. Andrew’s latest hobby has been to create a veggie patch so vast it is known as ‘Vegetable Park’.
