Contents
In this edition of Frank's News:
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Dear readers,
There are signs of spring around us here at College. Curlews are nesting and fruit trees are in blossom along Baroona Road. For several years now there has been the opportunity to keep the Season of Creation in September. The Anglican Board of Mission – Australia, has just released a new app for the 2025 Season of Creation (1 Sep – 4 Oct). Weaving a Stronger Spell is written by Celia Kemp, author of Into the Desert, A Voice in the Wilderness and creator of previous ABM study apps, Into the Desert, Deep Calls to Deep and Songs from a Strange Land. (More details later under ABM releases new Season of Creation App). Last year Queensland Churches Together developed daily reflections for this season, and the resource can either be downloaded as the Season of Creation Devotional App or a pdf version is still available on the Queensland Churches Together website SoC QCEN Devotions. It is lovely to have resources prepared in our Australian context. This year a collection of liturgies for many different seasons of life has been published, including contributions from people across Australia and different church traditions. A “hot off the press copy” of Modern Australian Liturgies edited by Michelle Eastwood, Catherine Lambert, and Tracy McEwan (Garrett Publishing, 2025) is already in the Roscoe Library, and I recommend it to you.
During September we look forward to Dr Lorna Hallahan coming back to Brisbane to deliver the Felix Arnott Lecture at 4 pm on Friday, 12 September, followed by a workshop on Saturday 13 September. Associate Professor Lorna Hallahan has been a social work academic since 2006, building on a professional career in disability advocacy and policy analysis and development. Her teaching is focussed on professional judgement and ethical decision-making and her research covers several fields of social policy. She was appointed Senior Research Advisor to the Disability Royal Commission. Fascinated with theology from her childhood in the Anglican Church Southern Queensland and Glennie School, Lorna completed her PhD in disability theory and the doctrine of incarnation. Lorna will invite us to think about testimonial and hermeneutic justice as we invite those on the margins and underside of power differentials to share their story, recognising the personal cost while these stories can transform hearts and minds and overcome discrimination. Please register for these events, noting that a zoom link is available for the Felix Arnott Lecture for those who cannot attend in person. You may also like to register for the Pride Week Theology Research Seminar on Thursday, 18 September.
Juliet Briner, the parish support worker for youth, children and families ministry, is organising prayer vigils for ministry with younger generations across the diocese. The first of these will be held at St Peter’s, Maroochydore on Sunday, 21 September, at St Bart’s, Toowoomba during the school holidays and at St Luke’s, Ekibin on 12 October. Please contact Juliet for more details, and if you have not already done so I recommend signing up for the AYCF newsletter.
This year as we celebrate St Francis Day on Friday, 3 October, we will also mark significant anniversaries. It is 50 years since the Rev’d Dr Canon Greg Jenks began his association with St Francis College when he joined the ordination formation program. Greg will be the celebrant and preacher at the 2 pm Eucharist. It is also 50 years since Geoffrey Thomas Roscoe (30 June 1900 – 7 June 1985) began volunteering at St Francis College turning an assortment of books into a properly catalogued library, and forty years ago (almost to the day) that the Roscoe Library was named in his honour. Following the Eucharist, refreshments will be served in Lecture Room 1, and tributes and memories of Mr Roscoe will be shared. There will also be an opportunity to go upstairs to the library and see the refurbishments completed in 2021, if it has been a while since you visited. Please register here:
https://www.trybooking.com/DFBDK
This year the theme of the Season of Creation is Peace with Creation – Isaiah 32:14-18 and the symbol is The Garden of Peace (Season of Creation – National Council of Churches in Australia). This recognises both Isaiah’s depiction of desolation of creation due to the lack of justice and the broken relationship between God and humankind, and the renewal of creation when justice rains down, righteousness abounds in all lands and peace is restored.
May God’s grace be with you where you live, work and serve in God’s garden of creation, and may we, through prayer, repentance and reconciliation experience the reign of God’s peace throughout the garden of creation.
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Felix Arnott Lecture & Workshop with Lorna Hallahan
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St Francis College will host two important events on 12–13 September exploring the ethics of testimony and advocacy in the context of Royal Commissions and disability justice. Associate Professor Lorna Hallahan, a seasoned social work academic and disability advocate, will lead both sessions, drawing on her experience as Senior Research Advisor to the Disability Royal Commission.
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The Felix Arnott Lecture on Friday 12 September is titled Reflections on Royal Commissions: Can eliciting testimony ever be ethical? This free event, available both in-person and online, invites us to consider the emotional toll of testimony and the delicate balance between justice, care, and consent.
👉 More info and registration: Felix Arnott Lecture with Lorna Hallahan — Saint Francis College
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On Saturday 13 September, the workshop Narrating injustice: how do advocates resist harming testifiers? offers an interactive, inquiry-based experience. Participants will explore the ethics of storytelling in advocacy, with a focus on testimonial and hermeneutical injustice.
💰 Cost: $50 / $35 concession (includes morning tea and lunch)
👉 More info and registration: Workshop with Lorna Hallahan — Saint Francis College
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Justice, Care, and Consent: A Call to Church Leaders
by Denise Ferguson
Every time a person must retell their story, whether it be an experience of abuse, DV, discrimination or mistreatment there is the potential to re-victimise. The toll can be heavy and permanently damaging. With the rise in Royal Commissions, initiated to shed light in the darkness of so many lives, these stories must be heard. The ethics of how the gathering and recording of real-life harm situations is undertaken must be considered carefully and pastorally. As Associate Professor Lorna Hallahan identifies, we who care for and support those who have been harmed, ‘need to consider the emotional toll of testimony and the delicate balance between justice, care and consent.’
If you are in church leadership, involved in pastoral care, or any form of support for those who find themselves in these places of fragility and vulnerability I encourage you to join Professor Hallahan at the Felix Arnott Lecture, and the follow-up workshop.
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Pride Research Seminar – Celebrating Brisbane Pride Month
As part of Brisbane Pride Month, St Francis College invites you to a special Pride Research Seminar on Thursday, 18 September 2025 starting at 2:00 PM. This event celebrates the contributions of scholars and students engaged in LGBTQIA+ related research, offering a space for thoughtful dialogue and inclusive academic exploration.
Hear from local scholars and students exploring LGBTQIA+ themes in theology and spirituality, including:
Emma Leitch (Australian Catholic University)
The Rise and Demise of the Ex-Gay Movement. This paper traces the medical, psychiatric and scientific background to religious forms of "conversion therapy," which were attempts to cure non-straight sexual orientations. The paper will show how the church and para-church organisations took the baton on sexual orientation change efforts precisely when medicine and psychiatry stopped medical change efforts. The Ex-gay ministry was based upon theories from scientific studies that were deeply flawed and already refuted and was perpetuated by hope of change rather than actual change.
AJ Gouws (University of Divinity)
Queer Readings of Female Mystics. This paper will offer a reading of the 13th century mystic Mechtchild of Magdeburg as a source for queer theology. It will examine the figure of the mother in her writings and the possibility of queer motherhood.
Chris Phillips (University of Divinity)
Reframing bodily integrity in theology: thinking hormonally with Haraway’s cyborg. Christian theological approaches to bodily integrity underlie a significant proportion of discrimination faced by intersex, trans, and gender-diverse people. These approaches see some bodies as requiring intervention to be considered whole, and other bodies for which wanted intervention is perceived as impermissible mutilation.
Borrowing the figure of the cyborg from feminist scholar Donna Haraway’s A Manifesto for Cyborgs, we can critique existing harmful approaches to bodily integrity as prioritising the aetiological or teleological and de-emphasising the problems of here and now.
This presentation speculatively fabulates a theological anthropology grounded in the present, building on disability theologian Brian Brock’s reading of the body of Christ in 1 Corinthians 12 as a tool to think the human body through the lens of hormones and the endocrine system.
Caitlin Olsen (Morling College)
This paper will approach the question of secure LGBTQIA+ inclusion within Christian community in Queensland from local historical, theological, and social-scientific perspectives.
This seminar is an opportunity to engage with diverse theological and cultural perspectives, and to support research that affirms and uplifts LGBTQIA+ voices within academic and faith communities.
Join us in celebrating inclusive scholarship and fostering meaningful conversations. All are welcome!
For questions, contact Peter Kline at pkline@ministryeducation.org.au.
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Roscoe Library Matters
by Eve James
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Indigenous Literacy Day
Join us for morning tea and a film (17 minutes) as we highlight the magnificent work of the Indigenous Literacy Foundation. Although there is no cost (you are invited to donate to the ILF), please register for catering and set-up purposes.
Geoffrey Thomas Roscoe
Following a significant career in education, in the year that he turned seventy-five, Geoffrey Thomas Roscoe began his library studies and, at the same time, started to volunteer in the library at St Francis College. He physically built the card catalogue and populated it with multiple cards for each book (title, author or editor, call number, multiple subject cards). Mr Roscoe built bookends and other items that assisted in making the space more functional. He read many of the books and loved discussing their contents with students. Mr Roscoe translated items to make them accessible to more people! This is but a fraction of the story. Save the date: Friday 3 October 2025, 2:00pm–4:30pm. Coinciding with our St Francis Day celebration, you are invited to a special event to mark 50 years since Geoffrey Thomas Roscoe began working in the library, and 40 years since the Roscoe Library was named in his honour. For those who knew Mr Roscoe, there will be an opportunity for you to share your stories. Please register to attend (no cost).
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New books!
Constructing an incarnational theology: a Christocentric view of God's purpose / Samuel Wells
Why did Jesus come? The traditional argument is that he came to redeem us from sin and destroy death, and thus reverse the fall. Many have long found this unsatisfactory, because it centres human deficit, rather than divine abundance. In this study, Samuel Wells traces his notion of 'being with' right into the Trinity itself, and in dialogue with Maximus the Confessor, Duns Scotus and Karl Barth, among others, articulates a truly Christocentric theology in which God's means and God's ends are identical. In the process, Wells not only greatly expands the compass of 'being with,' showing its scriptural and doctrinal significance, but also offers a constructive account of the incarnation, cross and resurrection of Jesus that out-narrates conventional atonement theories. Wells correspondingly proposes an account of sin, evil, suffering and death that accords with this revised understanding. The result is a compelling and transformational proposal in incarnational theology.
Journeying towards faith : becoming what I am / Philip Carter
'The glory of God is a human being fully alive.' The seven chapters in this book take seriously these celebrated words of Irenaeus. Confessing the Incarnation of Jesus of Nazareth, their underlying assumption is that Jesus did not come to offer us a particular way of being religious, but a universal way of being human. The author believes that the Incarnation – which says as much about the mystery of being human as about the mysterious purposes of God – is a central impetus for him in his spiritual life journey towards fullness of life and freedom.
The moon story / written and illustrated by Marshia Cook, with some illustrations by Tamua Nuggett
A perfect bedtime story, this stunningly illustrated book follows a family from Fitzroy Crossing as they go camping under the moon and stars. The illustrations for this book were produced in workshops with ILF Lifetime Ambassador Alison Lester, and children’s author and publisher Jane Godwin. Language: Kimberley Kriol and English. Picture book, for ages 3-8.
These books are just a few of those that are new to our library during August; here is the complete list.
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Membership
Not yet a member of the Roscoe Library? Click on register on the top right.
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FormEdFaith at the Clergy Conferences
by Jonathan Sargeant
Spirituality in every person!
Jonathan and Fiona have been sharing with clergy at Northern and Southern Conferences in the last 2 weeks after another session at the National Anglican Schools Conference.
The name of the game is innerVIVID, their new program that has people considering the shape of their own spirituality, using 8 themes that provoke questions like “In a scientific world, does spirituality have a place?” and Every culture has origin stories. Why are humans so keen on them?”
These big life questions are the doorway into considering participants own responses. It is these responses that begin to give clues into a person’s own unique spirituality.
Developed for people outside the Church, clergy have stated that their own parishioners might benefit from doing some of this work.
Clergy were introduced to the free videos (15 so far) at www.innervivid.au as well as playing with the ASKaround decks, conversation cards that form an integral part of the program. More than 800 decks have been purchased so far!
More videos are on the way; more decks will be printed and the response from clergy was ecstatic! Head to www.innervivid.au to find out more or order an ASKaround deck.
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innerVIVID Update
by Jonathan Sargeant
Jonathan and Fiona have just published the next 5 videos in the innerVIVID project.
Gathered under the theme How To Live?!, these videos continue the exploration of spiritual ideas in non-jargon language, designed to have people outside the church considering themselves as spiritual people, possibly.
This time it's all about ethics in the 21st century.
The five videos explore these questions...
- Human beings have to get on with each other. How do we decide how to do that? Are there some good ideas?
- What is right and what is wrong? Are they just things we decide? And if so, who?
- A lot of religions have a lot of rules for how to live lives. Why? Is that their main purpose?
- Some people say you shouldn’t judge others cos they’re just being themselves, their ‘true selves’. What do you think about this?
- People talk about a ‘moral compass’. What is yours and what does that do for you?
They're all free to access any time you want and can be found at www.innervivid.au
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ABM releases new Season of Creation App
by Rev'd Canon Stephen Daughtry
The Anglican Board of Mission – Australia, is proud and excited to release a new study app just in time for the 2025 Season of Creation (1 Sep – 4 Oct).
Weaving a Stronger Spell is written by Celia Kemp, author of Into the Desert, A Voice in the Wilderness and creator of our previous study apps, Into the Desert, Deep Calls to Deep and Songs from a Strange Land.
This new study app is grounded in place, begs us to ‘be’ where our feet are planted, and to see what is actually happening to the world. It is asking us to do the unthinkably difficult, to recognise the rising tide of environmental harm, and to accept our place in the renewal of all things.
Having left the desert and found herself by an urban river, Celia Kemp’s new study app, Weaving a Stronger Spell, is as complex and beautiful as the source from which it draws life and context.
It meanders and rushes, twists and turns, breaking off into distributaries of wonder, being fed by tributaries of both meaning and matter.
Scripture and theology, harsh and compassionate, are woven into this river of thought and prayer. Celia has never been afraid to rattle the cages of the spiritually complacent, nor has she been afraid of walking in the shoes of the marginalised. But not for her own sake – for the sake of those to whom God would reach to and include. Hers is a prophetic voice, unusual and vivid in the rigid, risk-averse and polite conformity of Australian Christianity.
Whether you dip your toes or plunge right in, you will be challenged and, possibly, changed by your encounter with this content. Celia’s voice rings true, and she includes the voices of many others who share a concern that we are letting things slide perilously close to the deathly.
If you take your faith seriously and care for the future of the planet, Weaving a Stronger Spell, will wrap you in its currents and allow you to see things from ground level.
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Waste Vouchers - Thank You for Your Support!
A heartfelt thank you to everyone who generously donated a waste voucher to the college. Your contributions have made a real difference in helping us manage our grounds and facilities more sustainably. We’re grateful for your ongoing support and community spirit.
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Donate Your Containers to Support the College
Did you know you can help support the college simply by recycling your drink containers? Through the Containers for Change program, you can donate the proceeds from eligible bottles and cans directly to the college using our unique code. Each container earns a 10-cent refund, and every contribution helps fund sustainability initiatives and community projects here at St Francis.
It’s an easy way to make a difference—just take your containers to a refund point and enter our college code when prompted. Whether you’re clearing out after an event or just recycling at home, your donation goes a long way.
College Code: Coming Soon!
Thank you for your continued support and care for our shared environment!
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Host Your Next Event at Old Bishopsbourne
Looking for a venue that blends elegance, history, and charm? Old Bishopsbourne offers a unique setting for corporate meetings, private functions, and special celebrations. It’s also the perfect spot for your office Christmas party.
📞 Book Your Event Today
Call (07) 3514 7400 or email enquiries@ministryeducation.org.au to learn more or arrange a tour.
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Escape to Tranquility: Pointro Campsite at Boonah
Just 90 minutes from Brisbane, Pointro Campsite offers a back to basics camping experience on the banks of Maroon Dam in Queensland. Enjoy spacious sites, firepits, hot showers, and clean toilets — ideal for fishing, hiking, and water sports.
Ideal for families, friends, and group retreats. Our bunkhouse sleeps up to 36 and is great for youth camps.
Book now on Hipcamp or email pointro@anglicanchurchsq.org.au for bunkhouse bookings.
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Contact
Please use the email addresses below to contact SFC Staff:
Ruth Mathieson - Executive Director/Principal
✉️ ruth.mathieson@anglicanchurchsq.org.au
Rod Mengel - Property & Finance Manager
✉️ rod.mengel@anglicanchurchsq.org.au
Linda Burridge - Registrar
✉️ registrar@ministryeducation.org.au
Adam Couchman - Academic Dean
✉️ adam.couchman@anglicanchurchsq.org.au
Peter Kline - Research Co-ordinator
✉️ pkline@ministryeducation.org.au
Eve James - Library Manager
✉️ ejames@ministryeducation.org.au
Jonathan Sargeant - FormEdFaith
✉️ jonathans@ministryeducation.org.au
Juliet Briner - Anglican Youth Children and Family
✉️ juliet.briner@anglicanchurchsq.org.au
Tim Coates - Administration/Reception
✉️ enquiries@ministryeducation.org.au
Wendy Dann - Spiritual Direction Program Officer
✉️ wdann@ministryeducation.org.au
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