E A S T A F R I C AOn completing his Diploma of Theology, Emmanuel John Masoud receives his Africa Bible Commentary from Jill Morshead at St Mark’s Theological College, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

E A S T A F R I C A

Kiswahili Africa Bible CommentarySPCKA presents essential reference works to students graduating from Bible colleges in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

This year SPCKA is pleased to be able to make avail-able to East African graduates the newly published Kiswahili edition of the Africa Bible Commentary.

Written and edited by African theologians, the Africa Bible Commentary is the fi rst one-volume commentary ever created to help pastors, students, and lay leaders apply God’s Word to distinctively African concerns.

Now Kiswahili-speaking students and pastors can draw on the expe-rience, wisdom and insight of a community of African church leaders to deepen their understanding and appropriation of the Christian faith.

$30will provide a theological grad-uate or pastor with a copy of the Kiswahili edition of the Africa Bible Commentary.

On completing his Diploma of Theology, Emmanuel John Masoud from Jill Morshead at St Mark’s

Kiswahili Africa Bible Commentary

presents essential reference works to students graduating from Bible colleges in Africa, the

This year SPCKA is pleased to be able to make avail-able to East African graduates the newly published

Africa Bible Commentary.Written and edited by African theologians, the

is the fi rst one-volume

Now Kiswahili-speaking students

community of African church leaders

$$3030will provide a theological grad-uate or pastor with a copy of the Kiswahili edition of the Africa Bible Commentary.

On completing his Diploma of Theology, Emmanuel John Masoud from Jill Morshead at St Mark’s

Theological College, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Kiswahili Africa Bible Commentary

presents essential reference worksstudents graduating from Bible colleges in Africa, the

This year SPCKA is pleased to be able to make avail-able to East African graduates the newly published

Africa Bible CommentaryWritten and edited by African theologians, the

is the fi rst one-volume

Now Kiswahili-speaking students and pastors can draw on the expe-

community of African church leaders to deepen their understanding and appropriation of the Christian faith.

You can make Christian literature available where it is most needed.

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one4me•1 Use this bookmark to add up how much you spend on books for yourself.

• 2 Donate an equivalent amount to help make Christian books available to students, pastors and church planters in diffi cult places through SPCKA.

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SPCKAChristian literature in diffi cult places

G ’ D A Y F R O M S P C K A S P R I N G 2 0 1 0

Fire proofConfronting an impossible dilemma, a Christian leader in China told me that he is ‘fi nding Daniel more helpful than Paul’. That got me reading.

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego took a risk and ended up in the fi re (Daniel 3). God showed up. We recognise him immediately. God did not extinguish the fl ames. He did not pluck them from the furnace. The God who chooses

to live among men dwelt with the three friends in the midst of the fl ames. This is Immanuel: God is with us.

Instead of hurling the off ending dish of food in the face of his Babylonian guard, Daniel proposed a dietary test (Daniel 1). By doing so he initiated a friendship. He opened a space in which God could act. Daniel took a risk and made God the protagonist.

Publishing is a risky business. Publishing Christian books in diffi cult places is an adventure. Just as the faithful fell in and out of favour in the Babylonian court so also the fortunes of pioneering Christian publishers are subject to volatile economies and hostile politics. They persevere because they reckon on God being with them.

Can they also count on your encouragement? Together we can make a diff erence. Let’s invest in strategic literature ministries and watch God use the written word to grow his kingdom. Where there is risk in our endeavours for God, we do not act alone.

Michael CollieNational Director

michael.collie@spcka.org.au

SPCKASociety for Promoting Christian Knowledge Australia Incorporated ARBN 119 800 645 and the Australian Christian Literature Society. PO Box 198, Forest Hill, Victoria 3131, Australia. Telephone 1300 13 7725 | admin@spcka.org.au | www.spcka.org.auChristian literature in diffi cult places

Michael Collie, with Christian bookseller, Puvee-Erdene (left), and Christian publisher, Enkh-Amgalan Purevdorj (right), in Ulaanbaatar.

G ’ D A Y F R O M S P C K A S P R I N G 2 0 1 0

Fire proof

to live among men dwelt with the three friends in the midst of the fl ames. This is Immanuel: God is with us.

Instead of hurling the off ending dish of food in the face of his Babylonian guard, Daniel proposed a dietary test (Daniel 1). By doing so he initiated a friendship. He opened a space in which God could act. Daniel took a risk and made God the protagonist.

Publishing is a risky business. Publishing Christian books in diffi cult places is an adventure. Just as the faithful fell in and out of favour in the Babylonian court so also the fortunes of pioneering Christian publishers are subject to volatile economies and hostile politics. They persevere because they reckon on God being with them.

Can they also count on your encouragement? Together we can make a diff erence. Let’s invest in strategic literature ministries and watch God use the written word to grow his kingdom. Where there is risk in our endeavours for God, we do not act alone.

SPCKASociety for Promoting Christian Knowledge Australia Incorporated ARBN 119 800 645 and the Australian Christian Literature Society. PO Box 198, Forest Hill, Victoria 3131, Australia. Telephone 1300 13 7725 | admin@spcka.org.auChristian literature in diffi cult places

Michael Collie, with Christian bookseller, Puvee-Erdene (left), and Christian publisher, Enkh-Amgalan Purevdorj (right), in Ulaanbaatar.

S P R I N G 2 0 1 0

Fire proofConfronting an impossible dilemma, a Christian leader in China told me that he is ‘fi nding Daniel more helpful than Paul’. That got me reading.

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego took a risk and ended up in the fi re (Daniel 3). God showed up. We recognise him immediately. God did not extinguish the fl ames. He did not pluck them from the furnace. The God who chooses

to live among men dwelt with the three friends in the midst of the fl ames. This is Immanuel: God is with us.

Instead of hurling the off ending dish of food in the face of his Babylonian guard, Daniel proposed a dietary test (Daniel 1). By doing so he initiated a friendship. He opened a space in which God could act. Daniel took a risk and made God the protagonist.

Publishing is a risky business. Publishing Christian books in diffi cult places is an adventure. Just as the faithful fell in and out of favour in the Babylonian court so also the fortunes of pioneering Christian publishers are subject to volatile economies and hostile politics. They persevere because they reckon on God being with them.

Can they also count on your encouragement? Together we can make a diff erence. Let’s invest in strategic literature ministries and watch God use the written word to grow his kingdom. Where there is risk in our endeavours for God, we do not act alone.

Michael CollieNational Director

michael.collie@spcka.org.au

ASociety for Promoting Christian Knowledge Australia Incorporated ARBN 119 800 645 and the Australian Christian Literature Society. PO Box 198, Forest Hill, Victoria 3131, Australia.

@spcka.org.au | www.spcka.org.auChristian literature in diffi cult places

Enkh-Amgalan Purevdorj

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SPCKASociety for Promoting Christian Knowledge Australiaand the Australian Christian Literature SocietyPO Box 198, Forest Hill, Victoria 3131, AustraliaTelephone 1300 13 7725admin@spcka.org.au | www.spcka.org.auChristian literature in diffi cult places

✁

E A S T A F R I C AOn completing his Diploma of Theology, Emmanuel John Masoud receives his Africa Bible Commentary from Jill Morshead at St Mark’s Theological College, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

E A S T A F R I C A

Kiswahili Africa Bible CommentarySPCKA presents essential reference works to students graduating from Bible colleges in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

This year SPCKA is pleased to be able to make avail-able to East African graduates the newly published Kiswahili edition of the Africa Bible Commentary.

Written and edited by African theologians, the Africa Bible Commentary is the fi rst one-volume commentary ever created to help pastors, students, and lay leaders apply God’s Word to distinctively African concerns.

Now Kiswahili-speaking students and pastors can draw on the expe-rience, wisdom and insight of a community of African church leaders to deepen their understanding and appropriation of the Christian faith.

$30will provide a theological grad-uate or pastor with a copy of the Kiswahili edition of the Africa Bible Commentary.✁

C H I N A

Essential references for young pastors

The church in China is emerging from persecu-tion only to confront the perils of prosperity. Christian ‘knowledge’ and virtues are now being officially cultivated, but only in order that they might, in the words of

President Hu Jintao in 2007, be ‘harnessed to build a prosperous society’.

Chinese Christians are facing impossible dilemmas. Their newly-trained leaders will require a maturity and wisdom beyond their years. While studying they have access to a college library but when they graduate and commence their ministries throughout China, their access to mentors and good resources is limited.

Will you help address the dire need for resources in China’s rapidly growing and under-resourced churches?

Final year students will be invited to choose a set of titles from a recommended list. The materials are offered in simplified Mandarin and in a variety of media including printed books, audio, video, digital references and software.

These quality resources will be vital aids to personal growth, the exercising of pastoral responsibilities and informed preaching and teaching over many years of ministry. You can be sure that your gift will also be an encouragement to our brothers and sisters working in a sensitive environment.

In 2010 SPCKA has given personal libraries of essential reference works to over 150 final year students at Nanjing Union, Yanjing and Huadong theological seminaries.

$85will buy a library of essential reference works for young Bible college graduates as they take up pastoral duties.

S U D A N

Dinka song linesSPCKA has been asked to assist with the production of liturgical resources for the Dinka-speaking church.

The Revd Abraham Ayur Mayor Dit studied theology and was ordained in Khartoum. Before escaping Sudan’s civil war, Abraham was a member of a committee working to update liturgical resources in Dinka.

Methods for writing Dinka were developed by European missionaries during the 19th and 20th centuries. The Christian prayer books and hymn books

first published in the 1930s remain the most significant and widely used Dinka literature. Dinka Christians have traditionally transmitted their faith through liturgy

and song. Congregations typically have a reportoire of hundreds of memorized songs and prayers.

While settling in Sydney, where he coordinates a Sudanese congregation based at St Alban’s Anglican Church, Belmore, Abraham has completed the massive task of compiling new songs and digitalizing classic material.

On your behalf, SPCKA has agreed to circulate a trial copy of Abraham’s new Dinka hymn book to twenty Dinka congregations throughout Australia for testing and checking. This draft includes over 850 songs and other liturgical material.

Please pray for the Dinka church leaders and the SPCKA Grants Committee as together we explore how this resource might be best deliv-ered to the global Dinka community.

Abraham and Sara Dit pastor a Dinka congregation in Belmore, Sydney.

$40will deliver a trial copy of Abraham Dit’s new Dinka hymn book to a Dinka congrega-tion in Australia.

C H I N A

Training Sunday school teachersIn recent years, Chinese laws regarding the religious instruction of children have been relaxed. Many churches have no experience of Christian education for children and struggle to cater for the sudden influx of children attending services and Bible studies. Their young teachers typically have commitment and enthusiasm but no training or teaching resources.

The training workshops sponsored by SPCKA this year for 70 teachers were warmly received. Student teachers included members of minority tribes from remote regions.

The attractive teacher’s manuals and teaching aids supplied were origi-nally created in Asia and have been adapted and translated into numerous languages including Mandarin.

The five-day training program concludes with an observed teaching practice class.

In China, first generation Sunday school teachers are being trained to use a variety of creative and engaging teaching methods to educate children.

$110will equip a Sunday school teacher with teaching resources and five days of training.

S R I L A N K A

Theological education workbooks in English, Sinhala and TamilAn encouraging development in the Sri Lankan church is the growing number of people seeking theological education.

You can help the Colombo Theological Seminary (www.cts.lk) respond to this opportunity with locally-written theological workbooks in English, Sinhala and Tamil. The seminary is uniquely equipped to produce a resource of this nature. It is an interdenominational centre offering theological education from certificate to bachelor level in English, Sinhala and Tamil. The CTS Publishing Unit is a respected theological publisher.

The workbooks are based on an Asia Theological Association accredited curriculum. They will make sound theological education accessible to believers in both the seminary’s classrooms and congregations throughout the country and among the Sri Lankan diaspora. These workbooks will extend theological education to regions where it has never been available before.

The new workbooks will also help standardise certificate-level theological teaching across the three languages. Academic resources long available in English will be made available for the first time to those learning in Sinhala and Tamil. The English language workbooks will benefit from the local perspective of the Sinhala- and Tamil-speaking authors.

As the Christian church appears to be one of the few agents with the potential to bring reconcili-ation to a country torn apart by twentry-six years of civil war, this trilingual initiative is especially strategic.

$1200will finance the writing, editing and printing of an Asia Theological Association accred-ited certificate-level workbook in English, Sinhala or Tamil.

M O N G O L I A

Training publishers in Ulaanbaatar

During September 2010, SPCKA National Director, Michael Collie, together with experienced editor, Owen Salter, led training workshops in Ulaan-baatar for editors and designers from Mongolia’s

Christian publishers. The workshops were convened and hosted by Tumen-Ulzii Byambatogtokh of the Family FM Christian radio station and coordinated and

sponsored by Media Associates International (www.littworld.org).

When the Soviet Union collapsed and the Russians withdrew in 1990 there were only four known Christians in Mongolia. Twenty years later there are tens of thousands of believers and hundreds of churches.

The Mongolian church is facing critical challenges. The social disinte-gration after the collapse of the communist regime is profound and the enthusiasm of first generation believers will soon be tested by the hazards of affluence: individualism, indifference and apathy.

This is a strategic time to be investing in Christian publishing in Mongolia. The Russians left behind a disappointed but highly literate society. Ironically, Mongols have been exposed to Christian ideas while being forced to study Russian literature.

Successive waves of missionary activity have produced evangelistic material but little to grow the church to Christian maturity through Bible teaching, discipleship and pastoral care. There are still only three hundred Christian titles available in Mongolian. The Mongolian church needs meat.

The workshop participants were quick to make

Where do new ideas come from? SPCKA’s Michael Collie, and two Mongolian designers discuss techniques for generating fresh solutions when the creative well runs dry.

their needs known and eager to engage with the challenges that confront them. Workshops covered the cultivation of healthy working relationships between members of a publishing team, the manage-ment of the editing process, the efficient composition of books using the Adobe Creative Suite software and the development and mentoring of new writers.

Issues that need to be addressed urgently by local Christian authors for their situ-ation include marriage, family relationships, child-rearing, alco-holism and personal finances.

A couple planning to publish a magazine called New Mongolian Family found Owen and Michael’s

combined experience in magazine publishing an opportune provision.

The local Christian book trade has been distorted by the mass distribu-tion of free or heavily subsidised books. With your collaboration, SPCKA can nurture independent and sustainable Christian publishers by providing expertise and strategic grants and loans.

At the completion of the training workshops, Mongolian writers and designers express their solidarity with a customary ‘group grip’.

$4800will provide publishing capital to make possible the preparation and printing of a book by an emerging Mongolian Christian publisher.

‘My most valuable discovery during the training has been the courage and motiva-tion to finish what I’ve started. I’ve already developed a working plan for my project.’ A proud workshop graduate with trainer, Owen Salter.

A U S T R A L I A

Tom Frame’s Losing My Religion declared 2010 Australian Christian Book of the Year

Tom Frame told this year’s awards ceremony audience that Losing My Religion (UNSW Press) is one book that he did not enjoy writing. ‘But if writing is a calling from God, you do it none-the-less.’ The judges found this wide-ranging study of belief and unbelief in Australia a valuable

contribution to our national self-understanding and to Christian apologetics and mission.

Second Prize was won by the best-selling The Trellis and the Vine by Colin Marshall & Tony Payne (Matthias Media). This practical and well-crafted book challenges the church to train and equip every Christian to be a disciple-maker.

Trudy Adams won third prize with her gritty fi rst novel Desolate Beauty (Ark House Press). This is the story of a young girl who simultaneously discovers herself and God in the midst of adversity.

The judges’ comments about the prize-winning and shortlisted books can be found at: www.spcka.org.au

The Australian Christian Book of the Year Award is given annually to a book written by an Australian and published by an Australian publisher. The Award carries a prize of $2,500. Entries are judged with an eye to the original nature of the work and the contribution that the book makes in meeting a need for Christian writing in Australia.

A U S T R A L I A

Tom Frame’s Losing My Religion declared 2010 Australian Christian Book of the Year

The Australian Christian Literature Awards also include prizes for unpublished manuscripts by young writers. Gold Coast resident, Jack Burnham, won the 2010 Young Australian Christian Writer Award. His intimate and muscular

composition, Held in His Hands, takes us to places most of us will never see.

The 2010 Australian Christian Teen Writer Award was won by fourteen-year-old Sarah Longden for her essay Choices. Sarah is a year nine student at St Andrew’s Christian College, Wantirna South, Victoria.

Extracts from the winning works can be found at: www.spcka.org.au

This year’s Australian Christian Literature Awards were presented during a lunch in Melbourne. The ceremony was preceded by an engaging performance by poet, Cameron Semmens, and an address by Naomi Reed, author of No Ordinary View, the 2009 Christian Book of the Year.

The unique needs of the local church are best addressed by local Christian writers. With these awards SPCKA celebrates and encourages excellence in Australian Christian writing and publishing.

G ’ D A Y F R O M S P C K A S P R I N G 2 0 1 0

Fire proofConfronting an impossible dilemma, a Christian leader in China told me that he is ‘finding Daniel more helpful than Paul’. That got me reading.

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego took a risk and ended up in the fire (Daniel 3). God showed up. We recognise him immediately. God did not extinguish the flames. He did not pluck them from the furnace. The God who chooses

to live among men dwelt with the three friends in the midst of the flames. This is Immanuel: God is with us.

Instead of hurling the offending dish of food in the face of his Babylonian guard, Daniel proposed a dietary test (Daniel 1). By doing so he initiated a friendship. He opened a space in which God could act. Daniel took a risk and made God the protagonist.

Publishing is a risky business. Publishing Christian books in difficult places is an adventure. Just as the faithful fell in and out of favour in the Babylonian court so also the fortunes of pioneering Christian publishers are subject to volatile economies and hostile politics. They persevere because they reckon on God being with them.

Can they also count on your encouragement? Together we can make a difference. Let’s invest in strategic literature ministries and watch God use the written word to grow his kingdom. Where there is risk in our endeavours for God, we do not act alone.

Michael Collie National Director

michael.collie@spcka.org.au

SPCKASociety for Promoting Christian Knowledge Australia Incorporated ARBN 119 800 645 and the Australian Christian Literature Society. PO Box 198, Forest Hill, Victoria 3131, Australia. Telephone 1300 13 7725 | admin@spcka.org.au | www.spcka.org.auChristian literature in difficult places

Michael Collie, with Christian bookseller, Puvee-Erdene (left), and Christian publisher, Enkh-Amgalan Purevdorj (right), in Ulaanbaatar.