This course was excellent and frames the gospel in very contemporary and practical ways but it also challenged me to reconsider my lifestyle as a Christian and my responsibility to be a custodian of creation and an advocate for ethical business practice and social justice not just for my fellow man but for the planet.

It was interesting to get a better perspective of the cultural difference between the Western World and the Eastern World. It gave me a better understanding of how to read some parts of the Bible. The way to see myself and refugees as both “forefingers” to Australia was very thought provoking. I would have loved more in depth lessons, it felt like just scratching the surface.

This course to me has endorsed my calling on many levels , I have been working in social justice and environmental issues for a few years . Through this course I have learned the biblical facts about how I am working . Firstly when I was ordained , I was given Proverbs 31 v8-9 which really resonated with my heart , God spoke to me about the many people in Zimbabwe , who had no voices , I have learnt to use social media to get their stories out into the world , while its made little change so far to their lives . I say that but know God is bringing changes through the prayer and people stepping out in faith . I have found the best way to encourage people is to give tools to help them provide for themselves , so we have chicken projects , where we donate 6 chickens and one cockerel, the people care for them and breed them , they get eggs to sell or meat depending on what they want to do , at the end of 4 months they give us back what we gave them ( not the same ones ) and we give them to other people . we have seed banks where people can grow food for themselves , sadly when we have drought this robs us of that growth , where possible we buy bales to set people up in business , so they can provide and buy the next bale themselves , this supports education .

however since we are mid the pandemic this largely has killed off some of our projects , we don’t want to create dependency. For me personally its been a great time of seeing Gods provision both for others and myself .

I never saw myself as a protester but I have stood with tree protesters in the Sheffield tree protests in the Uk again this course has helped me personally rectify some of my thoughts on what God would think , also gained more knowledge from scriptural back up. I don’t believe violent conflict is ok but NDVA is appropriate , also speaking out when security guards or police behave badly is important . Many of the things I have learnt through the course have brought me peace in the knowledge to know we as Christians are privileged to speak out about injustice and stand against poverty .