The national Anglican Hope25 intentional season of sharing hope in Jesus has begun and will run from now to Pentecost on Sunday, 8 June 2025.
St Barnabas College has already set the scene for Hope25, hosting the Festival of Hope in Theology and the Arts in February.
This was a week of hope-themed events and services held across Adelaide in our parishes, St Peter’s Cathedral and St Barnabas College.
The program included music, visual arts and photography, poetry and stories, multicultural celebrations of hope, a Hope25 hymn writing competition and theological responses to hope. Twelve parishes contributed to the festival success, and more than 600 people attended events.
The festival launched with Walk the Windows of Hope at St Jude’s Church, Brighton, followed by Hope After the No Vote, an address by The Right Reverend Chris McLeod, Dean of St Peter’s Cathedral and our National Aboriginal Bishop. Bishop Chris’s address appears as a separate Guardian article.
Theology Meets the People: Messages of Hope for 2025 was a lecture series at St Barnabas College with differing but complementary messages of hope provided by Rev’d Dr Lyndon Shakespeare, Rev’d Dr Michael Trainor and Rev’d Canon Jenny Wilson. The recordings of these lectures can be accessed at the Community of Learning site via the Parish Portal on the Adelaide Anglicans website.
St Columba’s Church, Hawthorn held Come and See: Theology, Poetry and Art where Rev’d Dr Warren Huffa, Ann Nadge led the seminar, hosted guest poet Peach, and launched the first booklet of poetry, Mustard Seeds, from their collaborative project of re-expressing Warren’s theology in poetry.
St Matthew’s Church, Kensington held Imagine, the Beatles meet Jesus, at St Bartholomew’s Church, Norwood. This live musical dialogue explored how the songs and ideas of the Beatles might converse with those of the Jesus Music Pioneers regarding some of life’s enduring questions. Rev’d Dave Brown provided thoughtful narration.
St John the Evangelist Church, Salisbury held Celebrating Gospel Hope across the Nations, followed by a Festival of Multi-cultural Food and Hospitality. Five multi-cultural congregations provided praise and worship in song and dance, aged from 2 to 70+. The ministry of word and prayer was expressed in Tamil, Bari, Cantonese, Dinka, Mandarin and English. The call to worship was expressed in the words of Psalm 86:9: All the nations you have made shall come and worship before you, O Lord, and shall glorify your name. The event was a witness to the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ to establish a profound and precious unity that is greater than any one culture or nation.
The festival closed with Hymn Fest of Hope at St Michael’s Church, Mitcham which was an inspiring afternoon of workshop through the singing of hymns that celebrate faith and hope, including those written and composed by the winners, runners-up and commended entrants in the Hymns of Hope competition.
