Tinsley annual Lectures

Since 1999, the Tinsley Annual Lectures have been shaped by a simple conviction: every follower of Jesus has a part to play in God’s mission in the world.

Hosted by Morling College’s Tinsley Institute, these free public lectures bring together leading theologians, practitioners, and thought leaders to explore how the good news of Christ speaks into the cultures, communities, and challenges shaping our world today.

Through thoughtful theological and missiological reflection, the series seeks to equip Christians to live, serve, and bear witness faithfully to the good news of Christ within today’s cultural context.

Over the years, speakers have included Vinoth Ramachandra, Stuart Murray, Charles Kraft, John Dickson, Alan Hirsch, Dave Benson, Professor Cathy Ross, Brooke Prentis, Dr Meredith Lake, Steve Chong, and many others.

Subjects and Citizens: Christianity in a Polarised Age

Presented by Rev Dr Michael Jensen

In the 27th Tinsley Annual Lecture, Rev Dr Michael Jensen explored what it means to live faithfully and wisely in an age of political polarisation, moral confusion, and declining trust in institutions.

Beginning with the fragmentation of a once-shared moral world, Jensen examined the forces shaping contemporary public life: identity-based division, ideological sorting, algorithmic outrage, the weakening of mediating institutions, and the temptation to treat politics as an ultimate source of meaning. In the Australian context, he noted warning signs of declining trust and a fraying national story, asking whether our public life can still sustain genuine disagreement, shared responsibility, and the common good.

Jensen offered a theological diagnosis of this crisis through the “Babel paradox”: the more humanity seeks unity apart from God, the more profoundly fragmented it becomes. Against this, Christian faith provides a different political vision. It refuses to give ultimate allegiance to the state, party, tribe, or ideology, and instead exalts the crucified and risen Lord Jesus. This conviction both limits political power and frees Christians to engage public life without idolising it.

The lecture presented the church as a “social prototype” or “Kingdom laboratory”: a community called to demonstrate a different way of living together. Drawing especially on Romans 12–15, Jensen outlined practices of resistance, harmony, boundary, proximity, inversion, and welcome. These practices challenge the patterns of surveillance, outrage, sorting, power, and exclusion that fracture society.

Rather than withdrawing from civic life, Christian discipleship offers a visible alternative: a truthful community formed by mercy, capable of sustaining hope, practising hospitality, bearing disagreement, and serving the common good. In a polarised age, Jensen argued, the church’s political witness is not simply to win arguments, but to embody a renewed way of belonging together under God.

2026 ANNUAL LECTURE

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2026 ANNUAL LECTURE SLIDES

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About the Presenter

Michael Jensen (DPhil) is the Rector of St Mark’s Anglican Church, Darling Point, and a theologian, writer, and speaker. He is the author of several books on Christian faith, ethics, and public theology, including Subjects and Citizens: The Politics of the Gospel (2024), and co-hosts the podcast “With All Due Respect” with Rev. Dr Megan Powell du Toit. His work engages themes such as grace, ambition, judgment, gratitude, and the moral shape of modern life, drawing on Scripture, church history, and literature.

 

Migrant Dreams: Generational  Factors and Gospel Opportunity

Presented by Jeri Jones Sparks

In a nation continually reshaped by migration, what dreams do migrants carry — and how do these aspirations shape the faith journeys of their children and grandchildren? Explore Australia’s complex multicultural story and the contemporary challenges of intercultural ministry. Drawing on stories from South Asian cultures, this lecture explores how understanding generational dynamics can equip the church to engage migrants more thoughtfully, share the gospel more effectively, and participate faithfully in God’s unfolding mission in a diverse Australia.

 

 

About the Presenter

Jeri Jones Sparks is an Indian-Australian Tamil woman who is passionate about equipping the local church to reach those from South Asia and the Hindu world. Jeri has been the outreach minister at St James Anglican Church Croydon, the Director of the Good News Series, and is part of the SATYA Network Committee reaching South Asians with the good news of the kingdom.

 

Presented by Dr Ash Barker
Monday 13th May 2024

Placemaking in Challenging Neighbourhoods

Growing Seedbeds of shalom in difficult places

Dr Ash Barker has intentionally lived missionally for over 34 years in three places that face complex urban poverty (in Melbourne, Bangkok and Birmingham). A common quest has been how to discover, connect and release local community leadership and assets as a way for change to come from within local communities.

Can the prophesy in Ezekiel 36:35 that 'former wastelands' can become 'gardens of our lord' come true in places facing poverty today? What can be the role and value of 'relocators', 'place makers' and 'churches' in local communities some consider wastelands? This lecture will share my insights and findings thorugh stories, scriptures and spiritual practices. 

Ash Barker will draw from his recently published book, No Wastelands.

 

Click the image below to register to watch the recording.

 

About Ash Barker

Dr Ash Barker is the founder of Newbigin House, a Christian enterprise in Birmingham, UK, that includes a school of urban leadership, a local charity (Newbigin Community Trust), and several new inner-city congregations. Prior to that, Ash and his wife Anji founded and led Urban Neighbours of Hope (UNOH), living and serving on the front line of urban poverty for ten years in Melbourne and twelve years in a Bangkok slum.

Dr Barker is the author of nine books, including Risky Compassion, Make Poverty Personal, Slum Life Rising, and his new book No Wastelands.

Recently, Dr Barker launched Seedbeds, a program designed to equip people to discover, connect and release their unique potential to partner with and serve alongside their neighbours in local community renewal.

He has also founded the Surrender Conference, the International Society for Urban Mission, and Red Letter Christians UK.

Ash and Anji Barker, who directs the Newbigin Community Trust, are both United Reformed Church ministers serving together at the Lodge Road Community Church in Winson Green.

The End of Apologetics? Christian Persuasion for a Post-Christian Age

Presented by Dan Paterson
Monday 29th May 2023

Is the age of apologetics over? The contention of some is that declining faith and the hostile dynamics of our post-everything moment should spark Christians to change our tactics, swapping out subversive persuasion for either a harder-edged proclamation or a socially conscious embodied witness. The question: Why present these as mutually exclusive options? Any move to jettison our apologetic endeavour seems foolish, not only in light of Scripture and the past scandal of our evangelical mind, but especially as we face emerging generations hungry for answers to life’s deepest questions.

Dan Paterson is the founder of Questioning Christianity, a ministry helping you connect the Christian story to life’s deepest questions. He has experience as a pastor, lecturer, and public speaker, having studied Theology and Apologetics in Australia and at Oxford. Dan currently lives in Brisbane with his wife, Erin, and their favourite job is raising three wonderful boys.

 

Micro Churches: Remembering the Past to Shape the Future

Presented by Bree Mills
Monday 9th May 2022

Micro churches, missional communities, and house churches are on the rise in Australia. As Australians seek authenticity and connection these more innovative forms of church seem to connect well, but, are they new? Isn't that the way the early church lived? Many movements have been born from small communities seeking to be conformed to Christ and love their neighbours, but where are they today? Will this movement in Australia last, or is it just the latest fad in church growth?

Bree Mills believes micro churches are going to increasingly become a part of the Australian church landscape. Micro churches are adaptable, lightweight, and lay-led communities that live out their missional identity in a particular network or neighbourhood. If we are willing to learn from biblical and historical examples, Bree suggests that micro churches can co-exist with existing churches, working in partnership to reach all the nooks and crannies of Australian society.

The Disappearing Evangelist

Presented by Steve Chong
Tuesday 12th May 2020

All around the church, we see pastors, teachers, and church planters, but where is the evangelist? In fact, what even is ‘the evangelist?’ Is it the preacher at a crusade, the leader of your church’s Alpha course or the person in the marketplace? How will the church enter this new decade keeping evangelism at the forefront?

These are questions that Steve Chong, founding director of the RICE movement, believes the church should be asking in order to carry out its mission today. The church is at crossroads, there is a harvest waiting and a church unsure as to how to harvest it. Is it new methods we need, a return to old ones, or something else?

Does the evangelistic rally still have a place in the Australian church today? In 2014, Eternity magazine even asked, “Is it time to give up on the big evangelistic rally?”

Defying this trend is the phenomenal success of the RICE Movement. Since 2002 they have been bringing people together at their evangelistic rallies in Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland and Perth and now Sao Paulo (Brazil) with many more cities in the pipeline. Why is their ministry so effective? What does it tell us about the ministry of evangelism, the content of the gospel, and the needs and interests of young Australians?

The Bible in Australia

Thursday, 16 May 2019
Presenter: Dr Meredith Lake

We’re all pretty used to the idea that Australia isn’t a 'Christian country', but it is still a culture upon which the Bible has cast a pretty long shadow. Christian belief and practice have been here since the First Fleet arrived. Today, references to biblical phrases (“my brother’s keeper”) and allusions to Bible teaching (“Do unto others…”) are commonplace. But, as we saw in the same-sex marriage debate, no one wants to hear the Bible quoted authoritatively in public debates.

Based on her award-winning book, The Bible in Australia, Dr Lake presented the historical 'backstory' to where we are at with the Bible now, with a view to exploring the best uses of the Bible in public discourse and political debate.

Reclaiming Community: Mission, Church and Aboriginal Wisdom

Presented by Brooke Prentis
Monday, 26 March 2018

2018 ANNUAL LECTURE BOOKLET

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The Joy of the Gospel - From a Theology of the Balcony to a Theology of the Road

Presented by Dr Cathy Ross

Wednesday 24th May 2017

2017 ANNUAL LECTURE BOOKLET

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Uncommon Good: Peaceable Dialogue for Partisan Times

Presented by Dave Benson

2016 ANNUAL LECTURE BOOKLET

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Prayer as a Weapon: Clasped Hands as Nonviolent Uprising

Presented by Matt Anslow

2015 ANNUAL LECTURE BOOKLET

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Gender: Being Missional and the Reign of God

Presented by Rev. Karina Kreminski

2014 ANNUAL LECTURE BOOKLET

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Preaching to the Birds? The Mission of the Church to the Creation

Presented by Dr Mick Pope

2013 ANNUAL LECTURE BOOKLET

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Everyday Theology in the World

Presented by Dr Justine Toh

2012 ANNUAL LECTURE BOOKLET

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Earlier Lectures

Copies of these lectures are available in written form by contacting Morling college.

2011 – How Dirty are the Hands and Feet that follow Jesus, by Jon Owen, Urban Neighbours of Hope, Sydney.

2010 – Lost in Salvation, by Michael Duncan, Alongsiders, Auckland.

2009 – Following Jesus into Suburbia, by Dr Simon Carey Holt, Whitley College, Melbourne.

2008 – Fitting into the Triune God’s Missional Plot, by Mary Fisher, Sydney Chinese Alliance Church, Sydney.

2007 – Mission After Christendom, by Dr Stuart Murray Williams, Anabaptist Network, Bristol.

2006 – Mission as Cultural Subversion, by Dr Vinoth Ramachandra, International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, Sri Lanka.

2005 – Promoting the Gospel, by Dr John Dickson, Centre for Public Christianity, Sydney.

2004 – Old Stories, New Directions, by Mary Evans, London School of Theology, London.

2003 – A Cross Cultural Missions Approach for the West, by Dr James Chancellor, Southern Baptist Seminary, Louisville.

2002 – The Holy Love of God and the Mission of the Church, by Rev Peter Corney, Institute for Contemporary Christian Leadership, Melbourne.

2001 – Christianity in Three Crucial Dimensions, by Professor Charles Kraft, Fuller Seminary, Pasadena.

2000 – Missional Leadership, by Alan Hirsch, Forge Missions Training Network, Melbourne.

1999 – Mobilising the Local Church for Global Outreach, by Paul Borthwick, Development Associates International, Boston.

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