The big news from Manna Gum is that we have expanded Jacob Garrett’s role, paying him an extra day a week (now two days/wk). With his extra day, Jacob will be extending Manna Gum’s work in two important areas:
- Making Manna Gum’s message more accessible to youth.
- Deepening Manna Gum’s teaching about the role and place of technology in our lives.
Obviously, there is a strong overlap between these two. Jacob is already making significant headway in reaching out to youth networks. If you are interested in exploring how Manna Gum’s message can connect with your youth, please get in touch.
If you are interested in exploring how Manna Gum’s message can connect with your youth, please get in touch.
We have wanted to expand into this work for a long time, but the money has not been there. But the amazing response to our Advent Appeal last year has emboldened us to give it a go. It is risky, as we still need to grow our income by an extra $13k per year to make it sustainable. Our longer term hope is to expand Jacob’s role to three days/wk, but first things first.
If Manna Gum were a normal organisation, and Jacob and I just employees, expanding like this so soon after a mini-financial crisis would not be responsible. Ensuring predictability and sustainability for staff (to the extent that it can be ensured) is only just and fair. But that is not the right category for what we are doing. Manna Gum is merely a vehicle for a ministry to which Jacob and I feel called. We aspire to the model laid down by the Apostle Paul, to be content ‘whether in plenty or in want’ (Phil 4:12).
We presume no entitlement to be paid for doing the things that Christ has laid on our heart, but being paid releases more of our time to put into the work that is before us. And there is no shortage to be done!
Jacob and I have both had appearances of ABC Radio National recently. In March, Jacob was interviewed for Soul Search about giving up acquisition for Lent, and in May I was part of a panel on God Forbid discussing religious perspectives on the Federal Budget. Make sure you check them out. Since last edition, we have recorded a couple more podcasts, and a couple more will follow shortly. Jacob has had the opportunity to speak to a couple of youth camps, and I have had the privilege of having some ongoing conversations with a church in Brisbane that is thinking hard about the economic shape of its communal life. But I have primarily been buried in a couple of writing projects, which I hope will bear fruit later in the year.
In July we will re-start our Evening Conversations in Melbourne, opening up some diverse and interesting speakers and topics, and later that month I will also be holding a Manna Gum Afternoon Conversation in Brisbane. Stay tuned for more information.
Speaking of responsible budgets, I am writing this the day after the latest Federal Budget. Although boring, budgets are important. All budgets, including your household budget, are moral documents: they are literally rankings of what we value.
This Federal Budget had a couple of positives: removing the capital gains tax discount, and narrowing the application of negative gearing, both of which have played a large role in driving our housing crisis; and also a tax on trust funds will help remove one of the many tax loopholes available to the wealthy. These things should have been done twenty years ago, but better late than never.
However, the Albanese Government is still refusing to tax gas exports—they are saying it would be irresponsible and harmful to do so, which is exactly what they said a couple of years ago about removing the capital gains tax discount. And they are persisting with their AUKUS madness: spending hundreds of billions on nuclear submarines that make us more insecure and may never be delivered. Meanwhile, we are struggling to fund crumbling health and education systems which are the foundation of Australian social democracy.
I hope to write more about what a renewed Christian political vision might look in our times, but as a taster, let me suggest that it would seek to restore universal access to decent, affordable housing, and free health care and education, as the foundation of a new equalitarian settlement, which would require major reform of our taxation-fiscal system as it now stands.