I often find it difficult to account for the labour of Manna Gum. Our guiding vision is to reclaim a practice of Christian faith that embraces all of life, and that is good news in the midst of a world facing deep and manifold challenges. But this is slow work, pieced together by fractions at a time. Much of the work is reading, thinking, and talking. For this to really bear fruit it needs to be joined to a lived practice of material life that itself takes time and labour. I often liken the work of Manna Gum to that proverbial iceberg: only one tenth of the work surfaces as some sort of visible ‘product’. This was certainly the case for 2025: the number of activities was not large, but the labour invested was great, especially in the case of the new podcast series (see below). Thank God Jacob and I don’t have managers demanding efficiencies and KPIs!
In 2024 I signalled that two major themes for Manna Gum over the coming years would be to stimulate thinking about the economics of churches and rethinking Christian political witness. As will be seen below, both of those themes were evident in our work in 2025, although, once again, they represent mere beginnings in a larger work.
A significant event in 2025 was the moment in October that Manna Gum ran out of money… and the incredible response to our subsequent appeal. There is a fuller report on our financial situation below, but the short story is that the wonderful response to the Advent Appeal has well and truly put us on a firm footing for the coming year. In fact, given the response to this emergency appeal we have been unsure of whether we should continue with our usual New Year Appeal. However, there is still a need to expand Manna Gum’s income base, so we have gone ahead with the New Year Appeal with a bit of a different spin. To be honest, I am a little intimidated by people’s generosity and hope and pray that Manna Gum’s work can prove worthy of it.
I often liken the work of Manna Gum to that proverbial iceberg: only one tenth of the work surfaces as some sort of visible ‘product’.
Manna Matters
Manna Matters remains the flagship of Manna Gum’s communications and represents the largest investment of our time. In 2026, articles in Manna Matters covered a wide range of issues and styles, all joined by a consistent thread that seeks a coherent way of inhabiting our world in forms that express the good news revealed in Jesus. We are immensely thankful for the many writers and artists who have contributed to keeping Manna Matters vibrant, diverse, and interesting.
We are conscious of a trend towards longer, more heady articles (there is so much that needs to be discussed!), but we would really love to include more shorter, practical articles focussed on practices of household economy or alternative life choices people have made. We are also always on the lookout for artwork that can complement the articles. So, if you feel you have something to contribute, please get in touch!
Last year’s spring Manna Matters was our 50th edition—a milestone worth celebrating. Over that time, our readership has crept up to just over 900 recipients. But we feel that the views and thoughts expressed in Manna Matters deserve a much wider readership, and our goal in the next season is to try get that up to 2000 readers. If you have thoughts on how we can get there, let us know!
MannaCast
The podcast continues to be a very effective way of connecting with people beyond the readership of Manna Matters. In 2025, our podcasting schedule was dominated by embarking on a series exploring ‘Legacies of Colonisation’. Initially this was going to be four- or five-part series, but it has taken on a life of its own and is now looking like being a ten- or eleven-part series. Perhaps this is appropriate, as the moral questions and present-day legacies of colonisation are fundamental to the task of rethinking Christian economic ethics in Australia.
More personally, undertaking this series has been something of a homecoming for me: Indigenous justice issues were my first social justice passion back in high school in North Queensland in the 1980s. I pursued this through my undergrad study in the 1990s, majoring in studying colonisation in history, and I have continued to read consistently on this subject over the intervening thirty years. As this podcast series expanded in scope, it struck me that perhaps this was what all that work was for. I hope this series is useful for others, but for me it has been important to honour the deep moral, spiritual, and intellectual struggles involved in coming to terms with the history of our nation.
If you have enjoyed MannaCast, it would help us enormously if you left a review and rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podbean, etc. and perhaps shared an episode or two with some friends.
Webinar
In June we ran a four-part webinar series on renewing the church in Australia, with a focus on renewing the church as an economic community. The webinars discussed some of the challenges facing churches in post-Christian Australia and some of the deep questions about structure and form that this is prompting, as well as how these relate to our understanding of the gospel. Underpinning all of these things are questions of economic structure. These are enormous questions, with big implications for the future of Christianity in this country, and this webinar series was really just the first shot in what will be an ongoing exploration over the coming years.
MG Evening Conversations
A new initiative this year has been trialling a couple of ‘evening conversations’ that get people together to discuss topics that don’t normally get aired in churches. These came about as Jacob and I were reflecting that we were really hopeless at doing social media and had little desire to get better, so we decided to lean into a much more substantial but numerically limited form of communication: meeting in person. Initially we were thinking of a ‘politics in the pub’ format, but couldn’t find a pub that would work as a suitable venue. Then were we offered use of a funky basement space in the Melbourne CBD owned by the social enterprise ValueLab. Manna Gum’s Evening Conversations were born.
We ran two events, both discussing political themes: the politics of place, and ‘Why I am a left-wing conservative radical’. I shared some thoughts at both evenings and I was joined on the first night by Shiung Low from ValueLab, and for second event by Robyn Whitaker from the Wesley Centre. There were 20-30 people at each event and the cosy atmosphere was supplemented by drinks and nibbles generously supplied by ValueLab.
We think the format worked pretty well and will look to run a couple more evening conversations in Melbourne in winter this year, and possibly one in Brisbane in June or July.
‘A Different Way’ Exposure Week
In November we ran our ‘A Different Way’ exposure week here in Long Gully, Bendigo, with twelve participants. This is the first time we have run this week since 2019, so it was great to get back into it. The exposure week is by far the most high-impact activity that Manna Gum does. There is ample scope for breadth, depth, and complexity in discussing the challenges of reclaiming a Christian mode of economic life and, moreover, it is grounded in the realities and compromise of what that looks like here in Long Gully. We studied what the Bible has to say on themes such as creation, salvation, work, money, and poverty, applied these to topics such as standards of living, economic cooperation, vocation, and mission amongst the marginalised, and engaged bodily in activities such as garden building, running a community food pantry, bush walking, making cordial, and chasing dogs.
An invaluable part of the week is what the participants themselves bring to it, and this year was no different: it was an engaged and thoughtful group who connected beautifully with each other and were fun to be around. All things being equal, we anticipate running the next ‘A Different Way’ week in 2027. (You can read a brief reflection on ADW from Bernadette in this edition).
Show me the money
A number of years ago, we decided to expand the work of Manna Gum, spending down our bank balance reserves while trying to grow our income to match the new cost basis. Our income base has been growing over the last few years, but not fast enough, and last year this caught up with us when we ran out of money. The response to the subsequent emergency appeal was awesome. We raised over $20,000 and signed up a bunch of new monthly supporters. In the space of a month, what was going to be a rather large annual deficit turned into a healthy surplus (see table below).
We are now back on a strong financial footing for the coming year, but we still need to grow our supporter base in order to be sustainable, and even more so because we are beginning to think about ways in which we would like to expand the work further! Our short-term goal is for 80% of our annual expenses to be covered by regular monthly supporters. We bumped closer to this target with the Advent Appeal but we still have a way to go.
But we don’t want to ask any more of those who have been supporting Manna Gum. We have been stunned by people’s generosity. Rather, if you already contribute to Manna Gum, don’t give any more money but help us by expanding our base: instead, pass on Manna Matters, share our podcasts with your friends, and give them ratings and reviews.
Below is our income and expenses for 2025. Our accounts are pretty simple, but in light of people’s generosity I thought it would be nice to provide some more detail below, for those who would like to better understand where the money comes from and how it is used.
We don’t want to ask any more of those who have been supporting Manna Gum. We have been stunned by people’s generosity.
... more detail
All of Manna Gum’s income comes from individuals like you, both regular monthly supporters and through ad hoc donations. Obviously, the more monthly supporters, the more stable our financial base. That said, we will always depend to some extent on once-off donations that tend to fluctuate from year to year.
In the last five years Manna Gum’s income has grown from $42k (2021) to $86k (2025). Currently we have 65 monthly supporters who make up for 68% of our income and, on average, are giving $65 per month. That is some seriously heavy lifting from our supporters, and we don’t want to ask any more them! Our great need is to broaden the base and spread the load — our short-term target is to get monthly support to cover 80% of expenses.
Manna Gum’s primary expense (85%) is employment costs. In FY 2025, Jonathan was paid $40,000 (3 days/wk) and Jacob was paid $13,000 (1 day/wk), both at the same rate of $34/hr. This hourly rate has been pegged to inflation (increasing yearly with the Consumer Price Index), but given our costs are rising faster than income, we decided to skip the CPI increase going into 2026.
Beyond wages, the next main expenses relate to the cost of producing Manna Matters and maintaining an online presence — the core vehicles of our work. The cost of these things has tripled over the last three years.
Looking forward, our hope is to be able to expand Jacob’s role. There is no shortage of things to be done, and he has already brought enormous added value to Manna Gum’s work. But for this, we definitely need to broaden our income base. If you don’t currently support Manna Gum financially but find benefit in our work, please consider our New Year’s Appeal.
