St Marks Anglican Church

Welcome to the website of St Mark’s Anglican Church Pennant Hills.

You can watch a short welcome and introduction to St Mark’s from our Pastor here.

Rick Hall has joined us at St Mark’s Pennant Hills in 2010 as Associate Pastor: Youth and Young Adults.

To help us get to know him and his family a bit, we went and asked the really important questions:

At our last Men’s Dinner, our pastor Craig Schafer gave a talk called ‘men mastering busyness’. Craig shared some very practical hints and tips. But his confronting, challenging ‘big idea’ was this; the busyness problem that so many people wrestle with is fundamentally not a problem of planning or time management but a spiritual problem.

If you’d like to know why, you can listen to what he had to say:

Nearly 90 women attended our recent ‘Christmas Pudding Afternoon’ at St Mark’s Pennant Hills.

They made their own Christmas Puddings under the watchfull eye of master pudding maker Madelin Sinclair. And they heard Alison Napier (pictured) who ministers among women at St Andrew’s Cathedral give a short talk entitled The Proof is in the Pudding exploring the spiritual significance of Christmas.


The women were so impressed with the things Alison had to say that wanted to make it more widely available to those who couldn’t be there on the day.

So here it is:

You can also find a few photos of all the fun here.

This years marks our parish’s 100th birthday. Pennant Hills, Thornleigh and Westleigh have changed a lot in the last 100 years but God’s plans and purposes for the human race he designed remain constant, solid and eternal. To hear our Pastor’s centenary address on those plans and purposes of God for human beings click here.

Urbane, British, ‘celebrity atheist’ Christopher Hitchens was in Sydney over the weekend explaining ‘Christians bad, atheists good’ (we may have missed some of the nuance, but not much).

To celebrate we’ve posted the video clip below of Mr Hitchens in discussion with William Lane Craig (more of a ‘Jesus right, atheists wrong’ kind of a guy) where Hitchens dances around the great sinkhole of his atheism as Lane Craig tries to nudge him into it.

If you’re an atheist up for a discussion about the evidence for Jesus and the things he claimed about himself why not contact our pastor Craig and have a coffee with him (we’ll make sure he pays). If you think you need to know more about Jesus and what he claims before you could have that conversation, why not sign up for our next Jesus: An Introduction course and have some of your questions answered. The guys at the last one had a ball.

You might have seen this ad on TV recently, which claims “Jesus has answers”:

Maybe some of the questions in the ad have got you thinking. Maybe the claim “Jesus has answers” has got you thinking. If you’d like to think a bit more about some of the questions raised in the ad, we invite you to have a look here, where you might find some answers that keep you thinking.

If you’d like to talk about any of the big questions or even the little questions raised by the ads, Jesus, life, the universe or anything, come along one Sunday or arrange to have a coffee with our pastor Craig (contact details here).

You might come across some ads on TV, radio and billboards over the coming weeks telling you ‘Jesus is all about life’ and flashing around this logo:





That’s because Jesus said things like:

• “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full”
  
  
• “Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
  
  
• “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life”
  
  
• “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you”

If the Bible tells the truth, then from God’s perspective it is true that Jesus is all about life. And if the Bible tells the truth, then from God’s perspective it is also true that life is all about Jesus.

If you have questions about Jesus, or issues with Jesus that you’d like someone to take seriously (or if you just want to know where in the Bible Jesus says those things), St Mark’s would be honoured to help. We have free resources and courses available. Come along one Sunday and see what it’s all about or get in contact with our Pastor Craig here.

In 2010 Rick Hall will be joining us at St Mark’s Anglican Church Pennant Hills as our Associate Pastor: Youth and Young Adults. This is an exciting development for us as a church family and we’re looking forward to getting to know Rick and his family.

Rick is in his final year at Moore College. Before that he did a ministry traineeship at St Paul’s Carlingford after working for several years as a mechanical engineer.
Rick is married to Helena and they have two young daughters Elise and Ashley.

We asked Rick to tell us something about himself. So he did:

For quite a while now, we’ve been followers of Jesus and seeking to serve him. We’re really excited that next year this will take us to serve with you at St Mark’s. We grew up around Carlingford so we’re looking forward to returning to familiar territory to help reach out to the community and the world with the gospel. Us in a nutshell? Rick loves being outside. Helena loves being with friends. Elise loves running around. We all love Jesus. See you in 2010!

Bishop Glenn Davies spoke recently at our combined Care Sunday service at St Mark’s Anglican Church Pennant Hills. Glenn is Bishop of North Sydney.

It was a great morning and a great talk so we thought we make it available for others to benefit from too.

You can listen to Glenn here.

Our last Men’s Dinner on Winning at Fatherhood was full of practical wisdom drawn from experience shaped by God’s word. We thought it so helpful that we decided to make the after dinner talk available, so here it is: