Thought Matters Conference 2025

Thought Matters is the annual conference of The Salvation Army's South Pacific Theological Forum

Thank you for your interest in Thought Matters Conference 2025. This year's conference proceedings will be published in the forthcoming edition 12 of our journal. If one of the abstracts below piques your interest, please email thoughtmatters@ebc.edu.au to inquire about access to the conference paper in advance of publication.

Proposed timetable

Abstracts

Rest assured

Jules Badger

As we see in Genesis, we were designed first and foremost to enjoy relationship with God. Our identity then, quite literally, rests in and flows from our communion with God. Every time we allow our work to determine our worth—even meaningful, sacrificial service—we risk making a practice out of working for God rather than with God. Work, or more correctly ‘toil’, stems from the fall and our addiction to work and cultural predilection to find our identity in it, has leaked into the Church under the guise of service. But isn’t rest assured by Jesus? Do we need to shamelessly prioritise rest and play so that work becomes the tail not the head? Drawing on my own lived experience of succumbing to what Dr Richard Black calls the ‘Five Saboteurs for Pastors’ I will explore the concept of ‘work, rest and play’ by subverting the order to ‘rest, play and work’, because what if our most powerful outreach tool in the 21st century is not what we do but the rest we model to a weary world?

‘This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says: “Only in returning to me and resting in me will you be saved. In quietness and confidence is your strength. But you would have none of it.’ (Isaiah 30:15 NLT)

I lay down my arms: A feminist reimagining of rest and resistance

Amanda Brummell Lennestaal

This paper offers a feminist and disability-informed critique of Salvationist theologies of work, rest, and worship. It examines how militarised identity—shaped by language of soldiership, rank, mobilisation, spiritual weaponry, and frontline service—has formed a culture where exhaustion is sanctified, care labour invisible, and rest mistaken for retreat.

Drawing on lived experience as a survivor of domestic abuse and as a mother-carer of disabled children, I explore how battle cries often reinforce unsustainable service and suppress the theological value of vulnerability, interdependence, and Sabbath. When discipleship is framed as constant battle-readiness, the wounded are left behind, and flourishing becomes a privilege for those perceived as strong.

Through feminist, trauma-informed, and crip theological lenses, I re-read Colossians 3, Exodus 20, and John 10 to reclaim rest as mission, not its interruption. Rest becomes an eschatological act of disarmament—a refusal to measure faithfulness by output or endurance.

This paper calls for a reconstitution of Salvationist identity: from warriors wielding spiritual weapons to a wounded body learning to breathe, lament, and heal. Not every call to mobilise is holy. Sometimes the holiest act is to lay down arms.

O boundless work, deep ocean of stress: A response to Catherine Spiller's paper and what it might mean for The Salvation Army

Matt Cairns

This paper is crafted in response to Catherine Spiller’s ‘Sabbath: A Call to Rest and Rebellion”, with a specific focus on how The Salvation Army might consider her challenge to trust God in the defiant act of counter-cultural rest and delight in both God and the world, alongside Sabbath as solidarity with those deemed unproductive in a capitalist framework.

Exploring some Salvationist concepts of sabbath alongside the work of Spiller, who argues that sabbath ‘is a deliberate choice to stop, rest, to not produce or consume, and to instead delight in God’s creation,’ this paper will consider how we might balance these somewhat competing considerations.

Further, it will propose some concepts that Salvationist places might consider as acts of resistance against the systems of anxiety, productivity, and oppression our 24/7 world creates. How can The Salvation Army speak counterculturally to a world that does not stop – this paper hopes to provide some opportunities for reflection in order to find rest – to find sabbath.

The work of becoming visible: Rage, rest, and reclamation

Lavinia Cope

This paper begings with a story of disappearance, the quiet ways women are taught to soften their tone, to silence desired, to equiate invisibility with virtue. Purity culture, I argue, is not simply a set of behavioural codes but a theology of absence: a disembodied spirituality that sanctifies repression and rewards self-erasure. Within The Salvation Army, as in much of Evangelical culture, this ethos is absorbed not only through doctrine but through tone, silence, and repetition. Drawing on feminist theology, trauma theory, and biblical exegesis, I examine how this labour of disappearance disproportionately burdens women and queer believers, distorting holiness into a choreography of self-denial.

In response, I propose what I call "the sacred refusal." Rage, rest, and play are reframed here not as indulgence or rebellion but as embodied practices of holy resistance. These acts honour the body as a dwelling place of God's presence. Through this reclamatino, the paper imagines a Church no longer defined by vanishing but by visibility, vitality, and the radical embodiment of faith.

Living an integrated life

Susan Goldsack

Since busyness and multi-tasking characterise much of our living these days, is work-life balance even possible.

What if we are aspiring for an illusion? 

Let's explore what it is to instead live an integrated life that is in harmony with the movement of the Spirit, partnering with His Divine work across our whole of life.

My journey with God

Jackie Harvey

This testimonial paper came out of a speech prepared for this year's NAIDOC week. This paper is grounded in lived experience. You will hear how Jackie relies on God in her work as a school teacher and her desire for her students to have a great life full of opportunities and the way that education helps to set them up well. Jackie's thoughts are those of a wife, mum, grandparent, aunt, sister, teacher, Aboriginal person, Christian and friend. 

A Māori Guide to Wellbeing: Harmonising Work, Play & Rest

Sue Hay and Tammy Mohi

This paper presents an indigenous Māori guide to well–being as the harmonising of work, rest and play called Whiti Te Rā. This model presents the fullness of life that Jesus promised (John10:10) through an indigenous lens, noting active engagement in six interwoven elements of life is required to experience well-being. Only one of the six elements is usually taught in Western Churches. However, the lived experience of both presenters is that by personally embracing the six elements of Whiti Te Rā we stepped into a fullness of life not found through our previous Christian experience. 

Recognition, relaxation, recreation, rest, recovery: A testimony

Phil Inglis

Revisiting play and games as adults

Sandy MacDonald

Unlike the Squid Game tv series, where adults revisit childhood play and games with deadly consequences in a bleak world where the hero doesn’t always triumph, our embrace of a childlike, playful life might infuse us with joy and hope, leading us into a more vibrant relationship with a loving and playful God.
 
Jerome Berryman paints human to human relationships as a game of hide and seek, starting from infancy and continuing throughout life, and extends the metaphor to the human/divine relationship. Might we say that God initiated the ultimate game of hide and seek in the Garden of Eden and, indeed, initiates the game of life with every person since? For Brian Edgar, “play is the essential and ultimate form of relationship with God.” So, what might it look like if adults bring the imprint of play from childhood into our relationships with the divine?

This presentation will help us explore the richness of our relationships with God, our selves, others, and the non-human world through play. Play is not just for children. Nor is it an optional extra. Play is necessary for all ages. And play is vital to healthy spirituality.

The role of fun in youth ministry

John Marion

The role of ‘fun’ in youth ministry is a topic of debate and discussion. Fun has been considered a key method of attracting young people to programs and engagement with churches. Others have criticised a focus on fun or entertainment as a distraction from the real task of discipling young people. Because of this, certain aspects of youth ministry have been dismissed as frivolous. What role should fun play in youth ministry? What are the perspectives of young people? Are there theological perspectives that inform how we think about this?

This paper will address these questions. Based on data collected through lived experience research with young people and youth leaders, this paper will argue that fun is not merely a means but also an ends of youth ministry. Whilst participants report that fun was a significant attractor to engaging in youth ministry, it was also recognised as a way of meeting the needs of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Fun was also seen as a way of communicating the Good News, and helping young people experience the Kingdom of God. This paper informs how we position fun as reflective of joy – a fruit of the Spirit.

Ironbark Cathedrals

Caleb Smith

In 2025 we have a complicated relationship with nature: we revere it and exploit it. This situation is even more complex for Christians, as our millennia-old scriptures teach us of a Creator God while also warning us against worshipping natural forces.  

This paper explores Christian responses to nature in the context of worship. How we define "nature," and what we value in nature, has big implications for how we rest, work, and play in God's creation.

Sabbath: A call to rest and rebellion

Catherine Spiller

This paper is an invitation to all Christians to join the rebellion and experience Sabbath rest.

In our capitalist society, people are given value based on their ability to produce. The more productive people are, the more money they have, the more status they are given. But this endless cycle of work and exhaustion was not the intention of the Creator. We are told in Genesis 2 that our value does not come from what we produce, it is because of whose we are. As people of faith, we are invited to actively resist this never-ending cycle of production. By exploring the theology of rest, eco-theology and disability theology, I discuss how Sabbath rest is an active form of rebellion and resistance in a consumeristic and capitalistic society. Rest is an act of solidarity with creation that is being plundered in the name of progress, and with people deemed ‘less than’ because of their inability to produce. Ultimately, Sabbath rest is an act of trust. As people of faith, we can rest because we trust what God says about who we are and because we trust that God is at work in the world, even when we are not.

[park]running together: Theologies of belonging and authenticity

Sarah Walker

What might happen if churches were known for fostering radical belonging and authentic self-expression? These aren’t just feel-good concepts - they’re markers of wellbeing and essential ingredients for healthy, thriving communities. This paper explores what faith communities can learn from parkrun - a global, volunteer-led running movement that fosters inclusion, belonging, and wellbeing. Through a comparative study involving survey data from parkrun participants and a local Salvation Army faith community, as well as National Church Life Survey (NCLS) findings, this research identifies transferable markers of healthy community.

parkrun’s success in cultivating belonging is deeply connected to its culture of radical inclusivity, low-barrier participation, and encouragement of authenticity. In contrast, in many faith communities, there is a gap between belonging and authentic self-expression. Faith communities, while valuing connection, often struggle to create environments where individuals feel safe to fully be themselves - impacting both individual and collective wellbeing in the community. parkrun shows us that belonging is not just about inclusion, but about being known, welcomed, and celebrated. Authentic self-expression is surely the starting point to life in its fullest.

"Followers of the Way": Reclaiming the Logos as the pattern of sacred living

Richard Wiltshire

In an age dominated by data and emotions, truth is often reduced to either cold rationalism or fleeting feelings. This paper proposes a recovery of the Logos – not merely as a title for Christ, but as the living source of truth and reality that transcends and includes both reason and feeling. Beginning with the Greek philosophical roots of the Logos as the ordering principle of the cosmos and culminating in its radical redefinition in the Prologue to John’s Gospel, this exploration seeks to reclaim the Logos as a theological compass for human life in its fullness including its labour, its leisure, and its stillness.

Rather than treating work, play, and rest as discrete activities, this paper argues they are united in their potential to manifest the Logos when lived in accordance with divine revelation rather than modern utilitarianism or personal preference. The Logos invites us into a trans-rational mode of being, where one may rest without resolution, labour without self-justification, and play without escapism. This way of life is not grounded in the certainty of facts or the volatility of feelings, but in the Spirit of Christ who is both truth and paradox, reason and mystery.

By engaging with ancient philosophy, Johannine theology, and practical spirituality, this paper offers a theology that affirms the incarnational rhythm of life: that to work, to rest, and to play in the Spirit is to participate in the deep logic of God. The Logos does not demand we escape paradox but teaches us to dwell within it and find sabbath not in resolution, but in revelation.

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Please email us at thoughtmatters@ebc.edu.au