The Australasian Religious Press Association's annual two day get together of the big players of Christian print-online media being held in Sydney has a line of up speakers and topics.
The program is essentially divided into a Friday smorgasbord of activities – a welcome lunch, an afternoon plenary, the AGM, an evening reception followed by a panel session.
Saturday is the heavy duty day with two major morning key note addresses, after lunch another two seminars which are repeated following afternoon tea – every delegate gets to hear them. Finally the Saturday night annual "awards".
Friday 2 September
Friday afternoon Karl Faase CEO of Olive Tree Media's topic is "Th Future of the Word in Australia".
Karl Faase is an Australian Christian communicator, media presenter, leader and social commentator. With 20 years under his belt Karl is certainly a very experienced Christian radio and television presenter and his programs through Olive Tree Media are distributed in the USA, UK, Canada, France, Germany and New Zealand.
The evening panel session is a favourite every year and often has been the most illustrated and helpful in answering home spun questions that impact Christian media at the grass roots.
Saturday 3 September
The morning plenary's from 9.00am followed by the second after morning tea at 11.00am are topics that will inevitably challenge and bring to the fore issues that affect everyone of us.
First is Associate Professor Shane Clifton Dean of Theology at Sydney's Alphacrucis College and editor of the Australian Pentecostal Studies journal. After a serious accident he was left a quadriplegic and Shane's life work has focused the intersection between disability and conceptions of the good life. His topic is "The Church, justice and disability."
The second morning session is a panel titled "Where will we be in 2024 – God Willing? (ARPA's 50th anniversary).
After lunch the two seminars are on Social Media for the Church led by Haylie Price Christian Media Australia. Haylie is a digital strategist with CMA working across 60+ member radio stations and not-for-profits and social media opportunities.
The second morning session is a panel on Media Relations – interviewing, connecting and being in the media.
Awards
The centre ARPA Award is the Gutenberg featuring what the judges consider as the outstanding Christian media of the year, last year it was won by Melbourne's Anglican Media.
Along with this major centre piece are a host of other high distinguished awards with best articles over a number of categories along best covers and the like. Last year one of the Press Service International (PSI) young writers won one of these Best Article awards, Casey Murray of Auckland.
PSI's chief editor Sophia Sinclair is responsible for these nominations into ARPA. Sophia bases these nominations on PSI's own awards as judged by its own Panellists of its young writer program.
We look forward to another ARPA conference, a feature event of the Christian media calender of Australia and New Zealand. Next year 2017 the ARPA conference is in Auckland.
Dr Mark Tronson is a Baptist minister (retired) who served as the Australian cricket team chaplain for 17 years (2000 ret) and established Life After Cricket in 2001. He was recognised by the Olympic Ministry Medal in 2009 presented by Carl Lewis Olympian of the Century. He mentors young writers and has written 24 books, and enjoys writing. He is married to Delma, with four adult children and grand-children.
Mark Tronson's archive of articles can be viewed at http://www.pressserviceinternational.org/mark-tronson.html