Julia Baber is French and speaks of this as an input into her experience as a young writer, Belinda Scotland from the Sunshine Coast spoke of her life, Ben Kitzelman of Melbourne detailed his IT profession while Laura Veloso spoke of being a young mum with three little boys.
These can be viewed on the Australian Missionary News IPTV at tv.bushorchestra.com/Media/index.html
or on You Tube at www.youtube.com/user/marktronson
These IPTV interviews were conducted at Well-Being Australia's Young Writers Mini-Conference held in Tweed Heads earlier this month where Christian Today Australia addressed the young writers.
There are five young Sport writers and fifteen young Comment writers from across Australia - extending from Perth, to Tasmania, to Cairns. There are nine young women Comment writers and six young men, with Well-Being Australia looking for additional young men.
Well-Being Australia chairman Mark Tronson is interested in hearing from such young men - timeout@bushorchestra.com
They write for "Press Service International" (PSI) which is a wing of Well-Being Australia's ministries which has its articles published in Christian Today Australia. PSI has recently published its Statement of Purpose.
Statement of Purpose
PSI - Press Service International is a ministry of Well-Being Australia (WBA) providing press articles to the Christian and Secular media, mostly in on-line publications. We provide a daily Australian news-feed and a weekly International news-feed for editors to choose from. For example, Christian Today Australia publishes three PSI articles on different topics each weekday – in the Ministry, Comment and Sport columns respectively.
The PSI articles try to follow Christian Today's motto from Matthew 5:37, "Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes', and your 'No', 'No'", in that its principle is "integrity in writing". This aim is communicated to a team of young writers, who are being trained as part of a succession plan for this ministry.
Many articles are written to reflect current affairs issues back to the readers, from a viewpoint of those who normally do not have a voice in society. It is hoped that the opinions and analysis in these articles bring awareness of various situations from a range of viewpoints, in order to help others in Australia and overseas to think more deeply about everyday, moral and theological issues and the place of Christianity in society and in their lives.
History
PSI was established in 2005 when the founder and sole operator of Australia's Religious Media (which distributed Christian news) Ramon Williams (76) retired. Now 82 Ramon still does some (considerable) Christian media.
Ramon had been distributing press releases for Mark Tronson (chairman of Well-Being Australia) since 1971.
Mark's background has been as a hockey writer for newspapers, an author of 24 books on hockey, railways and theology, as well as a long established portfolio of Christian writing, including two postgraduate theses.
After moving to Tweed Heads in 2006, Mark scoured the Internet for additional International Christian on-line and print publications, including religious writers of major world newspapers. He established the current two tier distribution system for his and the young writers' daily articles.
In 2008 "Christian Today Australia" approached Mark Tronson to become a daily columnist, and he is now their "Theological Advisor", because of his recognised reputation in Christian media.
Late 2009 young Sport and in 2010 young Comment writers were incorporated, at the suggestion of his mentor Basil Sellers AM. This has developed into more formal training with a range of editors and they have the opportunity to discuss the PSI values and standards at an annual mini-conference.
The history of this ministry is thus continuing into the future.