Turning up the volume on positivity

“If we all believed that just bringing our little piece, whatever it is, could make a difference, it really does have a really positive impact,” says Joce Goto, Chief Operations Officer at giving App, Charitabl.

Joce is joined by Mark Jones, Chief Storyteller at the ImpactInstitute; and Max Jeganathan, former advisor to Federal Government, to speak about how we can both grasp and wield the power of positive influence.

Negative Bias

It’s almost as if we’re wired to be negative, suggests Max, whose vast experience in politics, as a lawyer, and now as a social commentator, has given him ample opportunity to observe our “negativity bias”. He cites the interesting fact that negativity works in domains like X (formerly Twitter) where posts are twenty percent more likely to be retweeted if they are overtly negative.

How can we equip ourselves to not only quieten the influence of negativity, but to raise the volume on the positive?

Max says the answer is found in our mindset.

“Two simple rules that I like to have in place are that; (1.) things are never as bad as they seem, and secondly, even amidst the negativity, there’s always something we can do. There’s always something constructive, something positive we can do.”

Positive Influence

Positive influence must start somewhere, and its benefits transcend the difficulties of any context, Mark suggests, whether that’s in business, community or in our personal lives.

The philosophy of positivity lies at the core of everything the ImpactInstitute does. Whether it’s in marketing, communications and storytelling, in impact advisory and measurement, or through the events they facilitate, their passion is to see brands and businesses empowered to talk about the good they do and the positive contributions they’re making.

“It’s an expression of our values, and who we are, and we want to make a difference,” Mark says. “Our focus has been around – how do we amplify that impact that other people are having? … The key to it for me, as a leader, is that I’m an optimist. And what I love about optimism in this context is that it says, yes, it’s hard, but there’s also a solution.”

Within business, Joce adds, positivity is something people are not only searching for but are coming to expect and have the power to demand.

“As consumers, we have the power to speak into those businesses … If there is a brand you want to engage with, and you can’t find what their ethical, moral plan is clearly stated, I recommend asking them about it … I encourage people to have empathy for businesses who are trying to get it right as well (because) businesses aren’t perfect.”

Our desire to search for and lean into the positive stems from our deep human longing for something better, Max says. Quoting sources from poetry and his Christian faith that inspire him, Max demonstrates that to find positivity, whatever the source, is to find hope, because they are inextricably linked.

Appealing to hope is the way to stay focused on moving forward, Max concludes. When we take the time to look to constructive, positive voices who help us see living, breathing examples of positivity, we have examples from whom we can seek inspiration to be positive, too.

Article supplied with thanks to Helping Hands TV.

About the Author: Helping Hands is an Australian produced TV program that airs on 9GEM, Channel 9 and 9NOW, and showcases people and organisations who make the world a better place.

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Reverend Tim Costello, Chief Advocate for the Alliance for Gambling Reform, reveals the staggering scale of gambling harm in Australia. From pokies to sports betting, Australians are losing billions, and the consequences are devastating.

The Scale of Gambling Losses

Australia loses $32 billion each year to gambling, the highest per capita in the world. Tim explained: “The nation that comes second in gambling losses is 30% less than us. The world looks at us and asks, how did we allow this?”

Pokies account for $17 billion, sports betting $6 billion, with horse racing and greyhounds adding more. Even more shocking: “We have 20% of all the world’s pokies, but 75% are in pubs and clubs. Everywhere else, pokies are only in casinos.”

Unlike casinos, pokies are everywhere: in pubs, clubs, and even shopping areas. Australians often gamble unintentionally, with machines designed for predatory addiction.

The Impact on Families and Young People

The reach of gambling goes beyond adults. Tim highlighted a growing problem among youth: “Influencers are paid by the pokies industry to show how fun it is to feed cash into machines.”

Combined with 900 gambling ads a day on free-to-air TV, many children are absorbing adult gambling behaviours. “Eighty per cent of ten-year-olds now know the odds on AFL and NRL games,” Tim said. “The normalisation is devastating.”

What Can Be Done?

Advocacy is key. Tim outlined practical steps:

• Pokies: Lobby state politicians. Each state has jurisdiction.
• Sports betting: Contact federal representatives, especially the Communications Minister.

“Get boots on the ground. Send letters. Touch base with your politicians,” Tim urged. Western Australia sets a strong example, with no pokies in pubs or clubs and much lower gambling losses.

A Call for National Reform

Despite bipartisan support for a national gambling regulator, recommendations remain ignored. “We need to treat gambling as a health issue, not a sports issue,” Tim said. “Where there’s gambling in a family, there’s four times more domestic violence.”

Public support is overwhelming: 80% of Australians want gambling ads banned, yet action is lagging. “Politicians need to listen. The public has spoken,” Tim added.

Article supplied with thanks to Sonshine.

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What does Christmas look like around the world?

Here are seven colourful and surprising ways Christians celebrate Jesus’ birth.

‘But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people.”’  (Luke 2:10) 

Christmas looks different in communities across the globe. And as Christians, we have the profound joy of being part of a worldwide family of believers—beautiful in our diversity.  

Here are seven wonderful ways our brothers and sisters around the world are expressing the good news of great joy that Christmas is.

Lebanon

In Lebanon, Christmas trees are less popular than this tradition: building a nativity crib. Set in a cave rather than a stable, the holy family is arranged alongside seeds that sprout and grow over the Advent season.  

This live and growing scene becomes a place for the family to gather for prayer in the lead up to Christmas.  

England (via Germany) 

At Christmas in 1747, a German Bishop called John de Watteville gave candles wrapped with red ribbons to children as a reminder that Jesus is the light of the world. The Christingle (Christ Light) was born, and the custom spread around the world.  In 1968, The Children’s Society in England expanded on the Christingle’s symbolism to further explore the importance of Christmas with children. Now the Christingle is made from: an orange to represent the world God made; four sticks threaded with dried fruit or lollies to represent God’s provision; a red ribbon wrapped around the orange representing Jesus’ work on the cross; and a white candle placed in the top of the orange to represent Jesus as the light of the world.

Philippines 

The city of San Fernando is called the ‘Christmas Capital of the Philippines’ because of Ligligan Parul—a festival dating back as far as 1904 where enormous, intricately decorated lanterns are displayed against the night sky.   

Thought to have originally represented the star of Bethlehem, these days the lanterns are typically six metres wide and illuminated by thousands of bulbs intertwined to create a dazzling display of dancing light.    

Ethiopia

Christians make up around 60-70 per cent of the population in Ethiopia, and the largest denomination within that are our Orthodox brothers and sisters who celebrate Christmas on 7 January.  

After fasting and refraining from meat and alcohol in the lead up, on Christmas Eve, Christians dress in a white cotton garment called a netela and attend an overnight service from 6pm to 3am.  

With no emphasis on gift giving, Ethiopians enjoy a day of feasting and traditional sports such as genna, a hockey-like game played without boundaries in the space between two villages.  

The game—and the fun it brings—is thought to represent the shepherds’ joy at the birth of Jesus. 

Bangladesh 

Only 0.3 per cent of the population of Bangladesh are Christians. Nonetheless, 25 December is a national holiday known as Boro Din (The Big Day).  

Christians celebrate with church services, kirtan (a traditional song and dance circle) and special Christmas treats. Many churches hold Preeti-bhoj (love feasts) after church where the whole community share a meal. 

Uganda 

Christmas or Sekukkulu is one of the most important holidays in Uganda, and families spend weeks preparing. Houses are meticulously cleaned, and many people prioritise buying new clothes. It’s common for people to travel long distances to their ancestral home, so they can attend church and big family reunions.

While gift-giving isn’t common, many families save money for months to buy ingredients for an elaborate Christmas feast. With all that effort, it’s not surprising that celebrations continue all day and into the night!

Solomon Islands  

Nathanial, a local pastor who volunteers in the Solomon Islands shared what Christmas is like in his community. 

‘Christmas is a time of celebration for the whole community, because we believe in God, and we believe in his son’ he said. ‘When it’s Christmas time, we make birthday cake and we say, “Happy Birthday, Jesus!”—it’s a birthday cake so big it takes four people to carry it to the front of the church! Then the Chief Elder will cut the cake, and we all sing Happy Birthday to Jesus.’ 

You can stand alongside local leaders like Nathanial in the Solomon Islands and around the world with a gift to the Baptist World Aid Christmas Appeal.

Please give generously this Christmas so that families everywhere can thrive in good health and look forward to a future without poverty.  

This article was prepared with AI assistance and then carefully reviewed, fact-checked, and edited by our Digital Team.

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Julie Goodwin’s ‘Dinner Club’ uses cooking to teach men in juvenile detention not only culinary skills but also social responsibility.

Julie Goodwin has always been open about her battles with anxiety, PTSD, and depression.

Through a journey of confronting childhood trauma, she was able to rediscover resilience, the first step toward healing.

“It’s really important if that stuff comes up, I think, that we look at it and actually seek some help,” Julie said.

This self-awareness paved the way for a deeper understanding of herself and her mental health.

Julie’s journey highlights a crucial message: recovery isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach.

It’s messy and personal, and it’s okay to take it one step at a time.

Julie’s “Dinner Club” initiative takes the concept of food as therapy to a whole new level. 

Working with young men in juvenile detention, she uses cooking to teach not only culinary skills but also social responsibility.

By gathering around a table and sharing a meal, these men are introduced to the power of community. 

“The idea was just to get into the juvenile detention centre and teach these boys how to cook, but for me, far more importantly, how to share the responsibility of cooking and how to eat around a table as a family,” Julie said.

It’s a reminder that food isn’t just about sustenance—it’s a bridge to connection and healing. 

In a world where isolation often exacerbates mental health struggles, shared meals can help us feel grounded and less alone.

Article supplied with thanks to Hope Media.

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About the Author: Joni Boyd is a writer, based in the Hawkesbury Region of NSW. She is passionate about the power of stories shared, to transform lives.

Have you seen or heard that warning on a train system, “Mind the Gap”?

It’s usually written on the platform or announced from the station audio at older train stations where the gap between the train and the platform could swallow your leg. Or a toddler. I’ve seen it in London and there are a few here in Sydney.

Mind the gap!  Be careful!  Watch out!

That sort of gap is dangerous physically. We do well to “mind it”.

But what about the spiritual gap? Do we mind that?  And ministry leaders in particular.  The gap between our public assertions and our private actions. Because that gap can eventually swallow you whole.  There’s another type of platform where the gap is dangerous, and that’s the ministry platform.

Those in Reformed circles have been sobered by the Josh Buice scandal on social media, in which the founder of the G3 conference, who at the very time he often called out people online for hiding behind social media, was trolling and abusing other Christian leaders with anonymous accounts. And then denying it over the years until he was found out.

Trolling leaders in his own tradition. Friends he had once shared platforms with, in which the message to ministry people was often “Mind the gap!”

Of course if only he had known it’s okay with God to abuse and mistreat those from other Christian traditions online. God’s completely okay with vitriol and reviling others as long as … oh wait? You are saying God’s not okay with that?

All dark humour aside, there was a certain level of schadenfreude after Buice had shut down all his media accounts, and been stood down from his roles, at the tweeting of screenshots in which he called out anonymous online trolls.

King Saul and The Gap

The tragic tale of King Saul and his downward spiral reaches its nadir in the chapter before his death, 1 Samuel 28. And it’s a story of how Saul did not mind the gap. And how it took him down.

There he is, surrounded by the Philistines, and terrified of what is going to happen. Samuel the prophet is dead, and God no longer speaks to Saul. He is bereft, alone and frantic.

The start of the episode gives us a little hint as to the gap that Saul has not minded in his own life. In fact as it unfolds, we see that Saul’s refusal to mind the small gaps in his life early on in his reign, has led to chasm-sized gaps by the time he is in terminal decline.  Here’s what we read:

Now Samuel was dead, and all Israel had mourned for him and buried him in his own town of Ramah. Saul had expelled the mediums and spiritists from the land. The Philistines assembled and came and set up camp at Shunem, while Saul gathered all Israel and set up camp at Gilboa.  When Saul saw the Philistine army, he was afraid; terror filled his heart… (1 Samuel 28:3-5)

It’s an aside isn’t it? Why do we need to know that Saul had basically kicked out all of the witches? Because of what happens next:

He inquired of the Lord, but the Lord did not answer him by dreams or Urim or prophets.  Saul then said to his attendants, “Find me a woman who is a medium, so I may go and inquire of her.”

“Hey,” thinks Saul, “Why’s it so hard to find a witch around these parts? Oh that’s right – I killed them all!  Silly me!” I wonder if his own men were horrified by his request.

Now this episode raises all sorts of questions about witches, and whether the witch really brought up Samuel, given that Saul could not see the figure of Samuel, but only had Samuel’s words relayed by the witch. But that’s beside the point.  The point is that the gap in the king of Israel’s life had grown to a chasm. And that was going to bring him down. His public assertions “Get rid of the witches!” were thrown to the side when he needed some advice.

But it’s not like this was a one-off. A mere peccadillo. The problem with the gap in Saul’s life, and surely the problem of the gap in our own lives, is that the disobedience towards God that he exhibited right here at the end, was simply the trajectory of what had gone on earlier. The gap had grown. And he wasn’t minding it!

First he implicitly disobeys God by sacrificing before Samuel turns up, even though Samuel had said “wait for me” (1 Samuel 13).  At that point the prophet turns up – talk about timing! – and announces that Saul’s kingdom would not last.  Now you would think that that would be a warning shot across his bows.  But it isn’t enough! Saul ramps things up.

So two chapters later in 1 Samuel 15, Saul explicitly disobeys when told the dispense with every Amalekite and everything they own. He didn’t. He kept some back.  And then makes excuses as to why he did so. And Samuel tells him this time that not only will his kingdom not last (it might wither away in a few generations), it will actually be torn from him!  The buck – and his dynasty – stops with him!

And so we end up at a witch’s house, where in a parody of the Last Supper that would have made a Paris Olympics organising committee proud, Saul, the king of Israel, has a meal prepared for him the day before his death and he goes out into the night – cursed.

Us and The Gap

Sobering.  But a warning for us. Not for no good reason do we read in the New Testament to be careful not to be hardened by sin’s “deceitfulness”

“You know that gap in your life? The gap between your public assertions and your private actions? That doesn’t really matter. That won’t be unbridgeable should you try to leap back to safety. That is manageable for you. You can spin those plates without it all coming crashing down. Others have been caught out doing this – countless others – but you’re smarter than that!”

All delicious lies.  All designed to stop you seeing the growing gap that sin is carving out in your life. Yet time and time again when we see public Christian figures fall, it’s never because of one significant decision that flew in the face of every other decision that they had made. Perhaps publicly. But never privately.

The trouble with Saul – and with us – is that the sin behind the sin is what trips us up. In 1 Samuel 13 it is Saul’s fear – his lack of trust in God – that pushes him to conduct the sacrifice against Samuel’s instructions.  His subjects are melting away in the face of the enemy, and so he decides to take matters into his own hands.

And that fear drives him to keep alive a king who should have been killed. He wants him as a trophy, a subject perhaps. And why kill all those well-fed animals that are in better shape than our lot?  The gap in Saul’s life does not widen because he deeply desires to disobey God. The gap in Saul’s life widens because he does not trust that God will come through for him in the areas of his life that he most worries about.

How about us?  Especially us in leadership in light of the failures that are pretty much tripping over themselves to get onto social media platforms.

How about our difficult marriage? Our struggling ministry? Our poor finances? Our need to be justified in the eyes of others?  These are the areas of life that we worry about, and they are the places that sin’s deceitful comes in, and drives a gap between our public assertions and our private actions.

In all of these we need to mind the gap!  The Bible tells us that there are ways that seem right to us that end in death (Prof 14:12). That’s the wages of sin right there! And that’s Samuel’s message to Saul. You didn’t listen to me when I was alive, why are you bothering me now that I am dead? And oh, you’ll be dead soon too.

No More Gaps!

There’s a lot of darkness in that story. And not much light. Not much at all. But perhaps there is some. There’s another Last Supper that’s coming in which a king has a meal before his death, and who then goes out into the night, not doubting God, but entrusting himself to his Heavenly Father. The next day he is strung up outside a city.

It’s not a meal prepared by a witch, but as 1 Corinthians 11 reminds us, it’s a meal in which Jesus gives thanks to God, and then says “this is the new covenant in my blood” as he offers his disciples the cup.  A new covenant of obedience, because the old covenant was super-frayed and always broken through disobedience.  Jesus then goes out to face the enemy for our sakes, and is strung up outside a city.

But not because of the gap in his life. Because of the gaps in ours.  He could even look at his enemies and ask “Which of you accuses me of sin?” (John 8:45). When it comes to his public assertions and his private actions, Jesus is the ultimate equivalent of that building product “No More Gaps!” Finally a king whose life is completely sealed off from sin, insincerity, hypocrisy, disobedience, fear of man, you name it!

Here’s the Israelite king that Israel has always needed. That we have always needed. A “No More Gaps” kinda king who leads his people into battle, wins the victory for them, facing down the terror of death, and although buried by his mournful followers like King Saul was, is raised to life again, to rule and reign forever.

And he’s the king who, as we come to him, all too aware of the growing gaps in our lives, calls us to approach the throne of his kingly grace in time of need (Hebrews 4:16).

Perhaps that time of need is where you are at right now. If so, don’t let the gap grow so wide that the chasm swallows you whole. Your king has done everything for you to strengthen you to obey and close that gap. Pray for his strength today.

Article supplied with thanks to Stephen McAlpine

About the Author: Stephen has been reading, writing and reflecting ever since he can remember. A former church pastor, he now trains church and ministry leaders, and in his writing dabbles in a number of fields, notably theology and culture.

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