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Global warming is often seen as either the end of the world as we know it, or as mere media scare-mongering. Which is right?

Could it be that I, a respectable Christian, am partly to blame? Might I need to change the way I live? Before we search for climate changes, we ought first to understand what it is that might be changing.

The Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) is at the heart of attempts to tackle the split between Catholics and Anglicans.

Mark Santer, the Bishop of Birmingham, who was co-chairman of the Commission that produced the latest report entitled 'The Gift of Authority', is quoted as saying: 'the dialogue between Anglicans and Roman Catholics is only one stream in the wider river of ecumenical dialogue. The issue of authority comes up sooner or later in every dialogue which addresses itself seriously to the questions of communion and authority.'

I had just clicked the camera when an elderly woman came running out of the house screaming.

She demanded to know by what permission I had taken a photograph of her house. She certainly had not consented to this act. There we were, in a snow-covered Siberian hamlet. The place appeared to be desolate. The wooden houses set back, looked too flimsy to withstand the harsh climate.

We might be tempted to consider male absence a problem beyond the capacity of pastoral strategies to remedy. After all, we may think, it's produced by a tidal wave of cultural forces far beyond our ability to control . . .

Yet pastors can take specific steps to stem the tide; specific strategies will help us keep men in our fellowships. While not exhaustive, here's three that have worked in my own experience.