How to manage and lead the staff team? with Peter Mayrick

‘How to manage and lead the staff team?’ with Peter Mayrick.

How we go about employing people? What are the issues we face with with structure, culture, job descriptions? 

How do you best 'onboard people' onto your team? 

How you function in the first 90 days? How do you introduce behaviours that you plan to repeat such as, discipleship, positive feedback and trusted corrective feedback?

What about ongoing management, six monthly reviews, delegation and coaching?

How to preach better at Christmas? with Luke Tattersall and Kanishka Raffel

It’s less than two months to Christmas and we are sharpening ourselves on the practice of proclaiming Christ at Christmas.


Whether you are speaking at a carols service, a gingerbread and wreath making event, a Kids service, Scripture Christmas Service or Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, this discussion will be helpful for you.


We’re joined by Luke Tattersall from The Campbell Street Presbyterian Church and Kanishka Raffel, the dean of St Andrew's Cathedral Sydney.



Some of my questions are:

• In your preparation how do you think about a Christmas talk differently to a regular in series talk?

• What else are you aiming to achieve in your Christmas meetings?

• How do you choose your Christmas passages?

• What does preparation look like for these occasions?

• What's the goal of a Christmas talk?

• What makes a boring / interesting Christmas address?

• How much are you looking for guests and how much for regular members?

Getting professional with Archie Poulos

Today we are talking, ‘the profession and professionalisation of Christian ministry,’ with Archie Poulos.

Archie lectures in ministry at Moore Theological College, and is completing a PhD on building the competency of ministers. 

In what sense are ministry leaders ‘professionals’?

What separates ordinary Christian ministry/ministry leaders from amazing ones? 

Why is a theological eduction no longer adequate for Christian ministry?

How can we do the task of ministry better?

This is the heart of Archie’s PhD studies and we are looking forward to hearing from him. 

Best strategy for welcoming and follow up with Andy Hobbs and David Allen

How can your church be more loving to newcomers? 

How do you do welcoming well? What are the strategies for best connection?

Not so much the arrival on the first visit, but what is best practice to see people journey from that first visit to becoming a fully integrated member of your church - so that they are still with you 12 months later?

How do you triage people? Then what resources/energy do you spend ministering to different people?

How do you work out how not to put too much energy into people who will never come back? 

Andy Hobbs from Salt Church Wollongong and David Allen from Hunter Bible Church and Unichurch, Newcastle in Newcastle have both thought lots about these questions. 

Understanding and engaging with our changing community with Mark McCrindle

‘It’s not that we don’t care on purpose … it’s just that we don’t care’ – Generation Z.

Jesus has given us a job to do, make disciples of all nations. We want to better engage in our changing community.

But it’s going to be an easier task if we understand the people we are reaching out to. 

Mark McCrindle of McCrindle Research has been looking at this topic for years, and has just presented at the ‘Australian Community and Church Summit 2018’.

Mark will be our guest on www.thepastorsheart.net this Tuesday afternoon at 2pm to discuss the Australian Community and how we can best minister to our changing neighbourhoods

There are issues of demographics, technology, debt, life expectancy, cultural diversity.

Pastoring singles with Dani Treweek

Fresh from the Singleminded Conference, we speak to Conference Chair Dani Treweek about how we can better love and pastor the single members of our church family?

What are the particular pastoral issues that singles face? 

How can we encourage single Christians in their gospel maturity, contentment and service.

Pastoral care for same sex attracted Christians with Wesley Hill and Jackson Stace

On www.thepastorsheart.net we aim to help Christian leaders better fulfil the mission that Christ has given us. 

Today we are thinking about how to best love and care for the same sex attracted Christians in our churches.

We are talking about theology, maturity, history, emphasis, holiness, sin, language and culture. 

Our guests are Rev Dr Wesley Hill, from Trinity School for Ministry in Pittsburg and Jackson Stace from Liberty Christian Ministries Inc. Sydney (www.liberty.sydney). 

Wesley is best known for his book Washed and Waiting. His most recent work is Spiritual Friendship.

Same-sex-attraction, Jesus & Evangelical ministry

Mitch joins Dominic Steele to tell his story of living a ‘double life’ in his early twenties, before things came to a head in Dubbo in country New South Wales. And then his journey working things out with God, and into Evangelical Presbyterian ministry and heterosexual marriage.

How do you encourage the sheep that God has given you to care for to come to church to hear his word? with Antony Barraclough

There are health issues, work deadlines, the pressure of family to be together, the overall stress of life, personal mental capacity to face the day, and the crucial assessment of the kind of reception one could expect from church that day: ‘Will I have someone to sit with? Will I have to sit with unpleasant people again? Will the sermon be worth it? What if Rev X is preaching? Will I belong? ... perhaps it would just be easier to get the shopping done.’

What do you do when there is conflict in your church? with Bruce Burgess

What do you do when there’s conflict in your church? 

Because there will be at some point.

How can you deal with conflict well?
What do you do when there’s no conflict to prepare for the times when conflict will come?
How to you give your people a framework for understanding and resolving conflict?

What do you do when a couple comes to you and the marriage is a warzone?
What should you outsource? What should you do yourself?

Bruce Burgess is the Australian Director of Peacewise.

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How do you not just work ‘in the ministry’ but ‘on the ministry' with Rod Irvine

How do you not just work ‘in the ministry’ but ‘on the ministry’?
How does a senior pastor lead in vision, finances, staffing and money to promote the gospel of Christ?
How do we communicate, execute and celebrate the vision?
How to teach on generosity?
How do we ask graciously?
What are the mistakes to avoid?

Rod Irvine was senior minister of Figtree Anglican Church Wollongong and has written ‘Giving generously: resourcing local church ministry.’

Subscribe to The Pastor's Heart audio podcast:
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Catch up on our previous episodes at www.thepastorsheart.net

Faithful are the wounds of a friend: Have we lost evangelism?

A good friend tells you when you have something stuck between your teeth just before the photograph is taken.

Scotland’s David Andrew Robertson was a guest on The Pastor’s Heart a few months ago and is a good friend (http://bit.ly/2vp3MJ4).  

In an interview with ACR, having spent three months in Sydney, he’s had some significant things to say about the Sydney Anglican Church and asks have we gone off the boil on seeking the lost saved? 

On Tuesday 7 August at 2pm, Phil Colgan from St George North Anglican Church and Craig Schafer from St Mark's Pennant Hills for a live discussion with Dominic Steele to discuss what we can learn from from David’s critique

Calling out to our creator in drought

I’ve had the attached sermon notes on my computer since 2004.  I know I didn’t write them.  I cant be sure who gave them to me (If it's you please make contact and I'll attribute properly).  They are certainly helpful as we attempt to minister God’s word either in public Sunday teaching or in small groups. 

There’s also a range of graphics that you may like to use as you prepare to lead your people in prayer on this.

How do we reach those in the poorest communities! with Mez McConnell

What is poverty?  What gospel do poor people need?  How have parachurch ministries made the problem worse?  What does evangelism look like in poor communities?  What role for preaching?  What does church membership and discipline look like?

How can we see a transformation in desperate poor communities in Scotland or Australia?

Mez McConnell is the senior pastor of Niddrie Community Church in Edinburgh, Scotland, and founder of 20 Schemes, a ministry dedicated to building gospel-centered churches for Scotland’s poorest communities. 

The Christian leader and Pornography with Marshall Ballantine-Jones

As a senior minister what should you do if you have a porn addiction? What if it’s a staff member of senior lay leader? How do you preach to the congregation about these issues?

We talk to Marshall Ballantine-Jones who is doing a PhD on this topic, and who says there’s a significant rate of porn consumption in the general community, the church and amongst church leaders.

Pastoring difficult personalities in Christian ministry 

Albert Bernstein calls them ‘Emotional Vampires’

How do I (as a senior pastor) express the love of Jesus to those with different personality disorders: the narcissist, histrionic, paranoid personality disorder, OCD (both types), psychopaths, or the person with borderline personality disorder? 

There are people in every church who consume much more than their fair share of everyone's time and energy, particularly the senior ministers time. 

Jenni Woodhouse is a former chaplain to the Professional Standards Department of the Sydney Anglican Church and now is a chaplain to missionaries with the Church Missionary Society.