How are we going as a network of complementarian churches at raising up women for ministry?
How do you develop a culture in your church that is really positive to women exercising their gifts and hence stepping forward for full time ministry roles?
What should our vision be for raising up women in ministry? What progress has been made? What are next steps?
We talk, how do we plan for Christmas when we’re just waking up from the COVID lockdown?
Senior Pastor of Lower Blue Mountains Anglican Church Ken Noakes, joins Mission Pastor Andy Bootes from Hope Church Leppington and Missions Pastor Jess Brouwer.
We talk from first principles, demographics, what activities will work in this context, how COVID changes things, Christmas themes, strategy for events and follow up plans.
Plus what have they done in the past that they are not going to do this year? And what to do about Boxing Day on a Sunday.
We are joined by the authors of Two Ways to Live, Phillip Jensen and Tony Payne, to talk through the changes they have made to the iconic gospel outline.
Plus how do they respond to recent criticisms of the Two Ways to Live outline?
How we can improve our competency leading the church from the books of leadership, business and management?
Archie Poulos teaches at the Centre for Ministry Development at Moore Theological College in Sydney.
Churches will be free to open for vaccinated and unvaccinated people a week earlier than had been expected in New South Wales.
With 80% of NSW adult population fully vaccinated, a new Public Health Order comes into force from Monday 18 October 2021.
What happened to the idea of Christian Australia?, so long and widely held and so quickly abandoned?
How did evangelical leaders respond to the end of Christendom?
How have Australian evangelicals appraised their relations with other national cultures?
How has the end of Christendom led to a reconsideration and reconfiguration of the movement’s own internal culture?
How do you welcome all while keeping the vulnerable safe? But on the other hand how to avoid overfunctioning and blocking people from taking risks they are willing to take?
How to have difficult ‘front door conversations’ that you never expected to have? Plus how do you encourage ‘church workers’ to present vaccination certificates?
A model of what to do when the pastor’s kids catch COVID.
Australian businessman Tony McLellan describes his pride being broken, feeling wretched and desperately alone, talking openly about things bottled up for years, much of it shameful, in the company of Atlanta pastor Michael Youseff.
Tony goes on to describe turning to Christ, to the mercy and redemption won through the sacrifice of God’s son. And his response, first sobs, ‘then with an enormous flood of tears, entirely involuntary.’
Michael Youseff: ‘You’re in a mess … You need Jesus.’
Tony McLellan: ‘No. I need help. I don’t know what the heck is going on.’
Michael Youseff: ‘Let’s start by praying together.’
How to preach sermons which are hospitable + have a good reputation with outsiders?
The former principal of Melbourne’s Ridley College Peter Adam says the bible’s call for us to be hospitable should impact how we preach.
Childrens’ ministry leaders who have not been vaccinated will be asked to temporarily stand down from their ministry roles in NSW Churches.
South Sydney Anglican Bishop Michael Stead expects a vaccination certificate to be required for kids ministry, in the same way a Working with Children Check is required.
Dr Stead says churches will be required to submit updated COVID safe plans. The plans include questions about ventilation and checks to ensure active steps are being taken to ensure church staff and key volunteer personnel have been vaccinated, especially those involved in ministries to children.
How could we build back better after COVID? Could evangelicals unite together to rebuild the church with a national co-ordinated evangelistic campaign?
COVID has created an unprecedented opportunity for evangelism, but churches and church leaders are feeling fragile and weary.
In Great Britain, churches are getting set for a national campaign leading up to Easter 2022, under the banner ‘Find life that lasts. It’s closer than you think.’
What will happen in churches after the third wave of COIVD as the freedoms return to Australia over the next two months?
When vaccination rates reach 70% venues, including places of worship are likely to be reopened, and even more when the rates reach 80%.
Governments are planning more freedoms for those who are double vaccinated. But will they impose restrictions on who can attend worship?
What are the consequences if euthanasia is legalised? And how do we fight the issue?
Legislation is before the Queensland Parliament and is about to come to the parliament in the UK and in New South Wales to allow euthanasia.
And laws permitting euthanasia have already been passed in Victoria, Western Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand… there’s a bit of a sense that even if the conservatives succeed in holding out this time… at some stage it feels like it will happen.
Euthanasia is illegal in most of the United States, although significantly it is legal in the more progressive Washington, D.C. and seven states.
Andrew Errington is Senior Minister of Newtown Erskineville Angican Church. Megan Best is a palliative care doctor and associate professor with the Institute for Ethics and Society at the University of Notre Dame.
Australia (or the west) is simultaneously post Christian, Christian and pre Christian according to Greg Sheridan, one of the most respected and influential analysts of domestic and international politics.
How can Christian writers and artists, or even non Christian writers and artists who think Christianity has something important and worthwhile to say, speak into the confused and hostile culture of today?
Greg started at The Australian newspaper in 1984. And has been the foreign editor since 1992.
Greg has just published: ‘Christians: The urgent case for Jesus in our world’, following on from his 2018 book ‘God is good for you: A defence of Christianity in troubled times.’
Answering your questions about a daily weekday bible study for your church. http:///villagechurch.sydney/dailybibletime
Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/thepastorsheart)
Father God,
We pray for everyone in and affected by what's happening in Afghanistan.
With this increasing news of deaths and violence we ask you to quickly bring peace and stability to that nation.
We especially pray for the women who are now fearing for their lives, and fearing what living under the Taliban will mean for them.
We pray for comfort for those grieving the deaths of family members in the bloodshed so far.
We pray for the Christians there, that they might be safe and be able to show great kindness to others, and that through their actions people might turn to Christ.
We pray this in Christ Jesus name.
Amen.
#PrayForAfghanistan
http://www.thepastorsheart.net/podcast/prayforafghanistan
How can we as pastors lead proactively out of the COVID quagmire and not just be reactive?
As we are weary and anxious what can we learn from God? How do you care for your staff team?
What adaptive change issues are open to us? How can we use this moment to go deeper with discipleship? And is this the greatest moment of evangelism? What does pastoral leadership on vaccination look like?
What are the implications of viewing the Christ’s crucifixion, when Jesus experienced being in the wrong flesh as BODY DYSPHORIA? What are the implications of our bodies being created, broken and redeemed? Is my body me?
Sam Allberry says for some the real me is my soul or spirit. The body is a simply a lump of matter I am connected to. It is the blank canvas on which I can paint my identity? For others the body is much more significant. Much of our identity is based on what our body looks like.
But what does God say? And what is the significance of our sex organs?
Sam is a preacher, pastor and apologist. He’s on the staff of Immanuel Church in Nashville in the United States, but joins us on the line from the UK.
How and should Christian pastors exercise leadership in the debate over vaccination?
Plus, What about suggestions to make vaccination passports for church attendance mandatory (whether imposed by government or denominational or local leadership)?
How do you have a budget that is driven by vision and mission rather than just by taking last years and adding a CPI increase? And what does a pledge and commitment season look like in 2021?
What’s the process for developing a budget that works to grow your vision each year?
And how do you roll it out with your church? Plus what if the amount pledged is not enough to cover expenses?
Pete Stedman is senior pastor of Norwest Anglican Church in Sydney’s North West and joins us today to talk about how not to have ‘Step off a cliff and cross your fingers church budgeting.’
