The Pastor’s Heart - A word to our heart from Dominic Steele

In a Pastor’s Heart special, Dominic Steele speaks to our hearts today as we engage in the battle of the Christian life. We get a call today to perseverance and resilience.

Dominic addresses, not just pastors, but young and old; healthy and unfit; wealthy and poor; busy and quiet; husbands, singles, divorcees and widowers; fertile and infertile, straight or experiencing same sex attraction; or struggling in addictions.

As pastors most of all we want our kids to love Jesus.  And yet Barnabas Piper says so often pastors kids are messed up. 

What are the unique experiences, joys and challenges of being pastors kids? And how can we better parent as pastors?

There are issues of awareness, assumptions and expectations.  Plus confusion about identity. 

James Galea grew up as a pastor’s kid in Western Sydney and now leads the ministry team at Freshwater Anglican Church on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. 

How do we speak to children about sin? How can we help youth understand themselves as sinful and in indeed of forgiveness?

What to make theologically of the sense of entitlement in youth culture?

Plus how do we think theologically about the important issue of vibe in youth and childrens’ ministry and in regards to how kids engage with church.

A new book is launched this week ‘Identity, Church Culture and Discipleship in Youth and Children’s Ministry - Australian Evangelical Perspectives on Youth Ministry.

The old saying is ‘A rising tide lifts all boats.’  But could the spark of story telling, and celebrating faith increase evangelism in churches and on university campuses everywhere?

National Director of the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students Richard Chin is emphasising the importance of prayer, through what he calls a 'two-for-two' model, and asks churches to join him in consistent branding in a nationwide push to introduce people to Jesus.

We discuss practical steps to integrate evangelism into the church's DNA, champion the role of head, heart, and hand in fostering a consistent culture of outreach.

“It’s like they got the exegesis spot on, then closed their eyes, fired an arrow randomly into the air, opened their eyes to see where it landed and said, ‘That looks like a good place to do application!’” - Theological College lecturer on student sermon application.

But are those of us who have graduated from theological college much better? For after all the students are just imitating what we have modelled.

Dean of Students at Sydney’s Moore Theological College Paul Grimmond has just completed a doctor of ministry project on improving application in evangelical preaching.

Andrew Leslie is encouraging us to first take a step back from practical concerns and reflect on the beauty and wisdom of the bible’s teaching about manhood and womanhood.

In much contemporary debate about gender we focus on practical questions about what different people can do.  

However the head of Moore Theological College’s Doctrine Department says the picture of gender in the beginning is not an arbitrary divine imposition that comes with its own set of arbitrary rules and instructions.

Stephen McAlpine says the real question is “Does the future have a church?”

The statistics are not our friend.

We have been talking on The Pastor’s Heart about dropping church attendance. Stephen McAlpine is writing about the more widespread phenomenon. 

Social media is changing again. In an increasingly digital age, our collective consciousness is captured by infinite scrolling, short-form videos, and internet personalities. A church's social media presence has gone from an optional nicety to a key lever for engaging newcomers to church.

How can pastors and ministry teams best capture the opportunities that can come with social media? How can a church's resources be best assigned to this new space? What if our gifts and skills don't line up?

How can male senior pastors have better relationships with the women on their ministry teams, where everyone shares complementarian convictions?

In those contexts - there are stories around that suggesting that relationships between some senior pastors and the women on the teams have been strained and have sometimes broken down completely. 

There’s been massive cost to the individual, the team, the churches and to gospel work.

What can we learn from recent secular literature about the practice of Christian pastoral leadership? 

‘Many of the ways we are running our churches and ministries and many of the ways we are exercising leadership within our churches, has become a significant hindrance to the growth of the church.’

Andrew Heard’s about to be released book Growth and Change will be the ‘must read’ book for pastors for 2024. 

In his opening preface Gospel Coalition founder  DA Carson - says ‘I am usually loath to proclaim that such and such a book is the best in it’s field … but if there is one book that happily serves as the exception to the rule, Heard’s book is it.’

Gospel ministry in the Indian Ocean is growing rapidly.

Anglican Primate James Wong leads the ministry in Seychelles, Madagascar and Mauritius and is visiting Sydney, on a speaking tour of the Church Missionary Society Australian Summer Conferences.

Archbishop Wong charts a course for further growth in ministry in his region.

The massive drop in church attendance is a crisis facing churches across the Western World and there are external pressures and internal weaknesses that need to be addressed at every level of the church.

We highlighted a few months ago the attendance drop in Sydney Anglican Evangelical Churches in the last ten years. 

Raj Gupta first called it a plateau problem.  But the data released at last September’s Synod shows it’s now much worse.  From a high in 2015, attendance in 2019 was down 7.5 percent. And in 2022, attendance was down a further ten percent.

We catch up with Australian Christian musician for one of our funniest ever episodes, but with a serious message.

Colin talks with Dominic Steele about managing life as a public Christian, living with integrity in family, church and while engaging in the secular media.

As we head to 2024 most of us are recasting ministry teams for the new year. 

But how can we do this without making some of the mistakes that we have made in 2023?

How do we do better with staff teams  and all the various volunteer ministry teams across our church?

And even in the best places - there’s an inertia that we will slip back to functioning as rosters… How do we fix that?

How can we make our Christmas Services better?

With just a few days to Christmas, and while some of us are well planned, some of us are still scrambling around putting things together.

Whether it’s Christmas Day or Christmas Eve, or a kids gathering, carols or Gingerbread and Wreathmaking...

What are the pitfalls we can fall into?  How do we avoid them?

Cultural changes and increasing push back against churches are impacting youth ministries. It is getting  much harder for Christian Teenagers to be Christian among their secular peers. 

Teenagers don’t just walk in the door of a church. 

What are latest youth ministry trends and opportunities? How can we do youth ministry on the front foot?

Poverty is fundamentally relational says David WIlliams 

What might a theology of caring for the poor look like? 

The bible’s terms for the poor (widow, orphan and alien) are all relational terms which describe someone who has lost relationships and as a result have lost connection with the land. 

The Church of England has abandoned the teaching of Jesus with prayers for same sex blessings potentially to start before Christmas. 

‘Tragic’ says Gafcon.

‘Disastrous’ says the Global South. 

‘Deeply Troubled’ says the Church of England Evangelical Council

‘First order difference requires first order differentiation’ says Vaughan Roberts 

‘It is hard not to dissolve into a flood of tears’ says the Mark Thompson the principal of Sydney’s Moore College. 

‘The Archbishop of Canterbury should resign’ - says the Church Society’s Lee Gatiss.