How do you balance the instability and chaos of external ministry with adding a foster child or adopted child to a ministry family?What are the implications of taking children in crisis into the ministry home? What motivates ministry families to become foster parents or to adopt? How do older children and the church respond? Sarah and Mat Yeo serve at Hurstville Grove Anglican Church in SydneyMatt Wilcoxen pastors St John’s Darlinghurst in inner Sydney.To purchase ‘The Forgetful Prince’: http...

What is it to be #likeaman?There are not many places in the New Testament where men are spoken to specifically.Today we are thinking about being a Christian man.In the ESV and NASB the translation of 1 Corinthians 16:13 has ‘Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong’. (ESV)But what does that mean?Dominic Steele put that question to panelists at the recent Men Meeting the challenge conference:Adrian Russell, senior minister of Northmead Anglican Church.Craig Hamilton, senio...

There are three different ways that the adult population of churches can grow:Adults being saved. Christians transferring from another congregation within your denomination of switching from another denomination. Children of members growing up in the church and taking on their parents faith for themselves.Most evangelical churches - even growing churches - are underperforming in the first and third ways.In the Sydney Anglican Church parents report that an average of only 65% of thei...

A new massive ethical question has risen up with the advent of artificial intelligence. How will people decide what kind of morality to give to their artificial intelligence creations?There will need to be a morality. But what should it be?The market is already making different choices. Elon Musk has said he wants the AI behind X (formerly Twitter) to be morally flexible. He wants his AI to appeal to all people: left and right, authoritarian and democratic, kind and brutal.Stephe...

How can a senior minister best train junior preachers (student ministers and assistant ministers) in preaching?There’s a tension we all feel: we want to be a training church raising up the next generation of leaders and yet we also want to make sure that the quality of what happens in our gatherings is high.We don’t want a Sunday morning ‘plane crash in the pulpit’, where people at church that day think‘I wish I had stayed home today’ or ‘I wish I had gone to St Bloggs down the road.’Toby Nea...

Artificial Intelligence is an oncoming tsunami that will catch all of humanity off guard. It is a change more like a wheel than a typewriter.But what will this do to our sense of self?Stephen Driscoll, in ‘Made in our Image - God, artificial intelligence and you’ says artificial intelligence may do great harm - giving more power to sinful people, governments or companies.He says artificial intelligence will likely trend towards people pleasing - giving each of us what we want now/a sense of h...

‘God wants all of me to love all of God all the time’ says Senior Pastor of Fellowship Dubai, Ray Galea.We want our staff and leaders to live and serve in ministry out of an overflow of the love of God for them. Grasping this love properly lifts our service from duty to desire.As pastors we are so committed and focused on encouraging our congregations to love God with all their hearts, souls, minds, and strengths. But do we stop to consider that our own love for God might be the limiting fact...

“It may be that God is destroying the Church of England and who am I to stand in his way? “The real tragedy would be if, in this traumatic, confusing time, if all of the evangelicals and the broader Orthodox group fall out with each other… if we can bear with each other in our different strategies, then that will be what we need (in whatever the future in England is going to be), whether that's within the Church of England or outside. Charlie Skrine, the senior minister of Al...

Australia’s former Prime Minister Scott Morrison releases a new autobiography this week where he speaks explicitly about his Christian faith, and there’s a bible quote on almost every page.Akos Balogh of Blue Fox Media joins Dominic Steele to review Mr Morrison’s new book where the former Prime Minister writes of wrestling with whether to study at Vancouver’s Regent College, being helped by listening to sermons by Tim Keller and Rick Warren, being rebuked and encouraged by Christian pas...

It is almost D day in the Anglican Communion.Today we give the background for two highly significant meetings. One to take place next week in Rome. The second in June in Cairo.The Rome gathering has been called by the rejected Canterbury leadership. The Cairo gathering has been called by the leadership of the Global South.As background, The Church of England, the historic mother church of the Anglican Communion, under the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury formally abandon...

We are moving into a post - post-modern world  But what does that look like and mean for truth - and us as pastors - as we attempt to communicate with our churches? Our church members have unconsciously adopted some of the presuppositions of our society in the way we process texts and information. We are living in a fake news world on social media with a parallel loss of confidence in institutions and authorities. Prince Harry says, ‘Whatever the cause, my memory is my memory, it does what...

What is permissible and not permissible under new conversion practice laws in New South Wales - with Neil Foster, Matt Aroney and Michael Stead Sydney Anglican Bishop Michael Stead, who chairs Freedom for Faith, describes the new laws  as the least worst that he has seen in Australia. Associate Professor of Law at Newcastle University and author of the Law and Religion blog Neil Foster says the law is unnecessary, but better than has been implemented in other parts of Australia....

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.  Calling...

We explore the delicate dynamics of faith, family, and identity in the world of church leadership. 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.  This episode isn't just about the challenges; it's also...

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 children's ministry and in regards to how kids engage with church. And what can we learn from Sunday School history that will help with practice today? The new book ‘Identity, Church Culture and Discipleship in...

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...

“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...

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. He says some countries like the US are coming off a high base and in those places there is fat and cultural cachet to play with, whereas the level of religious commitment in the UK has dropped so dramatically that it is possible to imagine...

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...

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. Clare Deeves has just completed her PhD, studying working...

What can we learn from recent secular literature about the practice of Christian pastoral leadership?  Head of Ministry at Sydney’s Moore Theological College Archie Poulos looks at how the 'The Infinite Game' concept, popularized by Simon Sinek, can be applied to ministry.  Sinek explores the consequences of short and long term thinking in business and life. Long term success is more likely when an infinite perspective is taken. Then we examine Loran Nordgren and David Schonthal’s book ‘The...

‘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...

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. Plus he outlines the detailed back room work taking place to reset the Anglican Communion, following the failure of the Church of England leadership to repent, ahead...