New thinking on addressing the collapse in ministry recruitment and training?

From Dominic Steele at The Pastor’s Heart –

“In the UK there are serious signs of a narrowing pipeline into ministry recruitment and training. Fewer people are coming forward through some of the traditional routes. Traineeships are under pressure. Residential theological education is changing.

And churches are asking: Where will the next generation of pastors, evangelists, church planters and ministry leaders come from?

In Australia, it is not the same story, but there is a similar question. Geoff Folland has argued that the old model of the young, full-time, residential theological student is no longer the dominant reality. Colleges face rising compliance costs, changing student profiles and tighter finances. And, churches, apprenticeships, parachurch organisations and mission agencies are now doing more of the early work of formation.

So is this a Bible college problem? A local church problem? A recruitment problem? A funding problem? Or an ecosystem problem?

Orlando Saer is Senior Pastor of Christ Church Southampton, Chair of Trustees of 9:38 and part of the team behind the Yarnton Gospel Workers Trust launched last week — a new UK initiative seeking to remove blockages and multiply gospel workers for the harvest.”

– Watch or listen here.

The Temple of the Holy Spirit — Our embodied future

From Phillip Jensen –

“The commandments of 1 Corinthians 6:15-20 are obvious: flee sexual immorality and glorify God in your body.

However, Paul does not simply give commandments; he gives the rationale behind them. The rationale has to do with the meaning of the body in his thinking in terms of our creation, our resurrection, and our marital union with Christ.

This densely argued paragraph provides for us a Christian understanding of ourselves as well as our motivation to live Christianly.”

– Listen at Two Ways News.

On ‘Worship Nights’

Mikey Lynch at The Gospel Coalition Australia shares some observations –

“I have observed an uptick in stand-alone ‘worship nights’ in Australia in the 2020s—that is, Christian prayer and praise communal singing events. I hear of churches and inter-church conferences hosting special ‘worship nights’; there are even once-off inter-church events, often hosted by informal parachurch groups.

These kinds of events have strong appeal among those under thirty.

In this article, I give some notes on this phenomenon, concluding with words of caution and calls for discernment. …”

– Read here.

John Newton: Mastermind and mentor of early Australian Anglicanism

“On 8 July 1777, Reverend John Newton confessed in his diary to binge-reading the latest bestseller: Captain James Cook’s A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, published that same year. It caught Newton’s imagination, but it also caught his evangelical heart: he prayed that the gospel would ‘arise and shine upon’ people of ‘unknown regions’.

Newton didn’t know it then, but his Lord had a time and a plan for those souls. Within seven years, Newton himself would play a crucial role in launching and nurturing the first Christian mission in Australia. …”

– Again, give thanks to the Lord for John Newton. At the Moore College website.

The clarity of Scripture and church gatherings

James Chen writes at The Australian Church Record –

“In the wake of the technological developments that churches went through during the COVID lockdowns, I explored different live and recorded videos of gatherings that occurred locally and globally. What it provided me was an insight into the flavour of church services across denominations and regions.

Something I was struck by was the disproportionate number of Protestant gatherings that would say, or have on their church website, something to the effect of how much they valued God’s word, yet would then have no more than one section of Scripture read in the service, usually a Bible reading preceding the sermon. …”

– A challenge and an encouragement for all churches.

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