Making key staff appointments with Bruce Clarke and Pete Stedman

“How do you find the right key person to join your ministry team?

There are questions like:

• What is the person’s heart for God and the gospel?
• What is the person’s relationship with authority?
• How do we recruit to a vision and strategy?
• What are the pitfalls of interviews?
• What are the first questions to ask referees?
• Who else to involve in the process?”

This week on The Pastor’s Heart.

How to rid yourself of ministry bitterness: pour out your heart to God

“Dear friends,

‘Will I be bitter for eternity because of what has happened to me in Christian ministry?’

I was asked this question by an old minister at a conference. It relates to a common problem in ministry, the bitterness that grows from how other people treat us or what they say to us, or don’t say to us, their expectations of us, their neglect, opposition, their attacks, their slander, how we have to live and work with the consequences of their mistakes, the conditions under which we work and live, their desire for control of the church or ministry or us! …”

– Wise and encouraging advice from Peter Adam.

Embracing a Hostile World — Queen’s Birthday Conference 2022

“The Bible tells us that God loved the world yet commands us not to love the world. So how do we live as a Christian in this world?

Are we to love it like God or reject it as He commanded us?

How do world mission and holiness hold together?”

– Read about (and register for) the Queen’s Birthday Conference 2022 – at Moore College, or online for those outside Sydney.

Moore Q&A Video Series

Moore College has launched a new video series – Moore Q & A.

The series of nine videos features a panel of Moore College lecturers (Jane Tooher, Chase Kuhn, Dan Wu and Lionel Windsor) answering questions about the Christian life – including stewardship and generosity, vocational ministry, and much more.

Watch the videos on Moore’s Youtube channel as they release them over the next month.

The anatomy of an Anglican service

From The Australian Church Record:

“Today we begin a new series of five articles on the elements that make up an Anglican service.

These pieces by the Moore College student orientation team were developed in 2022 to help new students understand the theological logic behind the Anglican services – based on the Book of Common Prayer – that are followed in Moore College chapel.

We’re sharing these because they help to demonstrate how and why Anglicans do what we do in church, for the encouragement and building up of the saints to maturity in Jesus Christ. We hope that you find them beneficial!”

Published so far –

More to come at The Australian Church Record.

Portrait of Thomas Cranmer by Gerlach Flicke.

Commanding the heart: Lust

Marshall Ballantine-Jones and Dani Treweek spoke on “Commanding the heart: Lust” at a Centre for Christian Living event at Moore College on 4 May 2022.

“Jesus raises alarm when he warns us that adultery isn’t limited to sexual intercourse outside of marriage, but begins earlier in the lustful glance of the eye and in mental fantasies. Adultery isn’t just physical; it can be done in the heart. So great is the threat of a wandering eye or straying hand that Jesus suggests losing a part of the body instead of facing the fire of hell.

Kingdom righteousness demands more than physical abstinence from sex outside of marriage, but not less. In view of such teaching, what kind of sexual conduct is becoming of a disciple of Jesus?

Dr Marshall Ballantine-Jones and Dani Treweek help us consider how to deal with lust in our hearts.”

The video has now been made available. Very sobering and very helpful.

Adultery of the heart – SydneyAnglicans.net.

Review: The Air We Breathe by Glen Scrivener

“The western world’s relationship to the Christian faith is like a celebrity marriage—complicated.

At one level, our culture’s rejection of its ancestral faith has never been so enthusiastic, so complete, so aggressive. It looks, for all intents and purposes, like a divorce of the acrimonious variety. And yet, our world remains so deeply Christian. We continue to use the convictions, the thought-forms, and even the metaphysics of the faith we are so keen to reject. …

Enter Glen Scrivener’s new book, The Air We Breathe. In it, Scrivener provides a compelling, well-researched, and confident account of the West’s debt to Christianity and to Christ.”

– At The Gospel Coalition Australia, Rory Shiner provides a brief and encouraging review of a new book by Glen Scrivener.

Image: Glen Scrivener at Speak Life.

The book is available from The Wandering Bookseller.

A good minister — 1 Timothy 4:6-16

ACL Council member and Moore College lecturer Lionel Windsor spoke on 1 Timothy 4:6-16 in Moore College Chapel last week.

He began by speaking one of faithful minister who was recently called home – Neil Prott.

Outline:

Intro: A good minister
The Foundation: The faith and good doctrine (6)
Our personal lives (7–10)
How we teach others (11–14)
Bringing it all together (15–16)

Unborn babies have taken another battering in Victoria today

Here’s a media release from The Australian Christian Lobby, 24 May 2022 –

“Commenting on Bernie Finn’s expulsion from the Victorian Liberal Party today, the Australian Christian Lobby’s (ACL) National Director, Wendy Francis, said,

“Abortions are only going to increase whilst pro-life speech is regarded as disrespectful, particularly when it applies to politicians who have the capacity to vote and change laws on life issues. Media reports indicate that Bernie Finn’s commitment to ‘pray for an end to abortion’ was the final straw for the Party who voted to expel him from their ranks today.”

Whilst, sadly, pro-life speech such as this will always sound disrespectful to those that don’t want to hear it, advocating for the child in the womb is perfectly respectful. It’s encouraging to witness a new, young, pro-life generation rising up around the globe.

“The Liberal Party of Victoria has seriously underestimated the impact this move has had on their pro-life conservative base,” Ms Francis continued. “It will be a tough journey for them to regain their confidence in the leadup to the State election in November.

“Freedom of thought, worship, speech and association are basic tenets of the Liberal Party of Australia. And yet, today, a democratically elected member has been expelled from the Liberal Party of Victoria for exercising these very rights.”

How this Christian is responding to the Federal Election

“Regardless of how one may feel about the election result and who your local MP is or isn’t, there is a Scripture that remains compulsory for all Christians. And it is this,

‘I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people— 2 for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. 3 This is good, and pleases God our Saviour, 4 who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.’ (1 Timothy 2:1-4)

I was reminded of this timeless word by Justin Moffatt, the Senior Minister at Church Hill in Sydney. He said,

‘One of the things I like about the prayers in the Anglican Prayer Book is that we always pray for the government of the day, and we pray the same thing no matter who governs.

It moves effortlessly from one to the next, as though the problem of the world isn’t government, and the hope of the world were found elsewhere.’…”

– Murray Campbell in Melbourne points us to the Christian duty to pray for our leaders.

Also relating to the Federal election –

“The media’s obsession with crucifying Scomo” – James Macpherson, Spectator Australia.

Scott Morrison reads from the Scriptures at Horizon Church, Sutherland, 22nd May 2022.

Humility, ambition and leadership — with Paul Harrington

From The Pastor’s Heart:

“How does humility drive ambition? How can you be ambitious, having a right ambition, not for ourselves, but an ambition to magnify Jesus.

Paul Harrington leads the Trinity network of churches in Adelaide, South Australia. …”

Watch or listen here.

Why is Canada euthanising the poor?

“Since last year, Canadian law, in all its majesty, has allowed both the rich as well as the poor to kill themselves if they are too poor to continue living with dignity. In fact, the ever-generous Canadian state will even pay for their deaths. What it will not do is spend money to allow them to live instead of killing themselves.

As with most slippery slopes, it all began with a strongly worded denial that it exists. …

Even before Bill C-7 was enacted, reports of abuse were rife. A man with a neurodegenerative disease testified to Parliament that nurses and a medical ethicist at a hospital tried to coerce him into killing himself by threatening to bankrupt him with extra costs or by kicking him out of the hospital, and by withholding water from him for 20 days.”

– Yuan Yi Zhu in Oxford writes in The Spectator (UK online edition) about the situation in Canada – which will get worse when changes come in 2023..

Election survey probes parties on faith freedom

“A survey of political parties and candidates on their attitude to religious discrimination has revealed varying levels of support – and in some cases, no support – for measures to ensure religious freedom. …”

– Russell Powell at SydneyAnglicans.net writes about the religiousdiscriminationsurvey.au website.

The Australian Christian Lobby (not associated with the Anglican Church League – we just have the same initials) has produced a page of “various documents and videos to help you make an informed choice on Election Day”, including this page where they share the answers given to their questionnaire in each electorate as well as each candidate for the Senate.

And not forgetting the call to pray –

“First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.

This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Saviour, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.” – 1 Timothy 2:1-6.

Adultery of the heart

“Judgement is not just for the last day. God also judges now. There are contemporary consequences for misplaced sexual desire. For example, when God hands people over to their shameful lusts and sinful desires in Romans 1:24,26, one of those consequences is the increased engagement in sexually immoral physical behaviour. God gives people what they want, which is the punishment. …

We have to stop and listen to what Jesus says in Matthew 5:28, because he takes a blowtorch to our world’s hypersexualised values.”

– Marshall Ballantine-Jones writes at SydneyAnglicans.net (it’s also in the current Southern Cross magazine).

Image: SydneyAnglicans.net