The challenges, struggles and opportunities of small church leadership
On The Pastor’s Heart this week:
“What are the issues that senior pastors of smaller churches face – personally and to do with church culture, mission and identity.
What are the joys and tensions? What is ministry success?
What are the common pastoral frustrations?
How is long term ministry fruitfulness helped or hindered by our ecclesiology?
The reality is that most churches are small churches …”
Dominic Steele chats with Stephen Anderson. He also provide a link to Stephen’s Encouragement for the Small Church website.
Why everyone started talking about Expositional Preaching
In this article at The Gospel Coalition, Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra looks at what happens when you discover expository (‘expostional’ in the US) preaching, and what led to the founding of the Charles Simeon Trust –
“[Walter] Carter was having the same eye-opening experience that [Dave] Helm had 25 years earlier when British pastor Dick Lucas first demonstrated expositional preaching to him.
‘It felt like a light bulb going on,’ Helm remembers. ‘It felt like you were closer to having command of what God was actually trying to say.’
Helm couldn’t get enough, and in 2001, he and some others started the Charles Simeon Trust (CST) to teach Lucas’s principles to others. Light bulbs have been going on ever since. …”
Many Australians have had similar experiences, thanking God for the ministries of Dick Lucas and John Stott and others.
See, for example these related posts. – in particular, Sydney Church History by David Cook and Reflecting on Fifty Years of Expository Preaching in Australia (1965–2015) by Peter Adam.
Photo: Dick Lucas at St. Helen’s Bishopsgate in 2014.
The Christian Gospel – a new resource
On the latest Two Ways News podcast, Tony Payne and Phillip Jensen chat about Tony’s new book The Christian Gospel. They also speak about the difference between the gospel and the Gospels.
– Listen here.
Read about (and order) the book from Matthias Media.
In their conversation, Phillip Jensen makes a great point:
“…one of the signs of a true fisherman is that they are optimistic and come prepared – they take something with them to carry the fish home in. Any fisherman who goes without some bag or net or bucket to carry home the fish is not a real fisherman.
And so to enter into conversations with people without something that you’re going to put in their hands afterwards is like being a pessimistic fisherman.”
Image of Tony and Phillip: The Pastor’s Heart.
The Key
“In my opinion, this is the KEY.
In 1976, having spent 3 years of formative theological training at Moore College, I moved to my first parish, Wee Waa, in the north west of NSW.
I was to be the church’s second minister, the first was a faithful man, an excellent communicator. …
My sermons were very different to the previous minister, I preached for longer, I had been trained to always expound, and, I wasn’t the communicator he had been.
It was not going well, I knew that the congregation were switching off…”
– At The Expository Preaching Trust, David Cook shares The Key.
God is Over All
Another encouraging and edifying song from City Alight and Colin Buchanan. “God is Over All”.
Moore College Lectures 2023
Coming up on 14 – 18 August.
The Gospel Speaks a Better Word than ‘You are Enough’
“We are currently in the so-called fourth wave of feminism, and it is not defined by people or texts so much as by cultural moments.
The Barbie movie will become part of feminist history for many reasons, but I am particularly interested in it because its central storyline conveyed something of a paradigm shift within liberal feminism, one I had been noticing for some time. …”
– At The Australian Church Record, Christine Bransdon has some very helpful observations about where we are in our culture – and the good news we can bring.
Mission & parenting in a post Christian world – with David Rietveld
From The Pastor’s Heart:
“There have been massive social changes as the western world has shifted from a Christian world view to a post Christian world view. In his new book ‘Being Christian after Christendom’, the senior pastor of Dapto Anglican Church David Rietveld analyzes the changes that churches, pastors and parents face in this transition.
Six weeks ago on The Pastor’s Heart David gave his explanation of the problem.
David is back today to paint a positive way forward for evangelism and parenting amongst the post Christian world view.”
How intermediate and experienced preachers can improve their preaching
“How do you make sure you continue to improve as a preacher?
You’ve learned the basics about big ideas and supporting ideas and introductions and applications and full notes versus bullet points and eye contact and hand gestures and preaching pyramids and illustrations and why it is better or worse to preach longer than twenty-five minutes. You are able to consistently research, compose and deliver a solid sermon every week without having a meltdown.
But how do you keep improving? …”
– At The Gospel Coalition Australia, Mikey Lynch has a simple suggestion.
See also:
Expository Preaching Trust Preaching Workshop.
The Barbie movie — Do you ever think about dying?
“Barbie is big. Its $150 million marketing campaign was more than was spent on the film itself, as the makers decided early on that they wanted it to make an impact.
One of the most surprising takeaways from this film (alongside questions about gender roles, stereotypes, struggles and what it means to be men and women) has been its position on mortality. …”
– At SydneyAnglicans.net, Tara Sing shares some more ways to think about the Barbie movie – for the eternal good of others.
Preaching a good and powerful word
“As we start to explore what it means to tremble at God’s word, I want to suggest that our relationship with the Scriptures as God’s word is more complex than most of us are willing to admit.
On the one hand, we know that Scripture is powerful, it is the Word of God. The preacher’s job is to get out of the way so that God’s powerful word can work in the hearts of people. We quote Spurgeon’s famous, ‘Defend the Bible, I’d sooner defend a lion. Just let the truth free and it will defend itself.’ We exhort each other to ‘let the word do the work’ and we share those wonderful stories of people who were converted just by reading Scripture. …”
– The Australian Church Record has published this edited transcript of Paul Grimmond’s address at the Nexus 2023 Conference. He reminds us, “When we talk about God and his word, we speak of a relationship that is utterly unique in our experience.”
Image: Moore College.
Speaking with Two Voices
“In John Bunyan’s classic, The Pilgrim’s Progress, there is a character Mr Facing Both Ways who lives in the village of Fair Speech. Bunyan is exposing one of the temptations in life which is to speak out of both sides of our mouth in the hope that everybody will appreciate us.
Yet there is a very real sense in which the Christian message does come with two voices; there is indeed a double-sidedness to the Christian life. …”
– Presbyterian Moderator-General, Peter Barnes, writes to encourage believers to sing two notes at once.
Graphical overview of Peter Jensen’s “The Life of Faith”
Peter Jensen’s book The Life of Faith: An Introduction to Christian doctrine was launched at Moore College in March this year.
At his website by faith, not by sight (‘my little repository of diagrams and scribbles about Jesus’), Alan Au at Captivate Presbyterian Church in North Ryde has created a terrific graphical overview of the book.
See it here. And you can get the book from Matthias Media.
August – September 2023 Southern Cross out now
The August – September 2023 issue of Southern Cross magazine from the Diocese of Sydney is now out.
Printed copies will be available in parishes shortly, and you can read it on the web right now.
In his column this month, Archbishop Kanishka Raffel reflects on Our True Spiritual Condition –
“Recently I was walking through the city and, as I crossed Martin Place, I noticed the usual queue of men and women lining up to receive their evening meal, while others set up plastic folding tables and baskets of plastic cutlery and paper serviettes ready for that night’s food distribution.
The Sydney City Council says there are about 300 people sleeping on the streets of the CBD each night, with close to that number in city-based crisis accommodation. Across NSW, the number of people without adequate housing is more than 30,000. I am deeply grateful for the work of Anglicare and a number of city and suburban churches that provide assistance to people experiencing homelessness, or who are at risk of homelessness in their local area.
As I continued on my walk, I soon passed another queue. This time it was a queue of people waiting to enter the Louis Vuitton store on George Street. It made for a jarring contrast, though the two queues were barely 500 metres apart. …”
Read it all on pages 13 and 14.
Barbieland and the Garden of Eden
“Like millions of others, I fell captive to the marketing genius of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. On the movie’s opening day, I donned my pinkest outfit and joined my friends to see Barbie in all her glittery glory.
But for a movie purporting to be fun and light-hearted, I was fascinated to see how its characters also wrestled with questions of death, gender, and purpose. Barbieland reflects its own kind of Garden of Eden, inviting Christians to compare and contrast the film with Scripture while opening the door for worthwhile conversations. …”
– At The Gospel Coalition Australian Anna Hoole reflects on how the new Barbie movie could open the door to talk about something that’s truly important.
What we believe
The message at the heart of Christianity is really quite simple…