Armidale’s “The Link” – November 2024

The latest edition (November 2024) of The Link, the magazine of the Diocese of Armidale, is now online.

Download a copy for your edification and your prayers.

How personality impacts ministry teams

From The Pastor’s Heart –

“I want to be a big hearted encourager like Barnabas. I want to be a reliable assistant like Timothy. I want to be passionate preacher like Apollos.

When you think about the qualifications for Christian ministry in 1 Timothy 3, the significance of personality is pretty much ignored.

What is the relationship between character and personality? Someone is all about structure and someone else is much more ‘loosy-goosy/flexible’.

When there’s conflict in church or in a ministry teams – it’s often put down to personality difference or sometimes even disorder.

What does the Bible say about all this?

Tim Omrod serves with the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students (AFES) at Griffith University on the Gold Coast and has just finished a study of the co-workers of Paul.”

– Watch or listen here.

Preaching through January

“This year, the quieter period of church life when families are away and thoughts turn to cricket test matches, begins on Sunday 29 December and continues through 5, 12, 19 and 26 January.

A total of 5 Sundays before life returns to normal on 2 February.

Some preachers use these Sundays to give younger preachers an opportunity to preach, others take a series on Psalms at each holiday period, so they continue with the next consecutive Psalm.

Why not make a special event of these Sundays because it is a special time as we turn the page on one year and get ready for 2025. …”

– At The Expository Preaching Trust, David Cook has some helpful suggestions for preachers.

A Tamworth ministry to the local Indigenous community

“In West Tamworth, there is palpable excitement in Glen Street on Wednesdays. Children finish school and go straight to Aunty Lucy Gibbs’ place where they wait for Frontyard Church to begin, filling in the time by running around or jumping on the trampoline.

In the late afternoon, about a dozen people arrive from St Peter’s, South Tamworth, spending the next half hour in the vacant block next door unpacking a shipping container full of chairs, tables and lights, plus a sound system and the all-important barbecues. …”

– SydneyAnglicans.net relays this encouraging story from the Diocese of Armidale.

Church Revitalisation

“The Presbyterian Church in Australia has a new minister – yours truly!  I have signed the formula and have officially become the minister of Scots Kirk in Hamilton, Newcastle. I am deeply grateful for this opportunity and wrote a letter reflecting on the journey that has taken us to this place – Letter from Australia 122 – A Return to my Radical Roots.

Some people felt that the basic principles for church revitalisation I listed in that letter might be worth sharing in a wider context so I have added to them a little and hope that they will indeed prove helpful.

I have no great plans. I have dreams and visions – for without that I would perish. But I also have this certainty  that God’s word will not return to him empty and will accomplish the purpose for which he sent it. I don’t know what the future holds, but I know who holds the future. I do have some basic principles/aims/ideas which are as follows …”

– At AP, David Robertson – not Minister at Scots Kirk, Newcastle – shares his thoughts on church revitalisation. Doubtless, many Anglican churches would benefit from at least some of his suggestions.

Parenting in God’s family

From The Pastor’s Heart:

“What is Christian parenting?  How do we do family Bible time well?

How can we prioritise church, even when it’s hard?  Navigating social media with teens?

And how to parent teens who are doubting, drifting or deserting?

Parenting is joyous, magical, tiresome, boring, stressful and complicated.

Harriet Connor is editor of ‘Parenting in God’s family: Biblical wisdom for everyday issues.’. Kat Ashton Israel is a contributing author.”

– Watch or listen here.

Phillip Jensen on The national soul – 1 Timothy 2:1-7

Phillip Jensen spoke at Moore College chapel last Friday.

He turns to one of the most controversial passages in the New Testament, 1 Timothy 2:1-7.

Do take the time to watch – and share the link with others in your church.

– Watch here.

When does old age start?

“There probably comes a time when we are too old to serve the Lord; when old age starts.  But when does old age start? I distinctly remember turning 60 and being embarrassed. Embarrassed because 60 seemed so old, and by definition in this throw-away society; ready for the scrap heap, useless. But I still ran an electronics business that supported 20 odd families so maybe I was still useful and old age had not yet started for me. Slowly that feeling of embarrassment disappeared.

When I was 70, I sold the business but I was not yet free to join the proverbial grey nomads touring around Australia or cruising the seven seas. I still had 2 years left of my term as Chairman of the Board of Elders of a big church. A big church as in 8 ministers, 7 congregations in 3 languages plus a bi-lingual one, in 2 locations. Old age still had not started……

Finally, at the age of 73 that was all over, free at last! What would God have me to do now? …”

– At The Expository Preaching Trust, Jim Kuswadi has some encouragement to serve the Lord, whatever your age.

Lessons from Mark Dever’s 30 Years at Capitol Hill Baptist Church

“September 25, 2024, marks the 30th anniversary of Dever’s installation as senior pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church (CHBC) in Washington, DC.

What lessons are there to glean from a ministry that has spanned three decades and influenced thousands? One answer comes from a response Dever gave in a pastoral candidate interview with the congregation in November 1993. …”

– At The Gospel Coalition, Caleb Morell, an assistant pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist Church, shares this encouragement for pastors and churches.

Photo: Mark Dever at the 2019 Nexus Conference in Sydney.

Evangelism encouragement from Bishop Dudley Foord

Bishop Dudley Foord spoke to the ACL’s 1988 Annual General Meeting.

The topic he chose was “Reaching Out In Difficult Situations”.

While many things have changed since 1988, the need for men and women to hear the gospel and be saved has not. Be encouraged and challenged. In our Resources section.

Bathurst Synod 2024 Presidential Address

Bishop Mark Calder this morning delivered his Presidential Address to the Synod of the Diocese of Bathurst. Click the image above to watch.

Or read the text (PDF file).

“I only have one agenda.

His name is Jesus.

I want everyone in our churches to know Jesus, love Jesus, trust Jesus, serve Jesus and share Jesus.

And I want everyone not currently in our churches to hear of Jesus, turn to Jesus, revel in Jesus as Saviour and serve Jesus as Lord.

I was elected by the Bishop’s election board in 2019 for that agenda.

The board made it clear that they wanted change. Not just any change, but Gospel-shaped, Jesus- focused change.

Of course, I am not suggesting that Jesus wasn’t on the agenda prior to my appointment. However, the reality of the prior years, is that there were many other distressing and distracting issues which needed to be addressed.

I have now been here five years, and under our ordinances, I have three more.

So I want to share with you five lessons I’ve learnt in five years and three prayers I will continue praying in my last three years. …”

– Whether you watch or read, be encouraged to share the link to this page so that others can pray, and help in other ways.

Southern Cross September–October 2024

The latest edition of Southern Cross is out now.

If you don’t get a printed copy at your church, you can download it or read online.

One Reason Preaching Matters — David Jackman

“To many people, preaching seems strangely out of place in the modern world. Why would anyone choose to go to a church building, week by week, to hear a preacher (often the same person) deliver a monologue for twenty or thirty minutes (sometimes even longer) about an ancient book with characters who lived, at best, two thousand years ago? This doesn’t happen in any other context. Educational methods are increasingly interactive. Learning by discovery is the watchword. Preaching seems to be just another example of the church being out of touch, out of date, and out of steam.

Of course, it’s not difficult to find examples of preaching that are sadly boring or irrelevant. Nor is it hard to hear arguments put forward to claim that preaching has had its day: we live in a visual learning culture, listeners have sound-bite levels of concentration, study groups or one-to-one mentoring is more effective, moderns are opposed to domination of a congregation from an elevated pulpit, and so on. But the remedy for the disappointing level of much contemporary preaching is not less preaching, nor its removal from the church’s agenda, but better preaching. And that is because something happens through preaching that cannot occur in any other communication context. …”

– Crossway has published this helpful excerpt from a new book by David Jackman, former Director of The Proclamation Trust.

Image from an encouraging interview with Word Partners on expository preaching.

A “Must Hear” address — Dave Jensen at the ACL Synod Dinner 2024

“Taking the evangelistic temperature of the Diocese of Sydney” is the topic of Dave Jensen’s address at the Anglican Church League’s Synod Dinner held on 16th September 2024. Dave is the Assistant Director of Evangelism and New Churches in the Diocese of Sydney. (Larger image.)

Listen Here:  Read more

“Will you help the crowds see Jesus?”

“Two years ago we met in the southwest growth corridor at Oran Park and I asked you, ‘Do you see the crowds?’ The crowds of people moving into Sydney – growth areas and established areas, people from many nations, people without knowledge of the Lord and his cross. Today I want to ask, will you help the crowds see Jesus?”

With that challenge, Archbishop Kanishka Raffel opened the Synod in the Greenfields in northwestern Sydney. …

– Report from Russell Powell at SydneyAnglicans.net.

Below: Watch Archbishop Kanishka Raffel’s Synod Address.

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