The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele

There are so many stories of the whole church's ministry going pear shaped by poor staffing decisions, unrealistic expectations and poor leadership. There's probably more anguish from senior and assistant ministers in this area than basically any other.  And there's an unspoken unrealistic expectation within the church that their paid leadership should be able to work out this area...

Archbishop Laurent Mbanda joins us to share his wonderful story from being a barefoot refuge in the East African nation of Rwanda to a Burundi refugee camp, where he and his parents were saved.  A long walk to Kenya followed, then he was miraculously accepted into university, after weeks sleeping on the streets. After university, he was a staff worker for Campus Crusade for Christ, before doing a...

How does mentoring work for senior leaders? And can how having a mentor help, especially through those seasons in ministry when everything goes pear shaped. How can ministers be cared for spiritually, emotionally, relationally and theologically.  And what can be done to help a minister who is having a spiritual crisis?  Presbyterians David and Kathy Thurston have planted two churches, and mentored...

National Director of The Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students, Richard Chin, reflects on God’s ‘severe mercy.’  How he learned from God, as he supported his wife Bronwyn, through her death from pancreatic cancer, six years ago. Richard shares theological, strategic, pragmatic lessons from 25 years of ministry, advice on dating at 50 and a new marriage to Jeanette.   Anglican Aid To find o...

Minister of St Stephen’s Christchurch Jay Behan tells the heartbreaking story of leading his church away from the traditional Anglican Church in New Zealand and working to form a new Diocese for faithful Anglicans.  Jay Behan tells of his tearful resignation from the New Zealand Anglican Church’s General Synod, just hours after the Synod voted to abandon the teaching of Jesus on sexuality.  He rec...

A special edition featuring GAFCON ’s new leaders Archbishops Foley Beach and Benjamin Kwashi . The most significant movement within the Anglican Church globally is GAFCON , representing 50 million of the world’s 70 million Anglicans. GAFCON aims to remain faithful to Jesus and the scriptures, and not follow the cultural winds. The GAFCON Primates Council resolved last week in Sydney to hold a glo...

Do you sometimes wonder how effective your growth groups are in growing disciples? Want to know how to measure the effectiveness of your growth group ministry?  Peter Mayrick talks to us to gather insight on changing growth group ministry to focus more on outcomes rather than just input. As church leaders how can we be confident with the answer to the question "are people growing in Jesus?&qu...

How can we preach better? How can we work together to do this? It's through collaboration. Steve Cree leads the ministry team at Queensland’s influential Living Church (formerly known as Creek Road Presbyterian). Steve’s taken a significantly innovative approach, helping pastors work in collaboration with pastors of other churches to better teach and pastor their flocks.  Steve says, by worki...

Ten so-called Christians from across the theological and denominational spectrum came together for a week in a reality TV program called ‘Christians like Us,’ screened in Australia on SBS. One of those housemates, Assumpta Venkatachalam shares her story of a week inside the house, where they navigated topics including women in ministry, homosexuality, child sex abuse, speaking to atheists, biblica...

Dean of Sydney Kanishka Raffel says it’s now difficult if not impossible for people to be Christian, respectable and successful, and yet so many of our people are used to being all three of these.  Kanishka says church leaders today face significant external and internal pressures today, in the new era post Same Sex Marriage, post George Pell’s conviction and post the Royal Commission into abuse i...

How can we do evangelism better?   What is working?  What can we do better? Where do we shoot ourselves in the foot?   In a change to our regular format we feature a live panel discussion from the Nexus Conference, Evangelism lets do better . In a ‘no holds barred’ discussion, the panelists are Village Church Annandale pastor Dominic Steele, Unichurch UNSW’s Alison Napier and St George North Angli...

Mark Dever says we can do better at evangelism.  Mark is the senior pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington and is visiting Australia to speak at the Nexus19 conference (in partnership with the Gospel Coalition ).  Mark says it’s important to  1 Remember that churches exist for supernatural change 2 Understand that persecution is normal 3 Eschew utopianism 4 Make use of our democratic...

A fascinating journey into an important aspect of Australian evangelicalism’s family story with Senior Pastor of Perth’s Providence Church, Rory Shiner.  We look at the amazing legacy of former Sydney Vice Principal of Moore Theological College Donald Robinson, his fresh reading of the Scriptures, fathering of the Australian biblical theological movement, what became known as the ‘Knox-Robinson vi...

What are the issues facing church leaders in regards to stress, thriving, surviving and burnout? Psychologist Valerie Ling, from the Centre For Effective Living, counsels and trains ministry workers on these issues.  There are important issues for those in solo ministry, serving as team members and as team leaders.  Valerie says she sees person after person suffering from burnout, and yet it is so...

Keith and Sarah Condie have been working at strengthening marriages for more than two decades.   They started on this journey when Keith was working at Moore Theological College, and there was a year of college graduates, where seven graduate couples of the college suffered marriage breakdowns. Keith and Sarah have conducted dozens of marriage enrichment courses and seminars at churches across Aus...

Sam Chan, Ross Ciano, Chris Bransdon join Dominic Steele for a thought provoking discussion about the 'event evangelism’ of the Graham tour of Australia. Their discussion focuses on the last night of the tour. They analyse the audience, music, mosh pit, sermon introduction, body and altar call. Sam Chan is an evangelist with City Bible Forum and author of Evangelism in a skeptical world. Ross...

How do we preach to the heart?  How do we grasp the emotion of the text and then communicate it effectively to those present? Former Sydney Missionary & Bible College principal David Cook talks about the four great influencers on him as a preacher and the impact each of them had on him.  David particularly wants us to work at ‘lather and shave.’  How do we create preaching clusters to encourag...

Andrew Barry lost his son Nathan to cancer just over two years ago. Here he shares his heart about the journey that God has worked in his marriage and among their remaining five children over the last two years.  We talk through how he has grown in his relationship with God, the cycles of grief, counselling, how different family members reacted, how it’s impacted his teaching and preaching and opp...

Graham Beynon is Independent ministry director at Oak hill College London and senior pastor of Grace Church Cambridge. Graham’s in Australia to speak at the Priscilla and Aquilla Conference at Moore Theological College and also on preaching to the heart.  Graham says there are a variety of patterns impacting our thinking on ministry models.  He calls them: separatism, permissions, de-contextualisa...

Colin Buchanan joins Dominic Steele to share his story of trusting Christ as a teenager at Hurstville Presbyterian Church, serving in the music team, writing his first song on John 15, discovering country music, writing bible verses for his primary school class, and then carving out a career in acoustic, country, Christian and children’s music. For 20 years, Colin has been one of Australia’s most...

How do you help your church members own evangelism and outreach / keep track of mission contacts - be thinking missionally and caring personally for non Christians who visit? We’re joined by Hunter Bible Church and Unichurch, Newcastle’s Missions Pastor Sam Hilton. How do you train, equip and unleash people for mission and evangelism? a speciality team? every member?  Anglican Aid To find out more...

29-year-old David Bennett, who describes himself as a former anti-Christian gay activist now Christian, says Jesus is good news for same sex attracted Christians. David joins us on The Pastor’s Heart to talk through his story and his two ‘coming outs,’ one as a 14 year old, and then later a second as a Christian believer.  Anglican Aid To find out more about supporting Anglican Aid . Support the s...

We launch The Pastor's Heart for 2019 with an 'on the road' edition from the Church Missionary Society Summer School in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney.   Dr Gary Millar answers questions on how to preach better so that your sermon lands with real application.  Gary is the principal of the Queensland Theological College and is the chair of the Gospel Coalition Australia.  Gary wa...

Raising up and training ministry trainees as harvest workers! Why those of us in local churches should? And how we should? Our guest is Carl Matthei, who leads the ministry team in the Campus Bible Study and Unichurch UNSW at the University of New South Wales. Carl has more ministry trainees than anyone else in evangelical ministry in Australia. Anglican Aid To find out more about supporting Angli...

How Christians can and should wisely engage with our increasingly hostile secular culture. How can we have a posture of grace in a time of outrage? CEO of the Gospel Coalition Australia, Akos Balogh, has a background in Campus Ministry, and is a influential christian writer and blogger. Anglican Aid To find out more about supporting Anglican Aid . Support the show