The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele

What is permissible and not permissible under new conversion practice laws in New South Wales - with Neil Foster, Matt Aroney and Michael Stead Sydney Anglican Bishop Michael Stead, who chairs Freedom for Faith, describes the new laws  as the least worst that he has seen in Australia. Associate Professor of Law at Newcastle University and author of the Law and Religion blog Neil Foster says the la...

The Pastor’s Heart - A word to our heart from Dominic Steele In a Pastor’s Heart special, Dominic Steele speaks to our hearts today as we engage in the battle of the Christian life.  We get a call today to perseverance and resilience.  Dominic addresses, not just pastors, but young and old; healthy and unfit; wealthy and poor; busy and quiet; husbands, singles, divorcees and widowers; fertile and...

We explore the delicate dynamics of faith, family, and identity in the world of church leadership. As pastors most of all we want our kids to love Jesus.  And yet Barnabas Piper says so often pastors kids are messed up.  What are the unique experiences, joys and challenges of being pastors kids? And how can we better parent as pastors? There are issues of awareness, assumptions and expectations. ...

How do we speak to children about sin? How can we help youth understand themselves as sinful and in indeed of forgiveness? What to make theologically of the sense of entitlement in youth culture? Plus how do we think theologically about the important issue of vibe in youth and children's ministry and in regards to how kids engage with church. And what can we learn from Sunday School history t...

The old saying is ‘A rising tide lifts all boats.’  But could the spark of story telling, and celebrating faith increase evangelism in churches and on university campuses everywhere? National Director of the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students Richard Chin is emphasising the importance of prayer, through what he calls a 'two-for-two' model, and asks churches to join him in cons...

“It’s like they got the exegesis spot on, then closed their eyes, fired an arrow randomly into the air, opened their eyes to see where it landed and said, ‘That looks like a good place to do application!’” - Theological College lecturer on student sermon application. But are those of us who have graduated from theological college much better? For after all the students are just imitating what we h...

Andrew Leslie is encouraging us to first take a step back from practical concerns and reflect on the beauty and wisdom of the bible’s teaching about manhood and womanhood. In much contemporary debate about gender we focus on practical questions about what different people can do.   However the head of Moore Theological College’s Doctrine Department says the picture of gender in the beginning is no...

Stephen McAlpine says the real question is “Does the future have a church?” The statistics are not our friend. We have been talking on The Pastor’s Heart about dropping church attendance. Stephen McAlpine is writing about the more widespread phenomenon. He says some countries like the US are coming off a high base and in those places there is fat and cultural cachet to play with, whereas the level...

Social media is changing again. In an increasingly digital age, our collective consciousness is captured by infinite scrolling, short-form videos, and internet personalities. A church's social media presence has gone from an optional nicety to a key lever for engaging newcomers to church. How can pastors and ministry teams best capture the opportunities that can come with social media? How ca...

How can male senior pastors have better relationships with the women on their ministry teams, where everyone shares complementarian convictions. In those contexts - there are stories around that suggesting that relationships between some senior pastors and the women on the teams have been strained and have sometimes broken down completely. There’s been massive cost to the individual, the team, the...

What can we learn from recent secular literature about the practice of Christian pastoral leadership?  Head of Ministry at Sydney’s Moore Theological College Archie Poulos looks at how the 'The Infinite Game' concept, popularized by Simon Sinek, can be applied to ministry.  Sinek explores the consequences of short and long term thinking in business and life. Long term success is more lik...

‘Many of the ways we are running our churches and ministries and many of the ways we are exercising leadership within our churches, has become a significant hindrance to the growth of the church.’ Andrew Heard’s about to be released book Growth and Change will be the ‘must read’ book for pastors for 2024. In his opening preface Gospel Coalition founder  DA Carson - says ‘I am usually loath to proc...

Gospel ministry in the Indian Ocean is growing rapidly. Anglican Primate James Wong leads the ministry in Seychelles, Madagascar and Mauritius and is visiting Sydney, on a speaking tour of the Church Missionary Society Australian Summer Conferences. Archbishop Wong charts a course for further growth in ministry in his region. Plus he outlines the detailed back room work taking place to reset the A...

The massive drop in church attendance is a crisis facing churches across the Western World and there are external pressures and internal weaknesses that need to be addressed at every level of the church. We highlighted a few months ago the attendance drop in Sydney Anglican Evangelical Churches in the last ten years.  Raj Gupta first called it a plateau problem.  But the data released at last Sept...

We catch up with Australian Christian musician for one of our funniest ever episodes, but with a serious message. Colin talks with Dominic Steele about managing life as a public Christian, living with integrity in family, church and while engaging in the secular media. Colin draws on his experience with Play School to share top tips for kids' ministry and shares his insights on planning publi...

‘Do not be anxious about anything’ says the Apostle Paul.  But Paul Grimmond says saying that to an anxious person is a bit like telling an icecream not to melt in summer. How do we think biblically about anxiety while taking on board what else is happening with a person’s biology and environment? How can we see anxiety as a gift? What does the interplay between mind and body look like? How does s...

As we head to 2024 most of us are recasting ministry teams for the new year. But how can we do this without making some of the mistakes that we have made in 2023? How do we do better with staff teams  and all the various volunteer ministry teams across our church? And even in the best places - there’s an inertia that we will slip back to functioning as rosters… How do we fix that? Grahame Fuller i...

How can we make our Christmas Services better? With just a few days to Christmas, and while some of us are well planned, some of us are still scrambling around putting things together. Whether it’s Christmas Day or Christmas Eve, or a kids gathering, carols or Gingerbread and Wreathmaking... What are the pitfalls we can fall into?  How do we avoid them? James Galea is senior minister of Freshwater...

Cultural changes and increasing push back against churches are impacting youth ministries. It is getting  much harder for Christian Teenagers to be Christian among their secular peers. Teenagers don’t just walk in the door of a church. What are latest youth ministry trends and opportunities? How can we do youth ministry on the front foot? Andy Stevenson is Director of the Sydney Anglican Youthwork...

Poverty is fundamentally relational says David Williams What might a theology of caring for the poor look like?  The bible’s terms for the poor (widow, orphan and alien) are all relational terms which describe someone who has lost relationships and as a result have lost connection with the land. David and his wife Rachel started serving as missionaries in Nairobi, Kenya in 1999. David now serves a...

The Church of England has abandoned the teaching of Jesus with prayers for same sex blessings potentially to start before Christmas.  ‘Tragic’ says Gafcon. ‘Disastrous’ says the Global South.  ‘Deeply Troubled’ says the Church of England Evangelical Council ‘First order difference requires first order differentiation’ says Vaughan Roberts ‘It is hard not to dissolve into a flood of tears’ says the...

Years and years of putting your feet up is the lifestyle of the sluggard. To be a sluggard is a so called ‘deadly sin.’ The concept we now know as retirement is a 19th century invention and not a Christian concept. Former Missionary, Bible College lecturer and principal Mike Raiter says the idea that we should stop work at 65 and enjoy 20 or 30 years of rest is not biblical. How should we think ab...

It’s going to be an especially bumpy six months for religious freedom issues in New South Wales.. Legalised Euthanasia will be rolled out in just a few weeks. But what about faith based aged care institutions, where organizations and staff are conscientious objectors to euthanasia?  Then there’s the Law Reform Commission inquiry into religious schooling and whether the religious exemptions to anti...

A few weeks ago on The Pastor’s Heart we talked with Zac Veron and Raj Gupta about issues confronting Sydney Anglicans. The National Church Life Survey shows a drop in newcomers from 9% in 2011 to 5.4% in 2021 - a more than ten year trend of fewer people joining church. Plus there’s been a 7.5% drop in attendance between 2015 and 2019. But it’s not just the Sydney Anglicans that need a wake up cal...

Rolling out the Global Anglican rescue - with Archbishop Justin Badi Arama  Nicky Gumbel teams up with the Global South in rebuking Archbishop Justin Welby Slowly, carefully, but quite deliberately, a new locus of leadership is emerging within the global Anglican Communion, a locus that significantly is intentionally focused on Christ and biblical authority and not focused on London, England or th...