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In one of my favorite episodes of The Simpsons, Homer takes his family out to a steakhouse where he challenges trucker Red Barclay to a steak eating contest; whoever could finish a 16 pound (7.3kg) steak first wins. As the contest begins, We see Red confidently carve into his steak when the camera pans to a panicky Homer, frantically buttering a bread roll . No Homer! Don’t fill up on bread!  I always try to share original insights into the world of ministry when I write, but sometimes the truth about how I’m feeling comes in a deep shade of cliché. I am struggling with how busy ministry is. There is always more I could do, always something I could do better, always more great ideas that I just don’t have time for. This is the downside to the exceptional freedom that most pastors have with their time. Week to week, there are certain responsibilities that are both urgent and important. You can’t not write a sermon if you are preaching this Sunday. You must drop everything to visit a...

All we see is light for forever 'Cause the sun shines bright for forever Like we'll be alright for forever this way Two friends on a perfect day Belonging is such a strange word. It is a verb, which if you remember your primary school grammar, means that it’s a “doing word”. Doing implies action. “Jog” is also a verb, which is why you can say, “Let’s go jogging!” But no one ever says, “Let’s go belonging!” That’s awkward. Technically you are using the word correctly with respect to its part of speech, but no one says stuff like this. Belonging is passive. You either are or are not. You either belong or you don’t. When it comes to the subject of belonging, being a member of something, being a part of something, you cannot, by the rules of English grammar, take action to do it .  You can’t belong the same way that you can make a sandwich.   But with respect to life, I can hardly think of another word that is more vital and more desperately lacking in our lives than belong...

I’ve been thinking lately about how to raise Christian children. Recently, an influential sociologist of religion named Christian Smith released a new body of research examining how religious parents pass on their religion to their children. He didn’t just study Christians, but also interviewed and surveyed Catholics, East Asian Buddhists, South Asian Muslims, and Hindus. And across his wide-ranging research, he identified a few key factors that strongly contribute to the success of raising children with faith.  Isn’t that something that we all deeply desire as parents? Don’t we all want our children to grow up with genuine faith? Don’t we want them to own their beliefs? To truly know Jesus, to love God, to have a real relationship with God? And don’t we want them to go to church, not because they are forced to, but because they truly belong to the Christian community?  This is my deepest desire for my kids, and from the bottom of my heart it is also a great fear as well, tha...

I have been a pastor for 14 months. From time to time, I’ve felt like I was in way over my head. A couple of times a week, I have moments where I feel I don’t know what I’m doing and who am I to even be involved in something so consequential for so many people. I fear failure. I don’t want to fail. I don’t want to make mistakes that end up hurting others, and I don’t want to let people down. But the thing is, I’m just a student pastor, by a long shot the youngest and least experienced pastor on a big team. And I joined in the middle of a lot of changes that have been a long time coming. A lot of these changes are being engineered by other members of the church that have been around for way longer than me. So I don’t want to be overly dramatic about how important I am to what’s going on; I’m just a small cog in a big machine. But, see that’s the thing! That last paragraph is true, but also a powerful way to absolve myself of responsibility if things end up going belly-up. “How is this m...

When it feel like livin's harder than dyin' For me givin' up's way harder than tryin' One of my favorite sermon illustrations was told by pastor Simon a few years ago back in our GracePoint days. It was about a slightly obnoxious work friend who was also an obsessive sports fanatic. The day after his team won some important match, he would come into work wearing the team colors and loudly boast, “We won! We’re the champions!” Everyone’s got a friend like this. It would be a perfectly fair response to ask, “We? What do you mean, we? What did you do to help your team win?” You don’t have to be a sports fanatic to talk this way. “Just when our defense got good this year, our offense starts sucking.” Excuse me, in what way is it your defense? Did you draft key players? Draw up strategy and plays? Train and coach the players? Did you fill any wax cups with gatorade on the sidelines during a game?” Why is it that fans of a certain sports team are allowed to count their te...

Photo from  Pixabay  via  Pexels This morning in class, we studied the theology of God’s attributes. The lecture was on who God is and what he is like. All good theology ends in ethics and doxology, which means that the goal of studying God is to obey him and worship him. And so after the lecture, we were given an exercise to pick one of God’s attributes and write a prayer about it. I’d like to share with you my prayer. Here in Sydney, we’re currently in week eight of a “quick two-week” lockdown in response to the outbreak of the Delta variant. So I guess, being drawn to the idea of connection, I chose to pray about God’s omnipresence, which means that he is always present everywhere in Creation all the time. For Christians this means that even if you feel alone, you’re not truly alone.  One of the key Bible passages that talks of this is from the Psalms: Where can I go from your Spirit?     Where can I flee from your presence?   If I go up to the heav...

Every year, many pastors undergo a tradition as perennial and written into nature as a jacaranda’s bloom or a salmon’s journey home .  The tradition is the dreaded leadership drive. “We need more Bible study leaders!” “We’re losing a bunch of musos!” “Sharon wants to step down from Sunday school teaching next year because she’s doing her CA” “Benjie doesn’t want to do youth group anymore; he wants to give welcoming a try” “Can Leanne play the drums??” Panic sets in as the roster holes grow wider. How is it we have hundreds of members in our church, and yet so few people to serve? A framework for thinking about church ministry In The Vine Project , ministry trainers Colin Marshall and Tony Payne lay out a discipleship framework which they call the 4Es. The 4Es are a pathway of bringing lost people from non-Christian to Christian. They hold this out as a way for churches to think of doing productive gospel ministry. The 4Es are: Engage : This is when the church engages non-Christian...