The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele Dominic Steele

There are three different ways that the adult population of churches can grow:Adults being saved. Christians transferring from another congregation within your denomination of switching from another denomination. Children of members growing up in the church and taking on their parents faith for themselves.Most evangelical churches - even growing churches - are underperforming in the first and third ways.In the Sydney Anglican Church parents report that an average of only 65% of thei...

A new massive ethical question has risen up with the advent of artificial intelligence. How will people decide what kind of morality to give to their artificial intelligence creations?There will need to be a morality. But what should it be?The market is already making different choices. Elon Musk has said he wants the AI behind X (formerly Twitter) to be morally flexible. He wants his AI to appeal to all people: left and right, authoritarian and democratic, kind and brutal.Stephe...

How can a senior minister best train junior preachers (student ministers and assistant ministers) in preaching?There’s a tension we all feel: we want to be a training church raising up the next generation of leaders and yet we also want to make sure that the quality of what happens in our gatherings is high.We don’t want a Sunday morning ‘plane crash in the pulpit’, where people at church that day think‘I wish I had stayed home today’ or ‘I wish I had gone to St Bloggs down the road.’Toby Nea...

Artificial Intelligence is an oncoming tsunami that will catch all of humanity off guard. It is a change more like a wheel than a typewriter.But what will this do to our sense of self?Stephen Driscoll, in ‘Made in our Image - God, artificial intelligence and you’ says artificial intelligence may do great harm - giving more power to sinful people, governments or companies.He says artificial intelligence will likely trend towards people pleasing - giving each of us what we want now/a sense of h...

‘God wants all of me to love all of God all the time’ says Senior Pastor of Fellowship Dubai, Ray Galea.We want our staff and leaders to live and serve in ministry out of an overflow of the love of God for them. Grasping this love properly lifts our service from duty to desire.As pastors we are so committed and focused on encouraging our congregations to love God with all their hearts, souls, minds, and strengths. But do we stop to consider that our own love for God might be the limiting fact...

“It may be that God is destroying the Church of England and who am I to stand in his way? “The real tragedy would be if, in this traumatic, confusing time, if all of the evangelicals and the broader Orthodox group fall out with each other… if we can bear with each other in our different strategies, then that will be what we need (in whatever the future in England is going to be), whether that's within the Church of England or outside. Charlie Skrine, the senior minister of Al...