The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele Dominic Steele

How do you balance the instability and chaos of external ministry with adding a foster child or adopted child to a ministry family?What are the implications of taking children in crisis into the ministry home? What motivates ministry families to become foster parents or to adopt? How do older children and the church respond? Sarah and Mat Yeo serve at Hurstville Grove Anglican Church in SydneyMatt Wilcoxen pastors St John’s Darlinghurst in inner Sydney.To purchase ‘The Forgetful Prince’: http...

What is it to be #likeaman?There are not many places in the New Testament where men are spoken to specifically.Today we are thinking about being a Christian man.In the ESV and NASB the translation of 1 Corinthians 16:13 has ‘Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong’. (ESV)But what does that mean?Dominic Steele put that question to panelists at the recent Men Meeting the challenge conference:Adrian Russell, senior minister of Northmead Anglican Church.Craig Hamilton, senio...

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...