The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
Christian leaders join Dominic Steele for a deep end conversation about our hearts and different aspects of Christian ministry each Tuesday afternoon.
We share personally, pastorally and professionally about how we can best fulfill Jesus' mission to save the lost and serve the saints.
The discussion is broadcast live on Facebook then available in video on our website <u><b><a href="http://www.thepastorsheart.net">http://www.thepastorsheart.net</a></u></b> and via audio podcast.
The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
‘The hardest talk I’ve ever given: Loving God’ - with Ray Galea
‘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 factor?
The pastor’s love for God will be a limiting factor for the congregation’s love for God. If we do not truly have hearts for God, how could we possibly lead others to the same?
Key Applications:
- Pray Ephesians 3 prayers for yourself and your team.
- Never assume a potential ministry staff member has accepted the gospel of God. Listen to see if they are personally gripped by grace.
- Demonstrate God’s love by meeting with your team consistently.
- Watch to see if the demands of ministry have choked the joy of salvation.
- Demonstrate God’s loving grace when a team member misses the mark.
- Encourage ‘Gospel Grace identity’: Does a team member welcome feedback or are they defensive; are they willing to apologise without qualification.
Ray Galea was the pastor of MBM Rooty Hill in Western Sydney for 33 years until he moved to Dubai in 2022 to lead the Fellowship Dubai church there.
Ray is giving the evening keynote addresses at the Reach Australia Conference to talk about our the Pastor’s heart, feelings, emotions, and faith.
Church Suite Taster Days in Sydney and Brisbane
Check out the new church management software ChurchSuite. Gavin and Luke are hosting five taster days in Sydney and Brisbane in November.
Assistant Minister role at Village Church Annandale, Sydney
Village Church is looking for an assistant minister. Perhaps it’s you or you know someone? Could you lead our mission outreach and the ministry aspect. Plus help set vision and in preaching and pastoral care. For more info or to have a coffee email dominic@villagechurch.sydney
Financially Support The Pastor's Heart via our new tax deductible fund
Please financially support The Pastor's Heart via our new tax deductible giving page.
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It is the pastor's heart and Dominic Steele and loving God and leading others to love God. With Ray Gilear, he's our guest. We're coming to you live today from the big Reach Australia conference. On the central coast of New South Wales and around us, the last little while there has been a hub of activity as people are arriving setting up for the conference which starts in 90 minutes time. 1,250 pastors at this conference from right across Australia, but also from New Zealand, and at the pre-conference yesterday I met some people from London and from Glasgow and one from Dubai.
Speaker 2:That is Ray Gilear.
Speaker 1:Senior Pastor of Fellowship Church Dubai, who's giving the keynote addresses this week in the evenings.
Speaker 1:Ray was the Senior Pastor of MBM Rooty Hill in Western Sydney for 32 years 32 years, Dominic Until he headed off to Dubai three years ago, two years, two years ago and an old friend speaking tonight on loving God and loving God ourselves as senior pastors and leading our team and our congregation to love God. But, ray, I just thought, before we start on our topic, we might just talk about Reach Australia because it is, I mean, 750 people for the pre-conference yesterday, 1250 for the big conference today. It is so exciting and exciting for you to come back.
Speaker 2:It's a privilege to come back. I mean, I have a soft spot for REACH because it's one of those ministries that makes a real difference, and the older you get, the more desperate you are to go to that which is actually really helpful.
Speaker 2:And so because of their vision to want reformed evangelical churches to be healthy so they can reach Australia and really to put legs on that in meaningful ways and to think through all the processes and steps but to be driven by God's word. That kind of theologically driven but wise practical application is a rare mix. They tend to go down either one or the other and they seem to have married them very beautifully for the sake of Jesus.
Speaker 1:You were saying to me that you've been benefiting from Andrew Heard's wisdom in this space from some 2010 or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, well, 2010,. At NBM, we built a building like you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, what do we do? Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 2:And then we got 200 new people come because we were in a high school that no one could see. So it was our own footprint and we just didn't have. I'm not very good at structure and thinking through a whole lot of things, I'm relational but I'm not organizational and we just found that we just weren't managing People, were falling between the cracks. And so it was Rowan, who was on staff, who's now planted a church in New Zealand. He said, ray, I think we need to talk to Evie and Andrew.
Speaker 1:Heard and learn.
Speaker 2:And so we went up there and up here and spent time with him and others to just think through a way of trying to think through church structure processes and just frame ministry in a way that really brings everyone together as a church in really effectively making disciples of all nations.
Speaker 1:And I remember coming along before it was Reach Australia. There's a little conference there's about 100 of us here called Team Pastoring, and I've got a photo here from 2016, and Andrew heard up the front.
Speaker 2:It's a little bit bigger now.
Speaker 1:It is much, much bigger and super helpful. Can I say it's bigger because it is helpful, because it's helpful.
Speaker 2:It's not a good advertising scheme and it's the work done in between conference to conference that the real work happens. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Now I was kind of thinking, as we said, the big conference here is on loving God. You're speaking tonight on loving God as pastors and we're the pastor's heart. This could be the most on-brand episode we've ever done. That's right.
Speaker 2:We better not blow it then.
Speaker 1:Dominic.
Speaker 2:What's it done?
Speaker 1:for your heart. As you've thought about, how might, I Ray Gilear, love God more?
Speaker 2:I have found this, I'll be honest, the hardest talk I've ever prepared, partly because I think it's so all-encompassing I mean, it is the great summary of our response to God's grace and so I went down rabbit hole after rabbit hole and tried to think I mean, in the talk I, I still align from a popular song, all of Me Loves All of you, which is kind of like a chick song but really kind of captures all of me is to love all of God. And because of that, because it's such a summary category, I just found whatever I wrote was never enough. So it was actually quite a hard talk, because every part of me wants to love God, or I want every part of me to love every part of who God is. And it's so all-encompassing. I'll be honest with you, this is the hardest talk.
Speaker 1:I've ever written Okay, well, break it down for me. I mean, I feel like I want to be somebody who's committed to God, I want to be somebody who trusts God, I want to be somebody who follows God, I want to be somebody who obeys God, but that's not enough, and that's not what love is. What is love?
Speaker 2:Well, I want to say love is one of the languages and you could actually love God without actually using not using that word. We want to be kind of not so married to a one word, but it is the word that God uses to actually, you know, in the Shema, in Deuteronomy 6, Hear O Israel, the Lord, our God. The Lord is one. Love the Lord, your God. And then Jesus picks it up when he's tested and uses it to capture exactly and he actually even adds an extra word to the Shema list and he actually even adds an extra word to the Shema list to capture the fact that it's all-encompassing.
Speaker 2:It's just got to do with. I mean, you could say Jesus is Lord and you'd get to the same point if you think about it. But the problem is we tend to get forensic very quickly in our tradition.
Speaker 2:And we get to. You know, jim Packer was always good at this, wasn't he? He kept saying that justification wasn't the high point, it was adoption, where God is our Father and the language of love and adoption is the pinnacle of our relationship with God. But he'd say it was adoption through propitiation. I thought that's Christianity. So, and because of who he is and you know, is and we say Jesus. But what do we mean? Every part of me wants to submit to the Lordship of Christ, which is functionally saying I want all of me to love all of God because he's worth it, do you?
Speaker 1:think in our tribe that we use language too much, of becoming a Christian, exploring Christianity making Christianity simple, if you like like checking out the faith system of knowledge rather than speaking in the personal categories of trust and love.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think even as we preach, you know you're exegeting a passage, there's an argument to present, and you can actually depersonalize God in the process without realizing it and you kind of lose. I always keep thinking, you know, at the heart of the Scriptures is the gospel, but at the heart of the gospel is the person of Jesus Christ, and I've got to keep reminding myself. It's a problem. We use gospel a lot you know, don't we?
Speaker 1:It's our distinctive marker as evangelicals and it's not wrong, because it's like I believe the gospel rather than I trust jesus.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah because you know what is the gospel is a message, but it's a message concerning the person of jesus christ and god in christ reconciling the world to himself. So us needing, I think, now more ever, that language to keep it relational and keep it personal. It's actually the language of the Bible and it needs to be our language as well.
Speaker 1:So your own heart as you've done this. How has this preparation, working up for this conference, shaped and changed your heart? Has this preparation?
Speaker 2:working up for this conference shaped and changed your heart. At the end of the talk I share a lament. At the beginning I quote Peter Adam. Let me just say that there's a beautiful quote he wrote in an article in Gospel Coalition about loving God. He says he's about to take his dogs for a walk and he remembers Psalm 18, I think it is verse 1, you know I love you, lord, my strength. And he says I don't. And then he just reflects I don't tell God that I love him. And that kind of convicted me, you know. And then he beautifully went on to describe how he spent the rest of that hour with the dog, telling God why he loved him and how much he loved him. And the thing is, when you start telling someone you love them, you actually that emotional part of you starts to arise as well. It's just the nature of how we deal.
Speaker 1:You do cognitive behavioral therapy on yourself.
Speaker 2:That's exactly right and so, and part of that, I think seeing that part of the heart is our emotions and maybe we'll get to that is that I've underplayed emotions within the nature of the heart.
Speaker 2:And part of that, then, is, I think, I've underplayed singing, because that's one of the means by which God nurtures all of our affections, which includes our emotions. So you asked me at my life. When I look back at nearly 64, Dominic, I don't know how old you are. One of my big regrets is I professionalise praising God to Sundays. I just don't sing in my quiet times. So it's only been recently that I've put in six of my favourite songs and I start my quiet time now in praise of God. Right, what about you? Let me ask you do you praise God in your prayer life?
Speaker 1:No, well, sorry, I do praise Him, but not in song. Not in song. No, not in song Using that medium. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I don't. And were you ever exhorted to do that? Nobody's ever told me. That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:And I didn't exhort anyone, so I'm not throwing any stones. In fact, I remember a great one who will remain nameless who I love so much and indebted to him for so many things, but that wasn't one of them. The trivialisation of the place of singing in.
Speaker 1:I spoke to a senior Pentecostal leader last week and we were talking about coming out of COVID and he said to me and I talked to him about how our attendance has gone in coming out of COVID and across the place we're overall, I think, in the reformed churches we're 5% down 2019 to 2023. And he said that is awesome Because the Pentecostal churches are much, much further down as a result of the COVID. And he said he thinks and I hadn't heard a Pentecostal leader say this before he said I think it's because you've built your ministry on the Word and Christ and so you've been more resilient than us who've built our ministry on the experience. And so we've wanted to say we don't want to have a ministry built on experience, we want to have a ministry built on the Word. We've wanted to say we don't want to have a ministry built on experience, we want to have a ministry built on the word, but there is something about actually nurturing our emotions there.
Speaker 2:Well, you think about. I remember hearing Don Carson on the prayers of Paul and the one on Ephesians 3.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I remember I was in Moore College. It was his first year. It was a model prayer and the way he explained. You know the prayer in Ephesians 3, and I remember I was in Moore College. It was his first year, it was a model prayer. And the way he explained, you know the prayer in the 50s about grasping the height and breadth, height, breadth, length, yeah.
Speaker 2:And to know this love. And he shocked me. He said you know, knowing here is just not information. You know it's actually. You're praying for an experience. Whoa Well, that was the Don saying it, so I must have been right. And then it just got me to realize that's right. The highest form of knowing is actually both truth, passion and will, all lined up, aligned.
Speaker 1:And that's a great prayer to pray for your team. Yeah, how do you do that?
Speaker 2:Well, every day I pray that prayer for my wife. I've always prayed that prayer for my wife Sandy, because I figured. If she feels loved, she'll love me better. But no, no, to me it's the best because you know, yes, I want people to love God more, but I think prior to that is actually grasping how much God loves us.
Speaker 1:That's what sets us free. So pray that I I mean, if I think about my staff team. Pray that they might know the length, depth, heart.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And the love of the Father who did not withhold his one and only Son, the love of the Son who demonstrated his love at the cross when we're at our worst, he gave us his best. The love of the Spirit that's poured into our hearts, the love of God that's poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit that allows us to rejoice in suffering. So yeah, grasping that love and knowing that that includes not just my thinking, not just my choosing, but actually my feelings. I mean, you know there is a difference between emotions and feelings.
Speaker 1:Unpack it for me.
Speaker 2:Well, emotions are kind of physiological responses.
Speaker 1:They just are to whatever I'm anxious or I'm yeah angry, yeah, okay, yeah but your feelings is your experience of that.
Speaker 2:So that is I know. I was talking to a guy the other day. He said I've been anxious all my life and unaware of it, so he wasn't feeling. He's actually emotions. Your feelings is your experience of your emotions and often, as understood rationally even and I think the Bible is actually speaking about how we are nurturing our feelings to God and not being satisfied. You know what it's like. We were all brought up in the fact-faith-feeling model. Here are the facts of the gospel Put your faith in Jesus and the feelings may or may not come. Don't trust them. You don't need them to love God and you can't command them. Actually, I've said that myself plenty of times. I don't think they're actually. They're all completely true. So in the Psalms we are commanded constantly about our emotions to nurture them.
Speaker 2:So rejoice in the Lord. Weep with those who weep. There's a lot of emotional language in the Bible and I think part of learning to read the Bible well is to learn to read it with emotional exegesis, the explicit, implicit emotions that are there, the explicit and implicit emotions that it's to provoke within us. And I think that's a dimension we've probably been a bit weak on.
Speaker 1:I think so. One of my friends, being a Christian, served in ministry, all those kind of things went to a psych hospital and ended up being on that 15-minute watch in the psych hospital and, in the absolute despair on the floor in the psych hospital and in the absolute despair on the floor of the psych hospital, called out to God for help and rang me up later that day and said I became a Christian today. In that I was, and what they meant was I was just flat out on the floor with nothing to offer and had not a skerrick of anything, and before the almighty. And we talked to a wiser pastor person later and I said I don't know that you became a christian. I think you were a christian, but you're actually one of the lucky ones that you've. You've not just got it in fact, you've got got it in just total dependence.
Speaker 2:And I think we need to. This is where I think we've under-discipled, we've just kind of taken a resignation posture. On emotions, yeah, no, no, no. I want to lift that emotional rock, whether it's the absence of an emotion or the misuse of an emotion. I want to lift that emotion because, guaranteed, there's a diamond of truth to appreciate God much deeper. So I can give you a couple of examples. You read Romans 9 and Paul's great anguish and unceasing sorrow for Israel who did the same. Well, that's not me. I'm reading the text and I'm thinking I don't have that experience. I want to have that part Because I'm to imitate Paul. Right, yeah, he's not just an apostle, whatever you've seen or heard do likewise. And he's the pattern of apostolic ministry. So I'm thinking Lord, that's not me. I remember being on a bus with Matthew Pickering someone we both knew, great evangelist.
Speaker 2:I said, matt, when you look at all these people on the bus, what do you feel, knowing that most of them are without Christ?
Speaker 2:He said, oh right, it breaks me. And he talked so emotionally. I said, Matt, it doesn't do a thing for me. So I realized there's a disparity there and I need to ask God, who actually not only commands emotions but invites us to pray for them. So, Psalm 51, David he's in the grip of guilt, he's confessed his sin with Bathsheba and Uriah and he's saying, Lord, give me the joy of salvation. He's somewhere between grace and guilt and he's actually asking God for the experience of the joy of salvation that he once had and has lost and now in repentance, actually wants to experience that joy of salvation.
Speaker 2:So I think what I'm saying is don't be satisfied, Don't resign. And this thing about you know, I know we're all different right. You're Anglo, I'm Maltese, but I think we overplay that card. We're all humans and sure you're going to display differently from me, and you know for all sorts of reasons. But at the end of the day, there's a language in the Bible that needs to be all of it.
Speaker 1:There's an experience of the experiences offered in the Bible that is for all of us, and if I, as an Anglo-reserved-y type person, I can't actually call that when God, I can't say it's OK for me to be like this because God's telling me to be different.
Speaker 2:In the same way that when I was too demonstrative with my emotions in Sandy who's Anglo, I had to manage that as well.
Speaker 1:I couldn't say Sandy, I'm just small, teasing you know, suck it up, live with it, live with it. I'm going to be a drama queen.
Speaker 2:You're going to be a joker. In fact that's exactly what my secretary once said of me.
Speaker 1:But anyway. I checked with her before she I'm just kidding you actually said you've had to learn to get the joy of being a son of God back.
Speaker 2:Ah, yes, yes, Earl, you know when you start ministry. I mean it can happen in any context, just the sheer pressure of life and family. But it was as a young church planter. I was kind of watching over everyone else's soul.
Speaker 1:My own soul. Yeah, I thought.
Speaker 2:I've lost the joy of being a child. I've almost stopped in those categories because I professionalized my spiritual walk with Jesus and that's deadly. So I had to sort of. I use a phrase that someone else uses I needed to learn the art, recall the art of wasting time with my father in heaven.
Speaker 1:What do you mean by that?
Speaker 2:Just spending time and enjoying his company. Yeah, casting my cares before him. How? Do, you do it Just not rushing. I'm a rush. I feel like, if you asked me the last year, I think I've rushed my time with the Lord. I don't like it and this talk kind of has reminded me slow up, Just give yourself more time to read the scriptures, more time to cast your cares before your Father in heaven, more time to meditate on his character. Just overcome the urge to rush.
Speaker 1:What do you hope? Did that ring any bells for?
Speaker 2:you, yeah, yeah, you're a rusher. I'm totally a rusher. You're so busy. I see you, you're a very busy man.
Speaker 1:Totally. I did my quiet time this morning on Isaiah 10, and I had to put a little five-minute YouTube video together because I'm trying to do 66 chapters in 60 days. But I just felt like, oh, I mean, it was good, I learned some things, I put it out, all that kind of thing, but was I actually stopping to reflect and enjoy?
Speaker 2:No, I don't think so. Well as I'd say, I would keep, because that's with an outcome, isn't?
Speaker 1:it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'd keep that separate from your time with Jesus and don't bring the two together. I know sometimes you're preparing a passage, but generally you keep doing that. It's transactional. Then it's a means to an end. I'm not enjoying God, for God's sake. You know that lovely verse in Psalm 73, whom have I in heaven but you? Earth has nothing I desire besides you Learning the sufficiency of God, and that is not a means to an end.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's been my issue and I suppose worse for me today in a house with a group of people got to get up early. Get that done. Get here, think about talking to you.
Speaker 2:And I'm not thinking that you know you're going to always have the luxury of time to do all this. What I'm just saying. I'm talking about a habit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so what about you? How does quiet time work for you at the moment?
Speaker 2:Well, I've had to because I've started to do a bit more exercise in the morning. I've had to move it to the evening and I've just been careful about that because I've got a plot now in the day. I need space for it to happen meaningfully and not rush. But I've got to tell you I would still say I'm feeling like a bit of a hypocrite because I think this last year there's just so much happening in Dubai and it's a big church and big staff. I feel like I'm not liking the fact that there's not enough time. That's slowed up with God.
Speaker 1:How do you disciple your staff in this space?
Speaker 2:I mean meeting up with them would be a good idea. Because I do want to say just on that you can't love your staff and want them to nurture their love for God if you're not meeting up with them. And when I left sydney I must have had five conversations with different people who said their their supervisor's not meeting up with them. So can I just play out there. We've got to be, we've got to be regular meeting up but I think one of them.
Speaker 1:I meet with all my direct reports.
Speaker 2:You weren't one of the guys I was thinking of, but you know you get busy and I've done it myself.
Speaker 1:I remember my exec pastor in 2010 and 11. But I feel like I ought to talk about their spiritual life more.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes, so it's not just about KPIs and goals and whatever it's like. Let's start off with what are we learning from the Word of God? You know, and that already we're, and it's not like I'm coming to you, it's just as brother to brother or brother to sister sharing. How has God's word impacted you? So you told me about Isaiah 10 or 11 that you just read. I don't know if you got any. Did it impact? You know, sometimes you get profound impact from scripture and other times it's a reminder of what you already know. That's fine, but at some level, keeping that on the conversation as well and then I'm always listening in on generally do they take feedback? Because you can't love God unless you love others? So the two are so inextricably bound together that unless my staff are feeling safe with me in the way I conduct my emotions, I can't love God with all my heart.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:He won't. Let me do that. He doesn't say the great commandment isn't love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and stuff everybody else. He doesn't keep all the love for himself. I can't love him without loving you, dom. I love him by loving you. Isn't that amazing, don't you love that about God? So I just so you're curious, but not judgmental, I think, is the posture. So you're always listening, because you want them to listen to you.
Speaker 2:Is there a love for God in their prayer language? Are they able to honor others and celebrate other people's victory? Because all of that's about the heart, isn't it? And so we had a testimony at Good Friday and the lady she got saved, actually on Romans 5.8 as it was read during the singing time, and Martha said you know what was interesting, ray, I started to receive feedback a lot more easier. Yeah, like I've not heard that application of conversion, but it was the first thing that you realised I could receive feedback. Why? Because my identity now is in Christ, who loves me with a love I can't earn nor deserve. And so how people take feedback is always a gospel issue, and whether they're comprehending the depth of God's love, and no one enjoys negative feedback.
Speaker 2:You're not supposed to enjoy it, but to be able to receive it and not get defensive about it. Just a little clue about whether you've really understood God's love for you and your love for him.
Speaker 1:You talked about a missionary friend who rang you up.
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness, this is about guarding the heart. You know Proverbs 4 is it? Guard the heart above all else. No, above all else, guard your heart, because from it is the wellspring of life. Even within Proverbs it's prioritised by that introduction. Above all else, and boy, if you don't guard your heart, the price that is paid. So yeah, four weeks ago I get this phone call from a dear friend, a missionary, and he said, ray, I need to talk to you. And you know, in the tone there's something.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:He said, ray, I've been living a double life. How long bro? He tone there's something. Yeah, he said, ray, I've been living a double life. How long bro? He said 20 years. I said what area? Sexual immorality. Now he's confessed to his wife, he's confessed to the church. It's, it's all out. Now I said were you, did you get caught? He said no, no, I. It was actually interesting. He was just sharing how he was upset at the hypocrisy Sorry, he was upset at someone else not sharing their struggle with their spouse and realized the hypocrisy in his own life that he was hiding these sins from his own spouse and family and church. But I thought, wow, now how do you get to that point? That conversation you have in your head and your heart you know the conversations we're having that says I don't need to tell anyone about this.
Speaker 2:Or if I tell someone, you know it'll harm the gospel or hurt people, you know, whereas, yeah, he's hurt people but oh, he's right with the Lord, now he's beginning slowly to experience the joy of salvation, while facing the weight of consequences, and for that I'm deeply thankful for. But, gee, it would be better if you could have avoided that. Guard your heart above all else.
Speaker 1:Thanks for coming and talking to us. Good on you. Dominic Ray Gilear has been my guest. Senior Pastor of Fellowship Church Dubai. My name's Dominic Steele. This has been the Pastor's Heart. We're live at the REACH Australia conference and back with you next Tuesday afternoon.
