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
Acting like men? - with Phillip Jensen, Craig Hamilton, Adrian Russell and Robin Kinstead
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, senior minister at Pitt town.
Robin Kinstead, senior minister of Figtree Anglican.
And Phillip Jensen who heads up Two Ways Ministries.
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It is the pastor's heart, and Dominic Steele, and today Act Like Men with Philip Jensen, robin Kinstead, craig Hamilton and Adrian Russell. There was a campaign by Procter Gamble a few years ago using the hashtag like a girl, and the campaign was very effective in reframing the stereotype of like a girl from being a negative expression to being a positive expression. Let's watch a clip. Show me what it looks like to run like a girl, from being a negative expression to being a positive expression. Let's watch a clip.
Speaker 2:Show me what it looks like to run like a girl.
Speaker 3:Throw like a girl.
Speaker 1:Fight like a girl.
Speaker 4:What does it mean to you when I say run like a girl?
Speaker 5:It means run fast as you can.
Speaker 1:That is a reframing of the expression like a girl. But what is it to be like a man, a Christian man? There are not many places in the New Testament where men are spoken to specifically. There are words to brothers and sons and fathers, and then a few to young men and a few to older men or elders. But interestingly, in the ESV and the NASB the translation of 1 Corinthians 16, verse 13 has be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong, whereas in the CSB and the NIV they've washed out the expression act like men from the translation and they've replaced it in both those translations with be courageous. I was joined on the panel at the Men Meeting, the Challenge conference, by Adrian Russell, the Senior Minister of Northmead Anglican Church, craig Hamilton, the Senior Minister of Pitdown, and Robin Kinstead from Fig Tree Anglican, and Philip Jensen, who now heads up Two Ways Ministries. I started by asking Philip Jensen about the translations and what Paul means in 1 Corinthians 16 when he says act like men.
Speaker 4:Well, it means we've got to continue to use good translations that relate to the way in which people understand English today, such as the NIV and the. What was the other one? You said CSB, was it? Well, they've changed it, yeah, I'm saying. But they are very good translations because they put into modern English what the Bible is saying and they're very helpful for people to understand what the Bible is saying. That's the first thing. Second thing is, once you grow up and become an adult, you need to get a better translation that actually tells you what was in the original, because, in order to put it into today's world, today's world's language is anti-Christian and therefore it de-Christianises our thinking all the time. Because the Greek is to act like a man. That's what you're being called upon to do. It's the only reference, I think, to something like being a man in the Bible, but it's couched around a range of those other commands Be watchful, stand firm in faith, be strong, let all that be done in love. That starts to tell you what it means to act like a man. Do you hear me?
Speaker 4:I think these Bibles are very good translations in terms of readability. I think the ESV I'm working from is not very readable. In fact, no one speaks like the ESV. It's translated English, it's not spoken English, but it tells you what's there, which is important at certain points, because in the Bible you're not addressed as men. You're addressed as there are passages on women. There's hardly any passages on men, but you're addressed as brother, son, father, husband. And that is how to act as a man, in right relationships with your parents, with your children, with your spouse, with your brothers and sisters. So to act like a man is to act in right relationship with those around about you with whom you have a relationship. And then there's a whole host of material in the Bible.
Speaker 1:Adrian Russell, let's go to you. Do you think there's a crisis amongst men, and amongst men in the church, on what it is to be a Christian man?
Speaker 3:I think if there is a crisis, it is mostly about what it is to be a Christian. I think, in terms of taking Christ seriously and understanding that he is front and centre, he's more important than my work. He's more important than my career, my status, my overseas travel. First and foremost, I think the crisis is we don't take the Bible seriously enough or the supremacy of Christ seriously enough.
Speaker 3:So I think there is a real challenge for men to step up and it's interesting that kind of the 1 Corinthians 16, act like a man is also in contrast to acting like a child, and that actually the purpose of being a man is you are mature, which is you can take responsibility for yourself and for others.
Speaker 3:So act like a man, as Philip said, is relational be mature in that you're taking responsibility for yourself, you're not a burden on others, you're not, you know, kind of grifting on off others and making them solve your problems, but also you're there to take responsibility for your others, your family, those in need, complete strangers. So that kind of that sense of manly desire to use what God has given us to be of benefit to others, to take responsibility, to serve, and in our family and in the church. I think men, men in our churches, could really step up in that sense of I'm not here to get my rights and my needs met, I'm here to serve, and God has made me taller, bigger, stronger and I can use that for his glory and for the benefit of the church.
Speaker 1:Craig Hamilton is the youngest person on this panel and the person who has an Xbox. And God's word to young men 1 Timothy 4.12,. Don't let anyone despise you for your youth. Set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in life, in purity. What do you want to say in terms of application of the scriptures to young men?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think it's that the scriptures to young men yeah, I mean I think it's that there is. You can have a sense of needing to wait until you're older or until people might, you know, give you the respect or whatever, but I think the scriptures help us to. We don't need to wait for those things. We can be those things, be the kind of man who is respectable and set an example. So, in terms of how it applies to younger people, it applies the same as to older people Do the word, hear the word, do the word and let the chips fall where they may word, Hear the word, do the word and let the chips fall where they may.
Speaker 1:Why do you think Paul says don't let anyone despise you for your youth and do set an example for the believers. He says that to young men specifically, though in a way he doesn't say that to older men or yeah, well, because I think it's one, peter.
Speaker 2:He says that younger men should look up to older men and older men should look across to younger men, and I think sometimes it's easier for younger men to look up and for older men to look down. Robin.
Speaker 1:Into the microphone here.
Speaker 5:Thanks, mate. Can I just take a step back and come back to your Procter Gamble study and just say that girls can fight, and the reason I know this is because the first time I got knocked out in a ring was by a girl. So I just want to say you know, brothers, invest in your daughters when it comes to fighting skills, as well as your sons. Um, timothy's a young guy, right? So there's a word for timothy and there's a word for young men.
Speaker 5:Um, that's the nature of discipleship, right. I mean, you can have older guys discipling younger guys. You can have younger guys who are younger in age, who have been walking with the lord long. I came to the lord in at the age of 27 years of age and I hadn't got a clue, and so I had a younger guy Christian was his name who walked alongside me and taught me good things from the word of God, because the word of God that he drew me to and the spirit of God who was then in me taught me, as an older man, how to get the calibration right.
Speaker 1:So he was really doing that. Don't let anyone despise you for your youth, but you set an example for somebody older than you.
Speaker 5:Well, he was a younger guy, walking with me, discipling me through the word of God and, yeah, not despising the responsibility God had given him in that context.
Speaker 3:yeah, what's God's word for sons? Adrian, honour your father and mother and respect authority that God has put over you, and that's part of what it means to grow up. It's interesting that Timothy is told don't let anyone despise you, and it's not as if he goes around and says stop despising me, stop despising me, but don't give anyone a reason to despise you for your youth. I think, is the challenge to him, as opposed to I'm controlling everyone else's. Don't be a young, immature person who people will go. Why are you even doing?
Speaker 3:That, I think, is the challenge for Timothy and I think, sons, our challenge is that we're thinking I want to be a mature, grown-up man, and how do I get there?
Speaker 3:And so we need the model of who are those who have gone before us. That's why we honour and respect those who are older, because they've done the hard yards. And I think, as we get older, the thing that we need to keep remembering is that God in his work in us, we get better at things that matter as we get worse at things that don't, and so my outswing is not as good as it used to be and I can't lift quite as heavy things, but it doesn't matter because the maturity of knowing God and knowing how to serve him. We keep growing in those things, even as our bodies kind of decay. So I think for sons there is this kind of aspirational I want to be a mature man. I want to be someone who someone else can look up to. I want to be someone who someone else can look up to. I want to be someone who walks in the footsteps of Jesus and have that I can take responsibility for myself and take responsibility for others.
Speaker 1:Let's go to you, Philip, and talk about older men. And what do you want to say to others who are older?
Speaker 4:Get ready. When I was a young fellow I was about 21, I lived in a house with seven blokes and all Christians. It was a great time. The fifth one died two months ago. There's only two of us left. Get ready.
Speaker 1:What does that look like?
Speaker 4:Get converted. What else can you be doing? But preparing yourself for the meeting of your judge. And any improvement in character between here and the day you die will be irrelevant for the judgment that comes to you, because the judgment that comes to you will be in the righteousness of Christ or not. So be Christian. No other way of preparing for death than being Christian. As a Christian, I should seek to grow in holiness, but the growth in holiness between here and there is in the sense of the ultimate judgement and irrelevance.
Speaker 1:Another thing you said when you stopped working at the cathedral was that Christians don't retire. Do you want to just elaborate on that, because you've lived that out for the last decade?
Speaker 4:Yeah, the idea that pastors, senior pastors, should be pensioned off at a certain age is a good idea. It's ageist 70 in our system, and I think it's a good idea because there are people Before it we had ministers who were in their 90s, no longer able to do the job but unable to retire from it, and so it's good that we have a retirement age, but there's no retirement from. The retirement that God gives is when he calls me home. That's the retirement. Until that day happens, with whatever strength, breath or air that I have, my job is to continue professing Christ.
Speaker 4:My son used to live close to the St George Hospital on holidays three years in a row, when I was away on holidays, my old friend John Chapman got sick and carted off the hospital, and so twice I called my holidays off and drove back to find out that he was all right. The third time I said to my son go around and check with Uncle John to see if he's all right, because I'm not coming back for holidays a third time just because he wants a holiday and he's in the hospital. Anyway, he rang back a few hours later and said to me you've got to come home this time, dad, he really is dying. So I said how is he? He said oh, he's perfectly all right.
Speaker 4:I said, but he's dying. He said yeah, yeah, he won't last much longer. And I said what do you mean? He's all right? He said well, he gave me a 15, 20-minute sermon on why I've always got to trust in the word of God. He said he was just firing. As usual, he died 24 hours later. You don't retire From the deathbed. Come and visit me and I'll try my best to cap up with Chapo.
Speaker 1:I'm going to go back to something you said, Craig, about men in loss, pain and hurt this morning. What's your word to? I mean, we have a generation where anxiety is a big issue and mental health is a big issue. A word on navigating that space.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I think my One of my first thoughts that jumps into my. I have kids who are 16, 15 and 12. And I notice that they have helpfully been taught language about anxiety and depression and these things. I think that's very helpful. Depression and these things I think that's very helpful. But I also see them using it in an inflated way. When they're nervous they'll say they have anxiety and I'll say you're just nervous, you have an exam, that's totally appropriate. Or a sad thing happens and they'll say that they're depressed and I'll say I don't think you are. I think a sad thing happened and you're feeling the thing that you should feel. And so I can see in their world. That's the way that everyone talks and so it inflates the currency and it doesn't. It doesn't help them.
Speaker 2:So the first thought that I have is just it is very important to label things properly. To feel anxious is not the same thing as to have anxiety, or to feel nervous is not the same thing as having anxiety. My other thought is that it is all the kind of professional help. There is a lot of good in it. It's really helpful and there's nothing wrong with pursuing help. Sometimes you get stuck when you are appropriately sad about a thing and then you get stuck there and you need someone's help to help you to get out of it. Nothing wrong, that sounds great, how helpful, and I think there is a spot for us all to continue to learn to trust the Lord. To trust the Lord, and there is a trust in the Lord that builds confidence not in self, but in him. That means that there are hard times and struggles and difficulties and griefs, and he has overcome the world.
Speaker 1:Adrian, if we could talk single men for a moment and just particular godliness, struggles and challenges that you're seeing as a pastor pastoring single men in your church.
Speaker 3:Exactly the same godliness struggles I'm seeing in the married men in the church in terms of sexual purity and don't look at porn and be content with what the life that God has given you. I actually see those struggles in men completely, and the reason why Paul encourages singleness as really a great blessing is because all of Christian life is focused on God and his glory and it's just filled with the Lord Jesus longing for his return, and so much of life distracts us from that and so there's a real freedom in singleness to go. Actually I'm going to give my all to serving the Lord Jesus and, given that we know the time, how can I share the gospel with more people? How can I encourage and build up more people? So I really think our society is just so anti-marriage in the way that it's set up. It's a real struggle and we just we're swallowing this stuff all the time in the tv shows.
Speaker 3:So I think I think those real struggles, the kind of purity of thought and heart and mind, is a struggle for single men, but it's certainly not exclusive, but contentment as well, the sense that the position that God has put me in. I'm glad I'm here and I'm going to serve God with my all. I'm in a marriage that doesn't make me real happy. I am content and I will do my best and I will serve my all. I'm in a marriage that doesn't make me real happy. I am content and I will do my best and I will serve the Lord. I am single and I'd really love to be married. I'm content, looking forward to Christ's return and I will do my all to serve him. So those are two things I think I would kind of mention are real struggles.
Speaker 1:Let's ask some of the other guys here about what you choose to watch on Netflix, what you choose not to watch. How do you make those decisions? Robin, you're nodding, so we'll go to you first.
Speaker 5:Well, I'm nodding because I'm kind of echoing what Adrian just shared. I think you know there's a scripture in Romans that says do not be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And the more that the word of God gets into our minds and our hearts and our day-to-day life, the better off we and those around us are. Um, I think it's a really big wrestle actually, it's so accessible now, like I could, any one of us. Now, you know, you know we're sat there out there looking at our phones. You know, perhaps following along with the bible, perhaps cap, you know, perhaps catching up on the latest episode of something that we're watching on netflix. You can never know. It's just, it's so it's easy to channel stuff.
Speaker 5:Now I think it's harder than ever. I mean, in our household we're proactively working on cutting down the number of live streaming services. We have helping our kids and my wife and I one another not to get sucked into the vacuum of. We're tired at the end of the day, so let's just binge watch another three episodes of the thing we're currently watching. I mean, at the end of the day, it's just squandering. You were talking about time. You know what does it mean? To redeem the time. I mean, you know we can squander the time right and, let's face it, we all do it, but it requires, I think, an active, disciplined response to do I choose this, do I choose that, do I not choose this? Lord, help me to make the wise decision. So I mean it's a constant vertical dialogue to enable us, I think, to escape what you know has always been a problem, which is entertainment and distractions and things that aren't going to endure, but just the ease with which we can access them today.
Speaker 1:Craig, almost every show ends up with some scene. That's unhelpful.
Speaker 2:Look, I'm not the best person to talk about this, because I don't watch anything much, not because I'm pious, but because I don't have a very good attention span. We could pray to be like you. Yeah, maybe it's a gift, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I wish I could teach it.
Speaker 2:I've been watching, you know, guardians of the Galaxy, volume 3 for three months now, just five or ten minute chunks at a time. I'm not, I'm not, I just I don't have the attention span for a TV show or a movie. I'm not the guy to speak into this.
Speaker 5:Are you happy for me to speak? I probably am the guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 5:Man, like you're right, it's. It's almost like it has become the currency for every series to have something in there that is is a corruption of god's good design for all his good gifts. So, you know, there's sex, there's sex outside marriage, there's, there's deviant forms of sex, there's, there's um lying deceit, that everything, and it's almost as if, I think, over the last probably two decades, there's been a desire to create an increasing, I think, a deception of the devil, an increasing blurring of right and wrong, what would be understood from the word of god to be, you know, clear moral indicators. You know the, the moral grayness is how you get captured a lot of the time with some of these shows oh, do I think that's right? Oh, no, that's wrong, surely. But then, three episodes later, but now it feels right because I empathize with the character and I understand their predicament, and what have you? Um?
Speaker 5:So, increasingly, sarah and I are becoming more discerning and selective and trying to help our kids to think through, and we talk about it now as a family. We'll watch the series and go what about this, what about that? What does the word of God say about this issue that somebody's facing? At the end of the day, though, we find that our kind of catchment is being reduced by the sheer quantity of things that we just wouldn't feel comfortable watching. So in the old days, when I went to the cinema with a mate and we saw something that was sexy on the screen, we'd commit to one another. We just put our heads down and wait for it to pass in a rather regal fashion, but, um you, really it's. It's almost like a constant bombardment. So I think we've got, and we've got to help one another on that journey as well, right, like, because it's very easy to then, when we know we shouldn't do it, to kind of hide it, and that's when we get into a whole bunch of other problems, right.
Speaker 3:It's worth being on the lookout for nudity and sex and all that kind of stuff that just gives an opportunity for our heart's desires. It's in us. I don't want to blame society, it's coming out of me. But the other thing to be really aware of is I remember watching the first season of 24. Love that show, such an awesome show. But by the end of it Jack Bauer's wife is annoying and the woman he works with, the co-agent, is just really awesome, and you just find yourself thinking I wonder if maybe he'll end up with her and you're like there's no nudity, there's no sex, but there's a deeply evil desire that has been unlocked.
Speaker 3:And so be careful of that stuff, because sometimes we can just think. There's two things I've got to be aware of when I'm soaking up the media sex and violence. Actually, there's just a worldliness that shapes our thinking that we need to be prepared to miss out. No, I haven't watched the show that everyone else is watching and I don't like the fact that you're all friends bonded together over talking about it and I look like an idiot. Whatever, we're Christians. We're willing to go without in order to do something much better, which is to be focused on Jesus.
Speaker 1:Just as you were speaking, rob and I, I was remembering I just started work at TWS, at the radio station, and the final friday of the first week they had a farewell and um, they were passing the hat around at work to pay for a stripper to come to the farewell.
Speaker 1:And I mean it wouldn't happen now, but um, that happened then and I thought, well, I'll go for a walk around the block after dinner and while all of that's happening and I'll come back, and so I planned to do that and I didn't put in any money for the stripper. And then it all happened earlier over the main course and we were in one big round circle room and suddenly this girl comes in and I spent half an hour kind of doing what you were doing, which was kind of I'd only been in the job for four days but just counting the hairs on the carpet and there were two girls on the staff of the radio station newsroom. There was 13, 14 men and two girls, and both of them thanked me afterwards for spending all. I mean I didn't publicly protest, but I clearly, by my posture, took a different stand and I mean now I'm much older, much more senior would have protested, but at the time I was 22 and it was one week into the job. Yeah, philip, wisdom.
Speaker 4:What we need, brothers, is to have a much clearer Christian worldview so that we know, whatever is coming in any area of life, how to be evaluating it, how to be teaching our children to evaluate how to think, evaluating it, how to be teaching our children to evaluate how to think about it. But we mustn't build the Christian worldview by the way of negation. I don't like this, I don't like that, I don't like this, I don't like that. We've got to build the Christian worldview out of the Bible itself. We need to understand creation and what the implications of creation are for us. We need to understand sin and the implication of sin for us. Like you say, it's in our very heart that the problem is lying, rather than what's outside there. We need to understand God's judgments. We need to understand the atonement and the resurrection. We need to think the way the Bible thinks so that, whatever the issue is, we can affirm what is good in society as well as explain why the bad is bad and damaging. Whereas I think I'm not blaming you, brothers, but the way the discussion is going is we're negating this, negating that, negating. All novels down history have been unseemly. Pollyanna is unbelievable because there's nothing bad in Pollyanna. Novels and films reveal the sinfulness of the human heart. It's not wrong to do that. They may do it in a wrong way, they may do it in a helpful way, but that I can see human sinfulness at work in the novel I'm reading.
Speaker 4:The first English novel was Robinson Crusoe by Dan Defoe. The second one he wrote was Moll Flanders, which was a morality tale full of sinfulness, wickedness and evil, but it was written by. Daniel D Fahou at the time was a Puritan. Now put that together in your head. The Puritan wrote a dirty novel, but it's like Mr Guinness. You see, guinness was a Christian. That's why he invented Guinness, the black brew that people drink, and alcohol. That's because he was trying to make a drink that took people away from spirits and gave them some health because of the carbohydrates in it. Life is a little bit more complex than just going around finding the things that are at fault. We need a broader, more positive brush the anxiety ones and the rest. We've got to stop thinking in psychobabble and start thinking in Christian concepts, the sun. You know, there's so many books on raising children that are just a Christianised version of normal psychology. What we need is to read the book of Proverbs, because it will tell you how to raise your son.
Speaker 1:I'm getting the wind-up from the organisers, so we're going to stop at that point. Would you say thank you to Adrian, philip, robin and Craig? A little different to our normal pastor's heart. Today. Our guests have been Adrian Russell, senior Minister of Northmead Anglican Church, craig Hamilton, the Senior Minister of Pitttown, robin Kinstead of Fig Tree and Philip Jensen, who now heads up Two Ways Ministries. Next week, on the Pastor's Heart, we're back in our regular interview format. My name's Dominic Steele. We'll look forward to your company next Tuesday afternoon.
