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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.
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The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
How to be fun and not boring in Christmas preaching? - with Nigel Fortescue and Pete Stedman
Planning Christmas Preaching.
What we are nervous about? What we want to get right? What has worked best? What hasn’t?
And how do we leverage the cultural moment?
Nigel Fortescue is senior pastor of Christ Church St Ives on Sydney’s North Shore.
Pete Stedman leads the ministry at Norwest Anglican Church in the North West of Sydney.
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how to be fun and not boring in christmas preaching. Nigel fortescue and pete stedman are with us today dominic steel in the pastor's heart and I have asked a couple of friends in to come and help me plan christmas preaching. Uh, we're going to talk about what we're nervous about, what we want to get right, what's worked, what, what hasn't worked. Nigel Fortescue, senior Pastor of Christ Church St Ives on Sydney's North Shore, and Pete Sedman leads the ministry team at Norwest Anglican Church in the Norwest of Sydney. Now, as we approach Christmas and all the different responsibilities that we've got, and we've got planning of things and preaching things what are you? Well, I'm going to ask you what you're nervous and anxious about, about the whole thing, but maybe I should go first.
Speaker 1:Go for it, dom, I am really nervous about the Friday night. Talk that we've got coming up for gingerbread and wreath making and we've got three nights of gingerbread and wreath making. There'll be mostly guests and the Wednesday night I'm confident about the first. They're adult only nights. But the Friday night is going to be kids and youth. But I've looked at the registrations and there's a whole lot. I mean like it seems like everyone from my wife's work is coming. Good luck with that, I just do. I mean, if you give me a talk on domestic violence to do, or something like that, I'll know what I'm doing. But just five minutes of fun to a multi-generational thing. I'm nervous. What about you, nigel? Yeah?
Speaker 2:I think for us remember last year Christmas Eve was the Sunday, and so that reset lots of things, Phil, that reset things for us. And so it's changed again this year with Christmas Tuesday, Wednesday, and so just changing times and I'm always a little bit anxious, you know are people actually going to turn up when you put effort?
Speaker 1:in.
Speaker 2:And so many moving parts, and I really trust our team to do an excellent job, but then also, like one $50 piece of equipment can actually make or break the whole thing as well, and so it's sort of like our tech teams are awesome, but they can't stop a little wire from stopping working, which just means everything's like, and so that's a constant little voice in my head.
Speaker 3:Please, lord, just for the next hour. Yeah, that's it, just this hour and a few hours through to about 10 o'clock on Christmas Day.
Speaker 1:What about you, Pete? What are you nervous about?
Speaker 3:Oh look, christmas always comes in the midst of life for a church. There's always plenty going on pastorally with families. For us this year at Norwest we've been off site for six months, so that's been big, and our return to site Sunday is December 22. Oh no so we are bringing.
Speaker 1:Well, this is not going to work.
Speaker 3:We are bringing everyone back on the 22nd. We're back on the 22nd and three days later we're pulling off Christmas.
Speaker 1:And so I mean what if there's a delay? Have you got leaflets out across the place, brother I?
Speaker 3:am of strong faith.
Speaker 1:And yes, we have leafleted. And what if Nigel's wires don't work?
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, we have a backup plan. We'll remain in the school, but we are working very closely with our project manager, with the builders and with the parish council. We think we'll be back the handover's a couple of weeks before, but it's just. It's all the work that needs to go into that, and so one of my roles as the leader is to ensure that it happens, but that I'm calm, that everyone's calm, that we remember that we have a robust doctrine of the sovereignty of God, that he's on the throne, whatever happens and it will be what it will be.
Speaker 3:But yeah, there's just another layer in there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it strikes me actually that if, as senior leaders, we can be calm and just walk slowly, I say to my team just walk slowly, it'll calm you down. And if we can be calm then that'll actually help the whole system.
Speaker 3:On the back of my door I have two pieces of AFL paper which says speak gently, walk slowly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, perfect.
Speaker 3:And I rarely remember to do that, but it's there. I need to change the colour of it so it pops again for me. You want it in bright red. It's exactly right. It's exactly right, yeah.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about the preaching, because I mean, it is one thing to do. If you like. The pastorally sensitive talk on divorce or those kind of, if you like, harder pastoral talks often fall in our lap. But sometimes the key evangelistic talk and key rapport building talk also falls in our lap. And how do you go about thinking about that for Christmas? Let's start with you.
Speaker 2:Nigel.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so a couple of things I think are really important to actually make sure that you pause or exegete your audience a little bit and remember who's in front of you to start off with. And it is a time still in our area as when I was in Campbelltown it was the same, and I know things shift all over Sydney and the world all the time but it's still a time in our area where outsiders come, and so the first thing that I'm thinking is actually outward gaze. And what am I doing in this talk that is going to help people who are in church for the first time this year, maybe this decade, to actually engage with the beauty of Jesus incarnate? And so there's little things that are triggering in my head. Number one I've sat in church on Christmas Day where the minister is like for all of you who this is your first time here this year, well welcome. You know, it's sort of like backhanded compliments. You want to get rid of all of that. You want to also use language that doesn't make it feel like insiders outsiders.
Speaker 2:So just pronouns in your preaching, not us and them or you and me, but actually we and all of us in the same boat as you're preaching and just using gospel terms and gospel ideas, be thinking actually we're all sinners, we are all people in need of the Lord, we are all people requiring the kindness of God to appear for us that we might be saved. And then I think the third thing that just immediately triggers in my head is then remember the moment. So Christmas is actually a moment of joy. None of the advertising like. I saw a Coles ad on TikTok this morning and the whole essence of the whole thing is this is going to be amazing. And so if you get up to preach and you're like this is really amazing, it's sort of like it's a cultural myth.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a cultural myth. Not only are you belying the day, but you are actually belying and censoring the gospel. So one of my little things for Christmas is you've got to make people get a smile on their face during the sermon at some point. Not everyone's a great joke teller and I'm not. I learned the best of my jokes from Rick Smith and I tell you, if I can get half a line out that gives people a smile on their face, you get a match between the cultural moment and their point in church and that actually helps them put the whole experience together a little bit. So there's some outskirts.
Speaker 2:I haven't really touched right on the core of the gospel there at the moment, but there's just sort of some structural things that are in my head as I start to think about constructing the sermon. Let's do outskirts things with you then Pete.
Speaker 3:Very similar to Nige. I always start by thinking two things what is the day and who is in the room? So the same thing. And what's distinctive about today than seven days ago and 14 days ago? And it is Christmas. We are celebrating God's remarkable gift of Jesus. Like that's incredible. When you start to think about it, christians, it washes over us and we want to roll back that a bit for people to feel that wonder again. But then who's in the room?
Speaker 3:And I think there's three people in the room. I think I've got my own people, god's people, our regulars, and I want them to sit there and just feel the warmth and the comfort and the encouragement of the gospel once again, that because God so loved the world, he sent his one and only son that whoever believes in him can have eternal life and their sins can be paid for. I want to remind them of that In that little moment I've got before they're on the freeway heading north or thinking about the temperature of the oven for the ham, all of that. That's the first group. The second is your people, who are there for the first time. They're not insignificant, but they're not my focus. They're there. I want to put a pebble in their shoe. I want them to walk away, surprisingly compelled by what they heard. I thought I was going to get this, but I got that. So it's something for them, but I may never see them again.
Speaker 3:Then there's a third group, actually, who I do want to speak more to, and they're the hardest to hit. But they are the regular irregulars, or your irregular regulars. They are your Christmas and Easter types. But I think of the lady with blonde hair who comes with her three daughters every year. I know where she sits. I think of the two men who come in their 60s, who I'm not sure if they're brothers or partners, but they don't miss Christmas, and more than that. They'll come up to me and they'll say can you pray for me about this? And I will, and I do. And then I'll say to them guys, you know I'm here next week. Actually, you know I'm here every day.
Speaker 1:We haven't gone anywhere.
Speaker 3:But, for whatever reason, these are the people for whom I think there are cobwebs of faith or nostalgia or cultural moments that still float in their hearts, but there's a dissonance. They don't know what to do with that. They're in the room and I wonder if they are the ones who actually I can have more chance of actually helping them take that next step forward.
Speaker 1:I mean, as we think about it, there's a clear goal of next step. I mean, I'm going to come back to the heart of the talk in a moment, but what's the next step? And how do you, if you like, paint a pathway? I'm thinking I've come to the first time and you're saying you've got a next step for me. What do you do in the meeting to get me on to that next step?
Speaker 3:So let's talk about the success and failure of funnels at Norwest.
Speaker 1:Well, what's the?
Speaker 3:No, totally how do we do that.
Speaker 1:It's a funnel moment, isn't it? It is.
Speaker 3:And so we start with carols and we'll get lots of people for carols. We used to run something called a week on the green three events carols on the green, jazz, on the green cinema, on the green in the week leading, all during December, all in the same week leading into Christmas, because the cost of doing one and the cost of doing three is very similar financially on your people Higher on your people. But the approach was that we would just really push our Christmas services.
Speaker 1:And you're not doing that this year because you're out of the building. We are doing that. You are doing it this year On the 15th before we get the building back.
Speaker 3:It's madness. But we are running carols for 1,000 people on the site on the 15th.
Speaker 1:There's a whole different discussion about whether carols outside is a good thing or not.
Speaker 3:There is yeah.
Speaker 1:Let's stay off that and stay on. What's the funnel?
Speaker 3:and then we try to launch people into our summer events, which will be an outreach sermon series but also some water park fun days for kids and so forth. So we're advertising January evangelistic sermon series and it has been spectacularly unsuccessful. It hasn't worked for us and we've tried it over and over and over Well they do say repeating phases.
Speaker 3:You'd think you'd learn, wouldn't you? And so I think it comes down to I try to ask myself what is the person in the room after right now? And I don't think anyone in the room is looking for a calendar appointment in six weeks' time. I think people are focused on who's picking up Nana and Christmas ham and Christmas ham and traffic times around Sydney, and I think if I try to do and for all my best plans, if I try to do much more than recognise where they're at, it's a missed moment, and so we will push our evangelistic series Questions. I'd Love to Ask God. We will encourage people to come to something, but we don't actually expect it to work, and I'm killing the podcast that sounds so pessimistic. What I want is that the preaching of the word to so engage with cultural moments and get to people's deepest needs not felt needs, but via their felt needs that they think I must hear more and come back.
Speaker 1:That's what I'm trying to do, so helpful to hear. First date is what you're trying to do, Well they probably have come to carols, or most of them have come before, or it's first second date.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, so there's a relationship of warmth there.
Speaker 3:I think the way the church is positioned similar to Christchurch establishing the community, loved by the community in some ways, or at least not reviled by most of the community. I think you can leverage that. And then it's just about helping people think, and I remember Andrew Cadet once saying the reason they leaflet, the only reason they leaflet this was years ago was that when crisis hit that family and they thought who could I speak to, what came to mind was the church down the road and in many ways I mean that's quite a low bar, but we've seen that. I've been there 15 years now. We've seen these people come in who said in fact, last year at Carols there was a guy there and he joined NOAA six months earlier and I said, oh, it's your first Carols. He said no, it's my fifth. I thought, wow, you've come for five years before you joined six months earlier.
Speaker 1:So this is your first as a member belonging to NOAA. Well, that actually does mean your funnels worked.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's just hard to get a KPI off that because, you don't see that right. So, yes, these things play a role, but it's not a one for one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and let's talk to you, the funnel at Christchurch tonight.
Speaker 2:Yeah, look, I think we have a big season in Term 3 of evangelism. We have a big lead into Christmas where we do serious topics in Term 4. So at the moment we're doing Song of Songs and we're leading into Christmas with three pretty heavy topics over the next three weeks and a lot of our guests, similar to Pete, are people who are connected with a family member and so feel like they're vicariously then a member of church or those people who are the regular irregulars. And for us then we see summer as an opportunity to connect beautiful preaching, compelling preaching about Jesus on Christmas Day to excellence across summer. So the concept of like summer psalms or, you know, small bands.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're putting on the main game, the main, yeah, in actual fact what we?
Speaker 2:I think we don't necessarily articulate it like this, but if we get to Christmas and want us to be sort of like we're on our A game, then that's sort of the baseline for the next year. In all the things that we're doing across preaching, across music, across service leading, across visuals, it does feel to me, like across our tribe, there's been a change in tone of where it used to be.
Speaker 1:We let everything fall apart and have a rest in January to actually recognising January as the A game.
Speaker 2:For us, the 29th of December is the thing we've had a bit more conversation about in the last two or three weeks than Christmas Day, right, and so we're sort of thinking we know what we're doing on the 29th, we know we're going to make it excellent, we know who's in the bands, we know who's preaching.
Speaker 1:So even that week between Christmas, I mean, I would say for us. I do know that we'll have less than half our normal attendance on that week, and that may well be absolutely the case.
Speaker 2:But if Jesus becomes compelling to someone in the power of the Spirit through Christmas, you don't want to turn up the next week and go oh, this was so good.
Speaker 3:No, it's 50% of what it was. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And people will naturally go. Oh yeah, people on holidays. It's not about volume, it's about, actually, I think, the end quality at that point in time, and so for me that plays into the Christmas thing again is actually for each church you play Christmas as well as you can and as well as you can replicate into the future, because what people's experience will be that day of hearing the gospel in that context you don't want to mismatch with what they might find were they to come again. And so there are a few things there. I think that sort of matter to us and we're totally with you on the way that you describe what you're doing.
Speaker 1:Just to come back to that, funnel Pete, I think we've been a little bit better than spectacular unsuccess in that I would say our biggest Introducing God course has been the Term 1 course and we've tried to make at all the Carol's moments. And this is why we've done Carol's indoors, because we want to play a video. You know and you actually can get better. So we've played an Introducing God promo video At the Gingerbread Nights. We thought what's the bottom line of success? It's somebody to give us their name and address and a tick on.
Speaker 1:I'd like to be invited to Introducing God in the new year, you know. And so we're running an interview with someone at all of those events who is an adult, who's come to Introducing God in the last 12 months and become a Christian, to show that you could make. I came along here a year ago, I went to the course, I found it comfortable and now I actually am in my first Christmas as a Christian. This could be you too, in the power of God, trying to model that and then play the video and do all of that.
Speaker 2:I actually am in my first Christmas as a Christian.
Speaker 1:This could be you too, and this could be you, so we're trying to model that and then play the video and do all of that before the preaching. And so the application point for the sermon is actually not so much become a Christian today, but fill in this card and make that step.
Speaker 3:Dominic, I think one of the things I've learned is you've just got to keep trying things. So we have seen summer historically as a low time, because Borkham Hills is gutted over summer. If you work at Borkham Hills in summer, you feel like you're 1,000 miles from the beach, which is where everyone else is. That's the perception I have when I'm at my desk. People do go on holidays. I think that's why our summer events haven't quite worked. But this year we're putting our best pictures on throughout summer. We're giving more thought to what we're doing there and launching a new Discover course out of that. We're just trying something new.
Speaker 3:We'll see how that goes, and I think that's what you keep doing, Do you think, though?
Speaker 1:I mean, I would say, for us the Christmas, new Year, the Sunday between Christmas and New Year's been really low. Then the first Sunday of the year's been really low, but we're basically back to normal attendance by the 15th of January. But we have more guests and fewer regulars in those weeks.
Speaker 2:We fluctuate a bit. We have a big summer camp and a lot of parents sort of send their kids on summer camp and send themselves on holidays late in Jan. And you know I'd celebrate that. And so there's yeah, it goes in waves for us and we do a first Sunday in February sort of our launch Launch. Yeah, where we go, we're on again.
Speaker 1:Now I actually wanted to talk to you about writing the talk. Yeah, so when we were having a conversation on the phone the other day, Pete, you said one of your things in the talk writing is you want to surprise people and come out of it from left field. I do so help me with some left field ideas. Left field ideas Because I'm feeling insecure about that.
Speaker 3:So again, what I'm trying to do is have people leave my regulars, our regulars leaving deeply encouraged, and they're faithful people. It doesn't matter what we really do, they just they love the place. So that's not to say it doesn't matter what we do. No, we're focusing on encouraging them. But they're easy to encourage at Norwest, they're a joy. It's the person who I want them to drive away thinking that was not what I thought it was, but is affected in a way that has surprised them with a compelled edge to it that I want to know more, maybe not in the moment, but maybe later.
Speaker 3:So one of the things we do is we look we've always looked to key cultural moments that are actually circulating at the time and then leverage things around that. So I'll give you a couple of examples of that. So we often love to show a video of something that's been up. So it started years ago where I just love Paul Kelly. I used to visit him up at Penn Hills Hotel all the time when he used to play there and I just love the song how To Make Gravy. So one year I just put that up and I had a great time I don't know about everyone else, but it was this.
Speaker 3:And how To Make Gravy is actually a wonderful Christmas song, but it's really sad. I then realised that there's all these sad Christmas songs. There's something about Christmas and sad Christmas songs that's incredibly compelling. So last year we actually showed Fairy Tale of New York, which is not safe for work nor church, so make sure your editorial team know when to turn it up and down because of the language and the themes. But it's a very sad song, but it's the most played Christmas song in the UK ever, and so we talked about how Christmas we feel, this juxtaposition within our breasts. We love Christmas, but Christmas also reminds us of those dashed dreams and those hopes unfulfilled, and so our sermon was about that.
Speaker 3:When Les Mis came out, we played. I Dreamed a Dream, which is a fabulous song because it was just at the movies at that time, when the Lion King came out. We talked about this king who would be born to rule over all the jungle and you could just show these videos. So you're tying in. So we think about songs that are relevant TV ads. So John Lewis and the UK drop amazing Christmas ads. They are profound, they are very expensive. The latest one, the song in the background, is Sonnet by the Verve, which I love, and it's about these two sisters that walk through life together, the ups and downs. But it lands on Christmas Day, how everything's right, which is what we all long for. But we don't all experience. And so there's just so many ways that the gospel can come in and address the deepest needs via the felt needs, and we just want to really leverage those cultural moments Songs, movies, ads, just out of COVID, maya did one called it's Going to Be Bigger Than Christmas and it was happy.
Speaker 3:Mazel Tov it was. You've missed everything, so jam it all into one day and make it work. And we just played and said it feels right. You know, you got married in the garage and baptized in the shed and all of this. It was all at home, all home. And we said it feels right, doesn't it? But is it right If we jam everything into this day? Does that actually work? And it was this trying to help people move from the things they see around them in culture to show how Jesus actually always promises the deeper, the better, the truer life, hope and story Before I ask, Nigel, I mean, you've persuaded me.
Speaker 1:okay, I'm all keen on sad songs at Christmas for us this year, but what are you going to do next month? I might just pinch that up here.
Speaker 3:I think this year. I don't know. It's a short answer, we're still four weeks out, but I think I'm going to do something on power. I'm going to leverage Trump and other things that have happened in the States and talk about worldly power versus the way God uses power. Maybe go to Philippians 2 and show that actually equality with God was not something to be grasped, but he humbled himself, became a servant, so on and so forth, Can forth, Can I say? One of the things I found very helpful here is writing of CPX on this space. Around Christmas, CPX put out these the sad stories thing. I'd done the Paul Kelly previously, but then I read an article by Justine To and I just thought oh, she's now you mean, cpx is Centre for Centre for Public Christianity.
Speaker 1:We're an acronym for you. Sorry, sorry, thank you so.
Speaker 3:Google Centre for Public Christianity. It's an Australian-based organisation and some of their very good thinkers are just writing some really helpful, culturally insightful moments around Easter and Christmas that I've found very helpful.
Speaker 1:What ideas can I pinch from Nigel Fortescue?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so first of all, I just back totally what Pete said there in terms of trying to really consider your own community. And this is where, Dominic, you can steal the ideas you like, but you've got to think about Annandale and your pool. You really need to work on. What are the existential yearnings for your community? What are the issues that actually have mattered? And it may not be Trump and power, it may well be Palestine, and you know, it could be electric vehicle it could be anything.
Speaker 2:And so for us this year we are going with kindness, because that seems to actually touch a number of the different existential yearnings in our area, and so, from Titus 3, the kindness and love of God appeared, he saved us and is where we're targeting in on, and so we're going to tap into, you know, across the generations, a whole lot of different things that have mattered, where people have seen unkindness and where the gospel answers that yearning for just can we just be nice to each other sort of thing and actually demonstrate that it's more than just being nice to each other, we actually need an internal transformation ourselves that actually will lead to a transformation of our community.
Speaker 2:Now, that's one thing. The second thing is one of our staff, tom Patterson. He brought this article to us for a preaching critique one day. We do a monthly preaching critique and it was someone had written a PhD on how to actually give an interesting talk. And there is the difference between saying things that people just sort of go that's ridiculous, like it's outrageous, and that's predictable, and finding the point in between, in between. Yeah, and I think if you Google PhD interesting talk, you'll find the article.
Speaker 1:We'll chase it up. That's the kind of topic we like.
Speaker 2:You're tapping into people who are there to listen. They're actually for the first 30 seconds or one minute. Everyone is there going. I'm hanging on every word. Have you got something for me? And if you can hook them in in a way that actually makes them go, that sounds extraordinary but possible, then I'm listening, whereas if you say something that sounds absolutely outrageous, it's like well, that's ridiculous, that's more just religious rubbish. Or if you say something predictable, it's like yeah, yeah, we were back at Little Drummer Boy again and away we go, or however they think about it.
Speaker 2:But if you can get into that surprising but possible zone, in the way that you are drawing people in to their own answers to their existential yearnings, then I think you are landing the possibility that people may leave with both quick, get the ham in the oven, and that was intriguing. And if you're able to do that and can I say it's hard both quick, get the ham in the oven, and that was intriguing. And if you're able to do that and can I say it's hard, I've tried it a few times. One time I tried it in a sermon and Tom messaged me at the end and said I saw what you did. And I've tried it a few times. It's a harder thing to do because it requires you to really dig into lots of different things in your opening, having done your exegetical work and trying to, you know, work all those things out.
Speaker 2:But I think that that's how you're then able to get you know your funnel, if you call it that that people might just go. I've heard something intriguing there and I might just go back and I actually think that the Christmas service can function like the Christmas flyer, like I'm a big believer in just let people keep on hearing. This church is alive in a world where, you know, I feel like in our area again there's another church building that's up for sale and you know that it feels like we're in a world where the churches are closing and people expect churches are closing. People have mates who live in old churches and renovated old churches To put flies in letterboxes just says we're alive, we're alive, we're alive, yeah, and you preach a compelling gospel sermon on Christmas Day and people go.
Speaker 2:Now I understand why 50, 100, 200, 300 people come to this church on a Sunday because that was actually really interesting, and that may well be the thing not that year and not the next year.
Speaker 1:But five years later they'll be at peace. They'll actually just go.
Speaker 2:This makes some more sense for me. Or in the crisis moment they'll go. You know, is the guy, nigel, who preached Christmas Day available?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I've had that in the last 12 months. Now we've talked a fair bit about, if you like, the sizzle. I want to just talk about the sausage, as you do, and I'm thinking at this point about Colossians 4, and pray that I might proclaim it clearly as I should. What does the apostle expect of me on Christmas Day? Do you know what's the bottom line in your staff meeting critique? That you're going to say we didn't get this or we had to get? This what's the sausage you're looking for?
Speaker 2:I mean it's got to be the power of the incarnation as the sort of the starting point of the gospel, but as the appearing of the gospel Like it's got to be, that people are able to leave that church going, I get why Jesus had to actually front up here. I see God's love in this incarnate moment. I understand a bit more for us this year of God's kindness in actually turning up in the flesh. And that again, not that you have people who are you know we won't necessarily preach for a sinner's prayer at the end or something like that but that the gospel is front centre, clear, cloaked in all the glory of Jesus. That would be what I'm looking for.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I love that, nige. I think one of the things I'm always thinking is every person in the room will one day lie in bed, look at the ceiling and ask the question is there a God? And I want to remember they are there and I've got that moment to speak to them, that that memory might come back, so I have an opportunity to speak to them about, and I've got that moment to speak to them that that memory might come back, so I have an opportunity to speak to them about the kind of God that they don't know but might be there. It's the condescension of God, the God who actually puts on a coat of skin to walk amongst it. All that's very significant, but I learned a powerful lesson 10 years ago where I wrote a sermon for Christmas. I thought it was brilliant. It wasn't there's the punchline, it wasn't, but I thought it was brilliant.
Speaker 3:And I worked so hard on articulating sin, but in a way, knowing that half the room weren't converted, I didn't want to use the classic phraseology, I wanted to couch it in different terms about relational breaches and all this sort of stuff that people would understand. Like I did all the cultural work. I preached it. I thought it was great. I got an email a few days later from a guy who said I don't come to your church. He said that was an atrocious sermon. He said my son was a drug addict for 20 years but he came to know the Lord because he understood he was a sinner and what sin was.
Speaker 3:And I remember reading it thinking oh mate, you're an idiot. I remember then feeling very uncomfortable for a week because I thought he was actually right. I think in my desire to be culturally relevant and engaged and thoughtful, I had overstepped the clarity and profundity of the gospel unvarnished. And so the challenge for me is to be engaging and thoughtful and to do all of those things not so helpfully articulated, but not to do it in a way that masks the clarity of who Jesus is, what he's done and what our deepest need is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just want to go. Saviour, lord, repentance, faith. Yeah, that he's my Saviour, so I need to put my trust in him and he's my Lord so I need to repent.
Speaker 3:And however, the categories work out to be.
Speaker 1:I'm wanting those ideas to ring Now. The emphasis might be more on the Saviour and less on the Lord, but in the end, in the staff room, when we review it, did we say Jesus is the Saviour and did we say Jesus is the Lord?
Speaker 2:And could people hear that clearly and could people see what a right response to that might look like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you so much for coming in. My guests on the Pastor's Heart Nigel Fortescue, the Senior Minister of Christ Church St Ives in Sydney's north, and Pete Stedman from Norwest Anglican Church in the northwest of Sydney. My name is Dominic Steele. This has been the Pastor's Heart and we will look forward to your company next Tuesday afternoon.
