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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.
We share personally, pastorally and professionally about how we can best fulfill Jesus' mission to save the lost and serve the saints.
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The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
Paul and Sue Harrington: Lessons on the way - Live from Reach Australia
This week on The Pastor’s Heart, we’re live from the Reach Australia conference at Erina on the Central Coast of New South Wales.
It’s an inspiring gathering, with 1,300 church leaders from across Australia and beyond, including New Zealand, South Africa, America, and the United Kingdom, coming together for encouragement and equipping to better Reach Australia.
Paul Harrington has led the Trinity Network of Churches in Adelaide for 33 years, guiding it from a single congregation of 800 to a thriving network of 13 churches with over 2,600 members.
Sue Harrington is a Reach Australia board member, has been deeply involved in supporting pastors’ wives, families, and women in ministry and runs a consultancy business.
Together, we discuss the lessons learned along the way, the emotional and practical challenges of planting daughter churches, and the role of humility and servant-hearted leadership. We explore the cost and recovery after sending, the evolving nature of church leadership, and the often overlooked but critical support needed for ministry households.
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Hey, there, it is the pastor's heart and we are live from the car park at Reach Australia at Erina on the central coast of New South Wales. The big conference has just got underway. In the auditorium behind us there are300 leaders from across Australia and other countries across two sites here on the Central Coast. I've met leaders from New Zealand, from South Africa, from America and the United Kingdom and what a mood of excitement. Paul and Sue Harrington are with me. We're going to talk lessons along the way from 30 years in senior church leadership. Paul leads the Trinity Network of 13 churches in Adelaide.
Speaker 2:He's done that for 33 years. Yeah, been on staff since 1988.
Speaker 1:And a network of churches that has grown from 800 to 2,600 under Paul's leadership. Sue Harrington's with us as well. She's a board member of Reach Australia and a particular role in supporting pastors, wives, families and teaching women and a longer bio as well. So let's get to our topic of lessons on the way in 33 years leading the network ministry in a moment, but first the pastor's heart as a board member of Reach Australia.
Speaker 3:What a day, oh, what a day Full of thankfulness to God, answers to many prayers, and just full of joy, because we see so many people with the same heartbeat, wanting to see churches grow strong, be out, reaching out to those who don't yet know Jesus, and see new churches planted.
Speaker 2:Paul Harrington, your vibe coming here to the central coast again for Reach Australia yeah, look, I always feel like when I get to this conference I'm with the tribe, you know, and it's not only the national tribe, but an international. Yeah, that's right. It's like being home, you know, with people who have the same heartbeat to reach our nation, the same sense of valuing the scriptures at the heart of that same ministry philosophy. So it's just a joy. Wherever you turn, those are the conversations that you're having.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's great. Lots of conversations I mean, you've been in the multi-site strand and lots of people thinking about what I might do to reach the nation with it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so yesterday we gathered with that sort of multi-site group, so they're pastors of churches but everyone in the room and I think there were 70 or 80 in the room all asking what do we do next? All different situations but everyone thinking how do I take the gospel further in my context? Do I start a new congregation? Do I plant a new church, start a new service? How do we keep making disciples and just seeing the gospel go forward for our nation?
Speaker 1:So one of the things that struck me yesterday and you were talking about some of the DNA at Church, at Trinity, and you were talking about humility and servant-hearted leadership and I just want to give you one of your lines and then ask you to expand. We tell new stuff.
Speaker 3:You'll be given respect and love as a leader at trinity church and you won't have to earn it, but you can lose it absolutely, and what we've seen over the years is um a trust in leaders for the congregations, and they've learned and they've been taught that that is a valuable role and they appreciate that, so they will be given leadership. They don't have to and they appreciate that, so they will be given leadership. They don't have to prove it. They'll be given love, they'll be given affection, they'll be given respect. People will listen. However, you can lose it If you use leadership as a platform for your own ego. If you are using people to achieve your own ends rather than together. We are on this mission, together, rallying people, training people, loving people then you can lose it. And so, yeah, that is very much what we say to people.
Speaker 1:When I heard you say you can lose it, I thought ah, that's a line born of watching. Do you know, Paul? Yeah, and watching people lose it at times, yeah.
Speaker 2:Look, our experience in the Trinity Network is that pastors come in and they love and serve their congregations very well, so it's a rarity for people to lose it. To be quite honest, in our sort of context and I'm surrounded by godly gifted pastors who are servant-hearted, they're humble, that is, they're serving the causes of Christ, not their own. So that's our uniform experience. We have had some situations maybe occasional or whatever where people do their ego gets in the way or they enter into sort of a sinful era which is really self-centred in the end.
Speaker 2:And then they do lose congregations. People who love them want the very best for them, but they can trash that respect if they're not careful.
Speaker 1:Once you've lost that trust, it's just about impossible to get it back.
Speaker 2:It is hard. Look, I think congregations, at least in our part of the world, in our network, are very forgiving. They're very patient, they want the best for their pastors. Our network are very forgiving. They're very patient, they want the best for their pastors and if the pastor takes a stance of humility in the face of error, they will still rally behind them. But it's true, you have to build that trust. It's like putting money in the bank. Over years you can build that bank balance and you can draw on it and you know. Therefore, you know take down deposits as you go, but you can't do that endlessly. You know you've got to be faithful and persist.
Speaker 1:And it struck me, as you were talking about encouraging the pastor to have a posture of thankfulness towards the congregation, just noting they pay our wages, absolutely, absolutely, and what a privilege that is um for the whole pastor's household.
Speaker 3:So, you know, I've often said to kids isn't it wonderful the way that the church has enabled us to be in this house, or isn't it wonderful that, um, yeah, and and to actually specifically, paul specifically thanks the congregation at at points that he's able to, um, you know, free up his time so that he can do this work.
Speaker 1:I mean, even we think about this weekend or this week here, that our little staff team of six or seven of us.
Speaker 1:We're here, we're set aside. We have the privilege, paid for by Village Church, to come and attend and grow, and not just grow in our practice but grow in our love for God, our understanding of him. That's a privilege. That's a privilege. It's a real privilege. I'm very thankful for it. Paul, as you were speaking yesterday and you've planted 13 churches and some of them multi-generational. You just spoke at one point of watching one of your pastors as they planted a church and lost a third of their people to someone else. And then they're given, a couple of years later, a third of their people to someone else and then, a couple of years later, a third of their people to someone else, and you just say I don't think I can do it to this guy again. And I just resonated with that line of I mean not that we've done that three times, but just seeing the cost of investing in people's lives and in them. Do you?
Speaker 2:want to yeah sure. So it's happened a few times now in our network. Because we plant churches, that plant churches. So often people are in a situation where they might have sent out multiple church plants and the on paper.
Speaker 1:Mechanically it looks very sensible, but the and you made it look very sensible with all those graphs, that's right.
Speaker 2:You can see the logic of it and yet the human cost associated with it, both of the congregation. Every time we send a new church out, the congregation's left behind. There's a level of sadness. I think Sue said this yesterday and it'd be a shame if they weren't sad. You know that loss. But for the pastor, I think there's two things going on. One is the loss of people and the sense of you know sending away people you love and you've invested in. And then the other side of it is sort of going back to a point where you're rebuilding over the same space and that sense of oh, we're back at this point again and we need to keep growing from here. And I think both those are quite strenuous in that planting space, especially for the sending pastor.
Speaker 1:Yeah, especially for the sending pastor. Yeah, I mean and you did talk about the sense of it feels to the sending church as if it costs me more than what the receiving church thinks they got. I'll take that for me Well.
Speaker 2:So the people who are getting up and going they're getting up and going, you know, like there's a lot of energy. It's the new thing, it's the exciting frontier work. It's strenuous, but you're breaking new ground. The people who are left behind. There's a sense of breathness. You know the sense of uh, loss without the sense of newness and I I think that's a difficult space. So what we, what we found we need to do, is when there's a church that's sending, uh, we've worked out that that sending church needs to renew their commitment to a mission. You know the purpose that they're on about. So there's sort of a church plant group that gets up and goes and a church staying group that gets up and reinvents itself with that sense of opportunity and potential.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I was talking to one church in our network here in Sydney, one church leader and they've just sent 80 people down the road to plant something. I mean he's feeling that at the moment, but it's the first time through the cycle for him. What's your advice for him as a young minister?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. I remember the first time we planted and I was saying this yesterday we sent about 80 people to a church plant and so that left about 700, 730 people at the home church.
Speaker 1:You can't relate to my problems at all.
Speaker 2:There's this large group that's left behind. But when we got there it was like oh no, there's only 730 of us. You sort of think what is going on here.
Speaker 1:Get over yourself. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2:I don't think it matters the size, but for a young pastor, sending off face up to that cost and think it's normal. So it's appropriate to feel that loss and then to be reflecting on how we lead into the new space that we're in as a home church. So the the recapturing of the sense of the core vision that we're on about to reach people for christ. Uh, we've now got space that new people can come into. It's exactly why we did it and our experience of church planting is we send off 80.
Speaker 1:Normally within 12 to 18 months they've been replaced you were telling me you felt like the giving bounced back faster than the numbers of people bounced back. Yes, explain that to me.
Speaker 2:So this is our experience. When we plant, people get on board with that planting. The ones that go, they step up in their commitment financially because they're totally sold out on the mission. The work we then do with the Mother Church and the sending people realise that they need to step up too because they're sold out on that vision to reach new people through planting. They do that in two ways. The people who remain they step up in terms of ministry service because they see there are now gaps in the teams that need to be replaced. So people then emerge in that way. But also financially they see the value of us reaching new people with the gospel. So the mother church people step up financially and that normally happens before the new people join the church, who then might take 12 months to 18 months to become members and financial belonging. So there's that. But you get the locals, then that commission.
Speaker 2:You know that mission to reach new people means new people do turn up there and we start to replenish our numbers in that sort of way with new gospel work on the home church front.
Speaker 1:I mean, I take it for you as overseeing the network as 13,. You don't really feel the grief if they move from site X to site Y, but it's the actual.
Speaker 3:You still get to see them, you still get to see them.
Speaker 2:Well, that's right Right now. That's true. I think in the early days we were in the mother church and so we'd sent off. I was essentially the senior pastor of that church. We sent off four times and there was a pain. I think you did feel that great four times. Yeah, so I did. I did that early on. But these days, of course, what we do is we soon go around the network.
Speaker 2:We normally spend three to four weeks in each church, and the joy is we reconnect with old friends that we've known for decades. We're in this church, still serving, still growing, and then we meet a whole stack of new people that we've never met before, and there's enormous joy in that too. So you see a church pressing forward, old friends. We always feel at home wherever we are in the network, but we're always meeting people we've never met before.
Speaker 1:Now church planting versus multi-site and the person we're going to talk to Wade Burnett about this. But what's your view about the different person you're looking for, sue, do you?
Speaker 3:want to weigh in on this. I think if it is a church plant that is not networked, then you need somebody who's got much more entrepreneurial skills Right. They need to be able to start sort of create something from you and they want to. They want to. But I think if you're part of a network or a multi-site and Trinity would call ourselves a church planting network with multi-site aspects so a lot of things are done centrally accounting and safe ministry and all those things that might help. Team players, people who love being part of the Trinity Network, have the Trinity Network DNA and, you know, just want to see more of the same in a way. But each but you want them to be creative in their own spot in a ministry sense. So character for everyone, of course.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're taking for granted character, convictions and competency at that point yeah, now attendance. I was really interested. You put up a graph of attendance and there was a dip in COVID, as one would expect.
Speaker 3:Yes, but if I closed my eyes?
Speaker 1:to 2020 and 2021, it actually looked like that way a straight line going up, and so you've recovered from COVID. Covid, well, and it's almost as if it looks on the graph, as almost as if covid didn't happen is that?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, I think that's been our experience.
Speaker 1:See, I mean which, which I just wanted to push into that because we've had all this stuff from the uk about almost a revival or a quiet revival and that kind of thing. And I just thought you're you're overseeing 13 churches here. You're keeping a pulse check on attendance. What's your sense of are we? Are you seeing something different spiritually in the air?
Speaker 2:I. I do think here in australia we've hit a different spot. So when I, you know, was a young convert, uh, I was encountering people who says we're talking 1980s, a long time ago. But, uh, encountering people who'd had some talking 1980s a long time ago, but encountering people who'd had some church background experience, and I felt like I almost, in evangelism, needed to dismantle those sort of preconceptions and then replace it with with gospel.
Speaker 2:You know, information these days we're encountering a lot of people who have no previous church understanding. So you're starting with a blank piece of paper you know, like to inform and to give that sort of insight into. So my take right now in Adelaide is that there's a real openness to the gospel and a comfort to engage with those sort of ideas. One of our churches has started up a read Mark to Mark one to one with people project and they want everyone in the congregation to want to read Mark with somebody else. And when the pastor told me that's what they're doing, I thought this is pie in the sky, you know, getting a congregation to do this and I've been proven totally wrong. There's a whole lot of people who have asked their friend, do you want to read Mark's Gospel with me and they've said, yes, you know all ages, all stages. I'm thinking that would never have happened, even a decade ago.
Speaker 2:But a willingness to stop and engage.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what we're seeing Are you noticing a gender difference there and are you noticing a generational difference? I mean there's been talk about, is it gen z? Is it the baby boomers? Yeah, not the baby, but the one down, yeah yeah, with that mark one to one example.
Speaker 2:it's across the generations. Interestingly enough, if I was trying to pick generationally, I think the you know the the blank slate people religiously are definitely at the younger end of things, probably that sub-30, sub-35 group definitely, and yet the older group are rethinking things. I sat with an 82-year-old woman last year who'd been converted two years prior and she'd been in an Anglican church all her life and then a friend, who pretty well worked out that she wasn't a Christian, said look, why don't I come to your church? And then why didn't she come to my church?
Speaker 1:And that's what happened so?
Speaker 2:she turned up at 80 years old thought, oh, I've never sort of heard the Bible taught like this. Joined a Christianity Explored group and the person running that she explained to him that she had lots of questions about Christianity, like the resurrection Jesus' resurrection bodily from the dead. But she'd been in a church and the pastor had told her it was fine for her not to believe, that that was okay. And this guy running Christianity Explored said to her look, you don't have to believe Jesus rose from the dead bodily, but you can't call yourself a Christian if you don't. And she thought that's right, I can't. And so she thought she better become a Christian. And so we're hearing stories across the age groups, even from people who've got that sort of background but really want you know, substantial, gutsy, real Bible and real Jesus.
Speaker 1:Now planting a number of daughter churches. They all began, and then they all became teenagers at once. What do you mean by that? Where do you go first?
Speaker 3:Well, just like a teenager, they want more independence, and so we. So it was important to restructure so that you could keep growing, and so, in the end, we made the mother church and the planted churches all on the same level and put a border on top of that, which is all on the same level and put a border on top of that. So just needing to keep changing and moving so that people didn't become more and more disconnected from the centre, because we wanted our planted churches to plant again and to plant again.
Speaker 1:Well, that would mean you'd, and so so at one level you do think there is a mother church, and at another level you think they're all at the same level.
Speaker 3:Exactly exactly.
Speaker 2:I think that's right. So when we started planting, we really weren't making it up. As we went along, we didn't have much idea what we were doing at all, and so we traded a lot on relationships, which is a good thing to do.
Speaker 1:So we had strong relationships, confident ministry modelling, but but I mean, there is something about you, paul, in that.
Speaker 2:I mean I think I've known you 25 years and I've always thought of you as a father figure, you know I've been old before my time, and so we're in that space and then worked out, though, that we hadn't put any you know, clarity arounding about the framework for how we related, and the ambiguity there was starting to catch us out.
Speaker 2:We kept hitting things we'd never struck before and hadn't worked out what the answers were to. So we spent a lot of time having to do all those new situational decision-making, and so we got to a point where we thought we need better clarity, and in fact we should have had better clarity from the start and then worked it out later on. We should have. So we had to then bring back that clarity into what we were doing without restricting the ability of those churches to grow.
Speaker 1:So I mean, one of the things I think I've heard you say is that we've had to move through several eras of governance. And I mean I think say is that we've had to move through several eras of governance and it I mean I think it's quite liberating from some of the others doing multi-site to think, oh, some of the issues we're having are the same.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they had yeah yeah, and that's I mean. I'm often talking to people who are looking at us and learning from the things we did wrong. Yeah, which is really good. What else did we do wrong that you want to share? Too many to number? Well, one of the things we did wrong, which is really good.
Speaker 3:What else did we do wrong that you want to share Too many to number? Well, one of the things was not to have a mission at home as well as a mission away, that was a major factor.
Speaker 1:Unpack that for us, yeah.
Speaker 3:Just the importance of the left behinds not feeling like we're the left behinds Right okay. And also for the sent church to realise that they need to send back stories, because if you ever want the mother church to send again, they've got to know it's worth it. And so, even though they've set those people free to minister, they need to be encouraged and so to be grateful. So a sense of gratefulness, the sent church, we are grateful to the sending church and we want to tell them stories. We want to tell them why it was worthwhile, why did you say that I'm doing?
Speaker 1:the day I went to capitol hill baptist, they were actually hearing all those reports from plants that you know they'd done.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's good, I know. In our northern region we've got a church we planted in 2010 that's planted three times since those four churches. Each year they get together for a big celebration and they just tell stories you know what god has been doing and it helps. All of them know they're in it together and the mother church in that context, the one planted in 2010, all the people who go. Yeah, that's why we did it. It was, it came at a cost, but it's been really worthwhile now let me push you around a bit.
Speaker 1:Is multi-site biblical? Somebody's going to say knox robinson view of church. Yeah, what's your answer there?
Speaker 2:yeah, so the? The answer is oh, there's probably a lot of ways to know what is the knox robinson view of church? Yeah, so. So knox robinson view of church is that the essentially, practically the local church is the centre of all activity now and the people of God are in the heavenly realms Ephesians 1, gathering around the throne of Christ, the heavenly and the local. So there is I mean, knox Robinson was complex, but essentially giving high-level autonomy to the local church.
Speaker 2:When you come to a multi-site space, then what you're talking about is a series of churches, higher level autonomy to the local church. When you come to a multi-site space, then what you're talking about is a series of churches that are connected together and the question becomes around the local autonomy of a church, the local leadership of a church. Is that ceded to something like a denominational structure? Does that take away from the local church? They're the practical sort of questions I think that people are asking and they've got theological undergirdings. What's your reply?
Speaker 2:The reply is in our context, what we have is a board that sits over the top of the network that delegates enormous local autonomy to the local church, and the idea is that that leadership team is making at the local church level, lots of ministry decisions, and the task of the board is to provide for that local church as well as possible to free them up to do ministry. So what we then have is a series of local churches that choose to be part of a network because they see the value of cooperating together for a bigger kingdom outcome, and so I think there's not a loss of local church identity but a strength through collaboration and partnership with others to achieve a wider set of goals, and I think that's very healthy.
Speaker 3:And quite biblical.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and biblical as well. Yeah. Now, one of the questions you were asked yesterday was wider set of goals, and I think that's very healthy and quite biblical.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and biblical as well, yeah, yeah one of the questions you were asked yesterday was uh, I mean, essentially you're operating now as a network of churches, but you were, I mean, even before you started. You were the strongest church in adelaide, you know, um, uh, but you're a healthy network operating in a sick diocese, spiritually sick diocese. What if one was operating in a healthy diocese and the question was, thinking, in Sydney, where I am, what would your advice be to such a person?
Speaker 2:So the context is very different. I think I said yesterday, if we were in Sydney with the same sort of church, I doubt we would have done what we've done in Sydney, what we've done in Adelaide. I think it is a very different context. However, there's some principles at the heart of it that are worth thinking through, particularly in that area of partnership. Particularly in that area of partnership and also allowing churches that are healthy to keep multiplying in their space and making sure that whatever structure you're involved in, whether it's, yeah, whatever denominational you know ecclesiology, you have there's capacity to flex to enable that to occur. So my comment would be in lots of spots there tends to be a church siloing, a church isolationism, which is healthy. There's an ownership and a local focus on ministry, but it tends to militate against partnerships and the ability to multiply into a wider space. I mean, the searching force has been important, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Collaboration he's the one.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I catch up with Archie fairly often and I think you're right Archie's view would be in a Sydney sort of context. He's saying I'm not sure we're really good for kingdom purposes playing ball on the sandpit together and we don't have probably the infrastructure to do it, the expectations do it, the expectations around it and the support to enable that to occur. And I think Archie's onto something it's worth thinking through for the sake of multiplication of disciples, kingdom growth, how we stretch into that space better.
Speaker 1:I mean you talked yesterday about the rule books in Sydney and the way we structure leadership is designed for churches stretch into that space better. You talked yesterday about the rule books in Sydney and the way we structure leadership is designed for churches of 211 people. You're quite precise about that, and you used words like cumbersomely protective, guarded and distributed.
Speaker 2:So when I got home, Sue told me I slipped into high privilege.
Speaker 2:So I'm really glad we're now recording this to the benefit of lots of people. So let me, let me speak into that space, but you did it just us. No one's listening. My comment is that I think there's a great strength in denominational frameworks that support churches, but they. The difficulty with large frameworks and healthy denominations like Sydney, uh, you know, and I have lots of friends, uh, in the Sydney sort of context is that they probably don't helpfully stretch for different size churches and different ministry sort of context. They and it's often difficult for a denomination to be agile enough and flexible enough to stretch into new sort of ministry. Now, in the city context, you know, I think anglicans, they've got lots of greenfields projects. They've also got brownfields, you know, projects as well. So there's a lot of that happening, I think, in a good way.
Speaker 2:I think the question that, say, someone like archie would ask is whether we've set up structures that do actually help that appropriate collaboration. So you come to a rich australia conference. That's what it's all about. You know, we're learning from each other, we're in this space. Uh, denominational structures aren't generally set up, I think, to achieve that sort of outcome and need reviewing. The thing is, I know in a Sydney context that's happening all the time, but it's difficult to get there and I think that the rule book often is set up to protect against failure and it guards it really well, not necessarily to provide lots of incentive to try things that are creative. Yeah, that's right and that that'd be my broad comment. But let me say you know, having heard my wife, I am speaking really wisely from a long way away. You know it's, it's easy to you know, sort of jump into that pond and have a and then get on a plane and go home.
Speaker 1:So grab your briefcase. Managing conflict. I mean you've talked about conflict with your archbishop. You've talked about um. I mean I imagine there's conflict with peers and then conflict with people below you. Give me some wisdom there.
Speaker 2:The thing I've learnt over the years and I think I'm still learning it is that when I'm in conflict with someone, I'm trying to work out is it a core gospel conflict or is it a disagreement about a directional purpose, trying to have that high-level distinction on what we're talking about. I'll always fight about the gospel with somebody. I say fight. I'm prepared to engage and disagree in that sort of space because I think it's so important. So I mentioned an archbishop that I went and saw because he publicly said he didn't believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead and I was deeply concerned about that and felt I needed to show up in person and talk to him about that. Talk to him about repenting, that's right. Lots of situations.
Speaker 1:And resigning. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2:But over the years what I've worked at in Christian circles is people can have very strong opinions about not very important things and at that point I think my approach has been to say I see, you find this important, but we are not going to fight about it, it's not worth a fight, and I've tended to try and diffuse a lot of that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:And when I've not been able to diffuse it, I go to a place like 2 Timothy 2, you know, where Timothy's encouraged to patiently deal with those he disagrees with you know who disagree with him and try to be patient in working through what the Bible says, what we agree on, the areas that we have disagreement on, whether they're secondaries or tertiaries, just to try and do that sort of patient work with people and to try and diffuse situations so we can talk about those things. It's been the same with archbishops, been the same with peers, same with staff that I've worked with and allowing for the fact that we can come to different conclusions on things and that's absolutely fine in some areas and then working out where are the areas that I have a little more fixedness in my thinking about, where we need to go and working that through. So, yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 3:The things that are harder are where it's keen gospel people that there's conflict with if it's Paul's had a lot of flack over the years from people who probably don't actually believe the gospel and that you can wear. It's not pleasant but you can wear and it's and the opposite is great joy when there is people that are coming alongside and saying look, yes, you are planting in the same area, but we want more people to come to know Jesus. Yeah, and they're not threatened, and that brings great joy and pleasure.
Speaker 3:So, there's the conflict, you know. Someone is saying how dare you plant here? But then there's the other keen gospel person who says we want 10 more churches in this area because we are praying for the whole area and we can't do it all.
Speaker 2:So I think for me, the really hard point in conflict is when there are people who are very close, where we have a level of falling out. That's the time when I lose sleep, that's the time where I am concerned, that's the time I'm trying to make sure we don't. So the closer they are, you know, the closer in leadership, that's you know where I, that's where I find it hard.
Speaker 3:The other thing I think is good advice that Paul gives people and we both sort of chat to people. You want to give a certain airspace and a certain heart space to a conflict and not let it take over the whole of everything. Because you know the squeaky wheel idea there's somebody that's unhappy and you feel like everybody's against something, but there will always be a few, and just giving it loving, caring, enough attention, but not letting that take over the whole.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one of the things that just struck me about your presentation was how little you've invested in property over the whole. Yeah, one of the things that just struck me about, uh, your presentation was how little you've invested in property over the years and um, and that the property investment, whether it's the building project, whatever, is going to slow momentum, at least in the short term you know, do you want to unpack that for us?
Speaker 2:yeah. So we have a, an you know established property in the city, but of the 14 churches that's the only one that has an un-fellows. Do the others still show us? Well, I think they do. Sometimes you have those who've gone out into the church planning world saying I mean, I got sick of the driving things to the site. Packing up.
Speaker 2:I just thought I am over this and I think there are people in the church planting world looking back at the city and saying you guys don't know how good it is. So that experience varies a bit. But when we started planting it just seemed more sensible to try and find flexible spaces to move into and we've just kept doing that. So we have 13 in rented facilities and that comes with a certain risk, that is, if we lose property because there's some sort of conflict or change of policy. That could be incredibly problematic, especially if it happens all at once. And yet it's given us an agility and flexibility to move into spaces and to get appropriate facilities. The other thing is we're continuing to find that people come to us especially non-Christian, they're going to give you their property.
Speaker 1:Well, that's true.
Speaker 2:That is true, but I'm thinking individuals who turn up at buildings and actually feel more at home in a building that's not a church building, ah right, and so, evangelistically, there's some benefits to that. Buildings and actually feel more at home in a building that's not a church building, and I so, evangelistically, there's some benefits to that.
Speaker 1:Yet I for us I mean we spoke to glenn scrivener the other week and he said and I as a on the younger end of the baby boomers, I kind of recoiled against the idea. But he said there's definitely a thing with the gen z of wanting the rootedness of traditional and and they're not going to get that in the school hall, no, where someone like me who's just thought I have a false gospel and all that trapping. I don't want that. No, yeah. But he that Jim does want something about the universe.
Speaker 2:It's a bit of both, and I remember that we were in a Gothic church building in the city with our evening congregation and running out of space, and I said we ought to move to something that's bigger and smaller.
Speaker 2:But a lot of the people a few years ago in that meeting time were saying no, we like it here Really, and that is the boomer difference, I think for sure. And so there is that factor of being able to adapt. The other thing about church you know about school halls meeting for church is we've worked out they're not designed for church. Yeah, designed for basketball, that's right. So the acoustics so there are lots of downsides. Design for basketball, that's right. So the acoustics so there are lots of downsides. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1:Sweaty socks smell, you know, like there's a lot of put off and I just thought I'm not going to be able to get the young professionals that I'm seeking to reach to this place that stinks of denka rub, yeah, yeah and and so we've.
Speaker 2:We do know that, even if we're renting, the facility we rent has an impact on how we especially for unbelievers, how we make it a space that they want to come to. It's not the gospel, but it's helpful to get to the gospel. Last words, Sue Harrington.
Speaker 3:Oh, it's just a joy and a privilege to be involved in this work, and we have a great God who wants people to be saved.
Speaker 2:It's something for us. Me it's wanting to see more and more gospel work happening. That's why it's so good to be here at Reach Australia and be surrounded by people who have that same heartbeat to take the gospel out, so it's been a great week.
Speaker 1:Thanks for talking to us on the Pastor's Heart. Thanks Pleasure, thanks all. And Sue Harrington and Paul of course, leads the Trinity Network of 13 churches right across Adelaide in South Australia, and Sue Harrington a whole range of things, but particularly board member on the Reach Australia Network. My name's Dominic Steele. You've been with us on the Pastors Heart and we'll look forward to your company next Tuesday afternoon.
