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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.
The discussion is broadcast live on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/thepastorsheart">Facebook</a> then on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@ThePastorsHeart">YouTube</a> and on our <u><b><a href="http://www.thepastorsheart.net">thepastorsheart.net</a></u></b> website and via audio podcast.
The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
Beyond the Crisis: Global Perspectives on a training culture for the next generation
A training culture for the next generation: Healthy Churches producing new ministers for the next generation.
Across the world, the number of candidates putting themselves forward for gospel ministry is in decline. Many churches are feeling the pinch—struggling to find leaders and often looking elsewhere to fill ministry gaps.
Yet healthy churches don’t just maintain ministry; they reproduce it. They raise up and send out the next generation of gospel workers.
This week in Sydney, a group of evangelical movement leaders from across the globe have gathered to sharpen one another in this task: creating a culture of training that will multiply gospel workers for the decades ahead.
The shift they are calling for is from passively plotting decline to actively asking, What are we going to do?—and then taking decisive steps toward it.
We’re joined this afternoon by three of those symposium participants. From the UK, Robin Sydserff of the Proclamation Trust.
From Santiago, Chile, Matt Pope—pastor and trainer of pastors in five Latin American countries, formerly of St Ebbe’s in Oxford.
And from Cleveland, Ohio, Marty Sweeny—pastor for training at Old North Church and long-time champion of multiplying ministry apprentices.
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a training culture for the next generation. It is the pastor's heart. It's dominic steel. Thanks for joining us. Churches that are producing new ministers for the next generation. Last week, on the pastor's heart, we spoke to orlando sayer about the drop in candidates for ministry and then the consequential closure of a number of theological colleges.
Speaker 1:This week in Sydney, a group of evangelical movement leaders have gathered from across the world to sharpen each other in the process of raising up a new generation of gospel ministers. Three of those symposium participants are with us this afternoon. Robin Sidserth is with us from the Proclamation Trust in the United Kingdom. Matt Pope is here from Santiago in Chile. He pastors well pastors himself, but is also working with pastors from five countries in Latin America. He's formerly of St Ebbs in Oxford in the UK. And Marty Sweeney is with us as well, from Cleveland, ohio, pastor of training at Old North Church. Robin, let's start with you and your pastor's heart. And well, firstly, just this week, meeting with pastors from across the world who are engaged in this same process, I take it it's been extraordinarily stimulating.
Speaker 2:Thank you, dominic. Thank you for having us on. This is my first visit to Sydney and it's been a wonderful experience for me, meeting with my colleagues from around the world. But let me just highlight what's most encouraged me, perhaps meeting two young men called Harry. Both called Harry, both with the great privilege of growing up in Christian homes. But to meet these two young men, zealous, hungry, humble to serve the Lord with their lives, is such an encouragement when you're here to think together about how to address the crisis we're facing, certainly in the UK, to raise up gospel workers, and that's been a hugely inspiring thing. Not just my colleagues from around the world, but the generation of people that we're seeking to pray will give their lives to gospel work, because you spent last weekend with I don't know how many hundreds of uni students yeah, 350, yeah 350 uni students from the University of New South Wales who are considering gospel ministry full-time.
Speaker 1:Matt, you are nodding. That must have done you good. It's amazing.
Speaker 4:I think the big thing that's encouraged my heart since we've been here just spending time with these guys and others doing basically the same thing all around the world discipling people and discipling people to help people disciple others and just seeing actually the model works like what Jesus did. What the Vine Project talks about is just working all around the world and it's been just thrilling to know that God's plan is just popping up everywhere, producing leaders everywhere that are running churches. I'm delighted.
Speaker 5:Marty, yes, I think they. I come from a very small area outside of Cleveland Ohio, and our metropolitan area is just a few hundred thousand people, and yet we still have tens of thousands of people who are lost. And so I know it's oft used at the end of Matthew 9, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. But we need more laborers for the harvest, and so my heart is to see those people reached for Jesus, and so we need more workers.
Speaker 1:What surprised you as you come here, man.
Speaker 4:If I'm honest, I found it very comfortable coming from Santiago. I just think the life is very comfortable. The amount of restaurants here, man, if I'm honest, I found it very comfortable coming from Santiago. I just think the life is very comfortable. The amount of restaurants here, there and everywhere. It just it was a shock to me if I'm honest, the affluence, the comfort.
Speaker 1:I think for me Hard to long for heaven when you.
Speaker 4:Just a shock, I don't know. Obviously there's suffering and pain and everything in people's lives. That's what makes us long for heaven. But uh, coming here flying in, and I was in newtown, I wasn't in the poshest of areas and it just felt like, wow, this is uh, this is different robin I think one thing that struck me, dominic because, is a kind of intentionality.
Speaker 2:Um, I came, uh, you know, way back hearing about the 10 vision of philip and and others.
Speaker 2:It's a bold vision, it's a clear vision and so much has happened here for good and bless the world.
Speaker 2:And and now that vision isn't being changed, it, it's just being given impetus, like the double where we are and move on by, so on and so forth. And what I picked up is none of the sense of complacency there might be, but amongst that group up the mountain in the rain, just a real hunger and a real drive to step up and to reach out and to reach forward to see more people trained for gospel work. I didn't really know what to expect, but that has really struck me that there is a real godly ambition, a humble godly ambition to multiply workers for this country and around the world. And I want to take some of that infectious, confident enthusiasm back to a tough context in the UK. It's not easy, but the Lord promises to build his church and we pray that he will raise up a generation of workers and we want to try and shape the pathways to enable him to do that. So I'll take back a big dose of confidence from time here.
Speaker 5:Marty, I had never been to UNSW and so spending a whole day there on Wednesday. We were with hundreds of students who've been in lectures all week doing work, and yet they would show up for an hour long exposition, an hour long training core seminar. It was so encouraging. I was surprised that you know it's easy to have that, you know generational condescension and think the gen z, gen z, gen z.
Speaker 1:uh, I've given it to you who says yeah, sorry about that, I'll contextualize gen z that they're out there crossing the culture. To me that's good for an american right. Yeah, you don't. You normally cross the culture.
Speaker 5:To me that's good for an American right, yeah, you normally cross the culture, but to see them giving up a Wednesday afternoon with everything else they have, going on to listen, learn, and to see the student workers there at Uni Church and CBS do the work, it was wonderfully surprising. I heard about it but I never saw it. It was great, right, yeah, but I never saw it.
Speaker 1:It was great, Right. Yeah, Robin, we had Orlando here a week ago and he led that Yanton report in the United Kingdom and you were just saying to me a moment ago that that report when it was presented a year ago at that conference centre to that group in the UK, that really marked a turning to that group in the UK. That really marked a turning point in discussion in the United Kingdom.
Speaker 2:Could you unpack that for us? Yeah, I think in the past lots of events have been convened to talk about how we arrest the decline, for example, but that day maybe 40 or 50 of us gathered, I can't remember exactly. There was a kind of spirit of humility. I remember the fellow who kicked the day off, stood up and did a short Bible exposition and he'd had an operation, I think, on his leg or his foot and he had a stick and it was very it kind of described how we felt. We were moved by it. It was a godly day, a humble day.
Speaker 2:Somebody Adrian Reynolds, who works for the FIC, said we've lost the confidence that ministry is a noble task. All these problems and over the course of the day there began to be a sense that we can move forward much better working together than we can on our own. Now we left the day encouraged, but what's happened since is concrete expression of that day. And what's happened since is 16 or so network leaders or stakeholders in training have begun to work together in the UK they represent the training colleges, the training churches, the hub churches to develop a kind of vision and strategy, a common pathway to think about raising up gospel workers and in God's it's working. Now we have in the UK a context which is pretty close to a crisis in the last few years.
Speaker 1:I've watched from a far stretch of my head. You're well aware of that.
Speaker 2:And, ironically, when the Church of England, for example, is in such a difficult place, it would be hugely tempting to say let's wait and see what the future will be. But raising up a generation of workers, creating pathways for them through this complex time, along with a vibrant FIC, folks like Orlando and others, 20 years and a whole generation will be lost, and that collaborative work is happening and that is hugely. It's not easy, but it's happening and it's encouraging, and being out here with some of the folks involved in that, like Orlando, has helped us. You know, when you come away from your own context, you can see it with freshness and clarity and we go back with that real, buoyant encouragement.
Speaker 2:The other thing about coming here is there's a very important bridge in the world as far as UK evangelicalism is concerned and that's Sydney and Australia. Keep going Now. Peter Philip Jensen, cole Marshall, dick Lucas, john Stott, and all my instincts, having been here, is that bridge between Sydney and the UK and South Africa and South America will be critically important going forward. It's just partnership, such a vital thing, and to come here and discover that people here are thinking and praying the same thing, not to come out of a crisis like us, but to take all the growth that you have and to take a step on. It might just be that God is aligning something across the world that's exciting. So that was a significant day.
Speaker 1:It was a supernatural event, it was a moving day and it was a day of real gospel unity and they've been rare in in in the uk and we are working together as leaders, which is great matt, you are in san diego, you've got an eye for five South American countries, but you've also got your roots back in Oxford and 10 years at St Ebbs, and so I mean, let's get your reflections about the UK, but also about Latin America.
Speaker 4:Well, I think it's exactly what Robin was saying. But the reality is the thing that's been exciting in Latin America here seeing movement, seeing progression is actually the model that the Bible gives us is really simple. So it starts with. I'm not saying ministry is simple, of course ministry's got complex things. But actually how do you raise up leaders? Well, the church leader, one person, needs to start with himself, just what the Vine Project talks about. You work on your own convictions. You're a man in a place where you love the Lord, you're praying, you're discipling yourself, you're discipling your family.
Speaker 4:Step two we disciple someone, anyone, whether that's 72, like Jesus did, or the 12, or the three, or the one In our context, we normally work with one or two or three. Walk alongside someone, share your life with them, share your faith with them, disciple them. But I think the missing step in lots of our discipleship is the next bit. You disciple them, we disciple them so that they can disciple others. So in my ministry, the stuff I do, I've just got one line I teach pastors. When you're reading the Bible with someone, just ask them, how would you pass this on to someone else? And that one line gets them thinking about. It. Gets them thinking about oh, I need to be passing this on, and then I encourage them to do it with someone else. Now often people say I've not got the tools. I come back to them and say well, every week we've been meeting, I've been asking you how do you pass this on to someone else? You've been telling me you can do it easily and from that I've seen small churches change, bigger churches turn around, just by one man loving the Lord, longing that he can help someone else, so that that person can help someone else. We do all these trainings for pastors to have apprenticeships in their churches and a question that used to come back to us over and over again was how do I get there? How can I have an apprentice? There's no one in my church to be the apprentice.
Speaker 4:I think the thing we've all seen in our context is you start with anyone if they're breathing Like you start with someone and you work hard with them. You disciple them so that they can disciple someone else. You'll get leaders for all your groups. You'll get leaders for this, that and the other. You'll get your apprentice. You'll get your church planter, you'll get someone to go into college and the conference stuff was so exciting to see Lift Lift and I hear people say, oh, but it's university settings. Yeah, that's amazing, but the university churches aren't the places. So I've seen it work in small churches, medium churches, big church, nothing to do with universities, and I feel, I feel we're scared of the diagnosis. If my church, our churches, your church isn't raising up your own apprentices, isn't sending your own people to college, maybe just go very simple, work on yourself, meet with one person, small group, so that they can meet with others.
Speaker 1:Marty Sweeney, I'm seeing you're not over there.
Speaker 5:Well, I just wanted to add in it was interesting In our setting in Ohio we didn't have a university ministry. We started with a training ministry, internal. An apprenticeship grew out of that and then from that grew a university ministry. So the accusation it can only work there is actually reversed. For us the university ministry grew out of our training culture.
Speaker 4:And maybe it will hurt other cultures. If you're looking for a university ministry to give you your apprentices, actually that will fill your need now, but it won't help the church in the long run. It won't help a city, and what we really want is the gospel to go to the world wherever we are. It's not just here, it's everywhere.
Speaker 1:Roman, I think you were saying to me before that there's a sense for the pastor to think I'm so busy, there's so many people, I've got to do this, I've got to do that, I've got to do this, and there's so much internal fire. The whole raising up of the next generation is somebody else's problem and the bigger church's problem.
Speaker 2:People look back to the beginnings of the Proclamation Trust in the UK and the seminal addresses given by people like Jim Packer, Philip Jensen, the mid-80s Philip came across and he managed to say something profoundly important Do what the Lord says you're to do and don't do the things the Lord doesn't tell you to do. Now, that was hard to hear.
Speaker 1:You were there for that. No, I was too young.
Speaker 2:No, I wasn't there and I wasn't in that world. But it comes to you, it gets passed on. And that constant battle in pastoral ministry to do the things God has given you to do. What we've been looking at this week is is training and raising up gospel workers normal or exceptional? And what we saw is Jesus trained the 12. Paul said to Timothy come with me, and he trained him and then he sent him away. He gave him lots of short-term mission trips on the way and the pattern in the pastals, it's normal pattern. It's normal pattern.
Speaker 2:Now I was a pastor of a church that grew from very little to become a strong training culture. In God's kindness, I fought that battle again and again and again and again. And there are times in pastoral ministry where I wanted to be in a training session and because a pastoral thing comes on, you drop the training and you go and sit at the bedside. It's not either or. But over time, when a healthy culture develops, you equip lots of people to care for people pastorally. Now, with me as minister, when it was death and dying, it was always me. That was a precious thing to me. But but the bible says go and make disciples of all nations. Equip and enable people in your church to be disciple, making disciples from that group. Gospel workers to be trained will emerge. Send them away.
Speaker 3:Send them away so a healthy church is not just a reach and a build.
Speaker 2:It's got to be a reach and a build and a train and ascend. When you do that, god wonderfully helps with the other stuff. What we're looking at in the UK is many examples of churches with a healthy culture of trade. Now, a number of them are university churches and one thing we said today over lunch is that perhaps if you're in a university setting you've got a an extra degree of responsibility to serve the church. But there are wonderful examples across the uk many of them of churches miles away from these settings gently, quietly raising up gospel workers. Another expression of that is say you did an apprenticeship in one particular or you grew up in a church and experienced somewhere else, in another church, in a suburb, whatever is vitally important and that just comes through partnership and connections, giving people that experience. It's a great question, dominic, because I battle with that every day of my life as a pastor, but I thank God that talks like Philip's helped me to say this is not just an optional thing, this is a key thing to do for the future of the gospel.
Speaker 2:When you look at churches the healthy training culture the danger is you go to the ones that are. I mean, we were at Campus Bible. So it's 50 and a half years old. It's a long time. Some of the most inspiring stuff we're seeing. You go to a church with a healthy culture and they say we'll go and speak to this young minister who's one or two years in to establishing that healthy culture and you describe what they are doing and that's accessible, because I can do that, because they're starting off. It's not this sort of grand plan after 50 years and it is the power of one. They're meeting off. It's not this sort of grand plan after 50 years and it is the power of one. They're meeting up with two or three people and they're beginning to create a healthy culture in their church.
Speaker 5:But it's intentional. It's the intentionality Because one of the things people don't really care much about America. I know it's a typical American saying that but because we have so much Christian activity, we have so many resources. But but because we have so much Christian activity, we have so many resources. But with all that activity we still see the same rot and need for gospel workers. And it's the intentionality of actually doing the work and sometimes saying, brother, it's time for you to go, put your hand to the plow. There's no greater joy. And we just haven't been doing that.
Speaker 1:Haven't been doing that.
Speaker 5:Yeah, we know, I know. So we have colleges, undergraduate colleges that you can go and major in, ministry Christian colleges as we would call them and I have contacts in a number of them and they're all saying that the enrollment is way down, for young men especially. So we have the same issues, maybe not in magnitude, but it'll come.
Speaker 1:I'm going to ask each of you what's a direct application that you're taking back from this week to your context and you're going to say you know what. I'm going to raise that with my team. I'm going to see if we can do this.
Speaker 4:So the change that has just really opened my eyes. We went to a training culture fellowship at Moore College and it was beautiful. Just some people there just talking about how we can keep this culture going, how we can do it in our own churches, how we can expand it. Basically, all my work is one-to-one or one-to-two or one-to-three with pastors, just getting alongside and helping them, bringing them to a place where they can start doing it, and it's been amazing seeing pastors changing a church culture little by little as they meet with one, two people. To train them, to train others. That's the key to train others. I hope I've said that enough. To train others.
Speaker 1:You have said that about me.
Speaker 4:But the thing that's opened my eyes to that this week is the doing it in groups. So I'm going to arrange a barbecue in the next couple of weeks and get six, seven, eight of them around my house and say come on, guys, let's just encourage each other with our stories, do it together and invite your friends to this to see it. For me, that was the. For me.
Speaker 2:Christian leadership can often come in your sort of mid-50s. You get into a job whatever at that sort of age and stage of life. One thing that we're beginning to see in the uk is working with different generations of leaders is a powerful thing. So when you speak to the the people in the first couple of years of their ministry and embrace what they're saying, they haven't had time yet to to develop, but some of them are hugely inspirational. And in the first couple of years of their ministry and embrace what they're saying, they haven't had time yet to develop, but some of them are hugely inspirational.
Speaker 2:And in the UK context and I'll take this back back to Harry that I mentioned at the beginning is meet with the generation in their late 20s, early 30s, people in training, and in the UK they need our support. It's really hard what the future is, but not just give them our support. Embrace them in the development what the future is, but not just give them our support. Embrace them in the development of the training culture, because they'll soon be in situations of leadership. So what I'll take back from here is working really intentionally with the different generations and listening to the emerging generation of leaders. I mean they have inspired me here all the generations have, but these young leaders emerging are hugely inspiring.
Speaker 1:Maddy.
Speaker 5:Someone not too long ago at our church, a dear saint at our church sent me prayer points from a sermon I preached five years ago, and one of the requests was that we would raise up an apprentice who was older, and just last year we had someone who's?
Speaker 5:38 years old decide to do our apprenticeship. I just think that's really encouraging about the generations. I would say the direct line from the gospel to evangelism, to training. I don't wanna just focus on training, but the holistic. A number of years ago when we started our apprenticeship, I emailed Philip Jensen and just said what were your best talks in calling people into ministry? And he wrote me back one sentence that said preach the gospel. And I thought it was just Philip didn't want to write me a long email, but it took me a few years and I started to realize it right the gospel is not just Jesus died for my sins, but that I'm now to give up my ambitions and take on the ambitions of Christ and have that through line from the gospel to the evangelistic call on into giving up a whole life for the Lord. So I want to be more clear about that through line.
Speaker 1:I reckon go and find his talks on 2 Corinthians 5, of God made him who had no sin to be sin for us.
Speaker 5:Thank you, I'll look those up, that's your tip yeah.
Speaker 1:I think they're great. What are some of the things that you've learned from some of the other guys in the symposium, from, I mean, stellenbosch or different places in the world?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that convictions can be expressed in different ways. So when you develop a training culture in your respective country, it's hugely helpful to listen to how it develops in another context, so that in your own culture we're not hidebound perhaps by the way it's been done before or there's only one way to do it. And I think listening particularly from Grant, watching him in a very different context, putting a culture.
Speaker 1:He's done an extraordinary work of it's grown so fast From next to nothing to a thousand uni students or something.
Speaker 2:And about to plant a church into a township in his context and I'm excited to learn about how the training culture he's establishing, what it looks like. In that context I've come across a church recently a fellow called John Funnell who pastors a church called Nodfa Church in Wales and it's a wonderful, healthy culture. But it's an entirely different setting of church and at grants like that and these guys like that, I mean what you're experiencing in South America is very different from central London and it makes me question my own assumptions about what a healthy culture looks like and working with these guys is hugely helpful for that what about you?
Speaker 4:if I'm honest, the thing that's really struck out to me is it's it's just so obvious and we're doing the same thing with different language. I'm not going to say it again, no, no, no. That is the thing that I think I've just learned, just thinking to increase your confidence. Yeah yeah. I was pretty confident to start with, but I feel like it's just seeing it here, there and everywhere, people doing exactly the same thing in different contexts. It's of the Lord, it just works.
Speaker 5:We have a brother with us, danny Rulander from Northern UK, lancaster yeah so the, the, the meek, but decided um effort, um to. I mean he had what, not that long, 70 apprentices what through, not at once? Not at once in 10 years, but still I a small tiny town or small city and learning the intentionality back to Matt's point to keep on doing this and don't give up.
Speaker 2:On a very simple level, there are 10 of us, something I mean it's wonderful to come away somewhere, especially Sydney, to work and learn together, but it's so enriching to do things together. We're talking about quite narrow conviction, alignment, it's not like, but it's unity around strategy, around vision, and it's global. The commission of the Lord Jesus is global. That doesn't mean to say you've got to not focus on your own context, but there will always be people that train in our context, that travel to other parts of the world, and there will always be people that come from South America, the US, malaysia, australia to London, and that's a rich thing and a wonderful thing.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for coming in and talking to us. My guests on the Pastor's Heart this afternoon Robin Sidser from the Proclamation Trust in the United Kingdom. Matt Pope from Santiago, chile. He's working with pastors across five countries in Latin America. And Marty Sweeney from Santiago, chile. He's working with pastors across five countries in Latin America. And Marty Sweeney from Cleveland, ohio. He is pastor of training at Old North Church. My name is Dominic Steele. This has been the Pastor's Heart. We will look forward to your company next Tuesday afternoon.
