How can we make our Christmas Services better?

With just a few days to Christmas, and while some of us are well planned, some of us are still scrambling around putting things together.

Whether it’s Christmas Day or Christmas Eve, or a kids gathering, carols or Gingerbread and Wreathmaking...

What are the pitfalls we can fall into?  How do we avoid them?

James Galea is senior minister of Freshwater Anglican Church. 

Dave Jensen will be working next year with the Sydney Anglican Churches Evangelism and New Churches team to encourage best practice evangelism.

http://www.thepastorsheart.net/podcast/improving-your-christmas-talk

Anglican Aid
To support Anglican Aid's Christmas Appeal - Click: Anglican Aid.

The Church Co
http://www.thechurchco.com is a website and app platform built specifically for churches. 

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Cultural changes and increasing push back against churches are impacting youth ministries. It is getting  much harder for Christian Teenagers to be Christian among their secular peers.

Teenagers don’t just walk in the door of a church.

What are latest youth ministry trends and opportunities? How can we do youth ministry on the front foot?

Andy Stevenson is Director of the Sydney Anglican Youthworks’ youth & children’s ministry division and Special Religious Education (Scripture Ministry).

Ruth Lee is Youth worker at Cornerstone Presbyterian Church in Sydney.

http://www.thepastorsheart.net/podcast/collaboration-in-youth-ministry

Anglican Aid
To support Anglican Aid's Christmas Appeal - Click: Anglican Aid.

The Church Co
http://www.thechurchco.com is a website and app platform built specifically for churches. 

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Poverty is fundamentally relational says David Williams

What might a theology of caring for the poor look like? 

The bible’s terms for the poor (widow, orphan and alien) are all relational terms which describe someone who has lost relationships and as a result have lost connection with the land.

David and his wife Rachel started serving as missionaries in Nairobi, Kenya in 1999. David now serves as principal of the Australian Church Missionary Society Training College St Andrew’s Hall, where Australian missionaries are trained for six months, before heading out to the field.

David has just given a provocative paper at the Anglican Aid conference at Sydney’s Moore Theological College and has agreed to come in and discuss it.

The issue for David is not just academic, with his first significant engagement with poverty, starting when working in the slums of Nairobi 20-plus years ago.

Anglican Aid
To support Anglican Aid's Christmas Appeal - Click: Anglican Aid.

The Church Co
http://www.thechurchco.com is a website and app platform built specifically for churches. 

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The Church of England has abandoned the teaching of Jesus with prayers for same sex blessings potentially to start before Christmas. 

‘Tragic’ says Gafcon.

‘Disastrous’ says the Global South. 

‘Deeply Troubled’ says the Church of England Evangelical Council

‘First order difference requires first order differentiation’ says Vaughan Roberts

‘It is hard not to dissolve into a flood of tears’ says the Mark Thompson the principal of Sydney’s Moore College.

‘The Archbishop of Canterbury should resign’ - says the Church Society’s Lee Gatiss.

The English General Synod has crossed a line that evangelicals across the world had been praying and hoping would not happen.

The General Synod expressed its support by a tiny majority of just a few votes for the continued implementation of the House of Bishops proposals to change the position and practice of the Church of England with regards to sexual ethics and marriage.

We now expect the English bishops to commend prayers of blessing for same sex couples by mid-December (and provide dedicated services soon after), to prepare guidance which will make it possible for clergy to marry their same sex partners, and that future ordinands will not to be asked to indicate whether their lifestyle and personal relationships are in keeping with the doctrine of the Church of England.

Vaughan Roberts is one of the UK’s leading evangelical ministers within the church of England.  Vaughan is senior pastor of St Ebbes in Oxford.

http://www.thepastorsheart.net/podcast/vaughan-roberts-on-english-synod

Anglican Aid
To support Anglican Aid's Christmas Appeal - Click: Anglican Aid.

The Church Co
http://www.thechurchco.com is a website and app platform built specifically for churches. 

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Years and years of putting your feet up is the lifestyle of the sluggard.

To be a sluggard is a so called ‘deadly sin.’

The concept we now know as retirement is a 19th century invention and not a Christian concept.

Former Missionary, Bible College lecturer and principal Mike Raiter says the idea that we should stop work at 65 and enjoy 20 or 30 years of rest is not biblical.

How should we think about the stage of life that starts at 65.  What are the ministry opportunities available? What are the sins and temptations that the over 65’s are prone to?

And how can younger pastors speak to those who are older?

http://www.thepastorsheart.net/podcast/growing-old-mike-raiter

Anglican Aid
To support Anglican Aid's Christmas Appeal - Click: Anglican Aid.

The Church Co
http://www.thechurchco.com is a website and app platform built specifically for churches. 

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It’s going to be an especially bumpy six months for religious freedom issues in New South Wales..

Legalised Euthanasia will be rolled out in just a few weeks. But what about faith based aged care institutions, where organizations and staff are conscientious objectors to euthanasia? 

Then there’s the Law Reform Commission inquiry into religious schooling and whether the religious exemptions to anti discrimination law should be removed. 

And the debate over conversion therapy will come to a head in the parliament. 

Monica Doumit is Director of Public Affairs and Engagement for the Catholic Church in Sydney… and was one of the presenters at the Freedom for Faith Conference in Sydney. 

Mike Southon is executive director of Freedom for Faith 

http://www.thepastorsheart.net/podcast/euthanasia-discrimination-conversion 

Anglican Aid
To support Anglican Aid's Christmas Appeal - Click: Anglican Aid.

The Church Co
http://www.thechurchco.com is a website and app platform built specifically for churches. 

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A few weeks ago on The Pastor’s Heart we talked with Zac Veron and Raj Gupta about issues confronting Sydney Anglicans.

The National Church Life Survey shows a drop in newcomers from 9% in 2011 to 5.4% in 2021 - a more than ten year trend of fewer people joining church.

Plus there’s been a 7.5% drop in attendance between 2015 and 2019.

But it’s not just the Sydney Anglicans that need a wake up call. It’s most of us in Australian Evangelicalism.

And if you are a senior pastor watching from around the world - it’s highly likely that there will be a massive overlap between your problems and our problems.

Andrew Heard leads the large and influential EV church on the Central Coast of New South Wales. He’s also the key person behind the influential Reach Australia movement. And is a leader in the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches

http://www.thepastorsheart.net/podcast/problems-of-heart-head-and-hands-andrew-heard

Anglican Aid
To support Anglican Aid's Christmas Appeal - Click: Anglican Aid.

The Church Co
http://www.thechurchco.com is a website and app platform built specifically for churches. 

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Rolling out the Global Anglican rescue - with Archbishop Justin Badi Arama 

Nicky Gumbel teams up with the Global South in rebuking Archbishop Justin Welby

Slowly, carefully, but quite deliberately, a new locus of leadership is emerging within the global Anglican Communion, a locus that significantly is intentionally focused on Christ and biblical authority and not focused on London, England or the Archbishop of Canterbury. 

An important meeting of the Primates of the Global South and other leader of the Anglican Community has just wrapped up in Cairo. 

Significantly and surprisingly the 13 orthodox Primates were joined at their meeting by Nicky Gumbel, the pioneer of the Alpha Course and London’s Holy Trinity Brompton’s massive UK church planting network. 

Nicky Gumbel has been a friend of the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby since high school. 

Chair of the Global South Archbishop Justin Badi Arama spells out the plans to reset the Anglican Communion, coming out of the Cairo meeting.

Anglican Aid
To support Anglican Aid's Christmas Appeal - Click: Anglican Aid.

The Church Co
http://www.thechurchco.com is a website and app platform built specifically for churches. 

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We traverse the historical landscape of identity, starting from Descartes' cogito ergo sum or "I think, therefore I am," to the current age where identity has become a commodity. 

Chris Watkin, the award-winning author of the Biblical Critical Theory, helps us understand possessive individualism, starting with John Locke, expressive individualism, and how both terms help us grapple with modern identity formation.

Plus, we probe into the delicate balance between dignity and humility in the context of human identity. 

Anglican Aid
To support Anglican Aid's Christmas Appeal - Click: Anglican Aid.

The Church Co
http://www.thechurchco.com is a website and app platform built specifically for churches. 

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Our focus today is on the massive legacy of some of the greatest women of church history.  We discuss how different the Jesus’ mother Mary (as portrayed in the New Testament) is to Mary as she’s popularly thought of.  We focus on the account of one of the early martyrs, 22 year old mother Perpetua, who was fed to the lions.  

We look at England’s nine day queen Lady Jane Grey and her mentoring by the Swiss Protestant reformer Heinrich Bullinger.  Then there’s the extraordinary story of Salvation Army co-founder Catherine Booth’s campaign to have the age of consent raised in England from 12 to the eventual age of 16.  And Gladys Alward’s 350 kilometer trek across the mountains of China with 100 orphan children.

Click here to purchase Ten dead gals you should know by Rachel Ciano and Ian Maddox

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