There’s been ‘a spate’ of resignations of senior ministers over the last few months, where team leaders of largish churches have surprised many of us by resigning and switching roles to become team members or switch to chaplaincy or other roles.

Lessons from seven churches, five of which were plants with David Jones Presbyterian Church planting enterpreneur David Jones has planted five churches and revitalised two. David, a former moderator of the Australian Presbyterian Church, has just retired as senior pastor of Anne Street Presbyterian in Brisbane. David joins Dominic Steele to lessons learned over fourty years.

There's probably more anguish from senior and assistant ministers in this area than basically any other. And there's an unspoken unrealistic expectation within the church that their paid leadership should be able to work out this area perfectly.  Raj Gupta helps us on how to recruit, engage, develop, recognise and track staff.

Archbishop Laurent Mbunda joins us to share his wonderful story from being a barefoot refuge in the East African nation of Rwanda, to a Burundi refugee camp, where he and his parents were saved. 

There’s a fascinating story leading to an amazing work leading the church in Rwanda, explosive growth, with thousands saved, to now starting an East African Christian University.

How does mentoring work for senior leaders? And can how having a mentor help, especially through those seasons in ministry when everything goes pear shaped.

National Director of The Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students, Richard Chin, reflects on God’s ‘severe mercy.’  How he learned from God, as he supported his wife Bronwyn, through her death from pancreatic cancer, six years ago.

Richard shares theological, strategic, pragmatic lessons from 25 years of ministry, advice on dating at 50 and a new marriage to Jeanette. 

Minister of St Stephen’s Christchurch Jay Behan tells the heartbreaking story of leading his church away from the traditional Anglican Church in New Zealand and working to form a new Diocese for faithful Anglicans. 

The new leaders of GAFCON, Primate’s Council Chair Archbishop Foley Beach (of the Anglican Church in North America) and General Secretary Archbishop Benjamin Kwashi (of Jos, Nigeria) sat down with Dominic Steele to talk about their heart as pastors and the future of GAFCON and the Anglican Church. 

Do you sometimes wonder how effective your growth groups are in growing disciples? Want to know how to measure the effectiveness of your growth group ministry?

By collaborating with pastors from other churches we can achieve substantially better results says Steve Cree, from Queensland’s influential Living Church.

Evangelical Assumpta Venkatachalam shares her story of a week inside the reality TV house as a housemate on ‘Christians like Us’ , where they navigated topics including women in ministry, homosexuality, child sex abuse, speaking to atheists, biblical authority, sex before marriage, abortion, and the future of Christianity.

Dean of Sydney Kanishka Raffel says the cultural change means ‘it’s now difficult if not impossible for people to be Christian, respectable and successful, and yet so many of our people are used to being all three of these.’ 

Kanishka says church leaders today face significant external and internal pressures today, in the new era post Same Sex Marriage, post George Pell’s conviction and post the Royal Commission into abuse in churches. 

Evangelism: What is working?  What can we do better? Where do we shoot ourselves in the foot?  

A panel discussion featuring Phil Colgan, Alison Napier and Dominic Steele. Chaired by Carl Matthei

Evangelism seems to be off the boil. How can we do better? Mark Dever from Capitol Hill Baptist Church joins Dominic Steele.

We look at the amazing legacy of former Sydney Vice Principal of Moore Theological College Donald Robinson, his fresh reading of the Scriptures, fathering of the Australian biblical theological movement, what became known as the ‘Knox-Robinson view of church’ and remarkable new insights into the Jew Gentile relationships in the New Testament.

What are the issues facing church leaders in regards to stress, thriving, surviving and burnout? Psychologist Valerie Ling, from the Centre For Effective Living, counsels and trains ministry workers on these issues.

How do we preach to the heart?  How do we grasp the emotion of the text and then communicate it effectively to those present?

Andrew Barry lost his son Nathan to cancer just over two years ago. Here he shares his heart about the journey that God has worked in his marriage and among their remaining four children over the last two years.