What is your ministry? Or what do you do that is of service to God and others?

How you answer that question is critical. 

Pause and take a moment to reflect on it before reading on.

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No—really pause—it’s an important question to ponder before continuing and it will make sense in a moment.

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Ok, the reason I ask you to consider that question is because I have a hunch that when church going people are presented with this question we typically look to what we do within the church; serving coffee, manning the audio system, playing music, or what we do in other parachurch groups that serves the wider community, eg street chaplains.

I wonder how many people’s minds gravitated immediately to their workplace. I have a sense that there wouldn’t have been many. We have been so conditioned to think of work as something separate to ministry (with the exception of specific ministry jobs; pastor, chaplain and the like), that we really struggle to imagine our workplace as ministry.

I want to wreck that idea, tear it down, rub it in the dirt and try and get rid of it altogether. It is as if we clock on to ministry when we do certain activities but work is not a ministry space.

In writing this book I am trying to help people envisage their workplace as their primary place of ministry. I will be helping you reclaim the eight hours you spend each day doing what some would consider unrelated to ministry whatsoever.

It’s a paradigm that doesn’t come naturally to us, because our church culture has predominantly framed ministry in terms of what happens in house or in overtly ‘Christian’ activities.

And that’s not to denigrate what does happen in-house. I have long said “if you are in the family then you help with the dishes.” Everyone has a part to play in our family—but our family isn’t an end itself.

So I’m expecting June will be the final edit and then publishing of this book. I am off to visit my friends at Sunshine FM next week for a couple of days to record the audiobook. I learnt last time that recording an audiobook allows you to pick any errors, as the spoken word is read slower than a normal scan. I also believe audiobooks are increasingly going to be a huge slice of the book market in years ahead.

And the beauty of publishing thru Amazon is that they allow you to create samples where you can test your design, font and lay out before committing. Just in case anyone is worried—the cover above is not the finished product…

It was the start of 2024 and a whole new phase of life for us. Danelle was going to study Clinical Pastoral Education and I was going to do some interim pastoring with Margaret River Baptist Church as well as running the caravan businesses.

Then Sam died.

Everything stopped and we took the time we needed to weather the assault of grief and just to regroup. As I write we are still in that process, but further down the track. A few months after Sam, my brother died, then in Dec last year one of my best mates and just last month mum and dad within a few days of each other. It’s been a heavy two years.

But it does feel like things are shifting. Up to now it’s been like walking thru dense, scrubby bush with no sense of where we are going and only just beginning to feel like we are hitting open space again. We can breathe, take stock, get our bearings and ask ‘what now?’

It’s almost like 2 years was wiped from our lives as we have simply survived the assault of grief and death. I know that’s not the case as we have grown, learnt and changed over that period too. I have written plenty about that so I won’t say any more here, other than to acknowledge that I know and feel things now that I don’t think I could have in Feb 2024. Is life richer for the experience? I dunno, I don’t think anything can be worth the loss of a son. It sux but I’m trying to make it suck in the best possible way.

As I’ve taken some time over the last 6-9 months to reflect on ‘what next?’, one of the things I have come to realise is that my future isn’t in local church pastoral leadership (of the permanent kind.) I feel like we can do the ‘interim’ stuff if it suits, but I don’t think I will ever be applying for either a part time or full time pastor’s job again.

That was quite a hard-hitting revelation this week, as I hadn’t actually given up on the idea before now. I would still take a look at the ‘positions vacant ‘ pages and ponder a new role in a new community. And as is often the case, the grass can look very green elsewhere and the illusion of a ‘perfect’ job, in a ‘perfect’ community can be quite alluring (and deceiving).

But each time I have pondered options I have to remind myself that we have spent 15 years embedding ourselves in the Yanchep community to the point where we know many people and we are well known and very much a part of it. We have a, beautiful street full of wonderful people and great neighbours. We would have to leave that behind.

With life organised the way it is at the moment we have time to be with people and do the very work we feel called to – the life of a “backyard missionary”. So to move to a new church would mean moving house and “moving friends” — because realistically you just can’t stay in touch with everyone. And we are only now in the place you really want to be—lots of friends, great connections and a life that we really enjoy.

Only yesterday morning I got a text at 10am from a mate letting me know a few local guys were going to surf a reef break that only fires occasionally – did I want to come? You bet! So 5 of us headed out for a blissful morning together. That wouldn’t happen spontaneously and regularly if we were to move house – esp if it took us away from the ocean.

That’s the biggest reason I think I couldn’t do it again. Moving house would be way too costly in terms of our relational and community investment. And unless it were for the rest of our natural lives it would also be out of line with our deepest sense of calling. As I learn more about mission and how the Christian message connects with Australian people I feel like there is much to be said for ‘staying’. It was once exciting and compelling to ‘go’ and plant churches, and while part of me would love the rush of doing all that again, another part of me knows that the best years of our time in Yanchep have been the last 5 as we have really felt the value of the previous 10 years. Real relationships take a lot of time. You simply can’t replicate that overnight.

Other than that I know that, reality is church leadership involves a whole bunch of tasks that I don’t enjoy and I’m actually not wired for. Many people still imagine pastoral work primarily as preaching, discipleship, leadership, and caring for people. Those things absolutely remain part of it. But the modern pastoral role often carries much more: managing expectations from every angle, organisational oversight and compliance, conflict resolution and lots of meetings just to name a few things. When I signed up to be a pastor it was with a view to meeting people where they were at and helping them move closer to Jesus. Now there is a lot more to it and I just don’t have the stomach for it.

It’s not that the church is doing stuff wrong or badly necessarily. It’s just living in this culture at this time when there are certain compliance issues that are both helpful as well as burdensome. It’s the shape ministry has taken in an increasingly risk driven context.

So while church leadership is no longer on the table, I sense I can make a better contribution from the place I am in currently. That means doing some speaking around the place, writing books and meeting with younger leaders hopefully to encourage and help them reflect. On one hand this feels like a beautiful place to be. On the other, leading a local community of Christians is very much in my blood and a hard thing to let go of. But I think it’s time. I remember during a few of my pastoral team meetings at Quinns feeling this sense of the Spirit saying to me, “get out of the way.” Not harshly, like I was an obstruction, but more like, ‘while you do what you do it limits what other younger people can do’. I’m fully aware that I still bring value, but I really do want to see the younger ones step up and shine.

So I think the time has come. As I have said many times, a ‘yes‘ to something is a ‘no‘ to something else and with only a finite amount of time left I want to be much more careful with those decisions so that the ‘yesses’ really count.

So future vocational plans include – in order of priority:

• Living in Yanchep for another 20-30 years and allowing our work here to develop organically. That is my hope, but as we know only too well an ‘early check out’ is always a possibility. But if we can just live here and be ourselves for an extended period of time then I sense good will come of it.
• Doing some speaking on subjects and ideas that I have done significant work on. I’m not a big fan of ‘one-off’ speaking gigs as it can be hard to get a real connection with people, so I lean towards 3-4 weeks of involvement or church camps. Not every church can allow this space, but there are plenty who can.
• Writing a few more books. I have the Hi-Vis Faith book due to come out mid June and I am currently working on something different – a 30 day Devotional / Reflective book focused on the letter of James.
• Catching up with younger leaders as it suits for them. This isn’t in any paid capacity so it’s more friendship than supervision or anything formal. That’s an intentional choice. I appreciate being invited into these spaces so I’m keen to be available to those who would find an older ear valuable.
• Developing the caravan businesses. I’m still not totally clear on where I want these to head. A part of me wants to get the diesel heater business firing to a point where I could sell it for a good dollar. But I don’t want it to absorb my heart and focus in these years, so it’s a tricky balance at the moment.

So while paid permanent pastoring may be a thing of the past, I don’t feel like I will be bored any time soon.

A few months back my friend Matt approached me and asked if I would be willing to make a short film that explored how I had processed grief since Sam’s death. I had met Matt in the surf about 10 years ago and we have become friends over that time. We share a love of the surf and a common faith. Matt also knew Sam and we had shared waves together at our local.

Matt is a brilliant videographer so I had no hesitation in saying “yes”, knowing he would tell a beautiful, hope filled story.

I noticed that I finish the film by saying ,”I think we’re going to be OK”. And I think we are—but more than ok we are going to continue to find joy and purpose in life and allow this tragedy to be woven into our story in some redemptive way.

And we live with the knowledge that one day we will be re-united and this time apart will be a blip on the radar of time. It doesn’t diminish the pain – but it does allow us to anticipate the life to come in God’s new creation

The film is one of a series Matt is producing titled, All Good Things Take Time Friend. If you go to his Youtube channel you will find 2 other short films about Yanchep locals, Warrick & Hamish, both also beautiful and inspiring to watch.

A few months ago Matt approached me and asked me if I would consider working with him to tell the story of how I have been processing the grief of losing Sam. I made a decision a while back to try and hit any situations like this front on, so I said ‘yes’.

I know some people need privacy and others just don’t want to revisit that kind of pain, but if I’m living in it anyway then I want to try and wring some good out of it.

Matt is a brilliant film maker, so I had no hesitation in saying yes to him particularly. I knew he would tell the story truly and beautifully. I met him in the surf at Yanchep about 10 years ago and we have become friends over that time. We share a common faith so he gets where I come from in this story. You can watch two promo links here & here and buy tickets here

The film itself is part of a series titled “All Good Things Take Time Friend”. It is both a brutally and beautifully honest slice of my life over the last two years. And I chose to participate in it not because I need anyone’s attention or adulation. I was happy to do so because I believe Matt allows me to speak a) to how blokes process grief b) how I reconcile my faith with a God who didn’t save my son.

So I hesitate to put this out there because I don’t want to say ‘come and look at me’, but I do want to say come and see what Matt has created. It isn’t soppy, nor does it point to easy answers. Matt does a great job of both tapping into the gritty daily reality of walking thru grief as well as capturing the hope that we have – that it’s all going to be ok. It really is going to be ok in the end…

The film is one of 3 that will show on Saturday evening. The first is about Warrick Palmateer another surfer friend, Yanchep local and very gifted ceramic artist. The second shows a local called Hamish creating a knife in his home-made forge – over a period of 100 hours and then the third is my story curated by Matt.

He asked me if I was happy to trust him and see it for the first time this Saturday. I absolutely trust him – but I wasn’t sure I could cope with the intensity of that – so I watched it a couple of weeks ago and I am really stoked with how it turned out.

If there is any beauty story in the brutality of the last two years then Matt has been able to tap it and unfolds it superbly.

I know he’d love to know how many people are coming so if you can, book a ticket ahead of time here.

Ok – this is more a stream of consciousness than deeply reflected on…

I just finished watching a video of someone preaching and it left me cold. Their content was good and their delivery was excellent – polished even – but I felt like I was watching a ‘Ted-talk’ like performance. It felt like the person had virtually memorised the script and was acting out the part. Often those Ted talks have a certain tone that just feels too tightly tied to a script.

It just led me back to pondering what we consider as ‘good preaching’ and I guess I have formed my own opinions on this over the years.

But it definitely isn’t polished oratory.

Those days are long gone. Neither is it academic exegesis and so called ‘deep teaching’. If we want to help people listen then surely the first step is to tune into the frequency on which they are listening.

Yes – we tune in to where they are. It’s not their job to make sense of our input – but it’s our job to help them understand by speaking their language. A couple of weeks back I had a bloke say to me ‘I like that you speak the Aussie language’. I took that as a compliment because I was trying to connect with a largely Australian crew of people. I imagine I would change tone a little in a very mixed context or in one where the majority were from another country.

John Smith used to say that if we want to connect with people then we need to speak in the ‘language of the vernacular’. In other words high fallutin words need to be ditched in preference for simple – basic communication. Sure – there’s a place for technical language, but it should never be the dominant form of our communication.

As far as polish goes, I have walked down the track of preaching from memory rather than notes and I found I spent too much time mentally background processing where I was up to and what was next. I don’t use notes a lot – but I do like knowing I have a structure to follow and it’s one I can change on a whim.

I will take conversational over polished any day. I remember years ago preaching would be a draining experience as I invested enormous amounts of emotional energy in voice modulation and what was virtually a performance. These days I lean heavily on simple conversational approach – in fact one of the closest styles of public communication I see that resembles good preaching is the stand up comedian who is able to interact with the crowd. There is an easy going, but confident approach that invites people in, rather than a download of knowledge. I rarely come home exhausted these days or suffer from morning after blues.

Not that knowledge is bad. We obviously want to communicate knowledge and biblical knowledge to be precise, but in a world where good communication is everywhere on Youtube and beyond we are unlikely to compete with the greats who have thousands of followers.

So knowing your audience matters enormously. Then knowing yourself and being yourself is so important too. Occasionally I speak at event where i find myself wondering ‘why me?’ I don’t think these are my people at all. That can be hard.

Although one thing I learnt from Calvin Miller when he was teaching in Perth many years ago was what he called ‘the talk before the talk’ – the 2-5 minutes we spend building initial connection with the listeners. For people we know well it’s a very brief time, but when I speak to a new crowd I usually take 4 or 5 minutes to try and make a connection. Those 4 or 5 minutes ‘lost’ from ‘content’ will establish a connection that ensures whatever is communicated has a better chance of making a dent.

Dress sense is interesting. Some churches have a certain dress code that needs to be adhered to. I accept that if i ‘dress down’, it’s prob gonna make it harder for people to listen. So typically shorts are off the menu when speaking around the place – but they are my staple when on home turf. I rarely wear long pants or shirts with buttons – but sometimes this little stuff just needs to be rolled with so that people aren’t immediately questioning your credibility. ‘Who is this dude who looks like he just rolled in off the beach?!’ In my own context I probably have just rolled in off the beach, but if people don’t know me then it just means I’m kicking into the breeze for the first 15 minutes.

Using slides is another issue. I see the value for Bible readings and quotes – maybe even for main content points. But they can also make a conversational message start to feel like a lecture. I sometimes choose to speak with no slides because it affords a freedom that slides don’t. That said I usually tell the person on the projector that the slides are only a guide and I may not use some of them. My jury is out on the value of slides v the value of simply speaking to people.

Of course I am a big advocate for communication by story telling. And Jesus is our best example of that. I find myself bemused by pastors who open with a Bible reading followed by some theology. Most people zone out before the end of the Bible reading. But tell a story, especially with some humour and then you can go back to scripture and offer an anchor for your story. If you don’t tell stories then you aren’t gonna connect. There is only so much expositional stuff people can digest before they need a break and a laugh. It takes time to find good stories but that is the work of good communication – observing life and seeing how it connects.

And finally when I’m speaking with someone who is struggling to communicate I often ask ‘what is it you want to say in one sentence?’ If you can’t answer that question then you aren’t ready to stand in front of a group of people as you really haven’t nailed why you are there. So so simple – but so so important. One sentence. If you can’t nail it to one sentence then keep working until you can. OR ditch some stuff. I sometimes see people with way more content than is necessary. Keep it simple – not ‘basic’ – just clear and simple so the message isn’t lost in a haze of clever words.

Bottom line – know your audience – be yourself – know what it is you want to say in one sentence – tells stories. Tell more stories. People listen to stories and you can slip some dangerous truths into stories!

Ok I’m done – now I’m off to the beach 🙂

And tomorrow is my first time ever speaking in a Church of Christ…

This might be up there with my all-time favourite quotes.

In his book titled Invading Secular Space, Martin Robinson said this: 

What would it look like for a church to function in such a way that the primary goal of church life was not to attract more people into attendance and membership, but to produce people who had a profound sense of their personal relationship to God, their resource in Christ and could take that reality into the world with them”

I love Robinson’s acknowledgment that our goal is to be people who live in and transform the world by our lives – not by inviting people to church.

It’s not bad to invite people to church, but that ought not be the main game for us. Instead as Robinson states, each Sunday we want to send out people who genuinely know Jesus, who are secure in themselves and their way of being.

The goal is not to be a street preacher evangelist or a pastor who spends his days trying to recruit new members. The goal is to equip and send out the people we already have to embody the person of Jesus wherever they go.

It may not see our church grow – it may be that everything looks kinda the same – but reality is that it’s not. If every church in the city took this as their calling rather than simply trying to grow then I imagine it would feel very different.

And to be sure ‘The Church’ would grow – but it might not be yours and you might not get any kudos for it and your stats may look horrifyingly similar year after year – but that’s because we only measure tangible stuff and this kind of stuff while very tangible in it’s shape defies being measured.

Jesus never told anyone to go to church – but he did send out teams of people to be present in the community healing, teaching and getting alongside the people – especially the people who would have never thought the invite was for them anyway.

Anyway – if you’re a pastor and feeling the pinch of your church not growing – then I know your pain – but perhaps you can contribute the expansion of God’s kingdom by preparing people to live in their communities and workplaces in ways that inspire and pique people’s curiosity.