Dick Lucas’ reflections on 2 Peter were great. Whenever he makes observations on theology and church life we ought to sit up and listen. He notes that Richard Backham has written that form criticism is academically defunct, and Lucas sagely comments on what a waste of a hundred years of scholarship, essay writing and lecturing has gone into liberal form criticism.

What was really interesting were two talks on raising children in ministry households by Charles and Tricia Marnham:

http://www.proctrust.org.uk/dls/AJM2011-09.mp3

http://www.proctrust.org.uk/dls/AJM2011-08.mp3

Full list of talks: Autumn Ministers Conference 2011 | The Proclamation Trust.

Media Release from the Ridley Melbourne Board

Canon Dr Peter Adam will resign as Principal of Ridley Melbourne at the end of study and long service leave in January 2012.

In announcing his decision, Board Chair, Claire Rogers, reflected on Dr Adam’s service to Ridley: “Peter has exercised significant biblical and theological leadership across Australia and internationally.  His distinguished service of the College over several decades includes Board Member, Adjunct Lecturer and most recently as Principal.”

“While tirelessly teaching, preaching, mentoring and writing, for a decade of students, he has also been instrumental in helping Ridley achieve financial stability, a skilful leadership team, strategic focus and an academic faculty of great strength”, Ms Rogers said.  “We acknowledge that this hasn’t been an easy decision for Peter, one that has been underpinned by much prayer, consultation and reflection.”

Dr Adam, reflecting on his time at Ridley, said “I thank God for the great privilege of serving as Principal of Ridley over the last ten years.  It has been a great pleasure to work with faculty, staff, students, supporters, and the Board, to grow and develop this vital and strategic ministry. I pray that God will provide for Ridley, and continue his rich blessing on the training of men and women for gospel ministry throughout the world.”

via Ridley Melbourne, Theological College -.

This is a great conference, our third year of encouraging passionate and challenging Aussie expository preaching.

Our speakers are both Aussies: Ed Vaughan and Murray Capill.

The emphasis this year is on application in preaching – preaching that sings and stings. Too often expository preaching is criticised as lacking relevance. We aim to address this head on.

Yes it is on at the same time as the John Piper Oxygen conference in Sydney. I’ll post later as to why I think the Ridley one is a better choice!

Ridley Melbourne, Theological College – Annual Preachers’ Conference.

Definition of expository preaching:

1. Preaching subject matter that emerges directly and demonstrably from a passage of Scripture. Anchored in the Biblical text.
2. Not simply running commentary on the text, expository preaching has packaging and application.
3. Not necessarily preaching through one book… e.g.: ‘visions of God’ series organised thematically, but each sermon is an exposition (Isaiah 6, Rev 5 etc).
4. The length of the Scripture text is variable. Could be a verse, paragraph or chapter etc.
5. At it’s best, expository preaching draws attention to inner canonical connections that move to Jesus Christ, despite being based truly in a single Biblical text.

Jane Tooher has joined the faculty of Moore College to become the founding director of the Priscilla and Aquila Centre.  This Centre, a new initiative for the college, aims to encourage the ministries of women in partnership with men and has a number of connected aims:1.  to encourage and strengthen the training of women for ministry2.  to encourage and promote a wide range of ministries by women, in genuine complementary partnership with the ministries of men3.  to encourage and support women to pursue postgraduate theological study at Moore and to write and publish at both a popular and academic levelThe first major public event arranged by the Centre is a conference to be held on 7 February 2011.  A range of men and women will address the topic of ‘Male and Female He Created Them’.  More details will be available on the website in coming weeks.

via Have You Heard of the Priscilla & Aquila Centre?.

Will the real Mars Hill please stand up? 1/3 from Arthur Davis on Vimeo.

Will the real Mars Hill please stand up? 2/3 from Arthur Davis on Vimeo.

Will the real Mars Hill please stand up? 3/3 from Tamie Davis on Vimeo.

Friends will know that this area is significant to me, as my first curacy (Anglican assistant minister’s position) was in Cranbourne which is also in the Casey growth corridor.

This south east part of outer Melbourne is one of the fastest growing areas in Australia.

The population of the shire is 247,000 people, but that is projected to grow to 380,000 over the next 25 years. That will make it bigger than our country’s capital city Canberra (assuming little growth there!).

This is huge and exciting news. We are so sad to be leaving the saints at Holy Trinity and the wonderful staff team.

Please pray for us. More posts to follow…

It is a new format – a one day conference in the city – on October 2nd this year.

This will be a full day of challenging people to consider full-time gospel ministry here or abroad.

We have some very very good speakers lined up.

If you are interested in going into full time ministry mark this in your diary now…

MTS are an excellent network of Melbourne (+ Victorian) evangelicals passionate about evangelism, training and ministry of the Word and prayer.

EDIT: removed all uses of the word ‘great’

MTS Vic Training Day 1 2010.pdf

http://www.flickr.com/photos/challies/4248235677/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/challies/4248235113/in/photostream/

Here is a tour by Mark Dever:

Mark Dever – Study Video from Together for the Gospel (T4G) on Vimeo.

H/T Justin Taylor

I’m going to try and tweet how we go each day. http://twitter.com/wayneschuller (you don’t need a Twitter account to watch, just go to this link)

PJ says it’s horses for courses, but also says that NCLS data shows the denominations with the longest pastorates are the ones with the greatest steady growth, and the ones with the shortest pastorates have more decline. To sustain a long ministry you need to be a person who is growing and developing as a leader. He also talks about his own 28 year pastorate at St Matthias. He generally advises avoiding the 7 year itch.

He talks about the typical growth, plateau, decline phases. He says of the third stage that the parish needs to be ‘reinvented’, so to speak, rather than hark back to the old growth phase. He also talks about the need to do more than just teach, also to implement the changes that should come as a result of teaching.

Mark Dever interviews Phillip Jensen – short version from Audio Advice on Vimeo.

635 Games as Coach – 4 Premierships.

I don’t like Essendon (go Pies), but I like Sheedy.

These are the problems I’ve heard about, some I’ve seen, but most of them I disagree with:

• the pastor may run out of spiritual insight or spiritual energy over the long haul
• the church may stagnate and won’t change under the pastor who won’t change (‘we tried that n years ago, didn’t work’)
• it makes it hard for the next pastor to follow in the footsteps of such a long ministry
• it is unfair for people to be ‘stuck’ with one pastor for so long
• people need a diversity of pastors to learn new or different things
• the people are transient and will move around anyway
• long ministry may tend to be more inward looking rather than evangelistic

Any others?

Let me give you the theoretical Anglican Diocese of Melbourne scenario (in reality there is much more flexibility and diversity): Say you are a committed lay leader in your Anglican church for 10 years. You are encouraged to go to Bible college and join the ordination stream. You will then go to a different church every year for your four years of college as part of your field education training. You then graduate, get ordained, and do a two year curacy in one place, and then a two year curacy in another place. Then you are given a PiC (Priest in Charge position), in your fifth year after graduation/ordination (typically).

So by the time you are running your first parish, for the past 10 years you have been gone to 8 different parishes (incl. the current one). Imagine all the moves that your spouse and family have made in that time. Imagine all the committed ministry relationships which have been started and stopped suddenly this whole time. How does this prepare you for a long term pastorate? Surely this only feeds the culture of not putting down deep ministry roots?

Certainly this model does give you a good introduction to the diocese and exposure to a wide range of ministries, and helps you to build some good mentors and ministry networks. There are some real benefits. In fact one of the reasons I got ordained was because I wanted the benefits of this model.

In our own experience we have put the brakes on the system by doing longer student placements, and three year curacies instead of two. The diocese have been very supportive of my training and pastoral needs, year by year. We have deeply loved every parish we have been involved in and tried to give of ourselves sacrificially in every one of them. But at the end of the day, we feel very hungry to care for God’s people in one place for a long time.

Are we training for a church culture of ministry transience or ministry longevity?

One bad reason for shorter pastorates is a sense of ministry careerism. The minister is jumping up the ladder, so the current pastorate is only a means to an end. This will always stifle bold faithful bible preaching:

“Any preacher who would ever wish to change the church must undergo one fundamental change of heart: he must destroy any desire or ambition for personal advancement or acceptance within congregation or denomination, especially that rationalized ambition ‘that when I come to power I will be able to change things for the better’. As long as a man desires to be a bishop or a moderator, he will not be a faithful preacher of the Word of God, or a preacher who will change the church from worse to better”

If long pastorates involving unashamed teaching of the Word of God are important, then they probably require some kind of security of office. See this quote on bold preaching and tenure:

“We are not answerable to one another, or to the congregation, or even to ourselves, but to God. It is why some form of tenure is so important to faithful preaching of the gospel. The preacher who is under the authority and financial control of the denomination or of the congregation will be severely hampered in preaching the predictably unexpected message of God. It is why preachers must be willing to risk all, even sacking and imprisonment, if they are going to be faithful to preaching the gospel.”

Quotes from Phillip Jensen, Preaching that Changes the Church, in “When God’s Voice is Heard: Essays on Preaching Presented to Dick Lucas”, edited by Green and Jackman, IVP, 1995, p143.

What better gospel witness is there than a minister resigned to boldly proclaim the word of God in one place, to one people, for a long time – come what may? Is this not a beautiful ideal?