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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
How to improve our preaching - with David Cook and Robin Sydserff
Today our focus on The Pastor’s Heart is on how to preach for transformation for real changes in people’s lives.
Two men with a lifetime’s passion for preaching — Robin Sydserff, Director of the Proclamation Trust and David Cook, former principal of Sydney Missionary and Bible College and a long-time preaching mentor - now with the Expository Preaching Trust.
We start by looking at how Christian leaders the UK and Australia influenced preaching patterns overseas.
We look at preaching that has led to record enrolments at Bible Colleges, the purpose of preaching, the life and relationships of the preacher, training preachers and what patience is needed in preaching growth.
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how to fix our preaching. Robin sits earth and david cooker with us. It is the pastor's heart, it's dominic steel. Today, on the pastor's heart, we're joined by two men with a lifetime's passion for preaching david cook, former principal of syd Missionary and Bible College and a long-time preaching mentor now with the Expository Preaching Trust, and Robin Sidserf, director of the Proclamation Trust. Today, our focus is on how to preach for transformation, for real changes in people's lives, and we're going to start with the pastor's heart and looking back. And we'll start with you, david, because some people don't know our history, and I just want you to tell us some of the stories about how the Englishman John Stott and Dick Lucas have impacted Australian preaching in the past. Yeah Well thanks, dominic.
Speaker 2:John Stott came to preach on 2 Corinthians, I think, at the CMS Summer School at Katoomba in 1965. The year I was born and John Chapman and Dudley Ford walked away from that convention and said we need to do everything we can to encourage that sort of preaching expository faithful engaging preaching in Australia.
Speaker 1:And from that- and I think you're saying expository preaching wasn't really the main thing at that point.
Speaker 2:No, I gather it wasn't. It was more textual, I think. You pick a text, pick a verse yeah, that's right and a different text from a different part every week, that sort of thing, I think. But in 1970, as a result of that, they formed the Anglican College of Preachers in the Sydney Diocese, which met every year to encourage preachers. And then of course it went on from there and John Chapman came to Moore College every Tuesday for many years and then he'd come to SMBC Sydney Missionary Bible College every Thursday and he'd just teach preaching.
Speaker 2:He taught Mark's Gospel, dialogue, evangelism and preaching classes and it was wonderful. His influence was tremendous.
Speaker 1:And Robin. I mean correspondingly some of the Australians who've impacted the preaching in the UK.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, what's striking about the timeline you described, so the 70s, John Stott, the influence here and what happened in England I guess it started in England with Dick Lucas and David Jackman was kind of just half a generation later in the UK around expository preaching.
Speaker 3:We got a big dose of Sydney at that point, particularly Philip and Chapel, and what they did is they came in and they just kind of dynamized it. So what happened in the UK is that it got a real leg up by that partnership between Australia and London and that bridge has been there ever since. I would come forward another generation with this man here, because when I worked in London before that was really David beginning to come into the UK scene and what you brought David was a kind of we're going to talk about preaching for transformation, that sort of clear commitment to the purpose of preaching, which is the transformation of people's lives. And you helped us, I think, in the UK just to rest a little bit of a risk that we were becoming too formal, too explanatory, whatever, and really preaching for transformation. So a double dose of Sydney influence.
Speaker 1:This is the impact of Philip Jensen, john Chapman yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, first Philip and John and then, I guess more recently, david. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So, david, the preaching that's led to people being called into ministry.
Speaker 2:Yes. Well, if you look at the records of Moore College and SMBC, you'll find record enrolments in 1960, in 1969, and in 1980. Now why? I mean, I was part of the record enrolment as a student at SMBC in 1969. In our year there were 35 men. The year before me there were seven men. Wow, Now, that's five times the number.
Speaker 2:I think more college, you might find it similar. And what had happened? In 59, billy Graham had come, and in 1968, billy Graham had come to Sydney and in 1979, billy Graham had come to Sydney. So it not only does that gospel preaching bring people to salvation, but people who are saved are challenged by this as a proper vocation for my life. And I think you see that in Philip's ministry, through the University of New South Wales campus Bible study, how many people came out of that and thought that's what I want to do with my life. Not only am I changed, converted and grow in Christ, but I want to do that with my life. And in our own denomination there was a man in the late 70s called J Graham Miller who'd been the principal of the Melbourne Bible Institute and he came to Hurstville. I think there are a dozen men entered Moore College as a direct result of his encouragement and his ministry, because they went to Hurstville. They see the model, they hear preaching and they think, man, that's what I want to do with my life.
Speaker 3:And in the UK, if you think back to the sort of dynamic time with this renewal of exploratory preaching through dick and david and david jackman, dick lucas, people look at it and they say it was a kind of renewal and expository preaching. What it was also was the raising up of gospel workers and they kind of coincided. They're both sides of the same coin. And one of the things that Dick did so powerfully he was a people man, a people person. His people were with him, whether in his expository lectures or his conferences or in church, and they caught it and were inspired by it, by a brilliant model of a preacher in front of them. One of the dangers is we've kind of we describe that as principles, or people even call them Lucas lessons. But what they Lucas lessons? Well, some of the hermeneutical.
Speaker 1:Give me a Lucas lesson, I'll sit at your feet.
Speaker 3:So keep the preacher under control, something like that. Don't say more or less than is in the Bible or stay online. You know, preach the melodic line of a Bible book and they're great and they're important, but they are just tools. When you listen to Dick and I'd be doing that recently again you see a real he would almost like you can hear him in St Helens on a Tuesday expounding the Bible and looking people in the eye and saying, you know, as they went back to their city desks, do you believe this? Do you believe it? Your life matters or your future matters. So it's like taking the heart of a Bible text, a big gospel, and saying do you believe this? Do you believe this? Do you believe this? And always he expanded the Bible, expecting prayerfully people to change. That's a powerful thing. You can.
Speaker 3:I mean, you remember that, we remember it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And I think the basis of all this is that, as teachers of preaching, I would lecture in preaching, but I knew the most effective way to encourage good preaching was to model it. And so at SMBC in 1991, we started a preaching conference. We had it every second year. Dick Lucas spoke at the first one. They modeled it. You don't learn preaching, I don't think, from lectures or reading a book about it. You learn from sitting and listening to preachers. We had Haddon Robinson a couple of times, dale Ralph Davis, don Carson, peter Adam, john Chapman, and they were modelling preaching. And I found as we went on, we were receiving a larger intake of students in our odd years, because there were students coming to SMBC so that in their three-year course they'd get two preaching conferences. You see, it was just attractive and they were effectively producing preachers by modelling it.
Speaker 3:When this sort of became captured in the UK in some ways in something like the Cornhill Training Course, which was just one contribution, in some ways in something like the Cornhill training course, which was just one contribution, there was a kind of sense that you went to Cornhill to train to preach. That was never going to happen. What you get out of a course like that is a leg up, are some tools, some principles. But you can only train to preach when you're in the company of preachers and in a local church, and it takes time. It takes time, it takes time. I often pick up in the UK a sort of view that the people that come out of training are not great preachers. My question would be five, six, seven, ten years on inside a local church, when they're preaching to real people with good mentors around them? That's when you've got to ask that question, Because we can't train in a classroom people to preach. We can help them, give them tools, but they have to go and preach and have good mentors.
Speaker 1:Now you just drew the correlation between really good preaching and an uptake in Bible college enrolments. We're seeing a down take in Bible college enrollments. Are you therefore diagnosing that we've got a preaching problem? Does the negative correlation stand?
Speaker 3:Or, to pick up your point, what's the answer to the downturn? What's the answer We've been thinking this week, the group of us here in Sydney?
Speaker 1:what is the Bible? Who is this group? So a?
Speaker 3:group of people really committed to raising up gospel workers.
Speaker 3:From around the world, yeah, around the world, we come up with a kind of what does the Bible say? How do you train people We've come up with with and send? You know, jesus had the apostles with him. He trained them and he sent them. Paul had Timothy with him. He was with him and he trained him. So the with person. So what's the answer to the recruitment crisis? People being with people, then send them out, and what happens when they're with them? What did Jesus do? He equipped them and trained them to preach as they listen to him. So I think the first thing I want to say is what's the answer to the recruitment crisis? Before we get to strategy whatever, a really healthy culture of people listening to really good preaching and being inspired by that I mean preaching at its best raises up people for preaching.
Speaker 1:You had a line from Chapo there's nothing as good as good preaching.
Speaker 2:And there's nothing as bad as the opposite. That's what he would say, and you can see at college. You'd look over the years at the number of students who are coming in who were really starting off preaching well. They came from expository preaching churches. They had it modelled for them. But I think one of the problems is we, in our trust. Now we have a mentoring program, so we have 13 at the moment. We have 13 experienced mentors and we have over 40 mentees people getting mentored but we don't have senior pastors and I think I would want to challenge senior pastors, lead pastors or whatever you want to call them Lots of them are watching us now.
Speaker 2:Sorry, lots of them are watching us now. Are you investing in your preaching? Your preaching is developing. It is developing. It's developing some way. Are you investing in it? And I've been preaching for a long time but I've got a preaching mentor who I appreciate, giving him my latest sermon and saying Roddy, give me feedback, what do you appreciate? Knock some corners off here too.
Speaker 1:How does that work? I mean, I can't imagine coaching you, do you know?
Speaker 2:Well, I had to choose the bloke very carefully and I said to him now are you okay with this, because I think a mentor you need to. We call it lather and shave. Yeah, you say this is what's good about the sermon. Now shave me, tell me how. Areas of improvement? And very often I think it's much easier for some blokes to lather and not shave, and some blokes find it easier to shave and not lather, so you've got to look for both.
Speaker 1:Tell us about your latest session. What did he say to you? Well, no.
Speaker 2:I preached yesterday, so that's going to be his first session with me and I'm sure he's a really he's a good friend and I think the wounds of a brother, you know they're helpful, and so he'll tell me where it was lacking.
Speaker 3:Even inside a church. So say we link a real commitment to grow as preachers with a real commitment to raise up workers. Inside Chalmers, where I was pastor for a number of years, we tried to have a lot of input, not so much feedback Feedback was to kind of assess it over a few months but lots of input week in, week out. The reality was because we did most of the preaching, we'd meet with a group of six or eight, including the apprentices and the folks training, and they would critique me and the other preachers in the preparation. So we built this kind of culture of iron, sharpening iron, in a robust, loving, good way. But it really helped me no end to have to sort of say, well, okay, I want your feedback and it helped me grow as a preacher and especially when you become a senior minister, you get super, super busy.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And nobody tells you, nobody feeds into you about your preaching.
Speaker 1:One of your critiques and we heard this from Richard Cokin a little while ago is of lack of application.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I wonder if I would come at it slightly differently from Richard. So as I listened to Dick and others and I think we've lost something that they had, let me say that they were great expounders of the Bible. I don't think it's exposition plus application equals transformation. I think it's exposition with an eye to transformation that makes exposition applicatory, if you like. So I think John Piper has just done this little podcast on what is application and he calls it soul-searching exposition.
Speaker 3:So in the Bible passage there's truth and transformational intent and as you expound the Bible, you're always looking to say do you believe this? Do you understand this? Are you living for Jesus? So I think we've got to be careful that we don't look for a kind of missing link and say there's a kind of bridge we need to build, giving people direction and so on and so forth. We've got to preach a big gospel but look people in the eye and say do you believe this? Do you believe this? Do you believe this? Are you living this? Are you living this? There is something missing. But my view would be listening back to and others the way they did. Exposition was always applied all the way through.
Speaker 3:Does that make sense?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think engagement. I've now been mentoring, I think, for five years, and mostly Sydney-trained people, so they're good on the exposition, but when it comes to the engagement and application, sydney-trained people, so they're good on the exposition, but when it comes to the engagement and application, what Dudley Ford used to say, the jet takes off and lands maximum thrust getting off the ground, maximum thrust, getting back on the ground.
Speaker 2:I want to listen to your first few minutes and then your last few minutes. And engagement is important and my own experience. I went from Moore College straight out to a church in Wee War which was full of American people. I'd followed a brilliant communicator as the first minister and I was out there in Wee War ready to give 30 to 40 minutes theological lectures and it wasn't working. And I went and spoke to the senior minister in cotton farming country.
Speaker 2:Cotton farming country and he said you're preaching the statement, not the question, and that really was helpful to me. That is, preach the question that the statement is answering and then make it a marketable question. So God so loved the world that he gave his only son. Whoever believes in him should not perish, have eternal life. Okay, so for eternal life, put faith in Jesus, god's gift of love. All right, the question is how can I have eternal life? But I'm not there yet because if I got up and preached, how can I have eternal life?
Speaker 2:Three-quarters of the congregation know the answer to that question and that doesn't engage them. So I'm looking for a more marketable question which answers that question but which engages. And so I find a lot of my time in mentoring. I'm talking to the preachers about getting from the big question to the marketable big question. And then the way to get to the marketable big question is you do your work of application and then you go to your now what is your marketable question?
Speaker 2:And I think Chapo always taught pedagogically and Dick Lucas taught you are a teacher, so give regard to educational method Pedagogically. The impossible application of the passage is really helpful. That is, that I can have eternal life and not believe in Jesus. You see, so Dick Lucas used to say, preach scriptures negatives as well as positives. So look for the impossible application of the passage, and I reckon you could estimate that all of us go through periods of living consistently with the impossible application of the passage. And when I look at what the passage cannot, how it cannot apply to anyone and how it must apply to everyone and how it may apply to some, I'm ready to get my marketable big question.
Speaker 3:So, for example, I heard you speaking on this when you came to the UK and I edited a book that you wrote and teaching acts, and you had this at the start of the book you can't serve two masters. Yes, I can. So what you do is you look people in the eye and say some of you might be thinking you can, you can't. You get under people's skin that way. You're not having to, just sort of, you're not having to to give them sort of methods or tools, it's just arresting them with the, the truth of the. I mean dick, dick and david's. Jackman's.
Speaker 3:Great contribution to us in the uk was to have real confidence in the bible so that a bible passage or a Bible book gives you truth and transformational purpose, the kind of melodic line thing why is this book in the Bible? Why is this passage in the book? When you get a grip of that, what they did is not simply explain that that was there, they just went for it and they did it in all sorts of ways so that people left a Tuesday lunchtime service really without the ability to say well, that applies to somebody else, that applies to somebody else. And that's real preaching, preaching for verdict.
Speaker 2:So next week, dom, we have a preaching conference for a full day at Wurrunga. Simon Flinders is preaching Romans 1 and Michael Leong preaching Romans 5 in between two preaching groups, and then the leaders will give their top tip for preachers and then we'll have a Q&A panel. Brilliant day, good food, good coffee. Come along, you see, and then we're doing the same at the Armidale Cathedral in two weeks' time. It's a great way to invest in your preaching, and we provide through the trust. We have very generous supporters of the trust, so we're able to provide mentoring free of charge, and it's a great privilege. So what we do in my mentoring sessions, zoom, is 45 minutes for free, so it lasts 45 minutes. So we have 45 minutes on a weekly or a fortnightly basis and it's a great, great time.
Speaker 1:That's great, yeah. Now pastoral relationship between the preacher and the hearer is key to transformation.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So the locus of preaching, the place of preaching, is in the local church or the ministry, setting One of the most profound comments I ever heard and tucked away as a pastor these are the people God has given you to love. You preach to them like yesterday you'd have done in this church, consciously aware of what's going on in your lives. You don't change the message, you don't change the purpose, but you just bring it to bear. Jim Packer said you bring it to bear I think he said this at EMA in 1991 with life changing thrust to their lives, because you know them and you love them.
Speaker 3:And as I look out in the church, you know them and you love them. And as I look out in the church, I can think of a man called Alan who'd lost his wife, who was desperately, desperately grieving, and I'd just look him in the eye at a certain point and you'd connect. It's like Christopher Ashe described it as silent dialogue through the monologue of proclamation. And these are the people God has given you to love and that's why, in a sense, you can't learn to preach fully until you're in a local church with people. So it's a critical connection. It's a critical connection. And listening to Dick in the early days on Tuesdays. He had that critical connection with these people.
Speaker 2:So just that there's a real place for convention ministry. But being in the local church being preached to by the man, I know who knows me, I know how it works out. I know how the local church being preached to by the man, I know who knows me, I know how it works. I know how he treats men, women, I know how he treats the disabled, I know how he treats children. I know this man and he's teaching me, preaching to me, from all his imperfections and shortcomings, as well as all his growing godliness, and I think that's very powerful and added to that the preacher's own transformation through the word.
Speaker 3:So, the preacher, why do you need to prep in preaching? Why do you need to pray in preparation? So that you come to the pulpit of the lectern having been thoroughly worked on by the Spirit and the word, and that you stand up in front of people in some ways as somebody who has been changed in the way that you are praying. For that transformation. And that makes it a hard graft and a prayerful activity.
Speaker 1:Growing younger preachers. It takes years, though.
Speaker 2:Well, we're always growing, aren't we as preachers? We're always growing. We just need to make sure that we're growing To be in our effectiveness.
Speaker 1:So what encouragement to a younger preacher who's frustrated by their slow progress.
Speaker 3:Well, expose yourself to a whole range of things, learn really good theology, learn how to understand the Bible, but make sure you are with someone, with people who can help you, who can instruct you, who can mentor you. I think of the apostles designate, with the Lord Jesus listening to his preaching. Think of Timothy with Paul listening to his preaching. And then Timothy Paul said to him off you go, I'm going to send you out, but he kept his hooks in, kept his relationship with him. So learn the Bible, learn about Jesus, but be with people who can mentor you and help you and treat and there is no one more relational than Philip Jensen, john Chapman, dick Lucas, david Cook.
Speaker 2:And the other thing is there's lots of opportunities here. You can join a preaching club. There's preaching clubs all over Australia, but also you can Corn Hill, australia. They meet in Newtown and they meet in Rooty Hill. Rooty Hill Thursday, newtown on Tuesday, and that just do it. It's a one-day-a-week course and I do that. I lecture in that two terms a year and occasionally recently I had a senior Anglican minister in there just brushing things up and he had a great contribution to make and it was terrific to have him in the course as well. So these opportunities are there. And if you're from over Australia, at the moment the class I'm in at Rudy Hill has got as many people online as attending in person. So they're from Geraldton, there's a couple from the Sunshine Coast, some from the Hunter Valley and they're all enjoying and contributing and joining the preaching groups as long as and I'd say this about London the Cornhill course is only one third of the equation.
Speaker 3:So it works really well when it's in a really good partnership with an apprenticeship program, for example in a local church, so that what the guys, the men and women, are doing is they're out there in the local church with a pastor, teacher, learning how to preach and teach and we kind of partner with that. I mean, one of the great contributions to the UK was the ministry apprenticeship culture Way back in the early 2000s. What came across was a culture of being with and being sent information for ministry.
Speaker 3:one of the the challenges we've got to face in the uk is the apprenticeship programs have become one year, not two oh really well, many of them have, and all sorts of reasons for that, but you've lost time being with people to be sent out to be trained.
Speaker 1:I mean, I just remember I was useless the first year and vaguely confident the second. Well, that's right.
Speaker 3:And if you're there for one year, you're in for six months and you're worrying what you're going to do next.
Speaker 2:And a ministry training scheme. That's a lot of the people at Cornhill are from doing this. Yeah, Thank you so much. We could keep going, but we've got to. That's a lot of the people at Cornhill are from MT Are doing this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you so much. We could keep going, but we've got to stop. Robin Sidserf has been our guest from Proclamation Trust in the United Kingdom, and also David Cook, and David now works with the Expository Preaching Trust. This has been the Pastor's Heart. My name's Dominic Steele. We'll look forward to your company next Tuesday afternoon.
