For Pastors

An Archbishop in Tension

• Vic Francis • Season 1 • Episode 3

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Archbishop Justin Duckworth lives in the tension of being part of the establishment, and yet deep down being what he calls an "edge" dweller. In this podcast, we hear how Justin navigates that tension, and of his challenge to the church of Aotearoa New Zealand.

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PS: A big thanks to Joel Francis, for his genius in guiding his father towards getting this podcast out. Couldn't have done it without you!

Vic Francis:

Kia ora, I'm Vic Francis, and I'm combining my background as a journalist with decades of pastoring, national church leadership and practising as a supervisor and spiritual director to champion pastors and their holy calling in an uncertain world. This For Pastors podcast aims to inspire, encourage and help pastors and Christian leaders keep saying yes to the call of God on their lives. In this episode, we feature Archbishop Justin Duckworth and explore the tensions of his job and hear his challenge to the church in Aotearoa New Zealand. Kia ora and welcome to this week's episode of the For Pastors podcast. Today I'm joined by Archbishop Justin Duckworth, head of the Anglican Church in New Zealand. Justin, welcome.

Justin Duckworth:

Thanks. Lovely to be here. Actually, I wasn't too sure when you said"for pastors", whether it was about the number four or was it exactly! I couldn't quite tell. I, I know what it is, but I thought, oh, it's an interesting title.

Vic Francis:

It's very much a podcast about being for pastors, but maybe sometimes there'll be four pastors in the room. We can use it both ways. You are an archbishop and, I'm wondering what an archbishop is and what does an archbishop do?

Justin Duckworth:

Sure. As we know, each church has a way of ordering itself. The Anglican church, we choose an ordering, which is similar to the Catholic church. We have deacons, priests, and bishops. So we divide the country into regions, which are called a diocese. Each diocese is run by a bishop, and that's the primary ordering of our church is diocesan centric. But in order to hold together, we appoint an archbishop, the sort of coordinating bishop of the bishops. So every diocese, every region is still, the leader is still the bishop, but I'm sort of the coordinator I suppose, of the country is the best way of saying, or of the province, cause our province actually isn't just Aotearoa it's also the Pacific.

Vic Francis:

Okay. And in the Anglican Church, there are three, I think, tikanga. How does that work?

Justin Duckworth:

So in response to the treaty, we in 1992 chose to order ourselves in a way that we gave determination to Māori and to Polynesia, trying to move beyond, obviously, the impact of colonisation. And so we have three archbishops all leading over the church. We have a Polynesian, Māori and obviously the Pakeha or settler or European descent archbishop. Whatever way you wanna look at it.

Vic Francis:

And do you work together or are you with different streams of Anglicanism within New Zealand?

Justin Duckworth:

We all have our tikanga, so obviously I play more of a coordinating role amongst Pakeha. But, we all work together. We all archbishops of the whole church and we all connect together relationally, but also in ministry. So it's a beautiful relationship in that sense. And it's one of mutual diversity in enriching the church, I suppose.

Vic Francis:

Feels quite far sighted of the Anglican Church, quite a long way back to have made that distinction.

Justin Duckworth:

I think it really was. I mean, again, it was before my time, 92. If you think of the contemporary conversations we're having about co-governance, et cetera, yes, I mean, it's remarkable that we as a church chose to order ourselves that way over 30 years ago. So, you know, it's not perfect. We, uh, we are humans and we're always trying to work out how to live into our higher calling. But yeah, I think it is quite prophetic for this moment in history really.

Vic Francis:

Wonderful. Justin you are known by headline writers, I think, as the Barefoot Bishop, even in your own social media, at one stage you called yourself a dreadlocked bloke or just a dreadlocked bloke, helping others find their purpose in God's love and healing justice. Oh, and by the way, the Bishop of Wellington, uh, this was a couple of years ago, so it might be, oh, and by the way, the Archbishop of New Zealand. It is a good headline and it's like we can feel that we know you by, uh, dreadlocks or bare feet or something, but what are the real qualities and passions that make Justin Duckworth tick?

Justin Duckworth:

Yeah, just before I go to that, I think it's real funny because actually I think I set up that social media account, or a friend set it up when I first became Bishop, like 13 years ago, and I've never used it ever since.

Vic Francis:

I love it, I love it.

Justin Duckworth:

But I don't, I don't know how to delete it. And so, you know, it's funny. And then somebody quoted recently that, Justin Duckworth has all these followers on social media. I'm thinking I don't even use it for 13 years. It was one setup. Anyway, it's so funny, funny how these things.

Vic Francis:

That's so brilliant. Well, maybe, do you still have dreadlocks and do you still wear bare feet?

Justin Duckworth:

Yeah, I know, I still have dreadlocks and barefoot. And the questions still a good question. What is really important to me is I wanna partner with God to see the world transformed and the language we would use is the kingdom of God. We wanna see the kingdom of God come. That is my passion. I t's more than to see the church flourish or grow. I think it's to see the church take its part in partnership with God, see his kingdom come. I find there's so many troubling things, you know, locally, across the country, across the world, and I just actually wanna see transformation. And I think as we partner with God, even in our sort of broken churches, I do believe that somehow we get to see the kingdom emerging in these places, and I think that's sort of what gets me outta bed in the morning is that desire to see that transformation. I wanna see change, I suppose.

Vic Francis:

Yes. And that's something I think that has probably been a driver for you, all the way through your ministry. Would you mind just taking us back to maybe the early days? I don't imagine when you were a kid, kicking a football around that you thought, well, one day I am gonna be the Archbishop of New Zealand. How did all of this begin and, and what are the steps that have led towards where you are now?

Justin Duckworth:

The potted history is I didn't grow up in a church-going family didn't grow up in, in faith in that sense. I prefer to say, as opposed to growing up unchurched or, not a Christian, I grew up pagan. It sounds far more sort of romantic, yeah. You grew up worshipping goats or something, which of course isn't true, but sounds better.

Vic Francis:

I was a pagan, the barefoot, pagan ex pagan bishop. I love it.

Justin Duckworth:

That's right. Which basically means I just didn't grow up going to church, but it sounds so much more exotic. As a 14-year-old, I ended up going to a Youth for Christ youth group back in the day. Basically that was my introduction to faith. I got to hear about the good news of Jesus. I got to experience the good news of Jesus, and ultimately that set me on trajectory of life that I'm forever grateful for. I was involved in Wellington Youth for Christ as that's where I grew up. And I think Wellington Youth for Christ was really interesting, It's probably another podcast, but I think it's, it was pretty innovative and phenomenal just in the moments that I probably was a teenager amongst it. I was pretty lucky. We were well discipled. And as I say to people, basically three things I think were discipled into me, you know, by my mid to late teens, that was, it's all about Jesus. It's all about intimacy and obedience to Jesus. It's all about deep belonging together. Somehow in the body of Christ, we are called to belong together in this wonderful, crazy body. And the third one was, you can't read scripture without understanding and picking up, I think, that God has a special place for, I don't know, the biblical language would be the poor, the widow, the marginalized, et cetera. I think the Catholics call it the preferential option for the poor. So I was lucky enough by my teenage years to sort of have those three profound truths drilled into my life. I think the rest of my life has just been relatively trying to live them out. And so first season in my late teens, early twenties was just doing community-based youth work and got married to beloved Jenny and moved from doing community-based youth work to having an opportunity of running a house for teenage young women who couldn't live at home, it wasn't working out for them for whatever reason. It was a huge privilege to share life in that context. And now by the time we were about 30, we shifted in the inner city of Wellington, lived in top of Cuba Street, and gave hospitality to those who found themselves with the street being their home. Planted a church up there and just shared, shared life in that context.

Vic Francis:

What did that look like? Top of Cuba Street were you in a house, people come off the street. People be referred.

Justin Duckworth:

It was all kind of miraculous. The local Baptist church were running a drop-in centre up top of Cuba Street, and, uh, we sort of said to them, Hey, do you mind if we live in your upstairs offices? It was really small. So the, the downstairs was, the drop-in centre was our dining room kitchen. So if we didn't close the door at night the street community would walk in assuming the drop in centre was open, so to speak. And so we, um, we lived there with our young family and we had a couple of teenagers with us and a couple of, um, Christian young adults as well with us. And we just, yeah, lived there, gave hospitality, joined in what God was doing amongst that community and planted a church et cetera. Did that for about four or five years.

Vic Francis:

Was this Anglican at that point?

Justin Duckworth:

We were a part of Youth for Christ still. Yeah. I think at that point we were probably coming independent from Youth for Christ. At that time we were going to an Assemblies of God church. It was all sort of self-supporting. So we all earnt our own crust and we ended up having, I don't know, three or four houses, living up top of Cuba Street d oing life together and sharing life with the street community. It was all pretty fun. And pretty lively. And that's the context our kids were raised in, in the early days. And then from there we dreamed of getting a place where, um, our friends could have a healthier life where it was easy to make good decisions and harder to make destructive decisions, I suppose. And so we looked for a piece of land and ultimately we found a piece of land and, miracle upon miracle, we ended up going to live at Ngati Awa and ultimately it became Ngati Awa River Monastery, w here we were for 11 years and ended up starting a contemporary monastery as you do.

Vic Francis:

Contemporary monastery. Well that's what a pagan boy is bound to do, isn't it? Start a contemporary monastery.

Justin Duckworth:

That's right. And t here was only one church in the valley, which was a little Anglican church. Jenny had grown up Anglican and escaped in her teenage years to the Baptists. So we were committed to going to our local church, one church there. So we went to this little Anglican church. Me and Jenny walked in with our three young kids. They probably thought that me and Jenny were the youth group, right? Because, you know, classic little rural Anglican church. And, um, we loved it. In the end, ultimately I got ordained in Wellington Diocese, hung out at that little church which was part of the Waikanae Parish. And then 2012 somehow became Bishop of Wellington.

Vic Francis:

That seems, that seems an incredible leap.

Justin Duckworth:

And that's the, uh, that was the story really.

Vic Francis:

That's where you've been, where are you now?

Justin Duckworth:

So I live in, Whanganui now. Seven years ago we shifted outta Wellington. We called an assistant bishop, w ho lived in Wellington, so I went north of the diocese to Whanganui. Never had any history in Whanganui, but I love it. We literally just felt called by God, we ultimately went church planting with some other leaders and so have been about, um, replanting two different churches. I live in a suburb of Whanganui called Castle Cliff.

Vic Francis:

Wonderful.

Justin Duckworth:

And, um, we've been up here for seven years and still commute to Wellington obviously, because the centre of the diocese, the population centre is Wellington, so still go down there often.

Vic Francis:

So if you look back at those early days and you project through until today, maybe you're fresh, you're young, maybe you're idealistic. How have you changed over that course of that time?

Justin Duckworth:

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think there is a healthy idealism in my youth, and I think that's good. I always say, if you're a 20 something follower of Jesus, you don't feel like you can do better than your elders, then there's something wrong with you. You wanna be pushing up. You wanna think that you can partner with God and create a better world. I think that's good. It's healthy. I probably had a lot of that in my youth. I think what's probably changed for me is I've had to relate to a broader cohort of people, I suppose. So when you primarily feel called to the margins and called to the edges of society, primarily that's the people you are relating to, and that's the world that you are inhabiting. Having become bishop and now archbishop, you're also relating to a whole different part of society and a whole different part of the church. I think that naturally, I mean, you are the context you inhabit, so that naturally broadens your experience and there's a challenge with that. Yeah. Because in my case, there's a challenge to also not to be compromised to what you originally felt called to be about. So I think I live in that tension. I have the joy of living in a broader world relating to all sorts of wonderful people that I wouldn't have had the opportunity if I wasn't the bishop or the archbishop. And the challenge of that is, is like all of us, we are blown by the context we inhabit and sometimes it's hard to keep your true north. So I think for me, always a challenge is to keep my faithfulness and fidelity to the three things I said earlier you know that yeah, faithfulness of fidelity to Jesus the faithfulness and fidelity to deep belonging in the body of Christ and the faithfulness and fidelity to share in God's redemptive work on the edges and the margins of our society. It's always hard to keep those things centre because you know of all the competing needs that I experience in life.

Vic Francis:

Indeed. Well, I think that's probably a good place for us to pause, and when we return, I'm gonna talk with you, Justin, about your book In-tensional, and you mentioned the word tension, which is a very challenging message to the church in New Zealand. So we'll be right back. Justin, welcome back. Last year you and your friend Alan Jamieson, who is a substantial voice in the Baptist churches of New Zealand, uh, you released a book called In-tensional, and in it you describe churches or individuals who are in the centre and churches and individuals who are on the edge. And so before we look at some quotes from the book, can you explain what do you mean by edge churches and centre churches?

Justin Duckworth:

Yeah, sure. Centre church is basically what I would say is your standard local congregation, which gathers normally on Sunday. Everybody's welcome in the door, hopefully. It's probably been there hopefully for generations even and they exist as a generational gathering point for a location. Beautiful thing, wonderful thing. Also, through history, though, we have these other entities, which we call edge entities, but you can call them whatever you like really, which, if you go back to the early church, you have Paul's missionary band that would go around as a small group of people highly committed on a missional task, and we see those type of entities existing through church history as well. One, a local, inclusive, everybody welcome, another highly committed, missionally focused, normally focused on a particular gospel charism, or gospel gift they're trying to incarnate. So whatever language you want to use, we just call the edge and centre in the book.

Vic Francis:

Taking you into the book, you say,"Without the edge, Western churches will continue to die. Their buildings will increasingly become cafes and boutique furniture shops, and their communities will miss out on the passionate renewal God wants to bring to the Western church." It feels quite confronting that particularly if you're a centre church or a centre church pastor, which I guess probably I have to volunteer is probably me. What is the reaction that you're trying to provoke in bringing that to our attention?

Justin Duckworth:

I think there's another lovely quote that gets even more of a reaction, which is when we call the church and insipid, compromised and idolatrous, I think that was a great one.

Vic Francis:

"Flabby and Insipid, idolatrous, compromised." Flabby and insipid. I could, I could go deeper.

Justin Duckworth:

Well, look, I mean, first of all, stepping back a bit, I'm 57, pushing 58. It gets to a point in life where you think every other muppet like me is having their say on where they think the church is at, et cetera. I thought, in the end, I've been thinking about this and living into this for over 30 years. If I'm not gonna say it now, I'm never gonna say it. So I feel like there's a sense where you may as well add your voice to the chorus of voices out there, because if I don't soon, it wasn't gonna be added. And maybe, just maybe, it can add something to the conversation. Secondly, the question is I suppose, if you're gonna say something, you do have to somehow say something that's gonna get a reaction. Otherwise you just don't get, I don't know, cut through in that sense. The language is deliberately provocative in order to generate a conversation. I suppose there's two questions, therefore, that I would say in relation to that. The question is, is what we say basically true? I mean, it may not be pleasant, but is it basically true that the Western church is insipid, flabby, compromised, idolatrous? And the second question is, if it is true, what do we do and how do we talk about it? Yeah, so I mean the first question is we can all have our conversation around is it true? My belief is it's starkly true. Now, that doesn't mean every individual is flabby and insipid and compromised and idolatrous, and it doesn't mean any individual church per se is, but what it means is generically across the west, we would say that we have some problems. And I think, o n most indicators, we would say in the last 50 years there's been significant problems. I think we would argue that there's very little moral difference between churchgoers and non-churchgoers. Yeah. We would say that in the Western world, the major things that we give our lives for, mortgages, houses, careers, status, identity, whatever, that churchgoers seem to have t he same issues on steroids within the church, which we tend not to address ever. I mean, I grew up with a context, in my teenage years and that, that we all said don't smoke, don't drink, or don't do drugs. But we didn't say, Hey, be careful about giving your first and foremost loyalty to your job or your career, or to money, or to your mortgage. We didn't actually have those conversations particularly strongly in our churches. So I think that there's a really good argument. And again, we've been here before for thousands of years. It's not like we haven't, and the church has been often in these seasons of compromise and then we sort of hear the call and get our act together a bit more. So it's not like it's a new thing for us. So the question is, if that's actually true, what's the correct response? And I think the challenge is, if we can't actually talk about it, that's the first problem. We're not sort of saying you yourself or that particular church, but if this is a generic problem, the first thing would be let's just be able to have the conversation. Let's not harmonise and say it doesn't exist just because we don't want to hurt people's feelings. Because, you know, again, the first problem is to admit you've got a problem, and then once you admit you've got a problem, you can do something about it. So I think that's the challenge, is we live in a church where you can't even say we're idolatrous any longer. And so if you've lost the language, that's really difficult. And so I think, hopefully, although it's provocative in the book, at least it sort of starts a conversation to say, is this analysis relatively true about how the Western Church has fared in the last, I don't know, 30, 40, 50 years?

Vic Francis:

If I can give a bit of context, in the book, Alan is the centre dweller and you, Justin, are the edge dweller. And, you have that conversation uh, at least to some degree. Uh, you say also in the book that in all the historical movements of God, and you go right back to the beginning, that prophetic and apostolic edge dwellers have been at the forefront and over time that other communities join them. I'm wondering, and you paint something of a bleak picture, I guess, how ripe are we for another, to quote you, historical movement of God?

Justin Duckworth:

I think we are really ripe. I think we've been struggling as a western church for a long time now. I think numbers are hemorrhaging. Our transformational impact on society, I think, has been reducing the whole time from my perspective. So I think we are ripe and I think God has always, I mean, God hasn't changed, so God is always seeking to call all people to him. He's always seeking to see his kingdom come on earth. So God is constantly seeking to see his kingdom come and he would love to partner with his church in that endeavour. So I think God is always trying to renew and revive the church. In some senses, the season's always ripe. But it does feel like for me in the last few years, um, particularly it's ripe and I think as the world lives in more uncertainty and lives in more global carnage, I think people are more open to the gospel than they have been, at least in my lifetime. I think I experience people now more open. So I think it is a really ripe time. The challenge will be, will we as a church partner with God in embracing the opportunities or will we miss the opportunities?

Vic Francis:

You also talk about partnering between that centre and that edge, so it seems like the relationship's gonna be really important. It's not like the edge dwellers can do it on their own. The centre dwellers need to be there as well. You say"centre church leaders can invite edge dwellers into a relationship where differences are recognised and respected without trying to bring the edge dwellers under the church programmes and management". So that sounds both uneasy, but also creates a lot of possibilities of somehow we can join together to make that partnership with God happen.

Justin Duckworth:

I think that's why we wrote the book. We wrote the book to highlight that creative tension. W e look back on history and we think of groups that have been highly significant. I suppose what we're trying to say is, when these groups started out, it was very tense, historically. It was not clear sailing between these groups and the institutional church or the centre church. Now we look back and go, oh, you know, go the Franciscans, they were amazing. Or, you know, go the desert mothers and fathers or go the monastics. They were amazing. But at the time it was incredibly tense. But what we're trying to do is normalise that, because if we want to see more renewal movements or even, you know, you're a Vineyard pastor, when the Vineyard movement started out, when John Wimber started out, I'm pretty sure it was tense amongst the church scene as people either embraced it or didn't embrace it, et cetera. Now, now we look back and we go, thank God for the Vineyard movement. Thank God for John Wimber. Yep. You know, in hindsight it's a wonderful thing. So the challenge is how to set up the dynamism where we allow for a mixed economy long enough that in time we can see the things that come through which are of God and are fruitful. A lot of stuff will just be loopy. Yeah. Get that, but you don't know at that moment. So you've gotta create that intentional, that tension. So that you can allow things to flourish and just the possibility that God is present to wanting to do a new or bring a correction to the church that is so necessary.

Vic Francis:

You say at one stage,"Reconstruction is harder than deconstruction. Anyone can point out what is going wrong", and I guess we can all do that,"but the vital prophetic gift is building viable hopeful alternatives." I'm thinking, well, what are some viable, hopeful alternatives for pastors who are listening to this podcast?

Justin Duckworth:

Let me first of all dig into that quote, because I do think there's a generation who can point out what we're all doing wrong. And now I've become the problem, you know, as the archbishop, and I get that, but it's really easy to deconstruct all the issues we see. It's so much harder to put up an alternative that works. Yes. I think that's the critical thing, like absolutely be dissatisfied, want to see the kingdom of God come more and then make it happen. Partner with God and make it happen. Don't just whinge and deconstruct. Yes, really easy to do that. Now, I've got a lot of time for people who can say to me, this is problematic in church and that is problematic in church. I've got a lot of time for them if they're attempting to put up an alternative reality. But for those who are just, just pulling down, I probably know more now in my role to be able to pull down if I wanted to.

Vic Francis:

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Justin Duckworth:

Going back to your amazing question, which now I've completely forgotten, but it was a good,

Vic Francis:

Viable, hopeful alternatives for pastors.

Justin Duckworth:

The challenge, as I said earlier is, the things which are not yet proven, we cannot speak of, because we don't know if they're there or not. But I'll give two that I think are another great example. I mean, I've already mentioned the Vineyard movement, which is now, you know, you're maturing. You're no longer in that category. But, you know, one movement that I think worldwide in the West we could now recognise has been incredibly transformative is the 24-7 prayer movement. Sure. Now, Pete Greig, and, his original book, I think Red Moon Rising, which when we all read it was a bit of a game changer. But since then, it's really matured and I keep coming across people who will do the Lectio 365 prayer app in the morning. I mean, I find that across denominations, people doing that, people doing the"holy ground" or whatever prayer app where you walk your streets prayer course and videos. It's become an incredibly significant renewal movement, I would've thought, within the church, 24-7. So I think that's a really great example. It's, it's a bit newer. It's, it's only been around for you know, maybe in the last 10 years it's really kicked and it's really influential and it's really causing revitalisation. I think another one in Aotearoa would be, um, Te Rautini and Aaron Hardy and that crew, again, a little bit younger, but the way they have brought alive in worship and placed us in the centre of God's will for the decolonisation conversation, let's put it that way, or what does it meant to flourish in this land? I mean, I think it's been incredibly influential, small church, focused on a particular thing, which is t o be God's people in Aotearoa and what does that mean? But, you know, the pull of that across Aotearoa have been quite significant, I think. And, they were pretty early adopters of that. So again, that's another little example that we can now see and think, okay, yeah, God's been at work in that and we can give thanks to God for that and we can learn from that.

Vic Francis:

The book is called In-tensional. It's Philip Garside Publishing in Wellington. It is challenging. It is definitely worth a read. We'll be right back. I'm talking today to Archbishop Justin Duckworth, leader of the Anglican Church in New Zealand. In this final segment of our For Pastors podcast, we'll move on from Justin's book, In-tensional, into some more general questions about where the church is at and how we as pastors fit in both today and as we look forward. So Justin, what can you imagine, put your prophetic eyes and feelings into a church in 10 years or maybe 50 years? The best case scenario.

Justin Duckworth:

I suppose what I'd like to say is I don't think the form of church is gonna be much different. I think often, you know, there was a movement of quite a few years where we keep saying everything's gonna change. It's all gotta change. I don't think that's true. I think people have gathered for 2000 years, they've worshipped, they've prayed, they've broken bread. They've listened to the gospel get proclaimed. I mean, I think that stuff continues. I think that yes, the church will, my hope will be, will realign, a bit more to the call of Jesus and the faithfulness of Jesus and become maybe, you know, the biblical word is holy people, or I would say peculiar people. We might become a bit more peculiar, but my great hope would be that every geographical community should have a faithful gathering of people that are salt and light to that community where people who wanna find the good news of Jesus and be supported and that can turn up. So, you know, I just would love to believe that every geographical community across Aotearoa will have a faithful, maybe peculiar, holy people who offer an alternative of gospel hope in a world which is struggling. I still believe that will be the future and my belief is as if we, as followers of Jesus who gather together, if we can just a lign our lives a little bit more to gospel faithfulness, to embrace our call to be a peculiar, holy people, then that future's gonna be a good future for us.

Vic Francis:

And I think it's gonna be broad, isn't it? It's gonna be Anglican, but it's also gonna be all of the other denominations that we know about, or movements and plants.

Justin Duckworth:

And I think that's good. You know, I think the more the better? What we know from the nature of creation is God is a creative, l oves creating and has given that to us as well. So the more diverse expressions of local church, the better as far as I'm concerned, each one should carry the image of God, but should also carry the context of their local community in a beautiful way, which is unique and wonderful.

Vic Francis:

This podcast is about championing pastors and their holy callings in an uncertain world. What would you say to us as pastors, maybe particularly your Anglican priests and vicars, but also Vineyard pastors like me and the broad range of pastors who are doing what they're doing, with a real sense of God's call.

Justin Duckworth:

I would say, be encouraged. It is going to get harder. I feel like we look back now and realise that we lived in the golden era of human history for comfort. We had the best of the best. We had a stable Western world with democratic capitalism on steroids, and the question was basically how much we could accumulate. And it was a pretty comfortable existence. That has dramatically changed in the last few years. And so I think we were conditioned into a life of comfort. We have to realise that was a blip on human history and realise that as followers of Jesus and as church leaders, the norm is going to be challenging. However, what we also know is challenging normally means the gospel flourishes. So somehow my message would be to us all, God is moving. It is gonna be hard and, though, God has always been faithful to his leaders, his people. And there is resource for the journey, but I think we need to re-pivot again our resource from being trusting in the democratic Western capitalist dream, even as church leaders to, I actually do trust in the one who leads me through the wilderness t o the promised land. And I trust in that provision and I think, you know, as leaders, the provision of God is there for us and it's gonna be a challenging season. And God is on the move. And for those of us who can access God's resilience that he offers to us, I think it's gonna be a challenging but a wonderful ride. And my hope is that church leaders don't give up. It's hard. It's tough, but my cry is don't give up. R each out to each other to access the resilience that God has placed in the body of Christ for each other. Do the hard work to travel more lighter into the future, so that as church leaders we are not carrying baggage forward that we don't need to, but this is gonna tire us out and exhaust us. But I think if we can do those things, I think God is moving and we are experiencing that across denominations at this moment in history. But I just want leaders to continue to stick in faithfully. And to experience that.

Vic Francis:

It sounds like you still believe in the importance of us having leaders, pastors.

Justin Duckworth:

Yeah. I mean, I often come to that part in scripture, which I know there's probably more talking about generically Jesus, but, you know, they're like sheep without a shepherd. And I feel like there's so many people lost, w ithin our churches and outside our churches, and I think at this point in history, it's so hard for people to put their hand up and lead, particularly the next generation coming through. They just find it hard to say, we'll take responsibility and we will lead. But I so believe it is a high calling and it's a privilege, although a challenging privilege at this moment. And so I just think you know anybody, and again, I just want to do a particular shout out to those who lead churches in forgotten places. Full credit to those in the main centres who demographic works for you, but for those who are faithfully serving in the forgotten places of Aotearoa, good on you. Bless you. Yes, I think good on you, full credit to you when you are working in places where others would often have turned their back on. F ull credit to you.

Vic Francis:

Absolutely. As we come towards a landing, I wanna ask you a question that I'm asking all guests on the For Pastors podcast is, is what gives you hope?

Justin Duckworth:

Most of all, God gives me hope. I can point to situations and circumstances, but actually I think my hope has always gotta be in God, not the circumstance. Hmm. Because on a good day or a bad day, my hope is still in God. Second thing I'd say though is I feel like my life has just been miraculous in that sense. And I can see God's provision in different seasons. And so by looking backwards to God's provision, it gives me hope for the future. But I think, in a deeper sense. I think you are probably hearing the same rumours, but I have far more conversations now with church leaders where I hear always of, you know, there was a random person who turned up at church. They had a dream. They weren't a follower of Jesus, but they just had a dream and felt like they needed to go to church. I'm hearing that a lot more than I used to hear it. So it feels to me like God's Spirit is moving, and I think there's a receptivity amongst people in Aotearoa maybe'cause life is harder now than it has been for a while. I think there's receptiveness to the gospel, to the Holy Spirit's prompting that just means that people are, you know, basically you just have to run a healthy church and God sends the people is what I'm nearly experiencing now. If you run a healthy church, it feels to me that God just speaks to people and they're turning up now in a way that I haven't experienced in years.

Vic Francis:

It's interesting you say that. I just recently had a baptism service with our church, and we had maybe 10 from our church who were being baptised and a lady, probably in her twenties, I guess, just appeared off the beach and she'd seen in some sort of social media post that we were having baptisms, and she just walked up and said, can you baptise me as well? And that was remarkable in 32 years of pastoring. Yep. That, that hasn't happened before. So, wonderful.

Justin Duckworth:

I'm hearing those stories all the time now. Yeah. It's, it's quite unusual but again, I just want leaders not to miss that and to have the hope that that's happening, but also do the work in their churches, that our churches are healthy enough to receive that.

Vic Francis:

Justin, I'm also asking our guests to pray for our pastors in Aotearoa and obviously overseas. I t would be such a blessing.

Justin Duckworth:

Let us pray. God, we speak a blessing over all who minister in your name, pastors, priests, ministers. We bless them in Jesus' name. We pray even now that your Spirit will fill them, that your Spirit will encourage them. We pray for resilience in challenging times. We pray for eyes to see what your Spirit is doing. We pray for greater fruitfulness, that you will send more workers into the harvest field to experience the fruitfulness of the work that your Spirit is doing. We pray for eyes to see the generation pushing through that we may disciple them into leadership, that we may disciple them into the harvest. We pray to be leaders who set our eyes on eternity. And as it says in the book of Hebrews, that they lived for what they did not receive in this lifetime. May that be true for us. May we be leaders of legacy who give our lives to not receive what we will in this lifetime, but to sow in to the kingdom coming in Aotearoa into the future. So we pray God's richest blessing upon all who minister in Christ's name across Aotearoa, the blessing of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit be with them. Amen.

Vic Francis:

Amen. We've been listening to Archbishop Justin Duckworth, and I wanna thank you today for being with us on the podcast. I wanna thank you for being an edge dweller, but also recognising that those of us, perhaps, uh, Alan Jameson and myself, who may be more centre church people are important too. I thank you for being true to your prophetic edge and call, and I thank you for leading the Anglican Church and in that role influencing many other churches. I champion you and your holy calling in this uncertain world, even as you have championed us. God bless you, Archbishop Justin Duckworth.

Justin Duckworth:

Thank you.

Vic Francis:

Thank you for listening to this episode of the For Pastors podcast. You can find more information about us in the podcast notes, and I'm back next Tuesday with another episode, this time looking at the beauty and wonder of small to medium sized churches, which let's face it is the size of church most of us are pastoring. I hope you'll join me. God bless you.