The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele

The death of Pope Francis marks a pivotal moment for Roman Catholics.
What does this transition mean for the future of Catholicism and how should Protestants respond?
From Vatican City, Leonardo Di Chirico offers a firsthand perspective on reactions in Rome, while Rachel Ciano provides historical context from Sydney.
Many Protestant leaders have referred to Francis as a "brother in Christ," but Francis's final public act—granting indulgences during Easter—epitomizes the theological chasm between Catholic and Protestant understandings of salvation.
His distinctive Marian devotion and frequent requests for prayers further highlight fundamental differences in how salvation is understood.
The contrast between Benedict XVI's emphasis on Roman doctrine and Francis's focus on Catholic universality reveals a pendulum swing in Roman Catholicism that will likely now swing back.
Leonardo di Chirico is pastor of the Church Brecca di Roma and director of the Reformanda Initiative.
Rachel Ciano lectures in Christianity and History at sydney missionary and bible college, and is part of the faculty at the Rome scholars and leaders network, hosted by The Reformanda Initiative.

Reach Australia National Conference
Reach Australia’s National Conference is from 19 to 22 May 2025 on the Central Coast of NSW. This year’s theme is URGENT: The Necessary Task of Mission Before Christ Returns. For more info.

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Dominic Steele's preaching at Village
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Claims today that the global leader of the Anglican Church is out of step with God.

The Primates of the Global Anglican Fellowship (GAFCON), meeting in Kigali Rwanda, have said that Archbishop Justin Welby has,

‘Departed from the authentic exercise of his office by normalising and praising those who have departed from biblical teaching and practice...and giving equal place to practices contrary to biblical norms, as Anglicans have received them. We urge him to repent.’ (https://bit.ly/3DmPVas)

And the Archbishop of Canterbury’s explanations are described as 'disingenuous if not duplicitous'.

The Gafcon Primates statement comes on top of the statement from the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches, which if anything, is even stronger.

The Global South Fellowship says,

‘Archbishop Welby’s first position is lamentable; his second is repugnant to our understanding of the authority and clarity of Holy Scripture. The notion of ‘pluriform’ truth is contrary to the Anglican Ordinal which binds duly consecrated bishops to be responsible for the guarding, teaching and imparting of divine truth in Holy Scripture.’ (https://bit.ly/3smoqas)

Archbishop Welby’s actions, which have provoked the criticisms, are his appointment of a new Dean of Canterbury (the lead minister of Canterbury Cathedral in the UK) of a man in a civil same sex partnership.

The Global South statement says,

‘It feels as if the present Archbishop of Canterbury has shut the door of the [Canterbury] Cathedral to orthodox bishops, clergy and members of the [Anglican] Communion.’ (https://bit.ly/3smoqas)

We are speaking today with:

• Archbishop Foley Beach, from North America, who is the chair of the GAFCON Movement, but who also is aligned with the Global South.
• Archbishop James Wong, Primate of Indian Ocean, who is one of the leading figures in the Global South, and who was also at the GAFCON Primates meeting.
• UK Bishop Andy Lines, who leads the Anglican Network in Europe, and who was also present at the GAFCON meeting.

Reach Australia National Conference
Reach Australia’s National Conference is from 19 to 22 May 2025 on the Central Coast of NSW. This year’s theme is URGENT: The Necessary Task of Mission Before Christ Returns. For more info.

Anglican Aid
Anglican Aid - To find out more about how to support Anglican Aid.

The Church Co
A website and app platform built specifically for churches: http://www.thechurchco.com

Dominic Steele's preaching at Village
Subscribe to Dominic Steele's weekly sermons from the Village Church website.

Support the show

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Gafcon Australia Chair Richard Condie has responded to revisionist critics, labeling them as false teachers who have rejected Biblical and Anglican doctrine, and are responsible for the current Australian church schism.

Gafcon has formed an Anglican lifeboat for faithful Christians, the ‘Diocese of the Southern Cross’ announced at the big GAFCON Australasia Conference, this week in Canberra.

It will be a new ‘safe place for gospel ministry’ for ministers and churches who can’t work under bishops who are false teachers.

Bishop Condie has rejected the Primate of Australia’s statement that the new Southern Cross Diocese is not Anglican.

Bishop Condie says the Anglican Communion and the Anglican Church in Australia is broken.

Bishop Condie has called on the revisionist bishops to return to biblical orthodoxy, and says if they repented, he would be the first to vote for the closing down of the Diocese of the Southern Cross.

At the Australian General Synod in May, only ten of Australia’s Bishops affirmed that marriage in God’s sight is only between a man and a woman.

The Archbishop of Sydney Kanishka Raffel said in response the national church is in a precarious position.

Revisionist Archbishop of Brisbane Phillip Aspinall, further provoked tensions in his Presidential address, with a blistering attack on evangelicals, described by one of his minister’s as hurtful, hypocritical and hateful.

Guests on this week’s The Pastor’s Heart:

• Richard Condie, Bishop of Tasmania and Chair of Gafcon Australia
• Glenn Davies, Bishop of the new Anglican Southern Cross Diocese and Former Archbishop of Sydney
• Foley Beach, Primate of the Anglican Church in North America, and Chair of the Gafcon Primate’s Council
• Jennifer Hercott, Member of Gafcon Australia Board and registrar of the Diocese of Central Queensland

Download ‘The Line in the Sand’ https://bit.ly/3pvzssM

http://www.thepastorsheart.net/podcast/false-teaching-revisionists-caused-the-australian-church-schism

Reach Australia National Conference
Reach Australia’s National Conference is from 19 to 22 May 2025 on the Central Coast of NSW. This year’s theme is URGENT: The Necessary Task of Mission Before Christ Returns. For more info.

Anglican Aid
Anglican Aid - To find out more about how to support Anglican Aid.

The Church Co
A website and app platform built specifically for churches: http://www.thechurchco.com

Dominic Steele's preaching at Village
Subscribe to Dominic Steele's weekly sermons from the Village Church website.

Support the show

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Under God, something a little accidental and thrilling has just happened, so I thought I’d share it here.

A year ago I was invited to speak at a conference in the South West of Sydney called SweatCon. It stands for South West Evangelism and Training Conference.

It was so impressive. There were 20 or so churches working together brilliantly with close collaboration and team work. I came home inspired, encouraged and thrilled to bits.

And so when COVID forced the shutdown of the evangelical training conference that we used to send a few of our people up to each year, I said to the other minsters around here, ‘Let’s see if we can pull it off, to set up a local non residential ministry training conference running over four days.’

And so Cultivate Conference was born. The kind people at SweatCon gave us the strand material. The great trainers from Youthworks came and gave us electives. Plus there was an elective on sexuality from the crew at livingfaith.online

We had four New Testament talks from Bill Salier in the morning and Mike Leite on the Old Testament in the evening. All for $130 a head.

We got local restaurants and cafes to cater. On the first day - over an amazing Lebanese feast that we had for lunch - I met one young lady who came to Christ in March, who was having her first meal at her first Christian conference. I had to tell her. ‘Just so your expectations aren’t shattered about Christian Conferences in the future, in terms of food. It’s all down hill from here.’

Let me tell you what was amazing:

• From our church - we had at least four times as many people trained - as we have ever been able to get to go away to a residential external conference.
• It was the best inter-church co-operation that I’ve seen in our area in twenty years of ministry.

If it can happen in the hard soil of the inner west of Sydney - then in the many other places where the soil is softer - it’s absolutely possible.

And here’s a thing where the Covid disruption could lead to good. Wouldn’t it be awesome if instead of a total of 5-600 people going to the blue mountains to be trained, across the 26 mission areas of Sydney - there were 26 x 100 people each at one of these local training conferences.

There could be thousands more people being trained and equipped in the ministry of Jesus - who would never go to an overnight dormitory conference in the mountains.

How do you get the strand material? Go to sweat.org.au and send the conference organisers a message, be nice and polite, and you never know what might happen. That’s what I did.
See Sydney Anglicans Article: https://sydneyanglicans.net/news/cultivate-conference

Reach Australia National Conference
Reach Australia’s National Conference is from 19 to 22 May 2025 on the Central Coast of NSW. This year’s theme is URGENT: The Necessary Task of Mission Before Christ Returns. For more info.

Anglican Aid
Anglican Aid - To find out more about how to support Anglican Aid.

Dominic Steele's preaching at Village
Subscribe to Dominic Steele's weekly sermons from the Village Church website.

Support the show

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Become a regular financial supporter of The Pastor's Heart via Patreon.

There are claims - and you hear them every so often - that archeology has disproved this story or that in the bible, and claims from this or that scholar of particularly late dating of different bible books.

How do we as evangelical pastors react/respond/answer those claims?

Hans Kristensen is senior pastor of Marsfield Community Church in Sydney and is studying ancient archaeology.

He suggests that there are 10 major archaelogical finds that help us to increase our confidence in the Old Testament:

1. There’s evidence of a big population jump in Caanan at exactly the time that the bible said that Yahweh was giving Israel the land, called the ‘Hill Country Explosion.’
2. The Egyptian Pharaoh Merneptah boasts of raiding the land of Caanan, saying it was occupied by Israel.
3. In the city of Hazor, archaeologists have found religious idols destroyed and other items intact, just as expected from Joshua 11-12
4. The recently discovered altar at Mount Ebal is likely Joshua’s altar (Joshua 8)
5. In the Tel Dan inscription we now have archeological evidence for King David’s existence.
6. There’s consistent architectural town planning in the cities built around the time of David and Solomon - pointing towards planning and control under one ruler (eg a King).
7. There are similarities between what we know of the temple of Solomon and a similar temple built at Ain Dara, about 30 kilometres from Beirut, showing Solomon’s temple fits into the religious and architectural landscape of the time.
8. The discovery of six massive chambered gates at Hazor, Meggido and Gezer and other architectural discoveries at those sites corresponds with 1Kings 9:15.
9. A ninth century battle account from King Moab of Mersha mirrors the one in 2 Kings 3.
10. The Biblical chronology of the listed kings matches almost exactly with archeological evidence.

Reach Australia National Conference
Reach Australia’s National Conference is from 19 to 22 May 2025 on the Central Coast of NSW. This year’s theme is URGENT: The Necessary Task of Mission Before Christ Returns. For more info.

Anglican Aid
Anglican Aid - To find out more about how to support Anglican Aid.

The Church Co
A website and app platform built specifically for churches: http://www.thechurchco.com

Dominic Steele's preaching at Village
Subscribe to Dominic Steele's weekly sermons from the Village Church website.

Support the show

--
Become a regular financial supporter of The Pastor's Heart via Patreon.