[0:09]
G'day, I'm Scott Sanders from Reach Australia. Welcome to On Leadership. In these episodes of the Reach Australia podcast, I talk with Australian Christian leaders about what's shaping their leadership, the issues they're working through with their teams, and the regular practices underpinning their leadership. In this episode, I talk with Phil Colgan, Senior minister at St George North Anglican Church in Sydney's southwest. You've pressed play on leadership with Phil Colgan. I used to quite enjoy going and doing some photocopying

[0:41]
and locking myself near the photocopier up at the church building and gave me an hour to read. I sort of justified if I'm doing something else. So lots of people said, oh Phil, you can get someone else do that photocopying for you but I've always liked doing that photocopying just to just to give me that how to read. G'day I'm Scott Sanders and you've tuned in to the Reach Australia podcast a podcast that's all about healthy evangelistic multiplying churches.

[1:13]
So Phil take us back to when you were growing up what were family dinners like? I'm trying to think about that It's hard to remember My family had We moved around a lot And my dad worked a lot So sometimes it would be family dinners Without my father Because he wouldn't be back from work And that sort of thing But my memory is always Our family My mother would work very hard At making sure we all sat at the table There was no TV allowed During dinner

[1:43]
And the memory I always have Is a pot of tea afterwards my mother comes from england came from england when she was little i think it's an english thing we always actually have a proper teapot and everyone had a cup of tea at the end of dinner and that's where we talk and you know go beyond so wolfing down our food so your so your family it's just you and your sister is that right or you there's a larger family than that no just uh two boys just the two yeah yeah growing up yeah so and when you say you moved

[2:14]
around a lot did that get give you the opportunity to sort of go all over australia was it mainly just east coast east coast so uh sydney canberra brisbane at various times in each yeah yeah so ended up back in sydney which is where i became a christian so okay um so you had you became a christian later later in your journey like you were 21 you know i was 18 so uh yeah yeah so we came back to Sydney when I was near the end of school and a friend invited me along to sort of

[2:46]
a youth group end of school young adults type thing and a long story but became a Christian at the end of school beginning of university yeah great great so this podcast is all about leadership but we also want to find out a bit bit about you as well so that so it's really really good to hear Who are you currently learning from? Yeah, it's a really good question.

[3:16]
I mean, I always find myself, I sometimes think I'm a bit of a bowerbird. I just sort of pick at all different things. I wouldn't say I'm a disciple of so-and-so, you know, or anything like that. I always try and read widely. So I'm learning from lots of different people at the moment. I'm learning from Spurgeon a bit because I'm reading his old book on lectures to his students. And I'm learning from John Piper again, actually.

[3:47]
I'm reading Don't Waste Your Life with a group of men, and I find things like that always challenging. But it's funny how you learn things reading a book like that that it's not what he intended me to learn. It's been great for the men in my group. They've been challenged by how they use their life. I've been learning a bit about preaching just by reading his book, on things of how he puts words together, even though it's a book, but thinking about the flow of an argument, thinking about his emphasis, that sort of stuff. So it's interesting. The context of that Don't Waste Your Life is that's in your gospel team.

[4:20]
Gospel team is what we call them. That's in your sort of small group structure at church. You're reading a John Piper book. But it's interesting. Your main task at church as you lead is leading through preaching and teaching. And so you're pulling out all the sort of preaching gold that John Piper has. that's right. And as I say, I'm not a great listener to podcasts. I don't listen to a lot of other people preach to the truth, which, which those who listen to my preaching might think is obvious, but, but I love books. So reading is my thing. So, you know, if I was to be a disciple of anyone,

[4:51]
I'd be Don Carson in that. I go back to his books over and over and over again. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. So Spurgeon's what, what, what prompted you to read lectures to, to his students? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I, I was looking for another book to read. I went and grabbed it off the bookshelf. I've been finding in this whole COVID-19 time that I often run out of puff at about four o'clock in the afternoon. And so I just read for an hour before I do something at night, you know. And so I pulled it down.

[5:23]
And I started off on, I thought, oh, I'll read some of these things on preaching and so on. But then I just got engrossed. I'm reading a chapter at the moment where it's about keeping one eye closed and it's about not letting feedback put you off not letting not hearing the clamor and trusting your what you believe to be true and acting on it and not listening to those who criticize it and so forth yeah i'm interested you said sort of covid you know covid has got

[5:55]
you reading a little bit more in your sort of regular week did you sort of set aside a morning where you you did a lot of that reading or is it is it more in more just coming out of what you're or what conversations you're having with people that you sort of pull out your theological library and do your reading? No, so I always just read. So if I've got a spare moment, I'll read. That's what I do. So I read secular books at night and I read theological books or whatever during the day.

[6:26]
So I'll just grab something, read it, and I'll carry it around with you if I'm catching a train into town. Going and doing some photocopying, you know, and locking myself near the photocopier up at the church building and gave me an hour to read. I sort of justified if I'm doing something else. So lots of people said, oh, Phil, you can get someone else to do that photocopying for you. But I've always liked doing that photocopying just to give me that hour to read. Now I just read. Yeah, that was earlier on. We're in unusual times now, but what is your leadership team

[7:00]
currently focusing on? you know, I can't remember how many weeks we are in now to not having our normal church meetings, but whatever it is, six or seven. So a lot of our first four or five, we've really just been focused on the urgent and focused on dealing with doing ministry at the moment. So our team's been meeting regularly. We've been having, our staff meetings have always been encouraging normally,

[7:31]
but they've been even more encouraging now, I think, even on Zoom. But we've been talking about people, who's following people up, is everyone on top of things, how are the gospel teams going, what about our snack at home is what we call it, our suite of things we send out. Snack is St George North and Good Church. And I just noticed the last couple of weeks we've actually been able to sort of take a breath and just talk a bit more generally, which I think has been good, you know, and just get back to,

[8:02]
encouraging one another as a team and talking about the Bible passage for that week and getting into it and so forth. Yeah. But I wouldn't say we're currently focusing on a lot other than dealing with the immediate. But I do think one of the great benefits of working in a team ministry like we have here is we're always sharpening one another. I think one of the great benefits of that is I don't just lead. I've got this whole team of people to bounce ideas around with,

[8:33]
be thinking about things. And so just now we're just starting to think about what next, you know. So you've got a fairly large staff team. You said six full-time staff and a few others sort of pottering around. What does that sort of weekly staff meeting look like where you've got everyone in? You talked about opening up the Bible. Yep. What's your normal rhythm? Yeah, so we do that on Monday. and that's intentional. It means we can actually be straight on top of any follow-up out of the weekend, talk about what happened on the Sunday.

[9:04]
Well, at least normally at the moment I'm not doing much on Sundays. But so we meet for two hours every week. We briefly chat about the Bible passage generally we're preaching on the following Sunday, and we do a bit of a around the grounds catch up on how things went over the weekend, what were the newcomers, Are they all being followed up, all that sort of stuff? We do that even though we're not all at the six congregations.

[9:34]
So I might be at three of the six on a Sunday, but we just think it's really important for the guys at the smaller congregations to still feel a part of what's happening with the others and be a part of that discussion just so they get the benefit of knowing even if something's not going well in their area, it is somewhere else, or if it is, the others have the same issues. So St George North Anglican, as you said, there's three different sites, six congregations, but there's a sense that you're still one church. So we work very hard on that.

[10:05]
So we can only do what we do at our offshoots because of the people from the other supporting and so on. And we want the staff to feel a part of the one team. Yep. Yeah. And each of those congregations, are they sort of set up as, you know, are they small churches, you know, one group network of small churches, one big church, or is it really two churches? How do you perceive and keep them thinking about the whole but also thinking about their individual congregation as well?

[10:37]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we, it's interesting, different congregations need different emphases. So the old, the ones that have been a part of things for the longest, sometimes we need to work harder at helping them see that their congregation is a church and their first pastoral point should be their own people rather than just thinking, I support this thing called St. George North. Whereas sometimes at other congregations, we've got to say, hey, see the benefit

[11:07]
of being a part of the wider. But on the whole, we want people to see their individual congregation as the main thing they're a part of. And that's where they love one another, care for one another, encourage one another, speak the word of truth and love to one another. that sort of thing. But what we find is it's the cross-congregational ministries that then draw people in to seeing the benefit of being part of this wider thing. So, yes, we do one day a year where we have a big day out where everyone comes together and I speak and so forth.

[11:38]
And, yes, once or twice a year I'll travel around the other congregations and share a bit of a vision talk. But it's when people are working alongside each other in our evangelistic kids club for 160 kids It's the fact that people come from Carlton to teach kids church at Bexley North and people from Bexley North come and serve at a ladies day. You know, it's those sort of things where people see the benefit of being part of the whole. Yeah. So put me in the staff team where we're fighting over limited resources.

[12:10]
You know, what does that look like? How do you make decisions? How do you wrestle over finite resources when, when you're all obviously wanting to see your congregation grow and be strengthened? Yeah, well, actually, I think that happens at two levels. It happens at parish council as well as at staff team. So parish council in terms of financial and property resources and staff team in terms of people resources. We work very hard. I think this is the key of why we work very hard at being one team

[12:43]
with one vision and so forth. sees that they're part of St George North before they're part of their other thing. And I think the fact that you are constantly talking about and praying with the people involved in these other ministries means you're willing to cede resources. But having said that, we've learned how to do this better over time. There were periods there where there were, shall we say, more energetic, more outgoing staff members who were just very good at poaching all the people for their ministry.

[13:14]
so we then had to hang on we've got to structure this so we've got to have a meeting every couple of months with the youth worker youth minister kids ministry coordinators young adults ministry coordinators they were the three that really started poaching one another and actually just talk through who are we working with what's actually best for that person what's best for the whole church so that we don't have 82 leaders at kids plus and none at youth group or you know that sort of thing so it's a thing where yes it's relational but then we had to work out a structural

[13:45]
ensuring it yeah great that that's really helpful to uh to think into uh can can we just go into your regular pattern of leading and leadership what are the two or three things that you do regularly to sort of grow personally in that i mean this may sound pious but i do think uh reading the bible and praying each morning is actually, you know, that shouldn't be just an assumption.

[14:16]
It should be, it actually is the most helpful thing I do because it just reminds me of what I'm doing. So how do you, like, to take it away from being a pious answer, how do you work on that regularly? Yeah. How's it become a habitual thing for you in your leadership? I actually diarise it in my day. I do it in my office and I don't do it the first thing I do. which goes against a lot of people's advice, I actually do check my emails and do other things.

[14:48]
And then I actually have a time in my work day when I do it, which is usually about 8.30 in the morning or something like that. And in fact, I often talk about this with other people on my team. I say, don't forget I pay you to do your quiet time. It's actually part of your ministry. I want you to do your quiet time. It should be part of your day and given that priority. So do people on your staff team know that between 8.30 and 9.30, you're in, well, I should say 8.30 and 11 o'clock,

[15:19]
you're deep in prayer and fasting. I usually fish about five in the afternoon. Not a lot of fasting, Scott. That's where a podcast, that joke's lost on a podcast, but I'm looking at a very fit Phil Golden. That's right. So it's – I don't – no, I don't – and I'm happy to take a phone call at that time and come back to it and so forth. So I don't have it in that sense. It's more I make sure I do it in my diary than put it in a wider calendar or something like that.

[15:49]
Yeah. And have there been times in your ministry life where you haven't kept that daily habit up? Have there been times where it's just fallen off because, yeah, I don't know, you've had a terrible senior minister who's really worked hard on you able to do it well one of the i can't blame anyone else i've been in one place all my post-college ministry so it's me you know so um but uh yeah there have been times but i generally you know it's been more because i've fallen into that trap i and i think it's a trap other people

[16:20]
might disagree of thinking i'm spending a lot of time on this on the bible teaching it and preparing i don't need to do that so i've always sometimes i've slipped into the ah well i'm in matthew's series at the moment i'm reading the bible i don't need to do a quiet time too busy type thing and i i invariably find after a while not only am i uh less with it uh so is my preaching i think there's something about reading broadly in the bible for no reason other than to read broadly

[16:56]
in the bible that actually helps your preaching on other parts of the bible be richer um so that's You're not reading, say you work on Matthew's Gospel, you're not reading Matthew's Gospel. Do you have a Bible reading plan or an app? No, I'm not really an apps type of guy. At different times I've done Bible reading plans, you know, the Bible in a year and lots of stuff. But no, I generally just open up another book and read it. If I'm preaching in the New Testament, I might have an Old Testament book I'm reading. Sometimes I'll just say, you know what, I'm halfway through Hebrews,

[17:28]
but I want to go read the Psalms. As long as I'm reading the Bible every day, that's all I, yeah. In days where I catch up with someone at 6am for a breakfast meeting, you know, and we read the Bible together, I'm quite happy to then just get into my office and get underway. You know, I'm not silly about it in that sense, but yeah. Yep. That's really helpful. So the other thing I was going to say is, and I think this is my essential thing I must do, is I pray through our church role.

[18:00]
I think it just gives my prayers guidance and reminds me of my primary duty. So, I mean, as an ordained minister, I promise to pray for those under my care. But I make a point of actually using our online role and just going through and praying for it. And sometimes I'll come up with meek names I don't know. I'll pray for them. I don't know much about them, but it'll trigger me to ring Jason and say, hey, there's a new name in the Vexenus role. Tell me about them, you know, that sort of thing.

[18:31]
So you're praying through all 500. You're praying through members who are outside of your congregation, outside of your sort of pastoral care window. Yeah, I just go down the roll and pray for people. I used to say, hey, I pray for every person once a month. That's no longer the case. For good reasons, there's too many people. But it sharpens. It sounds like for you, it really sharpens. Here's my role. I'm spiritual. shepherd, spiritual leader. My role is to minister the word and prayer to the people under my care.

[19:06]
As much as my role is to set the vision for our church, to think about the best allocation of resources, to think about how all the different parts of, of, of St. George North need to be fine tuned and work together and so forth. That's, that's all really important, but underneath all of that and fundamental, or the bedrock in the end is teaching the Bible and praying. And that's what I want to, I find actually praying for the individual people as opposed to, I pray for the Bexley North Congregation

[19:37]
or the Carlton Congregation. If I'm praying for the individual people, it just reminds me what it's all about. My verse, people at St. George North joke because I was going to mention Colossians 1 again, you know, that sort of idea. My verse is Colossians 1.28. We proclaim him and admonish him with all wisdom each person perfect in Christ. And I take very seriously that each one, that we might present each one perfect in Christ. Yeah. So that's really, really, you're thinking about the each one, but you also think about the everyone as well,

[20:08]
thinking about the one church, thinking about structures that go across each of the different congregations. Yes, yeah. And I think it's a false dichotomy when you break those two apart. You fall into a trap if you say, I'm just a, every person is a soul who matters to God type. I think that's, well, you can't meet with each one. You've got to think of structures to help you do that. And it's interesting. I saw something on someone talking about, you know, things to learn out of COVID-19. And one of the people said, oh, I've learned that church

[20:42]
is more about people. I'm going to stop being involved in all those structures when this is over. And I thought, what a false dichotomy to say that. You know, it's by all means, if those structures are not growing people and are not loving people, then yes, get rid of them. But actually, it's a false dichotomy to suggest structures and people are at odds in that way. Yeah. Or to suggest that structure work is not people work and vice versa. Yeah, it can be, but it doesn't have to be. Yeah.

[21:13]
And again, I'm interested as well. What would it look like then? So let's just, you know, look forward. There's a thousand people. do you think it'll still be your practice to be praying through the role at a thousand people? I don't know. I mean, it was at 300 and it has been at 500, but it, I think, I think it will be, even if I end up saying that part of the church,

[21:43]
I get someone else. Yeah. Someone's the prayer, someone's a pastoral care coordinator and they're looking after it. It's done. Yeah, that's right. But I don't think I'll ever give up praying by name for people in the flock. And it doesn't worry me if I don't cover every name and I don't get to people in that congregation. It's as much the fact that I'm praying for individuals that is helpful, I think. So I'm interested. Do you feel that burden for people?

[22:15]
So you talked about one of your staff members, you give Jason a call who's at the other Bexley North site. Do you feel a burden for that name or are you just as easy as I would say, yep, I know Jason's got it? Oh, yeah. No, no, no. And this is a lesson I've had to learn and develop in and by no means master of. But part I think of a well-functioning leadership team is that I trust them enough to know I don't have to be hands-on. so I try and I try and walk a line of I am happy to give you as much help as you want you can ring

[22:52]
me at any time and we'll talk about it down to the minutiae if that's going to help you but I'm not going to impose myself to do that yeah yeah and does that come through hard you know hard learned experience from you know previous prior to ministry life or that's just always been a part of who you are? Well, I think sometimes it's what I appreciate when I've been led is what I try and do with others. So when I first came here to St George North under my predecessor, he gave me responsibility

[23:28]
and let me go but was always there if I needed to bounce an idea off him. And I thought that was a really good model. So, yeah. So, Phil, you've got three kids. You're married to Victoria. What does leadership look like in your home? Yeah, yeah. Sometimes chaotic would be the answer. But, yeah, yeah. I am very blessed in that we very much see ministry as a partnership,

[23:59]
both in the church and in the home. So I don't think we see it even as that's your responsibility or that's my responsibility. We've always seen both church ministry and home as a partnership in that way. And so leadership just looks like us together seeking to raise the kids to know and love the Lord Jesus. Yeah. We've actually found COVID-19 has been excellent for this in a strange sort of way because actually everyone's at home

[24:31]
table every night. We've never gone faster through a book we've been doing together at the dinner table than we have now because we're doing it most nights of the week instead of two or three nights of the week when, you know, Eloise is a dance and Sam's at rugby and I'm at a meeting in town, you know, these sort of things. So just as an example, what we're doing at the moment, We're reading a book out of Tim Keller's Catechism for Families and sort of like works through different doctrines

[25:03]
and we're discussing a different one each night and then one of the kids prays in the light of that and then we pray through some missionaries as well in the light of that. Yeah, yeah. So I think a big part of our leadership is just modelling to the kids the priorities of gospel work. Now, you've got high school kids. So what did it look like 10 years ago for those who've got younger kids? Yeah. What did it look like?

[25:35]
We've always tried to do it around the dinner table. And there were occasions where it would end up with me and Victoria at the dinner table and one kid screaming in one corner and one upstairs punching the other. You know, that sort of idea. And we always persevered. I don't think we've ever been experts at this. I just think we've just kept trying. So, you know, when they were really little, we'd just read one-on-one with them before they went to bed and so forth. And as we got older, once the elders got to be old,

[26:05]
we've always tried to do it at the dinner table. But then you've always had that issue of they're of different ages. We're now in a really good period, as I say. But I just think their parents, my encouragement to all Christian parents, is be forgiving of yourself. Just keep giving it a go. than whether little Johnny learned anything at the Bible reading yesterday is that long-term model of my parents clearly love Jesus. They talk about Jesus, not just went for two minutes when we're reading the Bible.

[26:37]
They love church. They're committed to church. You know, modelling those sort of things, I think, has as profound an impact as how successful you are at getting three kids of different ages to interact in a Bible yep yep yeah just what i just didn't want our listeners to sort of have this picture of you know working through uh you know the heidelberg catechism one you know one week and uh you know far from it and and you know so i think sometimes sometimes hours last about a minute you know

[27:08]
because uh someone's just not in the mood and and you've just got to know when to cut your losses and run especially when they were littler yeah and and it's it sounds like you're you're preparing for kids to be leaving home or, you know, kids to be hanging around for the next 10 years, depending on how you look at it. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. No, that's, you know, I think my great joy at the moment, by God's grace, is that all of our kids love church, love youth group, are serving and that sort of thing. And I don't take that for granted.

[27:39]
That is by God's grace. But that's my big hope is that we're setting them up to be able to keep doing that, even when we're not having that as direct influence. Yeah. Now, final question. What would you tell your 20-year-old self about preparing to lead? Yeah, it's a great question. I think two things. I think one is I would tell my 20-year-old self to work on character more than competencies, I think.

[28:15]
my 20-year-old self was zealous for the gospel, but was sometimes fast and loose in his self-application of the gospel, if you get what I mean. And I think actually competencies often just grow with time anyway, whereas character needs hard work. So yeah, at that point in my life, I would love if I'd taken that advice. Even if I'd heard it, I probably wouldn't have taken it, but you know what I mean? the other thing I'd say is I would have told myself to work harder at finding

[28:49]
older Christian brothers to be mentors yeah I think for whatever reason I was never individually mentored as a as a younger Christian man well I had there were great influences on me but I never had a a Paul to my Timothy. And now I see the great benefit of that. And I see it. How do you, yeah, how have you seen that now? Is that because you're doing that in your own ministry life?

[29:22]
Yeah, no, no, no. I see it in what I want to see happen at St. George North and what we're trying to create at St. George North. I see it in the way I'm able to take younger men and women in ministry under my wing and so forth. and I just think what a great benefit that is and I look for those sort of people now but that can be hard because people think you're the leader and hey, you're the guy who we listen to

[29:54]
why would you need a mentor? But that's why I think being a bit creative about what a mentor is a mentor is just an older Christian brother to bounce ideas off and so in the last few years need a couple of those just guys i can ring and say uh hey what do you think about this you know and have a chat about yeah yeah so it sounds like in your practice you're you're doing that in your local church uh are you mentoring people outside of the saint george north you know family as well yeah yeah so um again um by god's grace we have sent quite a few people off into ministry and so

[30:29]
we've had the opportunity to do that and i continue to try and do that with them even after they're But also we get a heap of more college students who come here as student ministers to be trained and seeking to do that. And I coach a few guys outside of things. So through my connection with Reach Australia, in fact, I was on a coaching conversation this morning where we were talking about staffing and other things and this sort of stuff. So, and it's funny, when you do it for others,

[31:01]
you realise how beneficial it is for yourself. Yeah. That's great. Well, Phil, really appreciate you spending time with us on leadership, talking about your leadership. Thanks for being so generous with your time. Pleasure. If you've enjoyed what you've been listening to today, we'd love it if you'd leave a review, share, or subscribe to this podcast in an ongoing way. If you want more information about Reach Australia, head to reachaustralia.com.au.

[31:34]
you