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Candid conversations for the church. Host is Ardin Beech of Windsor District Baptist Church, Sydney, Australia. Co-hosted by Jonathan Hoffman.
And it's like we never left this week at Windsor back for season four.
Jonathan:Back in the saddle.
Ardin:It has been a minute.
Jonathan:Yeah. It's been a few minutes. I've aged.
Ardin:Indeed. Yeah. You had a birthday the other day by the time people are hearing this. Yeah.
Jonathan:I'm now 58.
Ardin:50 eight. Wow. That was a rough year.
Jonathan:Yeah. Back season four. I'm excited. How are you feeling?
Ardin:Pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. Nice to be back in the hot seat.
Jonathan:Yeah. More of the things you love.
Ardin:Talking, I'm sure you've probably got principles lined up already. Ready to go.
Jonathan:I think we've worked through the whole private education system.
Ardin:Interstate. Yeah. A lot of things have happened since last time. You your nation has a new president.
Jonathan:Are we really gonna start with that?
Ardin:Yeah. Wow. Ripped the band aid off.
Jonathan:Yes. Well, he's a he's a new president, but he's an old president as well.
Ardin:Yeah. I guess. Yeah. Yeah. How's all that going?
Ardin:It seems tumultuous.
Jonathan:I don't know. It depends who you talk to. I mean, there's plenty of headlines to write. Gosh. Can you explain to me, Australians always, as soon as they find out I'm American oh, what do you think about Trump?
Jonathan:What are they looking for? What what what kind of conversation is that supposed to start?
Ardin:I guess some kind of verification from the normal human Okay. To just say, yeah. We all think he's crazy.
Jonathan:Okay. I
Ardin:don't know how he got in.
Jonathan:Gotcha. Yeah. I don't think he was running against a strong candidate. Nothing against Yeah. Kamala.
Jonathan:But, yeah, it didn't have many runs on the board. But, yeah, lots of things changing. I heard about the Trump gold card today
Ardin:Right.
Jonathan:Which apparently for $5,000, you, Arden Beach, could become a US citizen.
Ardin:Are you sure it's 5,000?
Jonathan:No. Sorry. 5,000,000. Did I say 5,000?
Ardin:You did. Oh, man. Yeah. Oh, you're not great with words.
Jonathan:I'm pastor. I'm a pastor. I'm not used to dealing in the millions.
Ardin:Yeah. 5 so $5,000,000.
Jonathan:5 million dollars gets you a, basically, a fast track to a citizen. Wow. Citizenship in The United States. Now what you will do with that and
Ardin:I don't know. But yeah. You know? Now staying on the, on all things democratic k. We had a vote as well here at WDBC.
Jonathan:We are having a vote. Having a vote? Yes. We are currently mid vote. Present tense.
Jonathan:Yes. Present tense. So I have no idea the results, but we're voting on some pretty interesting things, including the calling, drum roll, of another associate pastor.
Ardin:Cool.
Jonathan:Yeah. Aidan Holt is his name, SMBC graduate. Fine gentleman in his, early thirties. A lot of diverse experience. Yeah.
Jonathan:He's done some mission work overseas, and, he's currently undertaking a PhD as well. So, he's someone who loves the word, loves to study that. I think before he got into ministry, he was an aeronautical engineer. Wow. Yeah.
Jonathan:I don't know what that means.
Ardin:That's a step down.
Jonathan:We might we might have him on next. He might be the first guest. It depends on how the vote goes. Yeah. Yeah.
Jonathan:Which means if the vote doesn't go well, this episode's gonna look really bad.
Ardin:Super bad.
Jonathan:Super bad. But it'll be interesting for historical purposes.
Ardin:But folks will be familiar with him. Like, he spoke in the morning service one time. The vast majority of listeners would have heard him.
Jonathan:I think so. Yeah. Feedback we got was very positive. We were encouraged to hear him handle the word well and got to meet his family. And yeah.
Jonathan:It's you know, I mean, it's one of these weird deals. Right? If you go for a job interview, you're probably sitting down with your manager, maybe one other person, and they're assessing your fit with the team and so on and so forth. But it's a decision that boils down to a couple people. Here, it's a decision that boils down to a 51.
Jonathan:So, you know, you know, how do you do an interview like that? Not that preaching was the interview. We had a search committee that did the vetting and, you know, we checked his references and and, you know, dug into his, story and why he, you know, why he wanted to go into ministry, tried to assess some of his fit. But it very much is a faith process. It's a faith walk to to bring somebody in as a pastor and for someone to to join a church and serve in that capacity.
Jonathan:So, but we felt as a search committee, we felt like we saw, a lot of good things, and we really we really felt confident in the person. And we're excited to see how God would use him here.
Ardin:Is that a nerve wracking time? I mean, you would have gone through the same process when you came here. Is that a is that a difficult time for a potential candidate?
Jonathan:Yes. Absolutely. And we did have some discussion, you know, is it fair to put him in this situation? But as the discussion went around, you know, I waited and I said, look. I think it is fair.
Jonathan:I think it's good because if you're in ministry, you need to be able to self differentiate. You need to you need to put yourself in a situation where people might judge me, people might form opinions rightly or wrongly about me, and those will have an impact on me. But I'm not I'm gonna try to block all that out, and I'm just gonna do what I believe God has called me to do in this situation. And I think it's, you know, in that candidating sermon, it's a very small sample size of, does this person have the ability to block out what's going on all around them that they're potentially interviewing for a job and just focus on the task at hand, which is I got God's word in front of me, and I got a bunch of people who need to hear it. Can I deliver it confidently in a way that's gonna connect with them?
Jonathan:And so I think there is a bit of pressure there, but I think it's a healthy pressure. And, it's a good sign if you can handle it well, and he did. Cool.
Ardin:And what else do we cover at the meeting?
Jonathan:Oh, we're getting a new sign.
Ardin:A new sign? I
Jonathan:think we voted on that.
Ardin:At the front?
Jonathan:Yes. Yeah. Cool. It's a although it's a new temporary sign. Right.
Ardin:But not a new logo because I like the logo.
Jonathan:No. Logo's great. Yeah. Logo's great. Logo's not changing, but there is and it's not the it's not the front sign, the main like, the one on the the blocks.
Jonathan:It's a it's a sign most people probably don't even know exist because if you're driving, if you're heading from I don't know, my East West, but if you're heading towards the, towards Richmond Road from George Street and you see the sign, it's all faded. The other way, you can see it.
Ardin:Oh, the little stand up one next to the servo.
Jonathan:That's correct. Yep. Yeah. So that is looking to be replaced, and we're gonna look to put a new version of that. But that's hopefully gonna be temporary because we would love in the next couple years to get one of these pylon signs.
Jonathan:It's a bit taller. You know, we're we're we got McDonald's, KFC, seven eleven. Everyone's signed. It's like six meters in the air, so people drive by us all the time. So so yeah.
Jonathan:We're looking to do that. And, KSTP, who's our Tomlick School tenants, yeah. They'll they're gonna chip in as well because they'll they'll be advertising on that sign too. So yes. We talked about that.
Jonathan:We talked about plans for Easter, this year. So we might save that for a future episode, but we've been invited again for a combined service in the park. So we're trying to work out how do we participate with our fellow churches around us, show some unity, but at the same time, we also need to care for people who might not be able to get to that location but are part of our church family. So what do we do for them? So it was a really good discussion that we had around, yeah, caring for those who might have more mobility needs among us, while also trying to partner with the vision of what's going on around us in the community and to show with the other churches that we're united and we're excited about Jesus.
Ardin:We are a fair chunk into 2025 now. Any other plans for another year?
Jonathan:I thought you never asked, Art. You talking about the podcast or you talking about church?
Ardin:Church. Oh, yeah. I decide what happens on the podcast.
Jonathan:And we know you plan that well in advance. Well in advance. There's stacks of molten notebooks sitting on the desk. Yeah. Is that why you're so bleary eyed today?
Jonathan:You've been up all night.
Ardin:It's my life.
Jonathan:Yeah. That's right. I see the I see the caffeine. Podcasting is my life. That's right.
Jonathan:Somehow we stole you from commercial radio. I don't know.
Ardin:I don't know.
Jonathan:I left him speechless. Yeah. So we're really excited about this year. Our theme for the year is seeing God in our world, and we know he's he's active. We know he's doing things all around us.
Jonathan:But for us as believers in Jesus, every day is a walk of faith. And so, it takes faith to understand how the kingdom of God is breaking in in our world and how we participate in that, how we as ambassadors of Christ, as people who bring witness to his lordship and his love, how we interact in our world today. So our theme for the year is, yeah, seeing God in our world. And we got a few initiatives that are are gonna be coming, through the year, which we're excited about. One that I'd love to mention today is that we're expanding our foundations.
Jonathan:Did you ever do a foundations course?
Ardin:Oh, I went along to the foundations group when I first came along as sort of in in a kind of like a small group setting. Fantastic. Everyone I've spoken to really loves it. Things are changing up this year though, getting even bigger and better.
Jonathan:Yeah. So we're gonna expand that foundations to, four courses. So the first one is gonna stay the same, but we're gonna rename it. It's gonna be called Foundations Family, and that's a six week course for newcomers where we go through the book of Philippians. Anyone who's new to the church invites you to come along.
Jonathan:If you've been at the church for ages but just never got around to coming to that, I encourage you to come to that. It's a great opportunity to get to know one another and to get to know the pastors in the ministry and to understand what it means to be a member here at WDBC. The second course that we're expanding to is called Foundations Faith, and that's a course that's kind of a next step. So if you've already done Foundations Family, or you just feel like you wanna jump in into some deeper content, this is a course where we're going to be examining our statement of faith. And if you think about it, every one of us before we know Christ, we have this relationship with God that might acknowledge that he's there, but we're not really trusting of him.
Jonathan:There's this distance between us. And so part of coming to know Christ is coming to trust God for who he is. And so it's really important that we understand how God has revealed himself. So that's what the foundations course is all about, the foundations faith course. And in this course, we're gonna be looking at our statement of faith.
Jonathan:So things like, who is God? Who is Jesus? Who is the Holy Spirit? You know, why do we take communion? Why do we do baptism?
Jonathan:What do we expect happens to us when we die? You know, what happens with our sin? Can we really trust that that we've been forgiven? You know, these sorts of things that are kinda core foundational things about how we approach God and what we teach here from God's word. So that's a course for, anyone can sign up for that.
Jonathan:But both of these are starting Sunday, March. So it's not too late. Please sign up. We'd love to see you there.
Ardin:And these were previously, you'd kinda done these at someone's home, sort of like a home group kind of a thing. Now you'll be running them after the morning service, which kinda gives you, I guess, some larger numbers and stuff?
Jonathan:Yeah. It's a little more convenient. It's, one less time theoretically to ask people to come out of their house during the week or, you know, we're gonna provide lunch. So we're it's gonna run from twelve to 01:30. So the first half hour is gonna be lunch.
Jonathan:If you sign up, we're gonna feed you. And then one room, the Ephesian room is gonna run the foundation's family course and then the Corinthian room is gonna run the foundation's faith course. It's gonna run at the same time. And we're gonna have a variety of guests and, yeah, we're gonna be expanding this even more in subsequent terms. But really looking forward to kicking that off this weekend.
Jonathan:If you haven't registered, it's not too late. Jump on. Register. You can do it through the church center app. You can do it through the website.
Jonathan:Yeah. Just go to our website, find foundations, faith or foundations family.
Ardin:And also since the end of season three, we've had some young additions to the church.
Jonathan:We have. Yes. We have. I met one actually just the other week. A friend of the show, long time listener, never call her.
Jonathan:Long time listener, never call her because we don't take phone calls. But, friend of the show, Michael McGinnis, had a boy.
Ardin:For it.
Jonathan:He does. Shout out to you, Michael. He had a boy in little Noah, Noah's Ion McGinnis. Yeah. I guess he didn't have it.
Jonathan:Grace had it. But, yeah. No. We we continue to, yeah, just celebrate how God is growing us, yeah, spiritually. We're really looking forward to some services coming up where we're going to be dedicating, some children.
Jonathan:Also got a baptism service coming up in March. So lots of things to get excited about as a church family. But, yeah, we wanted to say a little welcome to, Noah McGinnis.
Ardin:We have I'm I'm always amazed at the sheer amount of baptisms we have here. It's really cool.
Jonathan:It's wonderful. I had somebody come up to me after church this week and say, you know, I'm really excited, Jonathan, because I feel like God has surrounded me with a bunch of people who who are really desperate to know him and he wants me to invite them. And this person has been inviting them to church. And I can look around the room and I can see, you know, multiple families that this person has invited and they are there and they're learning about God. They're starting to put their faith in him.
Jonathan:They're experiencing the new life that we have in Christ. And it's just really amazing. So I just wanna encourage people. Use the opportunities that God gives you in your life to speak of the hope that you have. You know, a lot of people think they have to have, some sort of Bible degree or they have to be the perfect Christian to, you know, invite someone into the into the kingdom of God.
Jonathan:But if that was the case, none of us would ever get invited in because none of us has, quote, unquote, arrived. So it's just really encouraging to hear people talking like that, to have eyes for their neighbors. You know, that's what God says. You know, part of our maturing is to grow in the love of him and the love of others around us. I've been really encouraged by what's going on in that space.
Ardin:Cool.
Jonathan:Well, a
Ardin:bit of a shorter, I suppose, episode. Just a bit of an intro into season four. We've got some pretty cool guests coming up this year.
Jonathan:We do. We do. One of them is overseas right now and is coming back. And this person actually also wrote a book. Just wrote a book.
Jonathan:Wow. Yes. An author. An author. First time author.
Ardin:How do we get these big gigs? Yeah.
Jonathan:Well, they're actually part of this church. What? Yes. Amazing. Yeah.
Jonathan:You're intrigued, aren't you?
Ardin:I am.
Jonathan:Yeah. I haven't invited them on the show yet.
Ardin:That's probably the first step before announcing they're coming. Maybe.
Jonathan:But but but I think they will. I think Do you think do you think they will? I think they will. Now that we've leveraged sort of this episode, yeah, I think they sort of have to.
Ardin:Or now that they're a world famous author, they'll want some sort of appearance fee,
Jonathan:which we can't afford. Yeah. Something like that. Is there something else we were supposed to talk about?
Ardin:I doubt it. Not on my watch.
Jonathan:Put your time in. You're done now.
Ardin:This week at Winds are back for season four. Thanks for joining us. We have got tons of great episodes on the way. We'll catch you next week.