Six Months Into Life Here In Sydney

Sydney City from our house

Six Months In Sydney

Well we have been here six months living in Sydney and that has moved along quickly. Most things in Sydney move along quickly. Apart from the traffic of course. Good thing the public transport system is top class. I know Sydney people grumble about it from time to time, but it’s amazing by world standards.

Sydney is loud, brash and fun. It is always on the go. It always feels like something is open. It always feels like there is something about to happen. It’s also hard to get around. The one thing we have learned about Sydney is that staying in your local area, and finding where the local shops are, and doing life in “your village” is the primary way you cope with the sheer complexity of a city with an interesting geographical make up.  Unlike Melbourne, Sydney is extremely hilly, broken up by bays, peninsulas, rivers and cliff faces and the like. As such it’s a chore getting around.

To that end – and for other reasons mostly relational – moving to the east coast has proven much more demanding than we initially anticipated (or maybe than I initially anticipated) but it’s also been helpful for us as a family. With so much of my work on the east coast, and us living on the west coast some 4000km away, it was starting to shred us.

This way I can be working at a variety of schools or churches over an extended period of a couple of weeks, but be driving home each night, rather than staying away for up to two and a half weeks at a time. Whatever else the move has done it has given us plenty of time together.

And time to go to church together also. The value of just turning up at my local church to sit under the preached Word, sing, pray and speak liturgy together with my family and my church family, then encourage each other afterwards, cannot be underestimated.

For all of the fancy culture stuff I do, I figure that 80 per cent of Christian discipleship is just turning up week in week out. And for those who say it has to be something more than that, then let’s admit that it can’t be something less. If you’re seeking the solution to what church is supposed to truly be (and you’re thinking there’s some form of ninja Christianity that might be the missing ingredient), then I’m sorry, you’re headed down the wrong path.

Being in church week in, week out, is what keeps me grounded. Everything else feels up in the air!

What I’ve Been Doing

Working for myself is always a challenge. Not because I don’t want to work hard, but I don’t want to “admin hard”. It’s the stuff I don’t like. By God’s grace and the generosity of a group here in Sydney I now have a PA a day per week who helps me sort that stuff out. I also have three directors who oversee not just the governance of my consultancy, but who can ask the hard questions about my life, marriage, godliness, etc.

If there is one thing we have learned from the modern church in the West and its parachurch offshoots – and there has been more than one thing! – it’s this: unless we want to take measures to be transparent and accountable for our time, our actions, our relationships, our use of money and technology, we will drift.

And people will drift. And some of those people will drift over to the edge of the waterfall before pulling themselves back. And some people will drift over the edge of the waterfall and destroy their faith, their reputations, their families, and bring shame on the gospel of the Lord Jesus.

While some of my work is consulting work as churches and schools contact me – the gig economy -, I also have some “big rocks in the jar” so to speak – ongoing work that pays me on a regular basis.

So this year, 2025, I’ve been super encouraged to work alongside the new Christian mental health co-op, Life To the Full, which brings together psychologists, social workers, sexologists, and coaches who are offering an orthodox Christian perspective on human flourishing.

Life To The Full is led by Sydney Missionary Bible College educated, Chris Cipollone, whose book published by The Good Book Company, Down Not Out is a great overview of what it means to have our lives firmly placed on the gospel even as we deal with mental health issues.

Here we all are on our first all-in meeting a few weeks ago:

If you’re in Sydney – and you’re looking for some mental health help undergirded by a gospel framework, of if you are looking for an Employee Assistance Program, then why not check out Life To The Full. I’ve really enjoyed the mix of gospel intent, psychological maturity, and ministry vision of the team.

I’ve also been writing for the New South Wales Presbyterian Church’s Gospel, Culture and Society Committee, an erudite, well-thought out crew of men and women who want to help ministry teams in their churches across the state grapple with the cultural issues we all face, and to do so in a gospel way.

It’s a great group, and some of them are scarily well read. I produce two long-form resource papers for them each year (the one I am currently working on is on the return of spirituality in the modern West ), as well as short Bible studies, Zoom seminars, videos and blog posts, all around the intersection of culture, theology and pastoral practise.

What I Am Planning To Do

Well I’m supposed to have another book in the offing. So let’s see where that goes in terms of the outline!  I’m also about to get back into the “tour bus” (er, the airplane) and do a couple of months of flying hither and thither speaking at conferences. The good thing however is that I’ll be home more often than I’m away, and much of that is down to the Sydney move.

Oh, and the last thing, and one of the more important is that I have just set up a paid subscription Substack blog. It’s for long form essays and my aim is to write one each week.  It’s around the cost of a large cup of coffee per month (6 Aussie dollars) and I’d love you to support me in my writing.

My aim over the coming year is to write more, and to do so both with my free blogs posts (such as this) and my Substack, which you can access here.  See that green button top right of my website? That will take you to my Substack.

I’d love you to sign up and partner with me in what I believe is an important work in these increasingly complex times for believer and unbeliever alike.  Our solid hope is that Jesus is King, and that while the nations can rage against God and his anointed, they cannot thwart his will.

And to that end, in all our plans, and in light of moving cities, I am always reminded of these words from James:

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” (James 4:14-15).

Let’s make that our prayer, whether for Perth, Sydney or whatever city or town you live in. We love life in Sydney, but these verses remind us that even life itself is not guaranteed beyond today. And even Sydney city, which seems so vast and immoveable, will one day be shaken by that great City that comes down from heaven.