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Tony Payne: I think we all agree that being involved in the ministry of the gospel in some way—in Christian ministry in some way, in disciple-making in some way—is just part of being a Christian. The Christian life is a team life—a life in which we minister the gospel together. But what exactly is the contribution of every Christian to that overall ministry of the gospel and the ministry of a church? What is the every member ministry of the Christian?

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Now, in the New Testament, there's a very clear emphasis as to what the every member ministry of the Christian really is about. It's about the words that we speak to each other—the word of the gospel—and this is not something we're used to thinking about. And in this episode of the Centre for Christian Living podcast, we'll be digging into this question: the question of the one-another word. Well, hello.

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I'm Tony Payne. Welcome to another edition of the Centre for Christian Living podcast—a podcast, this time, about the one-another word and the ministry of every Christian. The CCL podcast, of course, is brought to you by Moore College, and here we are in Moore College. And in this edition, in this episode, we're doing it a little bit differently.

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Since I'm kind of the guest on this episode talking about a book I've written on this subject, we've roped in a guest host. And our guest host is one of the members of our CCL student team here at Moore College: Liam Nolan from third year. Hello, Liam! Liam Nolan: Hello.

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It's good to be here with you. Tony Payne: Exactly. And now, over to you. You're now in charge.

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I am now the guest. Liam Nolan: Perfect. Well, why don't we start over. Hello!

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Welcome to the CCL podcast. It's great to have you joining us here again for another episode. This week, we've got a very special guest, but special in a kind of non-special way, you know—special, but always there. Maybe a bit like your mum.

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We've got Tony Payne and we're keen to chat with you about your recent book, Let the Word Dwell Richly: The vital power of the one-another word. I really enjoyed reading this over the break. It was an interesting experience having lectures with you nearly every day in the term before the break, and then I just read this over the holidays and have kind of come back into lectures with you nearly every day. But it was—

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Tony Payne: When too much Tony Payne is barely enough! Liam Nolan: Something like that! But it was really fun to take a look at this from both this kind of popular level angle that you've written here, which is really helpful for anyone to read, whilst also kind of seeing a bit of what was the more academic level of thought was going behind it that came out in some of your classroom stuff.

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But I'll be keen just to start off to hear why this book? Where has this come from for you? Tony Payne: It came out of another book I wrote a little while ago with Col Marshall called The Trellis and the Vine, which in turn came out of, I guess, decades of ministry and of producing resources for ministry, through Matthias Media. And one of the key questions of that book was in what sense are we all together as a team involved in the ministry of the gospel?

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That ministry is not just a kind of solo sport for an elite set of players—like a Formula One driver is the pastor, and the rest of us in church are just kind of like his pit team. We maybe help him out—change his tyres. But the ministry is something we all do together in some way. And in that book, The Trellis and the Vine, Col and I argued that the way that Christians get involved in the ministry of their church and of the gospel is in part, and perhaps the major part, is by actually speaking the words

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of Christ, the words of the gospel, to other people—for their encouragement, for evangelism, for building people up. And this is a point that has kind of been part of my ministry—part of what we did at Matthias Media for decades—produce resources to do this. But having written The Trellis and the Vine, the question came back to us, "What exactly do you mean by that—the one-another sort of word ministry of Christians? What do you mean?" What sort of word ministry? Like, quoting Bible verses to each other?

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Or can every Christian really do that? Is that reasonable to expect that Christians should have this ministry with one another? And it kind of raised these questions. So I thought I should do some more work on that and maybe write a little supplement or something, or write an essay about that question.

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Liam Nolan: So how did you start the process of beginning to write something for this? What form did that take place? Tony Payne: Well, I thought it was just going to be a little supplement in some ways—like an extra appendix in the next edition or something. Liam Nolan: Yeah, sure.

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Tony Payne: But the more I dug into it here in the Moore College Library, and it was just part of my research, I just discovered there wasn't much on this at all in the history of Christian thought. Liam Nolan: Mm-hmm. Tony Payne: And it became a much larger research project. It ended up becoming a PhD, which I did here at Moore College on the one-another word: on the nature and purposes and theological kind of structure.

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What is happening when we speak the word to one another as Christians? Liam Nolan: Mm-hmm. Tony Payne: And I finished that PhD, I think, 2018-2019. Liam Nolan: Mm-hmm.

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Tony Payne: And then it took me about five years to get around to writing it up in a book form that's more for everyone. Liam Nolan: Yeah. Tony Payne: Same level of book as The Trellis and the Vine. Something that pastors and elders and leaders would read, of course, but also that keen involved Christians in the congregation would also read.

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Liam Nolan: Yeah. See, I think that's really interesting, because sometimes you hear from a lot of people who've been in ministry for a while and they go, "I've got something that I want to think about a little bit more. I'm going to do a PhD." And most of them, unlike you, haven't had the kind of history that you've had, just publishing and writing and thinking and just putting into words what you're trying to figure out. So what was it about this topic that made you think, "No, this isn't just going to be a hundred-page book that I'm going to go straight to writing or a series of posts on some kind of internet blog or something. But I need to kind of really

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just sink my teeth into this, and I'm going to go off and actually do more tertiary education and devote a PhD for it"? Tony Payne: It was partly, as I said, that when you look back in Christian history, various people like Martin Luther and the other Reformers, John Owen and the Puritans, John Wesley, 20th-century theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. There's little mentions of this topic here and there, but just not developed. So there wasn't an existing set of giant shoulders to stand on—a well-established literature on this topic.

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There just wasn't. But also, it's everywhere in the New Testament. So I guess when I went looking to see where is it in the Bible, I expected to find a few of the familiar passages that I already knew. But as I kept looking, I found, well, what I've identified is 27 different passages that talk about this question.

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Liam Nolan: Okay. Tony Payne: And it occurred to me, if I'm going to really think about it, and I believe that the Bible should shape my thinking, I need to carefully read all those passages and the books within which they come. It suddenly became a much bigger project and took a few years of my life. Liam Nolan: Okay.

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Well, great. And now we've got on the other end of it, we've got this here. I'm keen to, in a moment, ask about some of those passages and what are some of the key parts of Scripture that have been key for you as you've been thinking about this. But I just—I first want to ask, just returning just back to that idea, the one-another word: what is it?

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What are we talking about? I mean, that's the question of the whole book, in some ways. Tony Payne: Yeah. Liam Nolan: What is this one-another word?

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Tony Payne: Very good question. Got to define your terms upfront. What are you talking about? Essentially, it's a word.

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It's a conversation. It's speech. So it's not talking about all the loving things we might do for one another, which are loving service: listening to you, caring for you, dropping a casserole around to you, running practical things at church. These are all loving, wonderful things.

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I'm not talking about those, though. It's verbal. It's when a Christian speaks to another person, especially to another Christian in their community, a word that relates to the gospel of Christ that has some kind of Christian Christ content to it that's gospel-centred or flows out of the gospel in its implications with the intent of benefitting you—of seeing you grow, of seeing you encouraged—and with a long-term goal of seeing you grow and become like Jesus and be mature on that last day.

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So it's that kind of speech that I found in quite a lot of places all over the New Testament. Liam Nolan: So let's talk about some of those places. Tony Payne: Yeah. Liam Nolan: So you were saying 27 passages.

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But in how you lay them out in the book, they seem to be concentrated in a couple of places. Where did you find this being spoken about most directly in the New Testament? Tony Payne: It's there in the Gospels in a few places, but mostly in the letters of Paul and other letters as well. And so, I looked at a few of the epistles in which there was a cluster and concentration—

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Liam Nolan: Yeah. Tony Payne: —of these references, because I thought it was important not just to pick verses out, but to say, take Ephesians, for example: to look at those few references that are there in Ephesians within the context of the whole flow of what Paul is saying, because I wanted to tease out how does this one-another word relate to everything else? How does it relate to Paul's ministry as a whole—to the ministry of the church as a whole?

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How does it relate to preaching and teaching? And so, I examined three letters in particular: Ephesians, 1 Corinthians and Hebrews, and looked at the way the teaching of those letters really drew out the theological and practical significance of this one-another word. Liam Nolan: Yeah. Well, why don't we start by just hearing a little bit about what seemed to be a key contribution to your thinking on this from each one of those books?

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Tony Payne: Oh, sure, okay. Liam Nolan: 1 Corinthians, as you were reading that—thinking about this topic—what struck you there that's been relevant for this? Tony Payne: Sure, sure. 1 Corinthians: a really big theme throughout 1 Corinthians, of course, is that the word of the cross and the love we have for other people should shape our whole Christian lives.

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It's an epistle about the cross-shaped life that's laid down in love for one another. That's the overall shape between cross and resurrection in chapter 15. But running through that emphasis is a very strong emphasis on the Spirit and especially on how we speak to each other. And it's there in the beginning of the letter when he commends them for being rich in speech and knowledge.

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It's there in chapter 2 when he talks about them imparting truth to one another through having the Spirit—understanding the gospel by the Spirit and imparting it to each other. But it's especially there in chapters 12-14, which is the most detailed and extensive discussion of what it's like to come to church and how do we speak in church under the Spirit in the whole New Testament? And without going into all the details of 1 Corinthians 12-14, the very strong emphasis as summarised in chapter 14:1, that because of love—because of 1 Corinthians 13 and the hymn to love—and because we have the Spirit that makes us understand and confess that Jesus is Lord, when you come to church, what you should be seeking to do is to speak to other people—to prophesy—to bring a word, a teaching and encouragement—and to share that for other people for their edification.

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And that's a big part of what 1 Corinthians 12-14 says our church gatherings and our church life is about. Liam Nolan: And that part of that being something that the people of God do in their church gatherings or— Tony Payne: Yeah. Liam Nolan: —In their church life more broadly than that.

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We'll probably talk about that later. In one sense, it's something that is maturing, people, building one another up, kind of growing people in the love and knowledge of God. But in another sense, it's a fruit or a result of being matured in that way. This is what I was reading, and I'm going to check that I'm right here.

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Tony Payne: Yeah. Liam Nolan: There seems to be kind of this mutually reciprocal relationship between speaking the one-another word to one another and being the kind of person who then speaks the one-another word. Is that wrong? Tony Payne: You've got it in one.

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Very important. This comes out in the other letters too, but it's very clear among Corinthians 12-14, 'cause he is basically saying, "You Corinthians". Like, they're pieces of work, the Corinthians. Like—

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Liam Nolan: They're real immature. Tony Payne: They're immature, they're arrogant, they're self-focused. They're more focused on their own gifts and what that means. And you're saying, "You don't understand.

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It's about love. It's about being like Jesus. And you're infantile. If you like Jesus and you love, what you do is you use your gifts—use the words that you've got—for the sake of other people.

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That's what a Spirit-filled, mature person does." And so, that's what you should pursue. And the reason you pursue that in love is because it's those words that build other people up, and that's what he says in chapter 14. That's why speaking in tongues isn't nearly as good as speaking something intelligible, because the intelligible word builds up other people, and that's the whole purpose: to build up other people.

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So you're right: the one-another word is, at the same time, a mark that you're growing as a Christian, because I love other people and I want to share a word with them for their benefit. And at the same time, it's that word, when we speak to someone, that builds them up. And when they speak it to us, it's the word that builds us up. Liam Nolan: It's both a mark of growth and a means of growth.

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Tony Payne: Very. Liam Nolan: That's interesting. Okay. That's 1 Corinthians.

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Ephesians: what did you see there that was helpful for getting your head around what this one-another word is? Tony Payne: Ephesians brings out those two kind of emphases as well, but just in a different frame. It's a different letter to a different context. And Paul is especially saying that—in Ephesians, he's saying that the gospel of Jesus Christ and what Jesus has come to do is to create a whole new humanity: Jew and Gentile, a whole new united humanity.

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And that's what the gospel does: it makes us new people and part of a whole new race, in a sense—a whole new bunch of humans who are a true humanity. And as part of that true humanity, we learn to speak differently, just like we learn to do everything differently. We pray differently. We're generous.

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We don't speak in a vulgar way; we speak in a thankful way. And running especially through chapters 4 and 5 is this idea that the new life we now live is a life in which our language is transformed. And instead of lying and generally abusing other people through our speech, instead, we speak to them for their good. Ephesians 4:29 is wonderful: it says, instead of vulgar or filthy talk spewing out of your mouth, what comes out of your mouth should be helpful.

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It should be gracious and give grace to the person that you're speaking to, according to their particular need. And so, the idea that the gospel makes us a whole new kind of human who speaks a new language comes out in Ephesians, as well as the idea that by doing that—by speaking the truth in love, as it says in chapter 4:15 or 16—that we build the whole body. That's how the body grows as each part speaks the truth in love. Liam Nolan: And you have used this phrase at one point that I thought was just a really kind of catchy, vivid, summative image for what you were just talking about there, which is that the church is a walking and talking body.

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And I quite like that! I think that kind of captures this idea that you're seeing there, and I think that's helpful. How about Hebrews? Tony Payne: Hebrews: at the very end of the letter, the author says, "I hope you bear with this little brief word of exhortation I've said".

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And we all think, "Oh, very brief: just 13 chapters of pretty heavy stuff." But what the author of Hebrews is doing is bringing this exhortation to his hearers: basically, to stick with Jesus Christ, and to go on and grasp hold of him and persevere in him to the end and not be drawn away by alternatives. And as he does this exhortation, at two key points in the letter, he urges his readers to do exactly the same thing with each other. So all through the letter, he's exhorting them to stick with Christ and to put their hope in him.

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And then chapter 3:12-13, he says, "Now, you: don't be like the Israelites of old who fell away. You exhort one another every day as long as it's called today, so that you won't be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin." And so, there's a sense in the early part of the letter that in our everyday lives as a community, we should be encouraging and exhorting and sticking with each other, 'cause the Christian life is hard. It's full of dangers and threats, and the going gets tough at points.

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And then in chapter 10 at another key hinge point in the letter, when he is talking about not giving up meeting together, but gathering with each other, he says the reason we do that is to encourage—to exhort one another. Same word. And so, the sense of the Christian community exhorting and encouraging each other in the midst of life, just to help each other stick with it and not get drawn away, and then as a community, exhorting and encouraging each other to grow in love—grow in in good deeds—two really vital points in the letter, these two exhortations, come out—that that's how we should be functioning with each other, helping each other.

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Liam Nolan: Hmm. I think in each of those letters you kind of draw out this—maybe a movement or a flow or an overflow from the kind of apostolic preaching of the word that then, I think you used the phrase "reverberates" across the Christians who are a part of the body, who that one word is then kind of just echoed and bounced around by all of the people who are belonging to this church here, as they seek to exhort one another, encourage one another, mature one another. And I think it's there that I want to ask that—you know, it's always really interesting when you're wanting to say—you draw upon this idea from Peter Adam a bit in the book of—that we just placed this big

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burden on preaching, wanting preaching to achieve everything that the Bible talks about the Bible doing. And we need to kind of broaden our understanding of the different ways in which Christians might be involved in speaking the word to one another. Now, I think that there might be some people who, when they first hear that, feel a little bit nervous. Tony Payne: Yeah.

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Liam Nolan: Going, "Are you wanting to downplay preaching?" Can you talk about that relationship? Does this involve a downplaying of preaching? Or, how do we think about the relationship between the proclaimed word that I think we have a clearer sense of— Tony Payne: Yeah, yeah.

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Liam Nolan: —and I think you think we have a clearer sense of how the proclaimed word fits in church—with the one-another word. Tony Payne: Sure. Yeah, the Peter Adam quote you mentioned was an important one I found early on. And it provoked me.

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He basically says—the New Testament, he says, there's all kinds of word ministries mentioned, and if we try to make preaching bear the load or the burden of doing what all those ministries of the word are meant to be doing—if they all get loaded into what preaching has to do, then we'll be bringing a load or a burden on preaching that it wasn't ever meant to bear. And that will be to our cost. And certainly, as I looked into the relationship between the preached word—the proclaimed word—and the one-another word, there's a really key aspect of what I had to think through.

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Liam Nolan: Yeah. Tony Payne: What I saw essentially was that the apostles saw themselves as the originator and proclaimers of this gospel word, and they wanted it, yes, to reverberate—to continue on. But in their letters, it continues on in two overlapping and complementary ways. They want other faithful men to be trained up to preach the gospel.

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They want gospel workers to go out to preach this word. But all the way through the letters in the places like Ephesians and 1 Corinthians and Hebrews and so on, they're also saying, "The word I brought to you when I was with you, I want you to speak that word to one another." In 1 Thessalonians, when Paul answers their questions about the second coming and gives them various teaching, he says to them quite explicitly, "Now, these words: encourage and exhort one another with these words. What I'm telling you, you keep telling each other and using with each other." And it leads to a conception of preaching and the one-another word as important, complementary ministries of the word that do slightly different things.

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And in a sense, the way of thinking about those overlapping purposes is, to put it kind of a little simply, that preaching lays down and teaches what the truth is. It forms our minds. It teaches us what to believe. It kind of forms our whole life by informing our whole way of thinking about everything.

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But it can't dig down into exactly what Liam's doing and the struggles he's having on a Monday morning with a particular issue. The preacher can't address that on a Sunday specifically. But we're in a community with each other. What the one-another word does is it takes that preached word, and we carry it with us in our hearts and our minds, and then we bring it to each other, because we're next to each other.

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We're with each other in daily life, and in church life. And in all the different challenges we each face and different situations we face, we can bring that same word to each other and encourage each other with it. Maybe comfort each other. Maybe sometimes admonish or stir each other up, or give each other a word that we need to hear, or remind each other, or clarify and instruct each other, or all the different ways in which us sharing that

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word together actually fills out and makes the preached word spread more broadly and be more powerful. Because it's the same word—the word we use with each other. Does that answer your question? Liam Nolan: It does.

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It does. And it brings me to my next question. On the whole, how do you think we are going at doing this? And maybe you can help me out with this, because I think, as you're speaking about the one-another word, are you seeing this as something that we're already doing, but maybe haven't clarified or given as much thought to, maybe, the amount of thought we've given to

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preaching, and this is an activity that we do, but we don't have a big enough understanding for the significance of what it actually is? Tony Payne: Yes. Liam Nolan: And you're wanting to fill that in? Tony Payne: Yes.

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Liam Nolan: Or is this something that we're not doing—that we have kind of overlooked and missed the significance of, and we need to start doing? Are you wanting to reframe a current activity, or are you wanting to spur us on to start a new activity? Tony Payne: Can I say yes to both? Liam Nolan: I think the answer is probably some synthesis.

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Tony Payne: Yes to both, although I suspect the emphasis is probably a little bit more on the second. So it's not as if Christians have never done this in the history of the world. Like, they've never encouraged each other or helped each other or talked in small groups together and urged each other on around the text of the Bible, or met together and read the Bible with each other. It's not as if Christians have never done these things.

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Liam Nolan: Totally. Tony Payne: It's been, in a sense, part of Christian culture in different ways. However, I think it is certainly true that we've rarely, if ever, stopped to consider what those interactions mean, what their real purpose is, what their nature is, how we might grow in those things, and how it relates to the preached word and the other ministries. I think that thinking hasn't really been done in any kind of robust or thorough way, which is kind of what drove the writing of a more lengthy kind of book to kind of give that framework and to open up that conversation.

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If this is what the Bible says, how do we understand our interactions with each other? But I think it's also in the latter category you gave where this doesn't happen so much. I think that's really very common, and that's partly because we don't teach and set the expectation that this is what the normal Christian life is. In some ways, and if I reflect on the last 20 or 30 years of our history in the circles that I move in here, we're certainly really keen on encouraging people to get involved in ministry and be part of things and volunteer.

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But we often see the essence of that as doing something practical to help. And once— Liam Nolan: Yeah. Tony Payne: —We've organised the church to get on rosters and teams and do practical things to help the ministry, we feel like, yes, everyone's involved.

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Great! Job done. Liam Nolan: Yeah, totally. Tony Payne: Whereas when you look at how the New Testament sort of frames things, it's kind of the other way round.

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It's—the really vital ministry we all have with one another together is to speak the word to each other. And the practical stuff is the framework: very useful, necessary, helpful framework that surrounds and supports and goes along with that vital ministry of one another. So having everybody in small groups, for example, is a great idea. But what an opportunity if we train and teach and encourage our people to understand this—teach on this subject—to see those small groups as an opportunity for this mutual ministry and to see that that's just part of the currency of what we do as a Christian.

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It's not a separate program; it's the kind of natural part of being a Christian together and being a word person that should permeate all the things we do. Liam Nolan: As I was thinking about this book and thinking about my experience at church as well, I couldn't get out of my head a quote that Peter Adam takes from anonymous friends of his in the preface. It says this: I'll just read it. It's real brief.

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It says, "At the yacht club, all we talk about is yachts. At church, we never talk about Christianity after the service." And I read that and I went to church the next day, and the service finished and I'm in the morning tea line, with the person next to me, and I'm chatting about how we are, how our week is. I got this quote in my head about "Never talk about Christianity", and I'm wanting to, you know—I'm still getting to know a lot of people at the church that I started at the beginning of this year. And I think that is a really sharp quote.

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Why do you think that's true? Why do we play in our soccer teams and all we talk about is soccer— Tony Payne: Because we love— Liam Nolan: But we go to church, and we love Jesus.

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I think we do. But we don't talk about it. Why do we find this harder than in other things we might do? Tony Payne: I think it's multifactorial.

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There's a lot of causes bubbling under that. One cause is that we haven't sometimes been given the kind of teaching and encouragement and framework in our thinking that that is the normal Christian life—to be talking about it. We've kind of perhaps absorbed a model that word ministry is what the guy at the front does, and we just chat. And the word ministry has already happened, because we've heard the sermon.

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So it's not as if we need to engage in anything. So perhaps we've absorbed that a little bit and we don't have that expectation in our minds that that's a normal part of my life as a Christian is just to speak and for the words to flow out. I think it's partly because we live in a culture that's very secular/sacred—that's very much partitioned Christianity and religion off to the private space as something you don't talk about. And we're so used to that in our everyday lives that even in church, opening up and talking about Jesus and our lives almost feels like a countercultural thing to do.

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Liam Nolan: Yeah. Tony Payne: So it's partly our western reticence to talk openly about the private space—about Christianity, about religion. It's partly that. And then it's partly sinfulness.

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So it's partly just our selfishness. It's always easier to not talk about—there's something deep within us that's perverse—that even though we love God and love Jesus and think it's the most important thing, somehow for some reason, we avoid the topic. How bizarre is that? So there's something cross-grained in us as well.

00:24:56.430 - 00:25:42.470

Which is why learning to speak this way is a part of growing as a Christian—growing in maturity and expressing that love through how we speak. Karen Beilharz: We know that the gospel of Jesus is transformative: it transforms our minds, hearts and lives. But how does it transform our daily work? This has been a disturbing question for many Christians.

00:25:43.110 - 00:26:08.140

We often struggle to connect the realities of the workplace with the reality of Christ, who stands at the centre of our lives. Simon Flinders and Paul Grimmond have just published a book on precisely this question. And on Wednesday 28th October, 2026, they will be recording a live episode of the Centre for Christian Living podcast with Director Tony Payne. Please note: this event was postponed in July due to unforeseen circumstances.

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Join us at Moore College on Wednesday 28th October for a lively event of input and conversation about this important topic. You can find out more and register on the Centre for Christian Living website: that's ccl.moore.edu.au. That's ccl.moore.edu.au. Tony Payne: And now, let's get back to our program.

00:26:31.550 - 00:27:07.700

Liam Nolan: I think as well, what you paint in this book is you make a point of kind of relationship between the universal and the particular, right? That we have this gospel message that we see in Scripture and we see proclaimed in preaching, and as we talked about just a little bit earlier before, that can't go exactly to Tony Payne and what's going on in his life on a Monday morning, even though it says things that reverberate with that universal sense, but maybe not so much particularly. And I really like towards the end, you recognise that in a kind of ironic, meta way, there's that same problem we encounter with thinking about this book and how we might then go about applying it.

00:27:07.970 - 00:27:39.560

So I think that there's a good chance you would come towards the end of this book and feel really excited and kind of craving for being a part of a church community where on Sundays and in other spaces during the week, this is just something that's normal. And so the question that I want to ask, but recognise it's tricky to ask, is how do we actually go about doing that? So to the person who reads this book, maybe let's think both a minister and also a member of just kind of normal involvement in a church as well. They've seen this.

00:27:39.560 - 00:27:51.050

They're excited about it. They want to see it happen. How might they be able to think about bringing that about in their church community? Tony Payne: As you say, it is a slightly ironic thing to do—to give too detailed a set of advice about this question.

00:27:51.210 - 00:27:57.960

And in the last part of the book, I go through and provide kind of what a sermon application would be, in a sense. It might look like this. Liam Nolan: Yeah. Tony Payne: You could try this.

00:27:58.130 - 00:28:21.250

These are the kinds of things. The sort of things I mentioned there really are examples of the kind of way that any change happens in our life and in our church culture: that is, you teach about it. So in most churches, this is not a subject that's explicitly taught about or drawn out as being a normal part of the Christian life. And people won't know that it's normal unless it informs their framework.

00:28:21.280 - 00:28:32.110

So we must teach about it in some sort of way. Liam Nolan: So to the minister who reads the book and they kind of get fired up by this idea: teach about it. Yeah. Tony Payne: In exactly the same way as if you'd want to say, "I want our church to be a prayerful church."

00:28:32.260 - 00:28:40.500

Liam Nolan: Yeah. Tony Payne: In fact, that's a good way of answering the question. If I said, "I want our church to be a prayerful church" and it's not, what would I do about that? Well, I'd preach about prayer.

00:28:41.330 - 00:28:53.730

I'd put on some structures that encourage us to get started. I'd work with some individuals to help them get started. I'd maybe get something happening in our small groups to encourage them to start doing it. I'd attack it at all sorts of different levels.

00:28:53.910 - 00:29:07.890

Liam Nolan: Yeah. Tony Payne: I'd model it myself personally as a minister to be this kind of person. And I'd pray and pray and pray that God would make us this kind of church in exactly the same way generosity—any other kind of aspect of the Christian life. This is an aspect of the Christian life.

00:29:08.710 - 00:29:31.510

So we talk about it, model it, find some structures and activities that teach and train in it, find ways and opportunities for people to practise it, and repeat and repeat in prayer that God would bring change—in a sense, the same way as God brings change to any church culture, I think. Liam Nolan: So in thinking about the member of the priesthood of all believers— Tony Payne: Yeah. Liam Nolan: —a so-called lay person, they read this book, they're fired up about these ideas.

00:29:31.660 - 00:29:53.890

Is there anything you want to say to them about how they might think about seeing this come about in their context? Tony Payne: There's nothing like setting an example, and there's nothing like actually doing it over time for it to become a normal part of who you are. The way we change as people is partly by being revolutionised in our thinking—in our hearts. "Oh yeah: I need to do this!" But it's also by that becoming part of our habit—part of our normal way of life.

00:29:54.620 - 00:30:20.080

And so, I'd say stop and think of those opportunities in your life: in the home, as you sit with your kids at night and say goodnight to them; as you drive to work and chat with your colleague on the way to work; in church—after church, in your small groups, in all the different facets of your life, where and how could I share a word that would encourage somebody else? And make a start. And the more you do that, the more it will become part of you—a part of your normal practice as a Christian.

00:30:20.140 - 00:30:44.230

Which is what it should be. Liam Nolan: Towards the end of the book, you draw a parallel between a one-another word culture and thinking about a church that has a welcoming culture. And you said something that I wish you'd said more about, so I'm just going to use this as the chance to ask you about it now. That you think that churches who are able to have a welcoming culture, that they've got all the things that they need and are kind of on the way to this stuff really taking root already.

00:30:44.260 - 00:31:02.020

Tony Payne: Yeah. Liam Nolan: Can you just tease it out a little bit more? What do you think it is about being a welcoming church that makes the flow to being a church that speaks the one-another word to each other, both at that gathering and outside of it that bit smoother? Tony Payne: It's because the key motivation for each of those things is love, and going out of myself to the other person.

00:31:02.290 - 00:31:14.070

So the welcoming church has members who've kind of got the fact, "Oh, hang on: I don't go to church just to consume and for me to have a spiritual experience." Liam Nolan: It isn't just for me. Tony Payne: It's not just about me. It's I'm here in community in love.

00:31:14.070 - 00:31:27.950

It's about other people. And I walk into church, to quote the name of another little book—I walk into church with a particular way of thinking that I'm here to love and serve the people around me. And as you start doing that, I'm going to sit next to that person. I'm going to say hello to this new person.

00:31:28.320 - 00:31:51.840

I'm going to walk across the room and reach out to the other person in love. Now, as soon as that starts to become your motivation and your normal practice of life, it's a very small step to start speaking to that person and sharing with them what's good about the Lord Jesus Christ or what's going on in their life, or bringing a word to them in the midst of whatever's going on in their life then encourages them. It's driven by the same motivation and by the same gospel, so the two often do go together.

00:31:52.350 - 00:32:30.720

Liam Nolan: Yeah, I guess they both flow from this sense of seeing that this community that we belong to is bigger than just kind of the community that's there, but it's all about Christ and who he is and what he is done for us, and us being in there. And you develop a lot of ideas from Bonhoeffer at some point where he makes those points quite memorable. Tony Payne: He has this wonderful image of Jesus Christ not only being a mediator between us and God, as we know he is—like, standing between us and God to bring us to God. But almost like being a mediator between us—that he brings us together in a way that we wouldn't normally know each other or have a fellowship together or love each other, but he kind of stands between us and brings us together, and he gives us what to say to each other.

00:32:31.490 - 00:32:51.290

And he has this beautiful quote where he talks about that sometimes, the Christ that's in my own heart is weak, and I'm struggling and I'm frail and fragile spiritually. And you come to me with the word of Christ, and the word of Christ on your lips is strength. It's stronger than the weak Christ in my heart. And so, it builds me up and it brings that word to me from outside that saves me.

00:32:51.390 - 00:33:03.740

So it's this lovely picture of the whole Christian community being people encountering each other as bringers of that word to each other. It's a lovely picture. Liam Nolan: Just talk to us a little bit about the structure of the book. How do you develop this presentation for the one-another word?

00:33:03.740 - 00:33:11.450

Tony Payne: Sure. There's a bunch of parts. And essentially, the first part opens up "What is this thing?" Why is there a gap in speaking about it? What sort of word are we talking about?

00:33:11.450 - 00:33:22.040

And does some definitions, and how are we going to approach it? And then there's a big chunk of Bible. And so, because there hasn't been a lot of research into this area, I wanted to do a fair bit of Bible. And it's Bible that changes us.

00:33:22.040 - 00:33:51.730

So I was really glad to do a fair bit of Bible, working through Ephesians and Hebrews and 1 Corinthians. And then in the next section of the book, getting sort of, well over halfway now, we draw together those biblical material into some sort of theological themes, and I look at three big theological themes that came out of that biblical material on the nature of the one-another word as the word: how does it relate to the word of God? And then, how does it relate to our growth as a Christian, both as part of us being a Christian and in helping other people grow?

00:33:51.730 - 00:34:08.470

So its role in sanctification, we would normally say. And then finally, the role of the one-another word in the community: how we think about what a community is. So that's the kind of synthesising, theological kind of conclusions. And then there's a final, practical part where I draw it together and suggest what this might look like in our churches and in our lives.

00:34:08.980 - 00:34:21.340

Liam Nolan: I'm really interested as well in how you see this book connecting with our time and place right now. Do you think there's anything particular to Sydney 2026 that this speaks to? Tony Payne: In terms of our general culture? Liam Nolan: Mm-hmm.

00:34:21.670 - 00:34:38.930

Tony Payne: In one sense, Australians have always been not as open and sharing. Like, we have more of the British reserve to our culture than, say, the American culture. But over the last 20 or 30 years, I think that's sort of shifted a little bit. I think we're much more share-y—especially through social media and other things—than we're used to.

00:34:38.930 - 00:35:12.070

In fact, we've become used to sharing ourselves and posting about ourselves and talking to each other a lot by social media especially, but without, in fact, bringing an encouragement or an exhortation or anything actually meaningful or true to each other very much. Usually it's fairly facile or trivial. And so, at a cultural moment where we're kind of working out what does it mean for me to be me and to share myself, I think this speaks a very powerful word into that moment—that for Christians, it's about realising who I am is bound up with the Lord Jesus and the community I'm part of in him.

00:35:12.070 - 00:35:33.580

And so, who I am with other people is someone who speaks this word, that's what kind of defines me. I'm someone who keeps talking about the Jesus that is in my heart and whose mind—whose love I've set my mind and heart on, and I now speak. I now let the word dwell richly in me, because Jesus has come to me and made me his, and I let that word bubble out to others as I speak to them. So I think it does speak to our moment.

00:35:33.610 - 00:35:47.460

Well, it speaks certainly to our culture in helping us to think what does it mean to share myself and share what's important with others? I'm sharing Christ. Liam Nolan: I want to ask my last question just about the whole Christian community. Is this an everyone thing?

00:35:47.550 - 00:35:56.480

You know, at church, I know some people, and they're great at music. I'm not good at music. We don't want me up there doing that. We've got other people who are on slides or making coffee.

00:35:56.480 - 00:36:09.350

I'm useless at all those things. Tony Payne: Yeah. Liam Nolan: Since we've got kind of different gifts. Is it cool if I walk away from having heard this conversation or reading this book, and understand this is something that some people are going to be really good at and do, but might not be other people's thing?

00:36:09.420 - 00:36:33.770

Or is this the kind of thing that you're wanting to say Scripture is pushing us all towards? Tony Payne: It's very striking to me that of all those references in the New Testament—the 27 different references—the majority of them are imperatives. They're the apostles urging their listeners to practise this kind of speech with one another. In other words, it's not as if the apostles themselves unaware that this is something we need encouragement to do.

00:36:34.310 - 00:36:55.360

It's not something that's going to always be flowing naturally out of everybody. We need an encouragement to do this just as they encouraged and exhorted their readers to pray, for example, or to be generous. And I think the answer is much the same. You might say, "Will every Christian pray in the same way?" Well, some Christians will have very faltering prayer lives and might not pray very much at all.

00:36:55.360 - 00:37:12.520

Doesn't mean they're not Christians, but they might have a very poor prayer life, and that's something that they may really need to grow in. Other Christians may be really wonderful pray-ers and be experienced, very mature praye-rs. And we know those people in our churches who just wonderful pray-ers. It's going to be the same in this aspect of the Christian life.

00:37:12.550 - 00:37:32.230

It's something for us all to grow in. And some of us will be further along the track than others. And some of us will have particular gifts and ways of doing it more than others. Some of us will be brilliant at writing a short note to somebody else that is just really encouraging, and others will be really great at having a long conversation and drawing out what's going on in someone's life.

00:37:32.230 - 00:37:52.720

We won't all be the same. But we all will have the same word and the same love, and seek to bring it in our own way in the different situations we find ourselves. Liam Nolan: So it's not so much a binary some people doing it/some people not doing it thing, but the sense of diversity that we might be looking for in this is, well, who is this person? Who am I?

00:37:52.990 - 00:38:02.860

And how do I do it? And how will I do this? Tony Payne: Like the fruit of the Spirit: it's not as if you have love and I have joy, and someone else has peace. It's the whole package of the Christian life.

00:38:02.950 - 00:38:19.990

And we're growing in those things in different ways, and we bear that fruit in different ways in our lives, and we grow in at different rates sometimes. Sometimes it takes some of us a long time to grow in gentleness or in patience. But it's all part of the Christian life. And this is part of the Christian life—just a normal part that, by his Spirit, God works in all of us.

00:38:20.380 - 00:38:28.850

Liam Nolan: Hmm. Well, thank you for inviting me to interview you on your podcast, and— Tony Payne: I'm just worried you've done such a good job that they won't want me back, basically. It's the—thank you, Liam.

00:38:29.050 - 00:38:46.060

Liam Nolan: I'm not worried about that at all! But I'm thankful for the chance that I've had to read this. It's when I'm at church or meeting with my church family or with other Christians, this is at the back of my brain about how I think about how I'm talking. And I'm really hopeful and I'm really looking forward to seeing what that leads to.

00:38:46.390 - 00:39:19.330

So I will hand the podcast back to you for your safekeeping from here on in, and I regive you the host title for future episodes. Tony Payne: Well, there's not much more for me to say except thanks for being with us on this episode of the Centre for Christian Living podcast. We'll see you next time. Well, thanks for joining us on this episode of the Centre for Christian Living podcast from Moore College.

00:39:19.810 - 00:39:57.060

For a whole lot more from the Centre for Christian Living, just head over to the CCL website: that's ccl.moore.edu.au, where you'll find a stack of resources, including every past podcast episode all the way back to 2017, videos from our live events and articles that we've published through the Centre. And while you're there on the website, we also have an opportunity for you to make a tax-deductible donation to support the ongoing work of the Centre here at Moore College. We'd also love you to subscribe to the podcast and to leave a review so that people can discover our podcast and our other resources.

00:39:57.720 - 00:40:22.380

And we always love and benefit from receiving your feedback and questions. Please get in touch: you can email us at ccl@moore.edu.au. Many thanks to Karen Beilharz from the Communications Team here at Moore College for all her work in transcribing and editing and producing this podcast; to James West for the music; and to you, dear listeners, for joining us each week.

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Thank you for listening. I'm Tony Payne. 'Bye for now.