Sermon on developing Christ-like character to sustain a missional life
Rev Harry Newton delivers the closing sermon of Missions Month at Sumner Redcliffs Anglican Church, drawing on Luke 4 and 5 and the story of David and Solomon.
Summary
Rev Harry Newton closes out Missions Month 2026 at Sumner Redcliffs Anglican Church with a sermon on the relationship between character, mindset, and mission. Drawing on earlier Missions Month teaching from Luke 9 and 10, he argues that every follower of Jesus carries a divine calling to both proclaim the kingdom of God and to meet people's practical needs — and that sustaining this calling over a lifetime requires the deliberate development of Christ-like character.
Newton uses two biblical illustrations: first, the story of Samuel bypassing the impressive Eliab to choose the youngest brother David as king, to show that God prioritises inner character over outward appearance or competence; and second, David's final words to his son Solomon — "Show thyself a man" — to underline that what matters most at the end of a life is not what was achieved but who one became.
A significant portion of the sermon addresses the specific missional context of the Sumner community. Drawing on a conversation with local resident Nick Jukes, Newton identifies the defining cultural DNA of Sumner as radical and militant individualism. He argues that the most counter-cultural and therefore missionally powerful thing a Christian in Sumner can do is to be genuinely communal and other-focused — and that this requires character, not merely good intentions.
The sermon concludes with two practical disciplines for developing Christ-like character: prayer, which Newton describes as a two-way, transformative encounter with God rather than a one-way wish list — illustrating its power with a personal account of being prayed for by Thomas Brow, the former vicar, during a family health crisis; and practice, drawing on N.T. Wright's argument that a thousand small intentional choices shape the automatic responses that define who we truly are.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Wrapping Up Missions Month
Rev Harry Newton: This is the end of Missions Month 2026. This is usually where a vicar stands up and says, "Open your wallets and repeat after me." And then everyone awkwardly goes, "Oh, I'm an Aussie, haven't got my wallet on me." But I'm not going to do that. Instead, I just want to wrap up Missions Month for this year by exploring these chapters.
Right back at the beginning of the month, we explored chapters 9 and 10 of the Gospel of Luke, where Jesus sent out his followers to go ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go, and to proclaim that the kingdom of God has come near. And if you remember the story, you might remember how Jesus sent out 12 disciples, and then he sends out 72 nobodies. And then from there, his commissioning of his followers ripples out to another generation — about 500 or so people — and it ripples out through time down to us here today, 2,000 years later.
If you don't consider yourself a Jesus follower, awesome — genuinely, you're welcome here, it's lovely to have you. But if you do consider yourself to be a Jesus follower, these same instructions from Jesus are relevant to you, and they apply to you: to go out and to proclaim that the kingdom of God has come near. You could even say, for want of a better word, that it's a divine job description.
The Two-Part Job Description
It's a job description that has two main components, and they're complementary to each other. The first is to proclaim the kingdom of God. In other words, tell people that God is in charge and that he is taking his world back. Not through an army — which is traditionally what we assumed, you know, the Crusades and all that, the idea that God would bring back his kingdom through military might. Not through politics — there is no one politician out there who we can hitch our wagon to who's going to bring back God's kingdom. Not through any form of cultural force or coercion, but through Jesus Christ himself. Through his life, his death, and ultimately his resurrection, as we sang about before.
We are called to proclaim that God is reigning right now, and that he showed this by sending his own Son to die for the people who are rebelling against him. And the good news that we're meant to be telling people is not that you need to clean up your act and behave a certain way, nor that you need to vote a certain way or be more like me. You'll notice that churches often talk about how they want people to come to know Jesus, but what they really want is for people to become more like them. That's a harsh thing to say, but it's true, because we're all inherently tribal and parochial. We all very easily fall into tribalism. So it's something to be aware of — that is not what we're being called to do. We're instead being called to proclaim that God is real and that the kingdom of God is near.
Now, that's the first half of the job description. The second half is simply this: do it. Get out there and do it. Heal, care, meet people's needs — practically, physically, not just spiritually. And that's exactly what Jesus told his disciples and then the 72 others to do alongside their preaching. He told them their mission was never meant to just be words. It was meant to be practical and address genuine human need.
The Kingdom Is Already Here
And here's something I think we can easily miss at times. The kingdom that Jesus proclaimed isn't just a future hope. It's not just, "One day I'm going to die, go somewhere else, and everything's going to be awesome." When I was a kid, we were on a missionary flight taking off from some random place, and my brother was peering out the window. My dad says, "What are you looking at?" And he goes, "I'm looking for Jesus — he's out there somewhere." Jesus isn't out there on a cloud playing a harp. That's not what the kingdom of God is. It's not a disembodied spiritual existence floating out in the ether.
It's already here, broken into the world through Jesus Christ and advancing through the work of God's church, until the day when Jesus returns and brings it to fullness — at which point there'll be no more suffering, no more evil, no more grief, no more death, no more tragedies like what happened in Nepal, no more wars like what's happening currently in Ethiopia or Ukraine, no more drug trafficking and child prostitution like what's happening in Central America. An end to suffering and grief and cancer and all those terrible things.
Through Jesus, God's kingdom is already here. That's what that gospel reading showed us. Jesus, everywhere he went, spread the kingdom. It just hasn't arrived in fullness. And until he returns, you and I have a job to do: to proclaim the good news that the kingdom is here, and to put that into action by caring for those whom the world deems worthless and discards.
Because when you and I care for someone's physical needs — bring healing, comfort, or even justice into someone's hopeless situation — that is not just a side project for social justice warriors who get to tinker with their little pet hobby while the rest of us wait for the real spiritual stuff to kick in. It's kingdom work. Because that's what it looks like for God's reign to show up in the actual physical world that we live in.
And that means those of us who want to follow Jesus have a job to do: to proclaim the good news that the kingdom of God has drawn near, and to do that both through our words and our deeds.
Character Fuels Mindset, Mindset Sustains Mission
But here's the thing. You guys look like a relatively intelligent bunch — that was a joke. My wife tells me I shouldn't crack jokes in church because no one gets them, and I'm like, I'll try it anyway. As you know, like I do, life is complicated. And that means that adopting a mindset that sustains us on this mission — this divine mission to proclaim the kingdom of God — is essential to help us steer the course and last the distance.
And the key to doing that is the development of godly character. Because your character fuels your mindset, and your mindset sustains your mission.
Your character reveals your true self. It reveals the person that nobody else sees. Because everyone sees one side of you, right? The side you project to the world. No one necessarily sees the person you are when no one else is looking. And that is your true character. That's your true inner self.
David, Solomon, and the Importance of the Heart
Your character is incredibly important, and there's a story in scripture that underscores this. It happened about 3,000 years ago. The ancient state of Israel was in a time of crisis — I won't bore you with all the details. But the king, a man named Saul, had gone off the deep end — putting it mildly. The whole of Israel was kind of ripping itself apart. And so God tells the prophet Samuel that he needs to go seek out a new king.
Samuel starts searching for the right man, and he meets a man — I wonder if anyone can remember his name — Eliab. Now, here's what's interesting about the Old Testament, if you've ever read it. Every time Samuel runs into someone and thinks they might be a good king, what's his number one qualification? They are handsome and ruddy of complexion. Take that as you will. But Eliab evidently has the outward appearance of qualifying as a king. He's strapping, he looks good, he's impressive. And Samuel is so impressed he says to himself, "Surely the Lord's anointed is before us now."
We're told Eliab was rejected for the role by God, much to Samuel's surprise. Why? Scripture tells us: "The Lord does not see as you mortals see. You look on the outward appearance, but I look upon the heart." In other words, God rejected Eliab because of his character. Instead, he chose his youngest brother, David — a man after God's own heart — and appointed him ruler of his people.
Now, was David perfect? No. If you know the story, absolute ratbag. But we also know that despite his very human faults, he consistently strove and desired to be a man of God-like character. And so David went on to rule Israel on God's behalf for about 40 years.
In the first reading we had at our nine o'clock service, we heard David's final words as his life came to a close — the words of a dying man, written down for us 3,000 years ago. And I think there's something we can learn from David's final words to his eldest son Solomon as he prepares to die.
Before we go any further, I want to ask you a rhetorical question — you might not want to answer this out loud because it might be a bit private. But if you knew you were dying, and you had one chance to offer advice to your child, your spouse, or someone significant in your life, what would you say? I guarantee it wouldn't be, "Don't leave the heat pump on tonight." Because it's a hard one, isn't it? There's so much you could say — so much advice, so much wisdom, so many things you could impart.
Because that's the situation David was in. Solomon, his son, is about to become king of Israel. And there's so much he needs to know — about civil service, taxation, healthcare, international relations. Nowadays it would be how not to use social media if you're a politician. And David could have advised him about any one of those things, because he knew a thing or two about leading a kingdom. In fact, David is still to this day considered to be the greatest Jewish king who ever lived. He solidified the borders of the state of Israel, united the 12 tribes who were pulling ever further apart, brought economic prosperity, set up trade routes with the big kingdoms surrounding them, and brought a period of relative stability and economic calm.
So David knew what he was talking about when it came to leadership. He could have advised Solomon on all sorts of things, all of which were genuinely important. But here's something I've learned in ministry: a dying person has neither the time nor the inclination to deal with secondary matters, as important as they might be.
There was a woman called Irene in my last parish. Irene's family were one of the founding families of the Wairarapa. She was a very important person in the community, though you would never have known it meeting her — super humble. And she was dying, in her late 90s. I went to see her. She had all her marbles. I sat down with her, and she had an intellectually disabled adult daughter who lived with her, and obviously had concerns about what would happen to her. She had to think about what was going to happen to the family farm. They owned a trucking company — another big thing. She had all this stuff, and she was the matriarch.
Do you know what her biggest concern was when she was about to die? She was really looking forward to seeing Jesus, and she wasn't sure what she was going to wear. Now, that might sound a little bit silly, but the point is that for her, in that moment, that was the most pressing priority.
And like Irene, David had something pressing on his mind. So when he looked at Solomon, he got to the heart of the matter and shared the one concern that overshadowed all else. He looked his son in the eye and said: "Show thyself a man."
What a final line. What an awesome line. Great last words, by any measure. Show thyself a man.
What Character Means for Our Calling
I think part of what we can take from David's words to Solomon is the importance of character. Because if you're anything like Solomon, there are probably some things you want to achieve in your life. You might even believe that God has called you to go to certain places, to do certain things, to achieve certain things. Awesome. Genuinely. Fantastic. But at the end of the day, what matters more than what you achieve is who you are called to be.
Because if you consider yourself a follower of Jesus, then you are called to be a light, a beacon of hope, a friend to the friendless, an advocate for the disempowered. You are called to be a peacemaker. You are called to be honest, to be fair, to turn the other cheek, to be forgiving and merciful, to stand up for what is right despite the cost. You are called to live a life which is radically counter-cultural here in Sumner.
What is the DNA of Sumner? When I was in my last parish, I thought about what the DNA of the town was, and I realised it was community — however you vaguely defined that. So doing mission in our community was relatively easy. I just had to join the fire brigade and the football club and build a playground out the front of the church, and everyone said, "Wow, you're a good man, the church is very community-minded." And the next thing you know, people started coming.
It's not like that here. What is the DNA of Sumner? I'll be honest, I've been struggling for the last couple of years trying to figure it out. I sat down with Nick Jukes — some of you know him, he lives nearby — and I said, "What would you say is the DNA of Sumner?" He said, "It's radically and militantly individualistic." People here aren't bad people — they're lovely people. He said, "I'm one of them, because I grew up here." But he said people here, it's about oneself. One cares about oneself before all else.
If you want to be radically counter-cultural and proclaim the kingdom of God into this context, learn how to not be individualistic. Be communally minded. Because you are called to be radically counter-cultural. You are called to proclaim the good news of Jesus as much through your lifestyle as through your words.
People tell me I'm an okay preacher. Great. Awesome. I genuinely believe that good preaching can change lives. But the reality is that we in this room represent less than 1% of our community. 99.9% of our community need to hear the good news of Jesus in a way that makes sense. You are the way that people will hear the good news of Jesus. You are the one who can proclaim it to our community through your lifestyle as well as through your words.
You are called to develop and adopt a missional mindset that will flow into every facet of your life. And your ability to do this is reliant not on your competence or your achievements, or even your generosity, or your ability to quote scripture, or how good you are at theological stuff. It's reliant primarily on your character.
We often think that our ability to make an impact on the world is based primarily on our competence — be it as a friend, a parent, or a professional. But actually what matters more than your competence is your character. As a mom, as a dad, a grandparent, an employee, an employer, a student, a citizen — your character matters.
I got this wrong early on in ministry. It's not that I developed a bad character, but I fell into the trap of focusing primarily on my competency as a minister, and realised after a while that while my competency is important, what matters most is my character.
Your character matters because, particularly in times of stress and temptation, your character tells wonders about who you truly are. As my old man always says: you knock the cup, what's inside spills out. And if your underlying character — the true you that spills out when that cup gets knocked — if your underlying character is not Jesus-like, then when you're buffeted by the storms of life, your true alternative character will spill out. And at times that may include things like envy, jealousy, snarkiness, judgmentalism, insecurity, bigotry, unjustified anger, lust, gluttony — you name it.
But if your character is Jesus-like, then when the storms come, you'll find that what is inside reflects what is on the outside. What you project actually mirrors what's already on the inside. And you'll find that what is on the inside is more and more like Jesus — that when your cup is knocked, what will spill out will be love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Jesus as the Model of Missional Character
And we see this in the person of Jesus, in that story we heard read earlier. People didn't just present themselves to Jesus when it was convenient to them. Have you ever noticed that? Time and time again, people just come to Jesus with no notice. And Jesus is tired — scripture tells us that. He was probably hungry, probably a bit grumpy, because he was human. And yet he doesn't turn people away. He doesn't snap or make snarky comments. He doesn't complain about a lack of professional pastoral boundaries — that may have been a dig at my colleagues.
He responded over and over and over again the same way he responded to the sick and the needy in our story: with compassion and openness of heart. And he did so despite being tired, hounded by critics, and hungry. He was a first-century peasant. Sure, he was God incarnate, but he chose to live as a first-century peasant. It wasn't like, "Oh, I'm hungry, I'll pop down to the bakery and get myself one of those pretzel bagels" — which, for the record, are delicious. If he's hungry and there's no food, there is no food.
He was busy all the time. People make a thing about how Jesus tries to draw away to pray and be alone. He does. But if you notice the stories, he often gets interrupted. Each time he tries to go away, something happens. And despite all these things and more, Jesus maintains a missional mindset despite everything the world threw at him. How? Because of his character — his godly character. Because his character fueled his mindset of how he lived his life.
So if you want to have the whole of your life naturally orientated towards the cause of Christ, if you want to have the whole of your life orientated towards the cause of Jesus in a way that goes deeper than skin deep, concentrate on developing a Christ-like character. Because the cultivation of godly character slowly changes us from the inside.
Two Ways to Develop Christ-Like Character
And the way you do that — the way you develop God-like, Christ-like character — is twofold. First, you pray. Second, you practice.
Prayer is a space in which God shapes us. Often we can fall into the trap of making prayer a one-way street. What my old youth pastor used to refer to as shotgun prayers. Every day coming home from the bus, I used to pray, "God, please let me find twenty bucks in the gutter." I prayed that prayer for seven years and it never once got answered. Do you know why? I wanted to buy a hacky sack. I wrapped it up in godly language: "Oh Lord, if you help me find money, I can buy a hacky sack and start a Hacky Sack for Jesus Club at school." I was 13 — judge me. But the point is, my youth pastor would say, that's a shotgun prayer. You go boom, boom, boom, just firing prayers up into the air.
Prayer is not a one-way street. Prayer is a two-way street, and God is not your genie. Scripture tells us that in prayer, we turn the focus of our hearts towards God's heart. Scripture tells us that in prayer, the desires of our heart are changed, so that over time we begin to long for what God longs for. Scripture tells us that in prayer, our anxieties and our worries are silenced, and God's peace guards our minds.
And not to digress overly, but some of you know — as I said in my email to the parish last week — we have got some stuff going on. One of our children is quite sick. Thomas Brow, the former vicar here, and I were on Zoom the other day, and he prayed for me. I'll be honest: at the end of him praying for me, I have not felt that overwhelming sense of peace for quite a while. Prayer calms the mind and the soul. It brings peace to our hearts and takes away our worries and anxieties. It truly does. Scripture is true when it says that.
And scripture also tells us that in prayer, our character is transformed to become more Christ-like. What that shows us is that prayer is profoundly formative, because through heartfelt and consistent prayer, we are drawn closer to God and our character is shaped into Jesus-likeness. Prayer shapes your character, fuels your mindset, and your mindset sustains your mission to proclaim the kingdom of God. Which means that prayer is a key practice if you want to become more Jesus-like in your character.
Practice: A Thousand Small Choices
Super quickly, the second thing you can do to develop more of a Christ-like character is to practice. I've shared this before, but N.T. Wright — has anyone heard of N.T. Wright, or Tom Wright? If you haven't, he was a bishop in England who got fired for writing too many books and not doing enough bishoping, which I think is fantastic. He once wrote this:
"Christian character is what happens when someone has made a thousand small choices requiring effort and concentration to do something that is good and right, but which does not come naturally. And then, on the one thousand and first time, when it really matters, they find they do what is required automatically."
His point is this: if, for example, you want to be more generous like Jesus — and you find it hard to be naturally generous — practice being generous. Do it consciously and intentionally. Practice being generous a thousand times. On the one thousand and first time, when it comes around and it really matters, your character has been shaped into the likeness of Jesus, and your automatic response is to act like him despite your selfish inclinations.
If you want to live a life that's counter-cultural in Sumner, and you want to be radically generous with your time, prioritise other people in your diary a thousand times. And when the one thousand and first time comes around and someone you really just couldn't be bothered talking to comes through needing a cup of tea, you'll find you're naturally drawn to sitting down and listening and chatting.
As we practice being like Jesus — being patient, being kind, forgiving, and merciful — as we practice being like Jesus in small ways, what you and I will find is that our inner self is slowly changed and morphed over time. And then, when we are buffeted by the storms of life and what's inside spills out, what spills out will be different to what spilled last time, and the time before that, and the time before that.
Conclusion
And as you develop Christ-like character, you'll find that over time you become naturally, missionally minded. You'll find that you instinctively begin to orientate every part of your life towards the cause of Christ — the proclamation that the kingdom of God has drawn near. That's your divine calling in your life.
What that looks like for you will be different for every person. I never thought I'd be ordained in a church — genuinely never thought I would be. There are pros to being in ministry. It's awesome, it's fantastic, it's a massive blessing for me to be able to serve the church and God and people. I love it. But if you're not being called to be a pastor or to be ordained in ministry, you still have the same calling: you are being called to live a life that proclaims that the kingdom of God has come near. And you're being called to proclaim that in your words and your deeds.
As I say, you can do it in the Sumner and Redcliffs area quite radically by living a life that is not self-focused. But if you want to sustain yourself long-term in that, you need to develop the mindset of Christ. And the way you do that is you develop the character of Christ. And the way you do that is you pray and you practice.