Whose sheep are they, really? Preaching from 1 Peter 5:1–4 at a service farewelling Mark Watson as youth pastor and commissioning him to lead a new church plant, Graham Joseph Hill turns to Peter’s charge: “Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care.” This is a sermon for pastors, youth leaders and church planters, and for anyone with somebody in their care, which is all of us. Graham begins with a grazier in a dry year who takes on another farmer’s sheep and cares for them as his own, knowing every one of them is going home. He tells his own story of learning, from a hospital bed and a surgeon’s warning, to hand ministry back to God. Drawing on Peter’s restoration beside a charcoal fire and Weary Dunlop’s courage on the Burma Railway, he shows that God supplies the gladness he asks of us, and that good shepherds go first. He points to Jesus, the Chief Shepherd who bought the sheep with his blood and who’s coming back to count them himself. The call, he shows, is to shepherd God’s flock the way the Chief Shepherd shepherds us.

Preached Sunday 23 August 2026 at Quakers Hill Uniting Church.

Can you outrun God? Jonah tried. Preaching from the whole book of Jonah, Graham Joseph Hill reads the runaway prophet as a mirror for every disciple, because Jonah is really about the call to follow God and our stubborn ways of fleeing it. God says go to Nineveh, and Jonah books passage to Tarshish, the idealised escape of the ancient imagination. Graham shows how the lure to flee God’s presence lives in all of us, especially after we’ve heard his Word, and how the storm strips away the money and self-will we hide behind until who we are before God is all that’s left. Here’s the good news running through it: you can’t escape God’s call, and he’s with you even when life feels out of control. The God who pursued Jonah is pursuing you, and he’s ready to transform your heart.

In today's sermon, Graham explores the themes in Eugene Peterson's book "Under the Unpredictable Plant: An Exploration in Vocational Holiness." In this book Peterson clarifies the pastoral vocation by turning to the book of Jonah, in which he finds a captivating, subversive story that can help pastors recover their "vocational holiness". Peterson probes the spiritual dimensions of the pastoral calling and seeks to reclaim the ground taken over by those who are trying to enlist pastors in religious careers.

Graham works through the chapters and themes of Jonah following Eugene Peterson's insights and themes, especially as they apply to Christian discipleship.

Preached Sunday 21 March 2021 at Northside Church, Crows Nest.

Where is God when it hurts? Preaching from Matthew 5:3-4 in the thick of a pandemic that has brought grief to so many, Graham Joseph Hill turns to the first two Beatitudes and Jesus’ startling promise: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” This is an honest sermon for anyone who suffers, who has lost someone they love, or who longs for a world made whole. Graham sits with the book of Job and refuses the clever, clichéd answers that wound more than they heal, making room instead for lament and honest questions. He points to the God who suffers alongside us in Christ, who stays present in our pain, and who holds out the hope of a new creation where every tear is wiped away. Comfort, he shows, is God’s own gift to the broken-hearted.

Preached Sunday 14 February 2021 at Epping Church of Christ.