Heart's In The Right Place or How Not To Lead A Church

18/05/2026

Look what finally arrived! Mail me at [email protected] to order! Now going at a special price of R150. FREE DELIVERY in Cape Town:) Limited copies available 😀

18/05/2026

07/05/2026

https://open.substack.com/pub/conroyesterhuizen/p/come-on-honey-read-the-room-prologue?r=5to4qg&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Honestly? Maybe you should read the room What on Earth? (What on Earth?) Come on, honey, read the room. The Smile, Read The Room

24/04/2026

10 Books that should be on every Christian's reading list :)

1. Dominion - Tom Holland
2. When narcissism comes to Church - Chuck DeGroat
3. Invitation to a Journey - M. Robert Mulholland
4. When the Church was a Family - Joseph Hellerman
5. Mere Christianity - C.S Lewis
6. The Unseen Realm - Michael Heiser
7. Life Together - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
8. The Practice of the Presence of God - Brother Lawrence
9. The Reason for God - Tim Keller
10. The Great Omission - Dallas Willard

Honorable Mentions:

How God Became King - NT Wright
The Moral Vision of the New Testament - Richard B Hays
Humility - Andrew Murray
The Pilgrim's Progress - John Bunyan
The Pursuit of God - A.W. Tozer
The Chronicles of Narnia - C.S Lewis

21/04/2026

I started writing "Heart's In The Right Place" almost a year ago. What began as a project on "spiritual formation" and discipleship quickly became a short book that also aimed to capture some of my own experience of church - the good and the bad, the beauty and the mystery.

I'm excited to announce that the book is in its final stages of release! And yes, I know I've said that before! But it'll be uploaded to Amazon Kindle in the next week, after a few last tweaks!

I couldn't be more excited to share this with the world:)

Below is the longer trailer we shot for the release:) Enjoy!

08/04/2026

“Long-term interpersonal relationships are the crucible of genuine progress in the Christian life. People who stay also grow. People who leave do not grow. We all know people who are consumed with spiritual wanderlust. But we never get to know them very well because they cannot seem to stay put. They move along from church to church, ever searching for a congregation that will better satisfy their felt needs. Like trees repeatedly transplanted from soil to soil, these spiritual nomads fail to put down roots and seldom experience lasting and fruitful growth in their Christian lives.”
― Joseph H. Hellerman, When the Church Was a Family: Recapturing Jesus' Vision for Authentic Christian Community

18/03/2026

I'll be honest - this video was kind of "meh" until Archie showed up.

This was only intended as a test before shooting the proper thing, hopefully the first in a series, but sometimes things don't go according to plan, and that's okay too :)

I intended to compare the writing of True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey with how we need to interpret the Bible through the eyes of an ancient Israelite or a first-century Jew, rather than through modern Western presuppositions. In an amazing act of ventriloquism, Peter Carey writes True History of the Kelly Gang entirely in the style and voice of one of Ned Kelly's earliest surviving letters, the Jerilderie letter.

This got me thinking about how we read and interpret scripture.

The Bible can often be a very challenging book to understand; it can be confusing, perplexing, or even unsettling at times.

There are two resources that I've found incredibly helpful in making sense of this beautiful and complex ancient book, and that definitely helped me a lot while I was writing Heart's In The Right Place.

The first is the Bible Project videos. These are so good and incredibly insightful, especially their How To Read the Bible and Poetry series.

The second is a book called How Not to Read the Bible, by pastor and theologian Dan Kimble, and he essentially offers four very helpful tools when we approach scripture.

1. The Bible is a library, not a book.
This reminds us that the Bible is a collection of books, written over thousands of years in various genres by different authors.

2. The Bible was written for us, but it wasn't written to us.
I’ve also heard John Walton say this, so I’m not sure who said it first! This helps us to keep the authors' original intent in mind when reading; the context is incredibly important.

3. Never read a Bible verse.
We all have our favourite Bible verses that we love to quote, and although this isn't necessarily wrong, it can mean that we often find ourselves taking scripture out of context.

4. The Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus. Reading the Bible with Jesus in mind.

Hope you found these helpful. I'll be posting more of these videos soon - hopefully with better quality video and sound, and without interruptions from my son :)

Watch this space to find out more about book release dates, it should be very soon!

18/03/2026

Thanks to Trevor Hudson for this glowing endorsement of my book!

I really enjoyed HOW NOT TO LEAD A CHURCH! In fact, I read it through in one sitting on a flight between two cities here in South Africa. Written in an accessible, and down-to-earth style, the book invites us to recover a vision of what the church is all about. My own mentor for many years, Dallas Willard, would often say, “The church is for discipleship; discipleship is for the world.” This book underlines this understanding of the church. I especially valued Conroy’s wide reading on the subject and his ability to weave into his writing his own many learnings. While being an internal critic of some contemporary expressions of church life, the author’s obvious heart for the church, and commitment to its renewal, comes shining through.

16/03/2026

https://conroyesterhuizen.substack.com/p/what-can-the-stanford-prison-experiment

This is the epilogue to my book. I wasn't planning to include it originally, but I thought it fit the central theme of my book so well that I changed my mind:)