Stewarding What God Has Built with Stewart Perry, Anglican Church

The Well That Wasn't Empty

There's a moment in Stewart Perry's conversation on the podcast that I keep returning to.

Early in his ministry, long before the Gold Coast, before Robina, before any of the work he's known for now, a visiting speaker prophesied over him at a church retreat. The words were simple: a deep well that's not yet tapped. And Stewart, by his own honest admission, thought the man had gotten him completely wrong.

Because at that point in his life, he was already pouring everything out. Punishing hours at work. Every spare moment given to the church. Leading worship, preaching, sitting on committees. He couldn't see where any more could possibly come from. There was no untapped well, he thought. He was already running on empty.

I find that so easy to relate to.

I think a lot of us live convinced we're already at the bottom of ourselves. That the version of us doing the most, moving the fastest, saying yes the most, is the fullest version we'll ever be. And so we keep pouring, faster and faster, afraid that if we slow down the whole thing collapses.

But Stewart's story is a quiet rebuke to that fear. Because the well wasn't empty. It was just deep. And depth, it turns out, takes time to reach.

A long, winding road

Stewart didn't set out to be a pastor. He wanted to be an accountant, of all things, and not even for the love of numbers. He wanted to run companies, to be a general manager, a CEO. He climbed the corporate ladder, worked in finance across dealerships and manufacturing and the not-for-profit world, and did it well.

And the whole time, something else was stirring underneath.

The turning point came in his early twenties, sitting in his backyard in suburban Newcastle with his wife and their first child. He finally said the thing out loud: I think I'm almost done with this job. When she asked what he wanted instead, he admitted he couldn't get full-time ministry out of his head. Her response was four words: "I knew it."

I love that. The thing he'd been wrestling with privately, she'd already seen. Sometimes the people closest to us can see the well before we can.

Ground zero

What struck me most about Stewart is that he's chosen the hard road on purpose.

Rather than coast comfortably toward retirement on an income he admits is already secure — something he says would "rip my soul out" — he's thrown himself at church revitalisation and planting. And he's refreshingly blunt about where the Anglican Church sits: planting lost momentum decades ago, followed by steady decline. Robina is coming alongside congregations in Palm Beach and Burleigh Heads, training young leaders, and reimagining what church can look like, gearing up through 2026 and 2027.

One surprise along the way: young people drawn to tradition. He tells the story of a Year 9 girl dropped off alone at a 7:30am traditional service — "stupid o'clock to go to church" — who experienced church for the very first time, and chose that quiet, older service over the modern one.

In a world that worships scale and speed, here's a man content to build slowly, seed by seed, into a future he may not even see finished. That's the Kingdom pace, I think. Not the sprint we're all told to run.

The loneliness no one talks about

Perhaps the most honest stretch of the conversation was about friendship.

Stewart didn't pretend to have it solved. When Pedro pressed him on it, he was willing to sit in the ache rather than tidy it up. Every minister, it seems, points to the same wound: shallow friendships, isolation, loneliness. Stewart spoke about making his wife his best friend without making her carry every burden, about keeping the school and sporting friends who knew him before he was a priest, and about the hardest challenge of all — pastors being real friends with each other.

His conclusion echoed Scripture: you don't need twenty or thirty deep friendships. You need two or three people you can call in a crisis, be vulnerable with, and let call you out. "God grows churches in twos and threes," he reminded us.

I felt that one personally.

A humble church

When Pedro asked what the Gold Coast needs most from the church, Stewart didn't hesitate: a humble heart. Not a church that thinks it has all the answers, but one humble enough to say, "We might not be the right church for you — but I know one that is." Churches that cheer each other on. Churches that point not to themselves, but to Jesus.

As one recent guest put it, and Stewart heartily agreed: resign from your own ministry, and sign up for Jesus' ministry instead.

I came away from this one thinking about wells again. About how the things that last, in faith and in life, are rarely the things we rushed. Stewart's been on the Gold Coast twelve years and in ministry for decades, and he's still talking about ground zero. Still building slowly. Still convinced the deepest water is the kind you have to dig a long way down for.

Maybe the well was never empty for any of us.

Maybe it's just deep.

Brought to you by the Full Gospel Apostolic Centre (FGAC).