Eternity - October 2017 - Issue 85

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Number 85, October 2017 ISSN 1837-8447

Brought to you by the Bible Society

The reformation we need today Revival hits outback town

Scripture Union turns 150

Why healthy churches grow

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NEWS

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OCTOBER 2017

Chappies, camps and clubs News 2-3

TESS HOLGATE

Charity Feature 4

Scripture Union, a mission movement to children, young people and families, will celebrate its 150th anniversary on Saturday October 21 at The King’s School in Parramatta in Sydney’s west.

Its rich history will be on show in a photo timeline display, which should bring back memories for anyone who has ever been involved in sharing the gospel at its holiday camps, beach missions and through chaplaincy in some states.

To mark the historic milestone, Eternity has found people who have benefited from the ministry of Scripture Union. Be encouraged.

In Depth 5-6 Bible Society 7 Education 9-16 NCLS 17-20 Opinion 21-24

Obadiah Slope DID YOU GET IT? E Two editions ago very Why the pews sharp-eyed are female readers will have noticed that Eternity had all-female bylines. That was because it was all written by women.

Obadiah wonders whether you were one of the sharp-eyed lot. at your

FREE church or

bookshop

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Number 83,

August 2017 83 ISSN 1837-8447

Why you are good at Check charity out Darlene

Brought to you by the Bible Society

What victims of abuse need to hear

ACTUALLY THAT’S A LIE: We cheated on this column, which Obadiah wrote but gave it the name of Mrs Proudie. She is his enemy (well one of them) in Anthony Trollope’s Barchester novels – in which Mr Slope is an “odious evangelical.”

For our next trick: there’s something very obvious missing from this edition of Eternity.

Once again, Obadiah wonders if you can spot it.

AND SOMETHING ELSE LITERARY: “We are all very lower class to God and our cleverness and second-hand scholarship bore him hideously.” Evelyn Waugh to Nancy Mitford, February 1945. Still true.

HOT OFF THE PRESS: Our Mob, God’s Story, Bible Society’s art book full of Indigenous art telling Bible stories, has surprised book experts by selling more than 7000 copies.

And it’s still going. Art books are not meant to sell that well. Obadiah will break a rule and mention Christmas early. Our Mob is about to hit the press for the fourth time as Obadiah writes, ensuring you can buy a copy for Christmas. It is ideal for your distant relatives, Obadiah’s cousin Mary got the first one to hit the UK.

QUEST CLUB - GREG CLARKE In a friend’s home in the NSW town of Armidale, on a weekday after school, God drew me close.

The occasion was the weekly meeting of “Quest Club,” led by the indefatigable Jacinth Myles who, I suspect, also supplied the carbohydrates required by primary school kids around 3.30pm.

Quest Club gathered primary school aged kids to teach them how to read the Bible using Quest Notes, the simple but effective guides to Bible reading produced

by Scripture Union.

In about 15 minutes, I learned to read a small section of Scripture, ask some comprehension questions about it, and then try to fit that passage into a broader understanding of the Bible’s framework from Genesis to Revelation. It was life-changing.

Ever since, that has been my basic approach to the Bible: read closely, observe, contextualise, internalise (I didn’t use those words at age ten!) I moved on to Key Notes in high school, and then for some time Daily Bread, before I left behind that style of devotions.

I have to thank my parents for connecting me with Scripture Union. I also recall a couple of great years at Scripture Unionrun beach missions, connecting Christianity with holidays, sun and sea, and playfulness. These are great associations that liberate a child from a wrong view of religion. God’s word set me free, and I am delighted to be celebrating 150 years of Scripture Union’s ministry in Australia.

Bald Hills State School chaplain Kylie Conomos with Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital school chaplain Sarah Petchell.

BEACH MISSION – JAN SYME (LEADER, SORRENTO, VIC) In the early 1980s Jan Syme led the Year 5 and 6 girls on a beach mission at Sorrento, two hours’ drive south of Melbourne “One day in particular, about four or five of them made commitments to Jesus. It was amazing. It just seemed to be the right time for each of them,” says Jan. “Most of the girls had been coming to beach mission since they were little kids, so some were from Christian families, some of them not. So much had gone into those girls’ lives before the beach mission – I just happened to be there at the right time and right place and witnessing it. I don’t think we did anything out of the ordinary; we just sat and talked about the [Bible] stories and prayed and supported each other, and caught up at other times too.

“The girls were so ready in a sense, they already knew so much … and they made serious decisions [to follow Jesus] but they didn’t make them lightly. They knew what they were doing.”

The experience has stuck

with Jan, who went on to study at the Church Army College of Evangelism after that beach mission. She says, “beach mission confirmed to me that the most exciting thing in life is seeing people become Christians and that’s what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. And 30-plus years later, it’s still part of my life.”

Sorrento Beach Mission began in 1946 and closed down in 2004.

CHAPLAINCY – VIOLET AND HOLLY (QUEENSLAND) In January 2016, six-year-old Violet was due to start school in Brisbane’s northern suburbs. Instead, she was in hospital starting cancer treatment. Hopeful of her recovery, her teacher kept her desk free.

Meanwhile, Kylie Conomos, the chaplain at the school, encouraged her classmates to write letters of support and friendship to Violet.

Holly was in Violet’s class and had written a letter to Violet to say she wanted to sit with her in class, recalls Violet’s dad, Craig.

A few months later, Holly was diagnosed with leukaemia.

Chappy Kylie (using the name they like to use) supported the family and friends at school while Chappy Sarah Petchell constantly walked alongside the

girls as they progressed through their treatments in hospital. It’s clear when talking to Holly what a difference her chappies made, particularly Chappy Sarah at the hospital. “She’s very funny. She talks about a lot of funny things,” says Holly. Chappy Sarah admits she does try to be funny with the kids.

“Humour is my way of relating to kids and trying to bring a bit of joy and fun to the situation. I try to tell jokes, bring some giggles,” she says.

“One time we drew all over my gown with the colouring stuff that Violet had. We were very naughty, we lay on the floor. When you’re in hospital with leukaemia there’s a million rules. Just breaking those rules, kids love it.”

Sarah says she feels called to do this work. “I consider it a joy and an honour to work with sick children.

“I think it’s an honour to cry for children, to be with them in their pain because they don’t pretend things don’t hurt. And they vividly illustrate how much things hurt; they really scream their heads off. It’s kind of beautiful and an honour to be with them during that pain.” *SU QLD has asked Eternity to note that school chaplains work in full compliance with state government guidelines.

CHRISTIAN SERVICES FOR THE BLIND AND HEARING IMPAIRED*

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For the Blind: • Delivering Christian audio books via Vision Australia For the Deaf: • Closed-captioning of online and DVD media • Sponsor of Auslan-signed weekly worship service at New Hope, Sydney • Sponsor of annual Deaf Camp If you or someone you know could benefit from these FREE services, contact us at CSFBHI: Phone +61 2 9847 2296 Email CSFBHI@adventistmedia.org.au Web hop.ec/CSFBHI *CSFBHI is a registered charity. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation today.

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NEWS

OCTOBER 2017

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Revival hits outback township JOHN SANDEMAN

Craig Mischewski

Scenes of reconciliation and a dramatic fall in violence have marked a revival in Aurukun, an Indigenous town on Cape York Peninsula. One thousand of the town’s 1300-strong population crowded into the Uniting Church during months of intense seeking after God. “There was a slow growth as more and more people came to faith, with more and more baptisms,” Craig Mischewski, minister at Weipa and Mapoon (100km away but a regular visitor to Aurukun), tells Eternity. “About nine months ago it just exploded.”

Asked what the revival experience was like, Mischewski says: “the best way to describe it was that there was spontaneous dancing and people were full of joy. There was laughing and people were just happier. The violence around town just dropped away.

“Up until then there had been lots of violence. You could come into town on any day and see fights erupt in the streets. There was a lot of reconciliation.”

The revival was led by local people mostly in Wik language. It occurred at the Uniting Church, the only church in town. During the time the revival was drawing 1000 to the church it was the second-largest Uniting Church in Australia. It is still a town where 1100 out of 1300 locals, if asked if they are part of the church, will say “yes.”

Aurukun Uniting Church, where a revival has taken place.

Until 1977 Aurukun was a mission run by the church – originally the Presbyterians. It is native title land owned by the Wik people, but there are overlapping clans present and sadly a history of violence.

But the revival has been good news for the town. “During the revival people went from having a

Christianised history [due to the mission] to having a much more intimate relationship with Jesus.”

The intense period of the revival has passed, according to Mischewski. The church attendance has passed its peak.

“The whole town would now identify as being Christian, but the euphoria of it has waned a bit.

There were fellowship meetings happening every night of the week but they have dropped off now.”

For the first time Mischewski has heard some words used in anger.

Despite the revival losing some intensity, Mischewski is optimistic.

“There are enough people here who have a good handle on the gospel, have a good handle on the Bible – there is some good leadership here,” he says. But it is too early to tell if the changes in the community will stick.

“It is like any of the great revivals; there are people who certainly changed, those who changed for a short time, and those who were not changed at all. The best way to understand it is the parable of the sower. This is a place of obvious spiritual battle.

“Where the people are at right now is the need for really, really good teaching. There is a desperate need for some people to come and do some discipleship training.

“We simply can’t find anybody in Australia who is willing to come as a full-time minister.

“The other thing is that there have been some people who have come here to do teaching who have brought in very legalistic Christianity, not grace-based.

Fortunately, the local leadership has said ‘we don’t like what these people are saying,’ so we’ve been able to move them on. But when word of a revival gets out it tends to attract a lot of people who want to be part of it. But if you weren’t here, you have missed it.”

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News brief A CALL TO PRAYER: Author of One Blood, a warts and all history of Christianity’s impact on Aboriginal Australia, Dr John Harris, will be speaking alongside Centre for Public Christianity’s Dr John Dickson at this year’s Australian National Prayer Breakfast at Parliament House, Canberra on October 16.

STILL REACHABLE BY PRAYER: Although no one knows the true number, there could be as many as 350,000 underground Christians living among North Korea’s 24 million people, according to Operation World. Up to 100,000 Christians today are locked up in harsh prisons or work camps.

MORE PRAYER: The World Day of Prayer on March 2 will focus on the country of Suriname in South America. This special day was formerly called the Women’s World Day of Prayer.

FREED: Four Christians in Nepal sentenced to five years in prison on false charges of “witchcraft” and “violence” were released in late September, church leaders have told Morning Star news. They had been targeted for praying for a mentally troubled woman.

WAITING FOR MR ETERNITY: The biography of Arthur Stace who secretly roamed the streets of Sydney (and Melbourne) chalking Eternity as a one-word sermon will be launched in early November.

The book can be pre-ordered at bibleshop.com.au

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CHARITY FEATURE

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OCTOBER 2017

Australians are giving more JOHN SANDEMAN Australians are giving more dollars to charity but the number of people giving is falling, according to Giving Australia research. In 201516, 14.9 million adult Australians donated $12.5 billion to charities and non-profits, up from $10.1 billion in 2005. The average donation in 2015-16 was $764.08, an increase of $210.06 since 2015 (adjusted for inflation).

The proportion of Aussies who give has fallen from 87 per cent to 80 per cent. “While fewer people are giving, they’re giving more as the average donation has increased.

Similarly, the percentage of people volunteering and the hours volunteered have both increased over the past decade,” said lead researcher Associate Professor Wendy Scaife of the Queensland University of Technology. (Fortyone per cent in 2005 versus 43.7 per cent in 2016; 132 hours on average in 2005 versus 134 hours in 2016).

This fall in numbers of donors has meant Australia has dropped out of the top five most generous countries in the world. Australia is now behind Myanmar, Indonesia, Kenya, New Zealand and the US, according to the latest Global Giving Index.

If you want to raise more money, building up opportunities for

Are we a Giving Australia?

38.2% of responders both volunteered and donated to a not-for-profit

I give to my charity of choice:

Asked 65.2% Donated 24.2%

Asked 54.2% Donated 19.3%

During 2015/6 we gave

$12.5

Asked 48.8% Donated 20.6%

billion ($11.2b Cash $1.3b Raffles & Events)

Charities use tech

77% 60% 11%

Asked 43.4% Donated 10.4%

to charity.

Website

Asked 39.9% Donated 57.4%

Social Media 3rd Party Fundraising

Why Don’t People Give?

4%

“can’t afford to give” “prefer to volunteer instead of giving money” “the government should provide the support needed” “concerns about the privacy of my information”

Crowdfunding

Source: Giving Australia 2016 Fact Sheets

Each month, Eternity will highlight a charity from the group bringing you this special page.

MISSIONWITHOUT WITHOUTBORDERS BORDERS MISSION

LET HOPE SOAR APPEAL Photo taken by our partner in Thailand.

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people to volunteer might work for your charity – or church.

Nicolas Hookway of the University of Tasmania, another of the researchers behind the Giving Australia project, told the ABC that “here we see a clear link between volunteering and donating … volunteers donated nearly double as much, on average, as donors who didn’t volunteer.”

Primary and secondary schools comprised the most common area for volunteers at 21 per cent, with sport second at 20 per cent and religion at 18 per cent. Given that the overall figure for volunteering reported by Giving Australia is 43.7 per cent, this means that 7.9 per cent of Australians are volunteering for their religion.

This is a very healthy figure considering 15 per cent of Australians attend church at least once every three weeks. Seeking donations remains old tech, with the telephone being the most common way people were asked to give. But all the older ways of asking for money are decreasing in use. Snail mail, door knocking, television and street fundraising have all become less common.

Another key finding is that 60.5 per cent of respondents say that they generally give on the spur of the moment. Those who plan their donations give six times as many dollars.

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OCTOBER 2017

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IN DEPTH

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Luther wrote 95 theses: here are

42 tweets

the church needs now wikimedia

Martin Luther, Lucas Cranach the Elder’s engraving of Castle Church Wittenberg where Luther nailed his theses on the door.

Michael Jensen’s Twitter handle should be @martinluther On October 31, 1517, a young monk named Martin Luther nailed a document – his Ninety-Five Theses – to the door of the Castle Church in the small university town of Wittenberg.

It sounds more dramatic than it was. The door was essentially the place where you would post anything you’d like to discuss.

Luther was basically offering these theses for debate in the theological academy.

The theses did address some controversial material, however, especially the selling of “indulgences,” which were tickets issued to the purchaser granting them (or their relative) fewer years in purgatory. This was a great fundraising scheme for the church authorities. But Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses were not just

a random collection of irritations with current church corruption.

They were an application of the principle of justification by faith alone to the church and the world of his time. Luther’s fresh reading of the Bible had led him to a deeper understanding of how a person comes to know the saving power of God. So, what are the implications of justification by faith alone for today? What would Luther nail to your church door? I’ve had a go at drafting some Theses for Today (I only got to 42!), with a little help from old brother Martin:

1

When Jesus Christ called people to “Repent and believe the gospel,” he meant that their whole lives should be lives of repentance.

2

He calls men and women to repent inwardly, in our hearts, but to show our repentance in our actions by leaving sin behind.

3

To repent means to know that we have, on our own, no merit that can please God.

4 5

The only one who can pardon us from our sins is God himself.

God pardons us when we take hold of the cross of Christ, by faith alone.

6

God forgives the guilt of no one who he does not, at the same time, humble in all things.

7 8 9

We are saved by faith and not by works.

board of elders, ministry team, or denomination panel.

But faith without works is dead.

17

The gospel of Jesus Christ inspires us to many extraordinary good works.

10

The gospel of Jesus Christ makes us depend not at all on our good works.

11

Only God can forgive sins. A church body can forgive the breaking of its own laws but only those, though it can declare God’s forgiveness of sins.

12

Membership in a particular church body does not mean that a person’s sins are forgiven.

13

Making barriers to church membership and to full acceptance in the body of Christ, that Christ himself does not make, teaches that salvation is by something other than faith alone.

14

Adherence to a church vision statement does not save anyone.

15

We are not accounted saved because of our decent lives, or our Christian values, or because people like us.

16

We are not accounted saved because we are on a council,

We are not accounted saved because we believe correct doctrine, even if we believe in justification by faith alone.

18

No matter how much time or money a Christian gives to the church, he or she is still justified by faith alone.

19

To teach that God will accept us on account of our good deeds and values is a doctrine of hell itself.

20 sale.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is not ever, anywhere, for

25

The sacraments of church, and other rituals and ceremonies, do not save us, though they represent salvation to us.

26

Believing that baptism or any other sacrament automatically saves is a gravely dangerous teaching.

27

The Christian is motivated by the gospel of free grace to give to the poor and the needy, and not by trying to win his or her salvation.

28

The true treasure of the church is the most holy gospel of the glory and the grace of God.

21

29

22

30

Every Christian has a right to know that they have, in Christ, full forgiveness for sins and freedom from guilt.

Every true Christian has a share in all the blessings of Christ and the church, and this comes from God, no matter what a particular church or church leader might say.

23

A Christian is to be taught that there is no assurance of salvation except in Christ alone.

24

Any minister who teaches confidence in anything other than Christ alone is doing Satan’s work for him.

But this treasure is not popular in the world or in the church, because it makes the first last.

The Christian church that celebrates the successful, the wealthy and the proud, has not understood the gospel.

31

The Christian church that ignores the poor, the orphans and widows, and anyone else who is vulnerable, has not understood the gospel of Jesus Christ.

32

The Christian church that is racially segregated or divided has not understood the gospel of Jesus Christ. continued page 6

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IN DEPTH

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42 tweets From page 5

33

The Christian church that does not see women as the spiritual equals of men, as “coheirs in the gracious gift of life” has not understood the gospel.

34

By faith, in Christ, a Christian has his or her identity above all other identities.

35

If justification is by faith alone, there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male nor female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

36

Preachers and theologians who teach that the cross is merely an example for us rob the cross of its power and steal assurance from ordinary Christians.

37

Preachers and theologians who remind the people of Christ of the cross continually and insistently are a great blessing to the church of God.

38

The Christian life as a life of repentance means that the Christian and the church freely admit that they have erred and sinned and depend only on the grace of God.

39

The gospel of justification by faith alone is opposed to human religions, which teach that we can save ourselves through efforts.

40

The gospel of justification by faith alone is for all nations, and needs to be preached to all nations, for “faith comes by hearing.” It is by definition a missionary message.

41

Christians are to be encouraged to be diligent in following Christ, their head, through every affliction and struggle;

42

And thus be confident of entering into heaven rather through many tribulations of this life (Acts 14:22) than through false confidence in their own achievement.

Michael Jensen is the rector of St Mark’s Anglican Church in Darling Point, Sydney, and the author of several books.

Eternity knows a couple of these tweets are over 140 characters. We are counting on Twitter going to 280.

OCTOBER 2017

That the Scriptures may be understood The Reformation and the languages of the people

JOHN HARRIS A costly battle was fought in the turbulent 16th century for people’s right to hear and read the Bible in their own language. One of the final acts marking the end of this struggle was the publication of the King James Bible in 1611.

Its translators wrote that Scripture must be allowed to speak for itself, that the Bible should be comprehensible to ordinary people.

This seems obvious today but for nearly 1000 years, translating the Bible into the “vernacular,” the common language of the people, was forbidden.

This had not always been so. Two centuries before Jesus was born, exiled Jews in Egypt had translated their Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, the language of the Empire and their new mother tongue. They called it the Septuagint, honouring its 70 translators. This Greek Bible, rather than the Hebrew Bible, became the Scripture of the early church, the text used by all New Testament authors. Unlike the Scriptures of other religions, the Bible is not fixed in time nor in one sacred language.

The word of God remains the word of God when faithfully translated into the languages of people’s hearts and minds.

The New Testament too was Greek but, as Christianity spread beyond Greek-speaking places, early Christians eagerly translated the Christian Scriptures into their own local languages. Within a few decades of the gospels being written, they were translated into Coptic, the language of Egypt. As Christianity spread south beyond the Roman Empire, the Bible was translated into Ethiopic. When it spread north it was translated into Gothic. The language of Rome was Latin. By the end of the 4th century, the great Latin Bible was completed, largely the work of St Jerome. This was the Biblia Sacra Vulgata, the Bible of the common people. This Latin Vulgate became the Bible of the Catholic Church for more than 1000 years.

The Vulgate was an extremely important Bible, mightily used

by God, the Bible loved and read by the missionaries who brought Christianity to Europe, the Bible carried to England and Scotland, to Ireland and Wales, the Bible of St Patrick and St George. This one

“

A man and woman from Togo reading a Bible.

By the year 2000, part of the Bible was available in 2500 languages.”

Bible, copied countless thousands of times, preserved the word of God through the Dark Ages so that it was never lost.

But sadly, this Bible became an instrument of oppression. When Latin became the language of the church, the Latin Vulgate became the exclusive possession of a politicised religion.

This Bible became locked away from the people, few of whom could read Latin even if they had access to it. Translating the Bible was considered a political threat, a subversive act challenging the church’s authority. Controlling the kings and officials of Western Europe, the Catholic Church was able to enforce this prohibition.

Any attempt to produce vernacular Bibles was viciously put down.

In England, on the outer edge of Europe and far from Roman power, Christians had freely translated the Bible into Old English or Anglo-Saxon. This freedom ended abruptly in 1066 with the Norman Conquest, placing England under the control of the Catholic Norman French.

By 1382, John Wycliffe and his followers secretly translated the Bible into English, but their doomed movement was crushed by the might of the church. Any further translation had to wait 150 years for the Reformation.

The Protestant Reformation is said to have begun on October 31, 1517 when Augustinian monk Martin Luther nailed his “95 theses” to the door of Wittenburg Castle church. Luther had reached his conclusions from study of the Bible. There he had learned that salvation was by “grace,” the free gift of God, and not by “works,” that is, not by anything a person or even the church could do. Luther realised that people could grasp this truth only if it were available to them in a language they understood. By 1522 he completed the New Testament in German, thus establishing the crucial Reformation principle that people had the right to read or hear the word of God in their own language.

Authorities tried vainly to prohibit the printing and distribution of Luther’s Bible, but the demand was overwhelming.

Around the same time in England, William Tyndale, greatly influenced by Luther, sought official permission to translate the Bible into English. Rebuffed, Tyndale went to the Continent where he completed his English New Testament, publishing it in Worms in 1526. Tyndale famously quipped that now every plough boy could know more of the Bible than the Pope. The books had to be

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smuggled into England. Although condemned and burned by the church authorities, eager people secretly kept and read them.

Tyndale was betrayed in 1536, declared a heretic and sentenced to be burned to death. He was strangled and burned in October 1536, his famous last words a prayer that God would open the King of England’s eyes. Within two years his prayer was answered when King Henry VIII permitted the publication of the Bible in England.

On the Continent, vernacular Scriptures were brutally suppressed. Casiodoro de Reina translated the first full Bible into Spanish. Published in 1569, it was banned and burned by the Spanish Inquisition. Casiodoro was himself condemned to death but managed to escape Spain, finding sanctuary in Antwerp.

Yet translation of the Bible continued everywhere in Europe.

The work was clandestine and dangerous in Catholic-dominated countries. But where Protestantism was flourishing, in places such as Sweden, Denmark and Wales, full Bibles were available and freely read before 1600.

The Reformation drive for vernacular Scriptures was unstoppable. When the English colonised North America, missionary John Eliot completed the Bible in Massachusetts. When the Dutch East India Company established a Dutch settlement in Batavia – now Jakarta – Dutch clergy translated the Bible into Malay.

The great period of vernacular Bible translation was the remarkable 19th-century missionary era. By 1800, some of the Bible had been translated into 68 languages. By 1900 this had become more than 500 languages. By the year 2000, part of the Bible was available in 2500 languages. Slowly but inevitably, a more enlightened Catholic Church also welcomed the Bible in the languages of its congregations.

This was what had begun in the Reformation in the 16th century.

This was what so many Bible translators had died doing. This was the Reformers’ dream come true. This was the triumph of the vernacular Scriptures, the word of God in the language of the people.

John Harris is Senior Biblical Consultant for the Bible Society.

OCTOBER 2017

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BIBLE @ WORK

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Iranians turn to Christ on their holidays Nahid Sepehri, left, with Mansour Khajehpour at the UBS Round Table in Sydney in July.

ANNE LIM Street evangelism in the countries surrounding Iran is as easy as going fishing in Australia – there are so many fish, says USbased Iranian pastor Mansour Khajehpour.

For the past two years, Khajehpour and his wife, Nahid Sepehri – the director of the Iranian Bible Society in Diaspora – have put Persian Bibles into the hands of Iranians who are holidaying in Turkey and Armenia, during the Iranian New Year celebrations in March.

“This past March and the last year, Nahid and I have been managing to deliver mass numbers of Scriptures into the surrounding countries of Iran,” Khajehpour says.

They don’t call it smuggling – they call it “Special Handling Overwhelming Care and Kindness (SHOCK) delivery of the Bible.”

“This coming March will be our third year that we are taking teams from the US and Europe to Turkey and Armenia and we go meet people individually, talk to them, respect them, love them, and then

ask them if we can give them a gift.

The gift could be a Bible, a New Testament, a children’s Bible, or a children’s game board. Then we tell them that ‘this story is about Jesus Christ. If you are interested, this is our address – come and hear the story of Jesus Christ.’”

Over a two-week period in March 2017, the team distributed 7500 pieces of Scriptures to people, one by one. “Out of that we personally had 35 individuals coming and accepting Jesus Christ, but we strongly believe the number is massive,” Khajehpour says.

The Iranian Bible Society supplies Persian Scriptures to Iranian Christians around the world from its base in the US city of Seattle, where Sepehri and Khajehpour live with their children, Rebeka and Matthew.

In 2015, it managed to distribute 150,000 copies of the full Bible inside Iran. But the main method of distribution now is digital. In 2016, it distributed one million digital Bibles, 500,000 non-print New Testaments and 7500 print Bibles and nearly 10,000 print New Testaments.

So why does Khajehpour describe bringing Iranian Muslims to Christ as easy as “fishing in Australia?”

“Among many Muslims in the Middle East, Iranians are fed up by the situation in the Middle East,” he says. “In the last three decades, more Muslims have been killed in the name of their common god by their fellow Muslims than Muslims being killed by non-Muslims in 1400 years, all together.”

Khajehpour says God is mighty enough to use this “horrible, ridiculous situation to bring people into awareness of their longing and their thirst for peace.”

“And that’s what we do. We just go in all honesty. We don’t give them a rosy picture; we tell them pain, suffering continues, but there is a companion; there is an Emmanuel. Ever since we became Christians, we have faced more challenges than before, but nonetheless we tell them ...‘there is a God that would walk with us through this whole process’ – and then you see tears are shed, hearts open, knees bend.”

As one who converted at age

15 from a Muslim background, Khajehpour has been disowned by his family, kicked out of home, arrested and imprisoned by the Iranian government.

Sepehri, who is the daughter of the last executive director of the Iranian Bible Society, suffered her own challenges after her father was evicted from the country in 1989.

“I was in Tehran working in the Iranian Bible Society in the translation department. In February 1990, we were working and we heard someone ringing,” she says. Some Muslim men came into the office with a gun and confiscated everything and closed the office down.

“After our marriage, the government took us for questioning and for two weeks they told us we are not allowed to drive out of the city. Every day we have to go to the office, sign there and they put a death penalty for my husband.”

After the birth of their daughter, Rebeka, Khajehpour took his opportunity to escape to Athens while he was on a bond out of prison. “When Mansour went out, I was thinking ‘am I going to see

him again?’ We don’t know what’s going to happen. Maybe tomorrow the government’s going to come and capture me. I didn’t have a visa to go to join him, but my father was in the US and he said ‘stay home, stay safe and I will do something.’”

Sepehri’s father told her to get a new passport and send it with her brother to Germany – which is illegal. But the Germany embassy granted visas to Sepehri and her daughter without any quibble.

“They looked at this blank passport, it didn’t have any stamp that she had entered Germany, and they granted Nahid a visa to Greece without Nahid being at the interview … if this is not God’s providence, what is this?” says Khajehpour.

“She and Rebeka flew on an aeroplane, they got a delicious breakfast, and three hours later they were in Greece. This is amazing.”

A year later, on June 28, 1997, the family entered the US as refugees.

+ Read the full story at http:// eternity.news/iran

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College grads: the defining moments page 12

Tim Argall with Year 10 and 11 students at Donvale Christian College, Victoria.

Why I love working in a Christian School!

TIM ARGALL I’m wandering across the school’s campus on a cold Melbourne March morning, making a beeline to the prep-grade building. I enter the foyer – four prep-grade classrooms open into this space. I get distracted by a mum (volunteer helper) introducing herself to me – I’m still “the new principal.”

Little Jez* wanders across the foyer – I catch his movement out of the corner of my eye. Then he disappears. I keep chatting to the

mum I’ve just met. (*BTW, Jez’s name has been changed.)

Suddenly, I feel a tug on the corner of my coat. We look down – it’s Jez. He is beaming. “Mr Argall, Mr Argall – I prayed for you this morning.”

“Thanks, Jez, you’re a legend.

Bless you,” I reply.

“No, no – you don’t understand” he says insistently. “I prayed for you … out loud!” he finishes with a cheeky grin, as he shouts the last three words.

That’s why I love working in a

Christian school.

I’m sitting at the information evening for Year 9, 2018. The year 9 coordinator introduces the evening as follows: “Probably the best question to ask at this stage is … What does God say?

“He says that he knew these kids before they were in your womb.

That they were made in the image of Christ. He says that each one of them has a part to play in the body of Christ. He tells us that we were

all bought with a price.

“These young people at times have the confidence of giants and within a second can feel fragile and isolated. Our role is to educate them to see the world through a biblical lens that equips them to be in the world but not of the world.

One that teaches them to recognise their value and identity in Christ.

To know they are made for a purpose.”

The freedom to articulate this paradigm shift we seek to embed as our definition of education

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– that’s why I love working in a Christian school.

Jess, my eldest, gives me a big bear hug – one of the deep ones she has been known for over her 23 years of life.

“I have never seen you so happy in your work,” she says. “Yeah – it’s been a good day,” I reply. “No, Dad – not today – every day.” I share this with Mary (our younger daughter) on Skype. “Dad – it’s ridiculous. I live 15,000km away, continued page 10

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Christian School from page 9 and I can feel it. Stop denying it – you are so happy,” Mary says, with the joyful directness she has been renowned for over her 21 years of life. Ben, the deep-thinking third of three, wanders past – he nods violently – his mane-covered head in danger of being loosened from his 198cm frame.

OK – I hear you, Lord – I love working in a Christian school.

Spending a night watching all 580 primary students on stage for an evening at the local performing arts centre, a multitude of faces full of joy, having a ball, delivering to the audience not one but two shows: “Fill Your Bucket” and “Shrek Jr.” This is how the head of primary summarised the evening at its conclusion: “We hope that you have heard clearly some significant themes that we have been encouraging our students to focus on as we have prepared for production. These have included the importance of seeing beyond people’s outward appearance to their heart and the importance of the gift we can give others when we extend friendship to them.

“Ultimately, our desire at this school is that, in the joy and creativity of our children, you will be reminded of and pointed towards the wonderfully creative and joy-inspiring God that we wish to honour tonight. He is ultimately the one we want to give all the glory and honour to.”

Tim Argall helps in the senior school area.

Continually, overtly, publicly focusing on God as our creator and the giver of life and all the blessings we enjoy – that’s why I love working in a Christian school.

A (much better than average) sportsman, Jack*, in Year 7 takes a very bad tumble at lunch, hurting himself significantly. What happens next is remarkable. Two friends go to his care and speak quietly to him, another two go to get first-aid help, and the growing crowd who have approached,

having witnessed the accident, form themselves into a series of huddles (about five in each) and begin praying for Jack, his injury and his recovery. No adult has arrived, but the group of boys and girls, none older than 15, spontaneously make this decision to hand over a very difficult situation to God. Seeing these kinds of expressions of faith in the young people of junior secondary – that’s why I love working in a Christian school.

Living out Christian community

among a staff of 150 followers of Jesus from 48 different denominational backgrounds (I didn’t know there were that many in Australia, let alone the east of Melbourne!); partnering with parents of more than 750 families, who are all actively involved in their local church and associated ministries, in the God-given gift of educating their children for their primary and secondary schooling; wrestling daily with my college board colleagues to ensure that our founding forebears’ vision for the college is not watered down or

lost within our daily activities and busyness; sharing in the education processes that are growing the next generation of Christian leadership for our nation; being part of a movement of schools focused on authentic Christian living and biblical frameworks surrounding all our schools’ programmes – these are a small subset of the reasons why I love working in a Christian school.

Tim Argall is Executive Principal at Donvale Christian College, Melbourne, Victoria.

DEALING WITH GUILT AND SHAME Come along to check out the College, be involved in classes and get a taste of Moore’s in-depth theological training.

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God didn’t take me seriously TESS HOLGATE

Picture post by model from pexels: Michael

“I had basically told God that I would never go to Bible college and that I would never do missions, but I don’t think he really took me seriously,” says Ann*, who will soon head off to Asia as a long-term missionary after studying at a local Bible college.

Having worked in allied health for several years, Ann went on a short-term mission to a country in Asia for two weeks. “I completely lost my heart to it,” Ann says.

“I came back and was saving so that I could quit my job and go and volunteer.”

She then worked overseas for nine months to suss out if she could go longer term. Upon her return to Australia, her family and friends asked if she was going to go to Bible college. She steadfastly refused, until a mission agency told her that most agencies require at least one year of theological training. She reluctantly quit her job, and enrolled at Bible college.

“I loved college. It was amazing.

I loved how deep we got to delve into the word, and I especially loved the lectures where the rubber hit the road and we could practically apply it.

“It’s a real gift to be able to have this time, where you’re not defined by your job or in the workforce.

Time that you are able to set aside and reflect on God’s word. You see yourself grow and reflected through [that] word. It really does

show us the worst of ourselves as we struggle in relationships, and the best of us as redeemed through God’s grace,” she says.

But Ann did find parts of her Bible college experience difficult, such as living with dozens of other women in college accommodation.

She also found it hard to leave behind the job she had and to always see the value in what she was being taught.

“I really missed work. I really missed people and I loved my job, so being at college – it was a struggle to sit and see how

these lectures were important for everyday life and for people ‘out there.’ It felt very far removed, and tackling ancient languages probably didn’t help there!

“And it’s hard not to fall into the trap of comparing yourself to others at college, especially when it looks like people are easing through the course, smashing out Greek, and I’m just struggling to pass. We’ve been used to ‘adulting’ out in the world and suddenly we come in to this space that is hard to describe … As Christian women, we come together and

we’re harder on each other than we are on people on ‘the outside.’ We’re more prone to show grace to nonbelievers or give them a little bit of leeway, whereas with each other it can be quite brutal.

“So even though you might feel like [you are] a bit on the edges in women’s accommodation, the question of how you practically show love to your neighbour [others living in the college community] is much harder.

[College] really shapes your character, and hopefully for the better,” says Ann.

Since graduating college, Ann has been preparing to move to Asia, where she plans to work with children with disability.

Christian believers in that part of the world face many challenges in following Christ. So, as a single woman in her late 20s, it seems a pretty big decision Ann has made to become a missionary there. And her family have their reservations too.

“My family don’t want me to go, but that’s not a new thing. The thing with Christian families is that there’s a lot of guilt tied up with it. Christians feel as if they should be supportive and as if they should love the fact that their child is going, but it’s different when it comes to their own daughter. And when safety comes into it, that’s a hard thing for them to let me go.

“But I can’t imagine doing anything else with my life. I’m excited about what God has in store in the future. I’m excited to see how he’s going to be at work.

“For me, Christianity is never something that you can do by halves. You always leave everything and pick up your cross and follow him. It’s not like you can have a foot in both worlds. It doesn’t seem illogical to me; it seems like the only logical way of doing it. Short term, you can see short gains, but if you really want to invest long term in people’s lives, we’re in it for the long haul,” she says. *Ann’s name has been changed.

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God can use you - Visit www.morlingcollege.com P. (02) 9878 0201 E. enquiries@morling.edu.au

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What I learned in college TAMIE DAVIS found that God was big after all “We don’t have to be afraid of the Bible,” my Old Testament lecturer said. This might seem like an odd phrase to hear at an evangelical college. After all, evangelicals are the Bible people, right? But we were in a class looking at Ezekiel 16, which is a pretty horrifying passage of Scripture and, to be honest, I wish it wasn’t in the Bible! I wasn’t the only one. Several members of the class were trying to excuse the passage away. The academic readings for the day did not help us to do that. They were by feminist theologians who were arguing that God is portrayed as an abuser in the passage. They resonated with me, but they didn’t seem like the things evangelicals should say about God! And what if they were true, what would I do then? Though my lecturer did not agree with their conclusions, he

said he thought their reading of the passage was truer to it than many evangelical readings, which led to his statement about being afraid of the Bible. We must not think God is so small that we have to protect him, he said. We must be willing to wrestle with God because we do no service to his word if we gloss over the difficult parts.

These words gave me the courage to ask questions of the Bible, and the permission to bring some of my experiences of the world and feminism into conversation with it.

Tamie attended Ridley College in Melbourne and now lives in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. She blogs at meetjesusatuni.com

NATHAN CAMPBELL reading the liberals made him sure about the Bible Bible College can be a pretty discombobulating experience;

either you go in committed to a point of view and remain in that bubble, or go in committed to having your pre-existing framework challenged and sharpened. Your posture shapes the way you read and consider new ideas. I’m naturally a contrarian, so I went to college determined to read beyond my tribal upbringing in reformed evangelical (Presbyterian) churches and Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students.

I was committed to a Christcentred biblical theology but open to challenging my own paradigm and having it challenged by others.

I emerged with this approach fortified, made more robust by taking on the best scholarship from different camps. (It is like a canonical view of Scripture where the text is given a rich human tradition to explain its emerging authority, and something like a christotelic* take on God’s work in inspiring and directing both revelation and history.)

As I read German biblical criticism, and “emperor’s new clothes”-styled modern critical academia, I was unconvinced by theorists who see the Bible as an unsophisticated hodgepodge of voices. I was increasingly convinced by the artistry and intricacies of these Scriptures, produced through different eras and contexts in Israel’s history.

I saw that God is a maximally creative artist and storyteller who

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spoke through words and people as part of one grand pronouncement ultimately revealed in Jesus (Hebrews 1). *A subtle but important distinction from Christocentric, that allows a passage to have two meanings, one for its immediate context and one fulfilled by Jesus.

Nathan Campbell attended Queensland Theological College.

Lecture room at Sydney Missionary and Bible

BEN MCEACHEN discovered it was not all about him I love to think I’m a guy who cares a lot about others. But I also can be pretty selfish and self-involved.

Going to a Bible college didn’t cure me of that common ailment.

Quitting my job and choosing to study things of Christianity fulltime was not the vaccine against being self-centred. There is a cure, though, and turns out I already was in possession of it. Despite having had a Bible since I was a kid

and reading it throughout my life, I had not noticed how much of it celebrates being part of a loving, supportive collective forged by the Holy Spirit. In my first year at Bible college, delving deeply into the New Testament’s Letter to the Ephesians, my individual way of thinking was smashed. While my grasp on ancient Greek was far from award-winning, even I could not miss what this letter shared about the unity enjoyed by those who believe in Jesus Christ.

Incredibly, I’d spent years being ignorant of what is an in-built gift of Christian faith. Lectures, small group discussions and my own study sessions came to emphasise, for me, that integral to being a Christian is being a Christian with others. That it’s not about me; it’s about all of us being built up in love, faith, maturity and knowledge in Jesus Christ.

Ben McEachen attended Moore Theological College, then he resumed his media career.

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Flickr/SMBC

College.

TESS HOLGATE explored the resurrection at a cafe I was sitting in a cafe in Newtown, drinking a coffee, writing an essay, when I realised that Jesus rising in an actual human body was a game-changer for my Christian faith. I had been a Christian for a bunch of years, so I had a sense that the resurrection of Jesus was important, but in my second year at Moore Theological College, writing

an essay on what we would lose if we denied that Jesus had a body in the resurrection, I realised that my entire faith was pinned to it.

Without it, death is not defeated.

Without it, Jesus can’t save us from our sins. Without it, we have no reason to try to live good lives.

Without it, we have no certain hope of our own physical resurrection nor the redemption of creation. But with it we have the certain hope of salvation and a future in which both our bodies and the world we live in is redeemed and made new.

Tess Holgate attended Moore Theological College.

KAREN MUDGE had seven years to learn to trust I studied at Sydney Missionary and Bible College for a total of seven years part time. During that time I had several critical moments that brought together what I was learning and influenced me deeply.

From the outset I loved unpacking the Bible, delving deeply into the text, its meaning, context and background. I realised that we were indulging in the luxury of time – time to unpack foundational building blocks of truth. I had a unique privilege, studying part time as I did. I had a “slow drip” of information and learning, so I had time to absorb the depth of the content I was learning. Many full-time students spoke about the “full-on” nature of full-time study, and I was able to witness the immersion they had in the Bible – all parts of it, all the time.

Over the years, I came to love the “extras” in my college days – Principal’s Hour (a time not unlike a church service for students and staff ), and Ministry Matters (where members from different mission organisations came to share their work). I realised that these times were incredibly valuable in the broader experience of college – they aimed to care for us pastorally, bypassing the academic and intellectual nature of much of our study. They worked together with our studies to build possibilities for life after college in our hearts and minds.

My most crucial moment of clarity came when I realised – close to the end of my seven years – that Bible college was the most trusted and consistent part of my life. I relied on the kindness and care of the people there as I attended each week. I trusted implicitly the

OPEN MORNING 9.30am Saturday 4 November 2017

Learn about our full-time and part-time study options, chat with the lecturers, and tour the campus. Brunch will be served. No RSVP required - just come along, we'd love to see you. Bring a friend!

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wise and careful teaching from the Bible, both in class and elsewhere.

And I treasured the prayer and gentle guidance spoken by the leaders and teachers, when the rest of my life was going through upheaval and painful challenges that left me reeling. College, and all I was learning there, became an anchor point for my mind, heart and soul.

Karen Mudge attended Sydney Missionary and Bible College.

SIMON SMART on wrestling in Vancouver My wife and I lived in Canada in 2001 and 2002 so that I could undertake a theological degree at Regent College, Vancouver. British Columbia is a beautiful place.

Vancouver is a fabulous city. Skiing at Whistler is an hour-and-a-half away. There are worse places in the world to study!

But the college experience itself

was truly life-changing. Regent is non-denominational and draws people from all over the world.

There were times when we might find ourselves in a study group or at a dinner party with a Northern Irish Presbyterian, a DutchReformed South African, a Korean Pentecostal, and a Southern Baptist from Alabama. We’d watch as a member of the underground church in China became close friends with an Anglican futures trader from London. There were playwrights and novelists, scientists and engineers, Hebrew scholars and pastors. The faith experiences of these people were often wildly different and yet the unity they experienced was profoundly moving.

Theological study can be a destabilising and challenging experience. I had a friend at Regent who used to joke that if he didn’t have at least one spiritual crisis in a semester he felt he wasn’t getting his money’s worth! But, in fact, it was a gift to be able to wrestle with real questions and be provided with satisfying and lifegiving answers.

By the end, my picture of God had been dramatically enlarged.

I liken it to stepping through a doorway into the open air and being struck by a vast landscape and sky that previously I’d only glimpsed through frosted glass.

Simon Smart has put his Regent degree to work as director of the Centre for Public Christianity.

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New staff, new buildings, colleges here to stay JOHN SANDEMAN MOST CHANGED: In a crowded field Trinity College, the Uniting Church (UCA) college in Queensland qualifies as the most changed Bible college or seminary in the past year or so. It has almost quadrupled its student numbers since the appointment of a new principal Leigh Trevaskis in 2016 and a major turnover of staff. The student numbers have gone from 11 enrolled from the UCA to 41. The college is drawing many of these increased numbers from the UCA’s larger evangelical congregations.

WATTS UP: Alphacrucis College landed an academic coup when it welcomed Professor Rikk Watts as the Dean of Theology this year.

Watts has spent 20 years in several academic roles at Vancouver’s wellregarded Regent College. His work as a biblical scholar focuses on Mark’s Gospel, Isaiah and the NT use of the OT. CONCRETE AND STEEL 1: In the past two years, theological colleges, especially in Sydney have poured a lot of concrete in a sure sign that they are here to stay.

Completed in early 2017, Hillsong Epicentre shares the Baulkham Hills campus with the well-known Hillsong convention centre. It is home to state-of-theart facilities that serve the church, the community and the Hillsong International Leadership College.

It is described by the architects NBRS as “an identity building that welcomes and inspires those

Moore College’s new Learning and Teaching Centre forms a gateway to Sydney’s inner-city Newtown. who gather there.” The builders reported the cost as $33 million.

The Epicentre incorporates a 500-seat auditorium, a professional sound studio, a smaller college training sound studio with four edit suites, three band rehearsal rooms, nine music practice rooms, 20 classrooms, and two large seminar/meeting rooms.

Hillsong International Leadership College awards degrees through AC College.

CONCRETE AND STEEL 2: Moore Theological College’s Learning and Teaching Centre “has already made a significant difference to our community life,” Mark Thompson, the college principal, tells Eternity.

“The new library facilities have taken us into a new era with plenty of comfortable reading space as well as allowing many more books, journals and rare items on site.

The Marcus Loane Hall, our new assembly hall is a wonderful place

to hold chapel and public lectures.”

Moore College library, the largest theological library in the southern hemisphere, has a fine new home, replacing one of the greatest eyesores in Sydney, the old master Builders HQ. CONCRETE AND STEEL 3: After 50 years in its home next to Macquarie University, the Baptist Morling College is making its physical presence felt. Morling College and the Baptist Union have

partnered with the Toga Group to develop apartments on a portion of the Macquarie Park site. The proceeds of this development will fully fund new educational facilities on the site including a new library, offices, classrooms and breakout spaces for students.

The first stage was new Morling Residential College (MRC), which opened in July 2016 Morling College and cost $17 million. The 100-bed residential building rises seven storeys, with new lecture and seminar rooms.

SOUTHERN BAPTISTS: Whitley College, the Victorian Baptist college, is currently undergoing two major changes: it is leaving its distinctive drum-shaped building on Melbourne’s Royal Parade at the end of the 2017 academic year.

Student accommodation company GSA has bought the building, and plans to triple the beds. The college remains in its academic building on The Avenue, Parkville.

Whitley also has a new principal, René Erwich, who started work on September 14. Several close observers of the Baptist scene have described him to Eternity as “more conservative” than the outgoing principal, Frank Rees, who positioned the college towards the progressive side of the Victorian Baptists.

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Get your hands dirty KATHERINE ROBERTS CRU® ENTHUSIAST

“I thought I was good with kids before I started working and training at CRU,” says Chelsea Sillar, primary school teacher and “Summit Fellow” graduate of 2012.

“And now she’s phenomenal,” says husband Tim, Children’s Minister at All Saints Anglican at North Epping and also a Summit Fellow graduate of 2012.

However, there was a lot to learn for both Chelsea and Tim when they began their traineeships as keen, young 20-year-olds, to get to where they are today.

“Even knowing how to start a conversation was a skill I learned.

I used to ask, ‘How do I walk up to a bunch of kids I don’t know and engage with them in a meaningful way?’, but after training with CRU, I was so much more confident,” Chelsea remarks.

As Tim and Chelsea say, one of the things that makes CRU® training so effective is the opportunity to practise these skills again and again, with each new group of kids either on camp or at school. In addition to the wealth of experience, practical training alongside peers quickly builds invaluable skills. And this applies not just to starting conversations, but to every aspect of children’s and youth ministry, from leading discussion groups, running games, explaining how to step backwards off a cliff in abseiling

Tim and Chelsea Sillar found that CRU training laid a solid foundation for ministry. and negotiating difficult behaviour, to “deep and meaningful” conversations.

The CRU® training programmes centre not just on the practical side of how to run fun camps and fantastic school groups but, more importantly, lay a solid biblical foundation for all the trainees. “My faith grew exponentially while I was at CRU, because we did so much Bible training and were in the word constantly. Plus, I saw God working and answering prayer every single day,” says Chelsea.

“Even now this strengthens my ministry, because if I am well-

PREPARE FOR A LIFETIME OF CHRISTIAN MINISTRY

grounded in the word, then I can explain the Christian worldview more clearly to others.” “‘So Many Questions’ was the name of one of the first training units I did when I started at CRU,” says Tim. It was an exploration of hard questions that kids (or adults) may ask about the Christian faith and “it really opened my eyes to how to answer questions helpfully, rather than charging straight in with my first thought.” Chelsea also loved grappling with what the Bible says on tough issues but, even more than that, “the training helped me to think about the

question, or the feelings, that are behind the question you hear.”

As they reflect on their training at CRU®, both Tim and Chelsea are thankful for how their experience taught them that Christian ministry really is much more than just programmes. It’s about God’s people: listening to them, understanding where they are coming from and the questions they are really asking.

“The power of ministry to kids is in the relationships established over the short but intense few days together. Whilst formal Christian talks and discussion groups

did the groundwork, the real transformation occurred when we were able to connect with the kids on a one-to-one level,” says Tim. “Spending time on camp really cemented for me how important those relationships are and that has been vital to remember in my work now as a Children’s Minister.”

This focus on people is also the key lesson remembered by Summit Fellow graduate of 1993, Tim Watson, Deputy Principal at Roseville College. “It was the relational stuff, the interactions, the people, which were the crucial elements of the training for me.

And those are certainly the elements that have gone with me into my teaching,” he says.

For Tim, Chelsea and Tim, CRU® training acted like a taste-test, confirming their gifts and desire to continue to work with, love and serve children. “Summit has equipped me to see the bigger picture that ministry is not just a vocation but, as a Christian, your whole life is ministry,” says Chelsea.

“I think of others graduating Bible college with me, and few would have that same depth of experience working with kids that I’ve had through CRU,” says Tim. “Those few short years, getting my hands dirty, have been so vital for me and for so many others! Not only were they great fun, we learned so much and grew so much as Christians.

All of us were placed in such good stead for living a Christ-centred life in whatever came next.”

3 DIFFERENT OPPORTUNITIES GET PAID TO BE EQUIPPED CRU® has offered full-time ministry training programs for over 25 years. We’re currently receiving applications, and will be looking to offer positions to successful applicants at the beginning of December.

WWW.CRUSADERS.EDU.AU/APPLY

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Healthy and innovative churches A SPECIAL REPORT FROM THE 2016 NATIONAL CHURCH LIFE SURVEY

Percentage of attenders who strongly agree that “this local church is always ready to try something new”: 2001-2016*

13%

17%

17%

2006

2011

22% 2016

2001

* Source: National Church Life Surveys: 2001, 2006, 2011 and 2016

We want the church to be ‘new’ RUTH POWELL, NCLS RESEARCH Eight out of ten Australian church attenders would support the development of new initiatives in ministry and mission in their local church. This very high level of support of innovation is one of the latest findings from the 2016 National Church Life Survey.

In the 2016 NCLS, seven out of ten church attenders agreed that traditional established models of church life need to change to better connect with the wider Australian community.

Australians are increasingly disengaged from church life, and the role of the churches is being questioned, with only four in ten Australians agreeing that the Christian religion is good for society. (Four in ten are neutral or unsure and two in ten disagree.)

So how do churches respond to this challenge? In different contexts around the world, some churches seek to maintain longterm traditions, while others try new approaches to build

community, provide nurturing worship services, act with justice and compassion, and witness to their experience of the gospel.

The appetite for new approaches in local church life has grown dramatically in recent decades.

The five-yearly NCLS shows that the proportion of attenders who strongly agreed that “this local church is always ready to try something new” increased over the past 15 years (from 13 per cent in 2001 to 22 per cent in 2016), while the proportions who were neutral or unsure or who disagreed declined.

Studies of organisations that want to be innovative have found that a “can-do” attitude is critical.

When a group of people share a belief that, together, they have the capability and will to be effective, they have what we’ve called “collective confidence.” When we find evidence of this shared sense of confidence, we also find churches doing well in a range of other areas.

In our previous National Church Life Survey analysis,

Light from the Lighthouse ANNE LIM Wayne Beddow runs a large retail furniture outlet in Wollongong, south of Sydney. But over the past several years he may have led more people to the Lord than has his own pastor.

Every time someone comes to the store, Wayne’s floor staff are trained to listen out for a way to minister to them. If the customer is buying a bed, maybe it’s because they have a bad back. In that case, the staff member would reveal that this is a Christian organisation and, with their permission, they would like to pray for healing as well as sell them a bed.

“Then he trains his truck drivers when attenders were aware and committed to a vision, and experienced inspiring and empowering leadership, it was

Spiritually hungry and wanting community

when they drop off the furniture to be listening to the conversations of people and, if they complain about something or they see a need they have, the truck drivers say ‘hey, we’re a Christian organisation, we believe in prayer and if it’s OK with you we’d like to pray with you,’” explains Paul Bartlett, senior minister of Lighthouse Church in Wollongong.

“He probably leads more people to Christ through his business than we do on Sunday.”

Bartlett urges all the business people in his congregation to view their businesses as like the well that attracted the Samaritan woman – she came for something natural but, thanks to her

encounter with Jesus, she left with something supernatural.

Bartlett has written a book called Thank God It’s Monday, based on his belief that the way to reach a secular nation such as Australia is not by trying to get people to come to church but rather empowering church-goers to see their Monday-to-Friday world as their calling.

“My message is Australians aren’t waking up Sunday morning thinking, ‘What’s a great church I could go to today?’ It’s not on their radar,” he says.

“We’ve gone from outreach to engagement; we’ve gone from Sunday to Monday – it’s a different continued page 18

related to attracting newcomers, growth in numbers and a range of other qualities of healthy churches, such as belonging.

In the 2016 NCLS around two-thirds of all attenders agreed that “Leaders here encourage continued page 18

Living the kingdom lifestyle

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NCLS REPORT

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Would your church risk resources on new ideas?

Would you be in favour of your church sharing its property with a new, separate church?

OCTOBER 2017

Would you be in favour of your church supporting a new church with financial & people resources?

Key Challenges to Innovation

33% Lack of Funding

23% Lack of Staff Time

13% Resistance or Disinterest

?

43% Don’t Know

N.B. Attenders could select more than one option so percentages may not add up to 100%.

Source: 2016 NCLS Attender Sample Survey K (n=1,409)

Strongly agree, Agree, Disagree Strongly disagree, Neutral/ Unsure From page 17 innovation and creative thinking” (65 per cent). Around three in ten were neutral or unsure and five per cent disagreed.

To push this idea a bit further, a sample of attenders were asked about how responsive their leaders were to “left-field” ideas. In 2016 around six out of ten (61 per cent) attenders agreed that if they had an unexpected idea, they could share it with the leadership of their local church. However, a third were unsure or gave a neutral response to this statement.

New ideas and approaches take resources: money, time and effort.

It is one thing to believe that there is a general sense of openness to consider new possibilities, and another thing to take steps to make changes.

When asked if their local church was “willing to risk resources on new ideas,” 58 per cent agreed (14 per cent strongly agreed and 44 per cent agreed) and only 6 per cent disagreed. The remaining group were neutral or unsure (36 per cent).

To test the scope of their openness to change as far as possible, NCLS researchers posed a few significant scenarios such as sharing property and supporting a new church. These scenarios are both innovative, but also disruptive.

Evidence from the 2016 NCLS is that church attenders strongly affirm the idea of new initiatives within local church life. Most believe their local churches are ready, that their leaders are supportive and they also claim that they will personally support new approaches. They believe that their churches are also ready to risk resources on new ideas. When pushed with various scenarios that represent significant changes, they still affirm their openness. The main challenges to innovativeness are money and staff time.

We would encourage church leaders to take their church attenders at their word, and accept that the majority believe that they are open to something new.

Sources: 2016 NCLS Attender Survey (n=189,751), 2016 Australian Community Survey (n= 1,258).

Definitely Favour, Favour, Tend Not to Favour, Definitely Not Favour, Don’t Know From page 17 way of thinking. We love Sundays but, really, most people are living out their lives every other day of the week.”

Bartlett says he actively discourages outreach because it’s based on programmes and calendar dates.

“What we’re saying is, ‘There’s no switch,’ so as a pastor I don’t need to rally a programme for you to engage with the community; you just need to go to work or join the local sporting club.”

As senior minister of Lighthouse Church for 17 years, Bartlett has inverted the spiritual rubrics he grew up with. He says he was brought up to stay away from non-Christians because they were heathens. “We say, ‘listen, you should be able to go into any sphere of society, even if it’s nonChristian, and you’re in no danger of becoming like them but they’re absolutely in danger of becoming like you.’”

No one at Lighthouse Church is allowed to be a “pew sitter.” Every six weeks Bartlett conducts water baptisms and without exception, he says, it will be the first time he has seen the new converts.

“I have never seen these people in my life. Somebody has discipled

Definitely Favour, Favour, Tend Not to Favour, Definitely Not Favour, Don’t Know

them, led them to the Lord and the water baptism is the first time they have been in church,” he says.

As well as the main campus, Lighthouse Church has two experimental locations, both led by couples who were saved in the church over the past ten years.

But rather than replicating the city model, the young couple who started the northern campus lived in the suburb for two years before starting a church service.

“This couple joined the local neighbourhood centre and became volunteers, served there, got to know the local people, joined the surf club; whatever the community were doing they did it with them,” Bartlett explains.

“Lighthouse is known as a large church in the region. I didn’t want the community to think, ‘Oh yeah, Lighthouse thinks they’re here to save us’. The community is already suspicious of us, all of us – they know why we’re there. So we did it the other way. We got to know the community first and then when we felt the timing was right we started the service.”

This service, however, was like a TED talk with food and a Q&A session – no praise and worship. Instead of trying to cram everything into one service – praise and worship, preaching

the gospel, discipling everybody and getting to know people – they deconstructed the four elements of church and did one each week.

“For evangelism, for example, we do a thing called Bread and Wine – so real wine, real bread, tapas – $20 a head. We hire a cafe, and we get 35 completely non-Christians every time we do it.

“My young pastor – he’s only 30, bit a of surfer, great conversational evangelist – sits on a stool and he teaches on communion with real wine and tapas and he teaches ‘this is what God meant when he made a covenant with us.’”

The church’s new southern campus is based in a renovated woolshed. “We bought one of the Illawarra’s most iconic old entertainment venues – it used to be a bush dance venue. Even Keith Urban before he was famous used to play there. We bought that about five or six years ago; we’ve just renovated it, kept it rustic and turned into a 24/7 community space. It’s got a cafe/restaurant, rentable spaces, and hundreds of people a day come through it. It’s open seven days a week, so when people walk into that space they have fond memories of turning up to the bush dance years ago and it’s literally like coming home,” Bartlett says.

“I always say you can put flags out of the front of your church to say, ‘welcome home’ or we can actually build a facility that feels like home.”

The church service is at 4pm on Sunday with praise and worship once a month and cafe-style church on the other weeks.

“We encourage our congregation to come at 3pm, when the public is still here, have a coffee, mingle with people, get to know them, build relationships, then we’ll start our one-hour TED-talk-ish ‘explore faith’ service with Q&A.” Having refined his approach at Lighthouse, Bartlett is now influencing 1100 other ACC churches across the nation as the denomination’s national leader for community engagement.

“The whole concept of Thank God it’s Monday is becoming a bit of a movement,” he says.

“I’m in four countries in Europe talking about it. I’m in the UK, Canada. There will always be a few mega-churches that will reach people by sheer size, but the vast majority of churches aren’t going to reach the community by running awesome Sundays.

They’re going to do it by getting involved in the community and I think it’s resonating with 98 per cent of the churches in Australia.”

What do we want? To be fed SAM STERLAND, RUTH POWELL AND KATHY JACKA KERR, NCLS RESEARCH When church attenders were asked what they would like priority given to in the coming 12 months, spiritual growth and building a stronger sense of community in their church were top of the list.

The 2016 NCLS posed 12 options for current priorities.

“Spiritual growth” (e.g., spiritual direction, prayer groups) and “building a strong sense of community within this local church” were the most commonly

selected responses, chosen by a third of churchgoers (32 per cent).

The third most frequent response was “Worship services that are nurturing to people’s faith.”

These three top priorities clearly display a spiritual fervour among those who attend church. It could be argued that these desires reveal the primary purpose attenders hold for going to church: to be spiritually nurtured and fed as part of a worshipping community.

In fact, these three priorities align with the NCLS Internal Core Qualities which focus on the inner life of churches: Faith, Worship and Belonging.

Do attenders have an alive and growing faith? Do they experience vital and nurturing worship and do they feel a strong and growing belonging? These “internal” core qualities are regarded as foundational to church life. This is a reminder of the main qualities of church life that attenders value, enjoy and see as most central to their experience of church.

Overall, there were differences between age groups. In general, those aged younger than 60 chose spiritual growth as their highest priority and building community as their second choice. Those aged 60 and over gave highest priority

to building community, followed by nurturing worship and third, spiritual growth.

Attenders in different denominations varied in their priorities. Attenders in Uniting and Lutheran churches chose nurturing worship first and spiritual growth second. Catholic attenders most commonly highlighted building community first and then spiritual growth.

Attenders in Pentecostal groups strongly endorsed spiritual growth as their first priority with “encouraging people’s gifts” as their second priority.

After the top three responses

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Living the kingdom lifestyle

“

ANNE LIM

We’re creating a more authentic environment where it’s OK to ask for help, where it’s OK to admit our weaknesses, OK to say look I’m struggling with this.”

James and Laryssa Schleusener are passionate about loving and serving people as Jesus did.

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There are about ten Oikos with anywhere from 40 to 70 people that meet in various houses and at church. They aim to function like an extended family. “It actually helps us to develop disciples better; I think people have got to learn how to belong before they can learn to be a disciple,” says senior pastor Ric Burrell.

He says church members are more comfortable sharing their faith because they’re just inviting friends to dinner. “We also find it’s a great opportunity to invite people who aren’t believers along and they can just come and be part of a family,” he says.

• The mission statement of Kingdomcity Church is “connecting and empowering people to bring the reality of God to their world.” Started in Kuala Lumpur in 2006 and Perth in 2008 by Mark Varughese, it now covers churches in six countries in Africa, Asia, Australia and the Middle East with a total of 17,000 worshippers. “My wife is a Westerner who’s lived in Asia most of her life and I’m an Asian who’s lived in the Western world most of my life, so our whole DNA makeup was hard wired for cross cultural ministry,” Varughese says.

What churchgoers want “Over the next 12 months we would like priority given to:”

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an industrial area of Perth, the church does not attract passing traffic but draws people to it through its involvement in a range of community projects. This allows Sunday services to be an opportunity for members to have a real and meaningful encounter with Jesus rather than aiming to be seeker-friendly.

• Rather than being a church serving the community, Northside Baptist in Crows Nest, on Sydney’s North Shore, seeks to be a hub bringing the community together to serve the community together. “That doesn’t necessarily translate into church growth, but it definitely translates into people experiencing the kingdom of God and the influence of Jesus on their lives,” says lead pastor Graeme Anderson.

The church has a dedicated community ministry called Love Crows Nest that runs three key activities – a monthly breakfast, a community garden and help teams to meet various needs in the community.

• Strong Nation church, which meets in three locations in western and northern Sydney, runs family dinners through the week, called Oikos (Greek for household).

There was a time was when the cutting edge of church life revolved around outreach programmes to reach the lost and increase the kingdom. Today, many churches are seeking to build deeper Christians who are true disciples of Jesus, and finding that the evangelism takes care of itself.

They are taking their cues from American pastor and church planter Mike Breen, who believes there has been a discipleship crisis in the Western church.

“Many Christians may come to a worship service, join a small group or even tithe, but few have the kind of transformed lives we read about in Scripture. If we made disciples like Jesus made them, we wouldn’t have a problem finding leaders or seeing new people come to faith,” he writes in his book Building a Discipling Culture.

Eternity doesn’t claim to know which churches are doing this best, but here are a few examples from around the country: • “We fully believe in being a church Monday to Saturday,” says Tara Conradt, pastor of Cornerstone Church in Perth’s northern suburbs. Located in

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came ministry-oriented choices.

Attenders were clear they wanted to be involved. Lowest on the list of priorities were social action, faith sharing and new approaches, church plants or mission ventures.

This may reveal a preference to develop and grow the internal life of their church, spiritually feeding people, bringing people in to the congregation and empowering them to contribute and belong.

Whether that comes at a cost of losing an outward focus into the local neighbourhood is open for question.

Source: 2016 NCLS Attender Survey (n=189,751)

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for one another and build each other up in the Lord using their spiritual gifts. “We’re creating a more authentic environment

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“I’m not anti-establishment – I love the Church. I just believe that we’re coming into a new season where we’re going to see a new model of church which isn’t built on programmes but it’s built on love for one another. I know it sounds so simple – it sounds like what we preach every week – but I think our church structures and programmes aren’t supporting our message. So we started to consider what would a structure look like if it did support our message.”

The first boundary they broke down in their busy lives was the boundary of time.

“We commit to eating together regularly and having a genuine communion. The second thing we commit to is the teachings of Jesus. And we discuss what Jesus said when we get together – what does this look like in our lives today?

“The third thing is fellowship, but fellowship is more than socially hanging out, laughing together. It’s a support network where we help each other.”

That’s why the church has set up a new bank account to which ten people are contributing, but another 15 to 20 want to join in.

“It’s not like a rule of how much money are you giving, have you been out for coffee this week?

It’s still free will – otherwise, it becomes some sort of cult. It’s weird. It’s all free will and it’s on top of our tithes,” he says.

“That account is purely to help people serve in the church. And it’s not just our church – I mean, any church. Any Christian needs

where it’s OK to ask for help, where it’s OK to admit our weaknesses, OK to say, ‘Look I’m struggling with this.

“But the goal is ultimately to have our church meeting together in different locations every night, every lunchtime, every breakfast, just everywhere. Wherever people can get together they’re doing this and I just believe this is a genuine revival because that’s the kind of Christian I want to be.”

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A core group of staff and volunteers at Collective Church in Brisbane have given up the luxuries of life – the daily barista coffee, the expensive restaurant meals, cinema outings and new clothes – to invest in a bank account that can support other Christians in need.

It’s part of a fourfold strategy to live the way Jesus spoke about and how the disciples in the early church lived. And they are experiencing the miraculous abundance that flows when Christians follow Jesus’ teaching to pour out their lives for one another.

Acts 2:43-44 says: “Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common.”

“That’s what’s happening to us right now,” says pastor James Schleusener. “We’re seeing these miracles happen, we’re being filled with awe at the kingdom of God and what Jesus would do. We’re not eating our seed, we’re planting our seed so that we can all eat the fruit of the kingdom and help people.”

Schleusener believes that inside every Christian is a desire to love other Christians without boundaries, as Jesus loved us – unto death. But the spirit is at war with the flesh, which warns that it is foolish for someone with family responsibilities to give up money to help someone in greater need and just depend on Jesus to supply his needs.

“The only reason I didn’t do this before is that I was not willing to pay the price … but once I gave up my food and my drink, my clothes and all the trimmings – all the wasted money – I was set free.

And then abundance just started coming in. I’ve been given so much money just randomly the last couple of days,” Schleusener says.

“This is how the kingdom of Jesus operates. He abundantly supplies. When you give up your life, Jesus says, for my sake, you find it. Once you actually apply kingdom principles like Jesus says, you don’t lose that stuff; people start to give it to you. The thing is, you actually are more blessed. It’s crazy.”

Collective Church has been meeting in Brisbane’s CBD for about a year and a half.

Schleusener says he felt frustrated by the limits Christians place on loving each other and started discussing with his core group how to move towards a kingdom

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as well as a broader sociological reality. Leadership can provide both stability in a church and be a catalyst for change. How the leadership and their endeavours are viewed by church attenders is covered in the leadership, vision and innovation Core Qualities.

While the first command for the Christian is to love God, the second command is to love one’s neighbour as oneself (Matt 22:3440). Our concern for our neighbour can include their physical and social needs (Matt 25:31-46), the

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dynamic aspect of the Christian faith is reflected in the faith and worship Core Qualities.

Faith in God also involves joining with others who are on the same journey of faith. “If we walk in the light … we have fellowship with one another” (1 John 1:5-7).

Relationships within the church, the degree of belonging that attenders feel, and frequency of attendance at church are covered by the belonging Core Quality.

The need for effective church leadership reflects a biblical pattern

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Eating and drinking at church Sharing in Holy Communion and sermons/teaching are by far the most valued aspects of church services by the people who attend, according to the 2016 National Church Life Survey. However, there are strong differences in the preferences of Catholics and Protestants.

Asked to select up to three most valuable aspects of their local church from a list of 13 options, 42 per cent of attenders named sharing in Holy Communion/the Eucharist/Lord’s Supper, while 37 per cent named sermons, homilies or Bible teaching.

However, these results mask strong denominational differences.

Celebrating Communion was most valued by 61 per cent of Catholics

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The first and greatest command is to love God with all of our strength (Matt 22:37). Church attenders seek to worship God and to be transformed through their relationship with God. This

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Nine Core Qualities of church life 1. Alive and growing faith 2. Vital and nurturing worship 3. Strong and growing belonging 4. Clear and owned vision 5. Inspiring and empowering leadership 6. Imaginative and flexible innovation 7. Practical and diverse service 8. Willing and effective faithsharing 9. Intentional and welcoming inclusion

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Christians understand themselves to be called into a relationship with God, with others in the church and with the wider community.

This “three-cornered” relationship underpins the thinking behind the measures of church vitality.

A spiritual awakening, a timely sermon, an experience of God’s presence in the church community, a helping hand in time of need – such experiences are signs of life in a church.

The National Church Life Survey gains insights into the attitudes, experiences and behaviour of a church’s people. This approach recognises and affirms that the life of a church can be seen in the stories of its people, the way in which they have been touched by God and by the activity of others in their lives.

The resource developed for churches, called the Church Life Profile, identifies nine Core Qualities that together build a picture of vitality in local churches. Ideally, we are looking for a balance across the various qualities.

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call to salvation and discipleship (Matt 28:19-20) and justice and mercy (Matt 5:6,7). We are to play our part in making present the kingdom of God. Practical ways in which church attenders do this are measured in the service, faith-sharing and inclusion Core Qualities.

The flow of newcomers is an important measure of how well a local church is connecting with the wider community. These are not people who have come from another local church but are fresh to church.

Their presence is often the fruit of the outreach efforts of the church and its attenders.

There is also a link between church vitality and church growth.

In general, churches with strong growth in attendance have much higher levels of each quality than churches that are declining. Details of this research can be found in the book, Enriching Church Life, which is available online for all churches who took part in the 2016 NCLS. (http://www.2016ncls.org.au/ church-life-pack)

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Celebrating the 25% 30% Eucharist, Sharing in 61% 30% Trad style 25 30% 25% Communion, receiving Holy Shar Eucharist, 25% of worship 61% Trad style Sharing in 25% Lord’sComm thestyle 30% Small prayer, Communion 61%Celebrating Trad Communion, Sharing in Euch Supper or music of worship discussionthe or Trad style 45% Eucharist, 61% Celebrating Communion, Lo 29% Eucharist, of worship Bible Study Lord’s or music Celebrating the Eucharist, Sup Praying or music of worshipSermons, Supper Groups Eucharist, Lord’s Celebrating the receiving Holy 25% Eucharist, Supper or music 25% for one 30% Preaching Small receiving Holy prayer, Eucharist, Communion Sharing in 25% 61% another receiving Holy Trad style Communion, discussion or 4 25% or Bible Eucharist, 29% Small prayer, Communion receiving Holy Bible Study of worship 25% Small prayer, Communionthe discussion or Lord’s 28%Celebrating Prayingdiscussion Se Groups 29% Teaching Small prayer, or Communion Supper or music Bible Study 45% 29% Sermons for onePraying and only 25 per cent of Protestants Eucharist, discussion or Groups Bible Study 45 Pre 29% or homilies (36 per cent of mainstream Praying25% Bible StudySermons, Groups another Praying for one Protestants, 14 per cent of receiving Holy Serm or Groups for onefor onePraying another 25% Pentecostals and 19 per cent of Preaching 28% other Protestants). The reverse was Communion anotheranotherfor one Small prayer, Prea Te or Bible or Sermons 45% 29%28%another discussion 25% Bible Study 28% or28% homilies Sermons Teaching Praying Sermons, Praying Groups 25% Sermons or homilies 25% for one for one Sermons Praying Preaching or homilies 25% 25% 30%or homilies Praying another another for one Sharing in Praying or Bible 61% for one Trad style Communion, another for one Eucharist, 28% another of worship Teaching Lord’s Celebrating the Sermons 25% another Supper or30% music Sharing in 25% or homilies 61% Trad style Eucharist, Communion, Praying Eucharist, of worship for one receiving Holy Lord’s Celebrating the 25% Source:Supper or music another 2016 NCLS Attender Survey (n= 189,751) Small prayer, Communion Eucharist, discussion or 45% 29% receiving Holy Bible Study 25% Praying Sermons, Groups Small prayer,

true for preaching, which was most valued by 28 per cent of Catholics and 45 per cent of Protestants, with little variation across the three Protestant groupings.

Traditional style of worship or music, praying for one another and homilies were the second strongest values among Catholics, with about three in ten attenders selecting them. For Protestants, small groups, praying for one another, communion, contemporary worship and practical care for one another were most valued by about a quarter of attenders.

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or Tea

OCTOBER 2017

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21

OPINION

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Why everyone is a missionary

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Go overseas with God Stephen Liggins on good travel Page 22

Kel Richards on a job we all share “Go into all the world,” said Jesus (Mark 16:15), and go for this purpose, in order to: “make disciples of all nations” (Matt 28:19). By “all the world” Jesus meant everywhere: “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Most of us think the people who are expected to obey this command from Jesus are the people we call missionaries. It is their task to pursue the mission of Jesus himself, namely “to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10).

That’s why most Christians support world missions: we give to mission societies and pray for missionaries; we read newsletters and emails from missionaries and mission societies; and in church or at conferences we hear reports from the missionaries we support.

We want to hear how they are seeking the lost and telling them of Jesus across cultural boundaries and in remote places so that we can pray for them and support them financially.

But what about the missionary who is closest to you?

To find out who your closest missionary is: look in the mirror.

I am suggesting that you are a missionary – that every Christian is a missionary. To be a Christian is to be a missionary. If you say that you are a Christian but not a

missionary, then I am suggesting you have misunderstood what being a Christian really means.

You may protest: “No! No, that can’t be the case. Missionaries are formally screened and interviewed and chosen and trained and commissioned by missionary societies. Without that process – and that permission – I can’t be a missionary.”

But in the early church there were no missionary societies, no screening programmes for prospective missionaries, no commissioning services. In the early church everyone who became a Christian became a missionary.

That was how the early church spread so rapidly and so widely.

While it’s true there were church planters (such as Paul) and he had a team around him (Luke, Timothy, Silas and the rest), that didn’t let the members of the churches Paul planted off the hook. They were, all of them, every member, part of the Christian missionary enterprise.

In his classic book A History of Christian Missions Stephen Neil writes: The Church of the first Christian generation was a genuinely missionary church. There were, of course, the whole-time workers, such as Paul and Barnabas, specially set apart with prayer for the prosecution of missionary endeavour … Apart, however, from these special workers the Church could count on the anonymous and unchronicled witness of all the faithful. Our first mention of this comes in Acts 8:4, where we are told that those who were scattered as a result of the persecution that followed on the death of Stephen went about preaching the word; some of them, more venturous than the leadership of the Church, seem to have made Christian history at Antioch by preaching directly to Gentiles.

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To be a Christian is to be a missionary.”

At the day of Pentecost Peter made the point that the prophecy of Joel 2:28-29 was now fulfilled: “I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy … Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days.” This has now happened, says Peter – all Christians now have the Holy Spirit. Speaking God’s words is no longer restricted to a specially designated group.

“But, but, but,” you protest, “I can’t be a missionary – I’m busy being an office manager, or sales rep, or shop assistant, or engineer, or accountant, or bus driver, or student, or …” However, there is no clash between being a missionary and also being an office manager, sales rep, engineer, etc, etc.

To understand this, picture what a medical missionary working in, say, Africa does. They are there to do a specific job (to practise medicine and surgery) and they have to do this and do it well to justify being there. And this will take up most of their time. The difference is their mindset: they know they are there to represent Jesus Christ and they will actively look for opportunities to talk about Jesus, to give Christian literature to someone, to pray for someone with whom they have a useful conversation. They know it’s a waste being on the mission field if all they ever do is practise medicine. They are there to look for opportunities to have gospel conversations – and to seize these

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opportunities when they come.

Once you have the same mindset as the medical missionary in Africa (which, I claim, is the normal Christian mindset) then you too will grab each small opportunity when it comes along to introduce a spiritual dimension into your conversations.

If we’re honest we’d admit that one of our most powerful motivations for denying all this and leaving the mission of Christ to the “professional missionaries” is that it scares the socks off us.

But we might be surprised at what happens when we try. As we become a little better equipped, and a little bolder, in adding a spiritual dimension to our conversations with our friends and colleagues and relatives, we may very well discover that people are more willing to engage in conversations of a spiritual nature than we previously thought.

But, back to you and your role in whatever mission field your life places you.

Bear in mind that the medical missionary doesn’t just go in for one gospel “hit” on whoever they meet – rather they are there for the long haul, to build relationships, and slowly – over time – “drip feed” bits of information to those around them about who Jesus is and why he came: which is a very biblical approach, since the most common image in the Bible for missionary work is agriculture, such as: • The harvest is plentiful but the labourers are few (Matt 9:37) • The parable of the sower and the soils (Matt 13:1-23) • The parable of the wheat and the weeds (Matt 13:24-30) • Paul’s explanation that he planted while Apollos watered (1 Cor 3:6) And what is the main characteristic of agriculture? It’s slow! It’s a slow, long-term, steady activity – not a single “one hit and it’s done” job. What we are talking

about is the relational equivalent to preparing the soil, planting seeds, watering, fertilising, weeding, and … waiting! (That’s what farmers do.) And what is the main characteristic of “seeds”?

They are small! We don’t need to say a lot. We don’t need to give sermons on John 3:16 – we just need to plant seed thoughts. But we need to be actually doing it.

There is a famous command in 1 Peter 3:15: “In your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.” This command is universal.

At the heart of this command is the instruction to do your homework (“be prepared”). If you’re a reader you can do this by reading a book or two. There are lots of good books on this subject – here are a few suggestions to get you started: • Conversational Evangelism by David Geisler and Norman Geisler (Harvest House Publishers) • Honest Evangelism: How to Talk About Jesus Even When It’s Tough

by Rico Tice (The Good Book Company) • One-Minute Answers to Skeptics

by Charlie H. Campbell (Harvest House) • Defending the Gospel by Kel Richards (Matthias Media) • Journey Towards God by Kel Richards (Beacon Communications) All are available at Koorong. And there are lots of others – but that list is, at least, a starting place.

Australia is now a post-Christian pagan country. You couldn’t get a better mission field than this.

And God’s team of missionaries to reach this place is us – all of us.

Kel Richards works for the New South Wales Council of Churches making their radio programmes for Sydney’s 2CH, 1170 AM.

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OPINION

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OCTOBER 2017

Discussion can go beyond mere posturing

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A legendary editorial in a provincial Australian newspaper well over a century ago thundered ominously: “We have repeatedly warned the Czar …” I vaguely recall it was the Townsville Bulletin about 1913, but it has been variously ascribed as going back to the Crimean War in the 1850s.

Regardless of where and when, it is a marvellous example of overreach - not entirely unknown in the media today.

This September I observed the 17th triennial General Synod of the Anglican Church of Australia which, as always, discussed several motions on social issues that might seem tinged with the same “vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself” (Macbeth).

Many of those resolutions urged the Federal Government to various courses of action. Governments, of course, have never been grateful

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Barney Zwartz on why church meetings might be useful after all

to be rebuked (or even exhorted) by churches. They have usually taken the stance that Immigration Minister Peter Dutton took with Qantas CEO Alan Joyce about same-sex marriage: “Stick to your knitting.”

Churches were once influential on moral and social questions, from marriage and divorce to conscription and voting, but that political power has been waning for decades. One doubts if many politicians were even aware that nearly 300 Anglican representatives from the 23 dioceses were meeting in sunny Queensland.

As senior Melbourne laywoman Muriel Porter, veteran of a dozen General Synods, observed: “There are people who long to think the church’s views would have some impact on politicians. The truth is that you’d have far more impact on politicians through GetUp!” (the progressive activist group).

So when the General Synod passes resolutions on such topics

as refugees, climate change, overseas aid, euthanasia, samesex marriage, Indigenous issues (moved by Indigenous Anglicans), modern slavery, women’s representation or domestic violence – all of those came up at synod – do they carry any weight or is it just posturing?

Is it the church bloviating into its own echo chamber while no one takes any notice?

Of course, in any large group of humans, some will indulge in posturing sometimes, and there is no doubt that the churches – like most other institutions – have lost credibility and moral authority.

And these resolutions were not the most important work of the synod, which this time was passing several important pieces of church legislation about child protection, including setting up the mechanism by which it can join the commonwealth redress scheme for sexual abuse victims. Yet church leadership – all denominations – on social and moral issues,

It is an important way for the church to speak to its own constituency, the people in the pews.”

I suggest, remains important and useful. Here’s why.

First, it is not impossible that the church’s message will resonate with secular powers. For example, Anglican advocacy helped raise refugee intake to Australia from the Middle East by 12,000 people last year. History is replete with examples where movements that began in the church have changed society, and we should not give up hope.

Second, it is a way for people to bring theological or social issues about which they are passionate to the broader stage of synod. They can invite others to share their concern. As one speaker said in support of a resolution, “motions like this are not just words on the page. They are a useful way for the church to speak into the public space what we think is important.”

Third, as Melbourne Archbishop Philip Freier, the Anglican Primate (national leader), observed, such debate is part of the democratic Anglican tradition. “Often there’s an insight in the outside view or the least-heard view. These motions are an important part of our discipline of being the church when we come together.”

Fourth, it is an important way for the church to speak to its own constituency, the people in the pews.

Retired Sydney bishop Robert Forsyth, another synod veteran, is dismissive of “soft-progressive” agendas, which used to be more prominent than now. “Christians are not happy with refugees in offshore detention? Well, tell me something I don’t know. Listening to the speakers at General Synod, I can see people have forgotten how little consequence what we say has. They think they will move the whole church.”

Yet, Forsyth says, a General Synod motion can become unexpectedly relevant. “In 2001 (General Secretary) Bruce Kaye moved a motion to support traditional marriage, just to get the issue debated, and it got through, and became official stated policy.” Synod reaffirmed that position in 2017.

Finally, social statements passed by synod can powerfully express the unity of the church.

Prominent Anglican commentator and Sydney minister David Ould is happy to allow the church a bit of posturing provided synod fulfils its most important role, “affirming the primacy of the Lord Jesus Christ, which it did.

There is a role for these motions, but the danger is that we lose perspective. People outside the church, whether Prime Ministers or the people who elect them, don’t care what we say about nuclear weapons, but they expect us to be clear about Jesus.”

Barney Zwartz is a senior fellow of the Centre for Public Christianity. This is a expanded version of an article for The Age.

Tips for travellers who want to go with God

Stephen Liggins on why you should leave Australia I never expected to travel overseas.

Growing up, family holidays were local affairs: five-in-a-stationwagon Aussie odysseys involving tents, air mattresses and a portable stove. International destinations seemed unattainably exotic. Yet one evening, aged 20, I sat in a plane on the tarmac at Sydney preparing to take off for London.

I was ecstatic.

Earlier I had farewelled family and friends in the departures hall.

It was a poignant moment – until then my longest stretch away from home had been two weeks, and here I was moving hemispheres for almost half a year! My main reason for travelling was to play a season of cricket in London. Many people

were praying for me, including my parents and friends from the fellowship group I attended. The senior minister at my church had also given me the details of two good churches in London.

Five months later I was again sitting in a plane – this time returning to Australia. I was a different person. Not only had I turned 21, but my Christian life had pushed on in leaps and bounds.

Being away from home and out of my comfort zone had made me more consciously reliant on God. Long periods of time alone away from my regular commitments had provided ample time for Bible study, prayer and reflection. I had read Christian books, listened to Christian music, met other believers, and joined one of the churches my minister had recommended to me.

I’d also made good friends at the cricket club in London. I’d put my Christian faith on the table early on, provoking everything from bemusement to genuine interest, and people noticed my different behaviour. But for all the potential benefits of going abroad, I am very aware of its perils for the

Christian. In thinking about whether to go, and in planning our travels, we face a real danger that we will think and act in accordance with the world’s agenda instead of God’s.

Important questions can go unaddressed: Is the trip a wise use of money and time? How will going away affect my relationships, church and ministry?

Being separated from home, church and normal routines for an extended period can sometimes play havoc with one’s Christian life. You may know people whose faith has been shipwrecked on foreign shores.

With airfares increasingly affordable, overseas travel is becoming increasingly common. For many young people it is almost seen as a rite of passage; for older folk it can be a compulsory introduction to retirement. This is true in general society but also within the church.

Unfortunately, going abroad must be one of the most widely practised but least considered activities in which Christians participate. Very little is written on the topic.

So, based on the Scriptures, my own experiences and insights, and

those of other believers, let me suggest some travel tips you are unlikely to find on tripadvisor.com. au or in any Lonely Planet guides.

Consider before you commit: Pray and consult with a few wise Christians before deciding whether going overseas is a good idea or not.

Resolve to have your quiet times: If you do venture abroad, determine to have daily quiet times while away. You may be leaving home, but you are not leaving God. Remain in him (John 15:5) – he is by far your best travel companion and guide.

Pray this prayer: When overseas, I often pray that God will lead me to Christians to encourage and non-believers willing to chat about spiritual things. This prayer has been answered in many encouraging ways.

Join a church: If you are in one place for a reasonable period of time, join a church and get involved (Hebrews 10:25). My five months with the church I joined in London proved to be seminal in my life.

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Prepare spiritually: Don’t just think about where you will go and what to pack; prepare spiritually. Learn how to answer people who ask what you believe and why you believe it (1 Peter 3:15). People are often open to deeper discussions when away from home.

Get support: Organise people to pray for you while you are gone, and ask a few trusted Christians to keep you accountable in areas such as your quiet times, behaviour and whether you are seeking Christian fellowship.

Remember you are not alone: However far you are from home, God is there with you.

“If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.” (Psalm 139:9-10) Stephen Liggins is Senior Assistant Minister at Anglican Churches Springwood, NSW, and a guest lecturer at Sydney Missionary and Bible College.

Travelling the World as Citizens of Heaven is available on pre-order at Koorong.com

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OPINION

OCTOBER 2017

No scapegoats

This month is the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses on the door of the All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg, helping to spark the Reformation.

It marked a profound shift from the authority of the Pope and church to the authority of the Bible and the primacy of individual conscience.

The Reformation emphasised that everyone carried the image of God, could interpret the Bible for themselves and could hear God’s voice in their individual conscience. Luther trusted that ordinary people could discern the truth.

In many senses, this Reformation was the birth of human rights. We often hear that human rights are secular, that they are the fruit of the Enlightenment, and have nothing to do with religion. I disagree.

Liberty of conscience, and particularly the right to religious freedom and the right to worship, were the foundational steps in what we call the human rights

Responding to inequality

movement. It’s fundamental that people hear God’s voice for themselves because they are made in the image of God. Differences may arise but that’s OK. We have to have respect for these differences.

The ministry of Jesus was about making space for differences.

He made it clear that the gospel was for everyone, including prostitutes, tax collectors and lepers – the scapegoats.

His message was that the kingdom of God includes these.

Jesus never seemed to have much problem with sinners. His main problem was always with the righteous – the ones who excluded others and created scapegoats.

Jesus was radical. He said we should make space not only for the scapegoats but also our enemies.

The Jewish rabbis have a great interpretation of Genesis chapter 1. They say God, in creating the world, had to limit himself; he had to withdraw. He had to choose to create space for humans to have freedom.

So much conflict in the world is the result of profound scapegoating.

Making space for personal conscience and for those who seem different is the reformation the world badly needs.

The cross stands for God saying: “In Jesus, I am the scapegoat. I am absorbing that need for you to scapegoat others.”

This is the power of the cross that deals with evil and our need to point the finger – to feel superior.

When we allow grace to work, we move beyond hardened boundaries and our hearts are freed.

Tim Costello is chief advocate of World Vision Australia.

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Independent Senator Lucy Gichuhi on feminism “Cancel marriage! It is an institution which is outdated and patriarchal in origin!”

Did I hear that correctly?

Yes, I did!

Israeli feminist politician Merav Michaeli, who was sitting with me at the ABC’s Q&A programme, proposed that all forms of marriage should be abolished because the institution has no place in our feminist postmodern society.

What a bold demand addressed to our Australian society! I have issues with the label “feminist” and the term “postmodern society.”

History has not always been kind to women. I know this first-hand – I grew up in Kenya, Africa. I was raised in a very patriarchal culture much different, I thought, from contemporary Australia.

In Kenya, I grew up understanding that men were in charge of every practical aspect of life. Married women were treated as property, could not hold property or even bank accounts and children belonged to men. I thought this was an African problem, but as a law student I came to realise it was the

same in Australia. It was only the Family Law Act 1975 that defined domestic violence. Prior to this, a man could beat his wife with rarely any legal consequences – you can imagine my shock; that’s only 42 years ago!

As a woman, a mother, a wife, a working professional, a Christian and a senator, the question gripping my mind is: How do we constructively deal with this part of our history?

The basic definition of feminism is “a striving for equality between the sexes.” Makes sense, considering the efforts made to raise awareness of women’s rights.

The problem is, feminism no longer has a single definition. Feminism started as a positive ideological movement to liberate women, at a time when it was acknowledged that women suffered many abuses in society. It was good to recognise there was a problem, but feminism has not been the answer. I believe the answer is in a balanced lifestyle that allows women to flourish in all aspects of their lives.

Has feminism kept to those noble origins? I would argue that the feminism of Merav Michaeli has

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Tim Costello on Jesus and space for diff erence

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little to do with the original version.

How do women reclaim their lives from the torment of the past?

One bit at a time! It is a private, personal and, at times, confidential journey.

The Bible says, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.” (Romans 12:2) Let us not be conformed to any form of feminism!

I will never forget my mother’s lesson to me. She said, “If your name is not on it, it’s not yours!”

She was talking about owning a bank account or a piece of property.

This extends to superannuation.

While working at Women’s Legal Services, I listened to many women’s cries when they realised they did not have superannuation and could not claim from their husband’s super.

Rather than cancelling marriage, how do we enhance and strengthen it? Let’s get back to the principle that God created us as equals, to be in right relationship with him and each other.

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OPINION

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OCTOBER 2017

From top to bottom, Jesus in Traditional Chinese, French, Japanese and Mende (south of Sierra Leone).

Naming Jesus in every nation and language

Greg Clarke on why Christianity is for everyone Christianity can lay claim to being the only truly global faith.

Most religions emerge from a particular cultural and/or racial context, and stay by-and-large within that shaping. This may sound controversial, but it is demonstrated by data coming out regularly from the Pew Research Center’s Religion and Public Life Project.

Nearly twice as many of the world’s living immigrants are Christian (106 million) then Muslim (58 million), with Hindu (10 million) the next closest; in other words, Christians today are

Bible Stat

more globally mobile than any other religious group.

Furthermore, those mobile Christians are more evangelistic than any other faiths. The countries that they enter become more Christian in outlook and laws. Christian migrants keep to themselves less than other groups. I suggest, although I am speculating here, that this may have to do with the missionary nature of Christianity itself.

While it can certainly be said that the British Empire not only exported Christianity but Britishness as well, it did not take long for colonised countries to begin to assimilate Christianity into their existing cultures.

Perhaps the finest example is the way in which African dance and Christian teaching are intertwined, but there are numerous examples around the world of the flexibility of Christian teaching such that it can be naturalised into local practices.

In Australia, Indigenous nations have absorbed biblical symbolism into their traditional art, song and dance, and the degree of influence of Christianity on Indigenous culture is offensively underrated (something that the recent art book Our Mob, God’s Story attempts to

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correct).

Ninety-nine per cent of Hindus are in Asia, so the Eastern religions certainly support my main thesis.

But what of the spread of Islam?

It is true that Islam arose in the Arabian Peninsula, but now twothirds of Muslims are found in other regions.

Furthermore, only around a third of the world’s Jews still live in Israel. Doesn’t this indicate global faiths? Not really; these are geographical spreads, but Christianity has a unique, or at least unmatched, cultural spread.

This is largely to do with language. Christianity elevates no particular language or culture to divine status. In contrast, for the Muslim, the Quran is only properly divine in Arabic. And Christianity reinterprets the nationalism of Jewish religious expression (“God’s chosen people”) to describe every believer as a child of God, regardless of race or nationality.

The period of the Reformation in Europe, beginning 500 years ago this year, contains many theological disputes. But what is undisputed is that it heralded several centuries of Christianity spreading into new cultures, as the notion of translating the Bible into the vernacular took hold. This

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powerful idea, that God’s word could be understood by a common reader (or hearer) contributed hugely to the global advance of the Christian faith.

Why is this so? The simple answer may be that it is at the heart of Christianity to appeal to every tribe, nation, language and tongue. Those specific terms are used four times in the last book of the Bible, Revelation, to describe the kind of world that we are heading towards. The vision of heaven presented is a cosmopolis: a city with all the nations crowding in. It reveals a reversal of the linguistic divisions that the Tower of Babel judgment story of Genesis delivered. At the other end of the Bible, all the nations of the world

speak the languages of heaven.

And this is why Bible translation makes such a difference. As another language group has access to the word of God, so Christianity deepens its roots. The next generation grows up on the Bible’s teachings. Translation also affirms the language and culture into which it is being done: your language is sufficient to carry the divine message; your culture, too, belongs to God. Christianity is translatable, a nearly unique characteristic among religions. The great scholar of this topic, historian of religion Professor Lamin Sanneh, writes, “If, as early Christians believed, God is the universal source of life and truth, then they were obliged to pursue that conviction across cultures.” It is the very message of the gospel – that all people are created in the image of God, equally sinners, and equally forgiven through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ – that makes Christianity a universal faith. Every tribe, language and nation can and will understand that.

Greg Clarke is CEO of Bible Society Australia.

Since 2010 Bible Societies have distributed Scripture material for two out of every five people on the planet.

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