Paul Cooper - Third Year Profile

The lovely Bronwen and I have been married for 22 years and we have three children – Erin, Lachlan and Tristan. I was raised in a loving and supportive family but we did not attend church and I grew up not knowing Jesus.

After studying electrical engineering I met Bron in my first job in an engineering department for a mining company. Bron and I moved quite a bit over the course of our married life, starting from Perth then to the UK, then Canada, back to Perth, the USA and finally to Sydney.

It was not until Sydney that Bronwen settled again into a regular church. It was here that her faith grew considerably and she encouraged me to attend church with her. I would, but reluctantly and quite sporadically, mainly just to keep the peace. But if something needed doing, like mowing the lawn or dealing with a leaking tap, I was there. I didn’t need much of an excuse to just wave goodbye from the driveway.

Bron asked me to read different books about Jesus, but I was always more interested in the latest novel I had by the bedside table and I resisted pretty effectively.

It wasn’t that I was adamant there wasn’t a God, I just wasn’t interested in exploring it. There was always something ‘more interesting’ to do. In hindsight, I wonder if deep down I was uncomfortable because I knew it meant changing.

In any case, as Bron’s faith grew she began asking more questions at church and one Sunday came home very upset after a conversation about marriage.

I wasn’t too impressed that someone had upset my wife. In any case, from my point of view we had been married 15 years by that time and we had three kids – a bit late to want to start changing things! But I considered the options as I looked at her and I knew that her faith (not that I would have described it as that back then) was not going anywhere. That was clear. I wasn’t going anywhere either, seeing as though I loved her, so I thought I’d better look into this thing she was into.

But I’d do it on my terms (so I thought). So I told Bron that I’d have a read of whatever she wanted me to read, but that I would be making up my own mind. She suggested I speak with someone from church, but I was firm – I’d be looking into this myself and I’d be making up my own mind.

I read several books and CS Lewis’s Mere Christianity made good moral sense. But I wasn’t sold.

Bron gave me a book by Francis Collins, The Language of God. Collins ran the Human Genome Project mapping human DNA and he laid out a very strong argument for why life on earth wasn’t just random chance. It was very logical and it appealed intellectually. It prompted me to learn more.

So I began reading the gospels. I realised they all said the same things. I researched them a bit and found they were written by different authors and they were dated differently. So I began saying a simple prayer ‘God if you’re there, I just need to know…’

One day I was in Perth for work. After reading a section of Mark’s gospel I went for a morning run. At the corner of Mounts Bay Rd and Riverside Drive I stopped and felt strongly that things had just become very clear. I remember thinking that the truth of it seemed so obvious, questioning myself why it had taken so long! I recall looking at others passing by and perceiving them differently. The gospel suddenly made sense and I accepted it as true. From that time I have been a follower of Jesus.

The ministry team at our home church were very good at getting alongside me. One of the minsters was planting a new congregation and we were asked to be part of the plant team. He got me involved in many aspects of that and spent a lot of time with me preparing me for service leading, small group leading and other aspects of church and ministry. He ran training courses which, looking back, I think were at least partly intended to get me involved in another aspect of ministry.

This minister spent many mornings before work reading the Bible with me, something I will be always grateful for. One morning he asked me if I had considered full time ministry. I laughed and said ‘You mean doing what you do? You must be joking…’

But the thought never went away.

Eventually Bron and I realised that we wanted to prioritise gospel ministry and manage other aspects of our lives around that. So we thought, if that was the case and we had the ability to go to college, why wouldn’t we do that full time? I left my job and here we are at Moore College.

If you’d asked me even 4 years ago if we were going to serve in full time ministry I would have thought that was crazy. But at the end of this year that’s exactly

what we will be doing – its been an amazing journey, one in which we look forward to the next step with great anticipation. We are so very thankful to the Lord for his blessings.