So from being a church member all of my life I found myself a little unexpectedly in a pastoral role. I had no ambitions of this when I left UWA in 1985. I had finally made it to being a Phys ed teacher and I was loving the experience of teaching at Kingsway. I had a sense that Bible college was on the cards at some point, but it was with a view to heading back to the Philippines to work in sports ministry.
When I began as a youth pastor those ideas disappeared. In their place came the realisation that I really didn’t know what a youth pastor did, other than run youth groups and preach occasionally. So I called up the best bloke I knew at the time – Rob Cain – youth pastor at Mount Pleasant Baptist – and asked him if I could literally spend a week with him and just follow him around. He agreed, so I shadowed him for an entire week, picked his brains and learnt a heap. I chose Rob as a mentor and it was a good decision. I also read every book I could on youth ministry and learnt the theory pretty well.
Then began 5 years of leading a youth ministry and what I discovered what that I had a very limited imagination for what a church could be. I had never really given ecclesiology any thought. I had assumed that whatever we did on Sunday we did because that was how things were and they weren’t to be messed with. It was the era of seeker services and then seeker sensitive church (another mild controversy) and I remember being given permission to be creative but ending up in more of the same. I think I frustrated John the senior pastor in this way, who was trying to encourage me to take some risks and experiment, but I simply couldn’t imagine church any differently.
Our Baptist liturgy was pretty predictable and it had been ground into me. So I kept on doing what I was familiar with. The church’s evening service moved up the road to the community centre in the belief that being in a ‘non-religious’ building would break down barriers for those who wanted to come but couldn’t see themselves in a church. Turned out they couldn’t see themselves in a community centre either so maybe the building wasn’t the problem…
In the absence of my own original ideas, I rolled with what John wanted to do – seeker stuff. The theory made sense to me, because I actually believed that maybe people would come if we got the formula right. At that time I had begun teaching again at Scarborough High School, the school I attended as a kid and I rolled into the Phys Ed office one day with a bunch of flyers to give to the other staff inviting them to a seeker service where I was going to be preaching. I still remember their faces. It was like I’d invited them to a nude knitting party.
As I reflect on those first years of Christian leadership I see a person so formed by the institution that he lacked the creative capacity to really explore new ideas. In a daring frenzy of fresh thinking I used a Simpson’s video in one of my sermons to make a point. That was a daring move. I sensed the disdain from some at this introduction of secular content into a holy space but I didn’t really want to get into conflict over it, so I just sucked it up.
Occasionally we would be allowed to have youth lead morning worship services. I’m sure part of it was in the hope that they would begin coming on Sunday morning – because for many this was considered ‘real church’ while the evening service was like a B grade option for the less serious. I imagine more would have come and stuck with it if some of the oldies didn’t frown or walk out on music they found unacceptable. I remember meeting one of those oldies down the shops after they had made an angry exit on a Sunday morning. The man started into me about the noise of the drums and the inappropriate type of music for worship. I had just started pushing back on those who were critical and difficult and this bloke got it both barrels, both for having the lack of awareness to think Woolworths was a good place to chastise me, but also just for being a grumpy, self centred traditionalist who couldn’t abide a different expression of church and couldn’t see the detrimental effect his attitude had on the young people.
I still dressed up for church occasionally – another way in which the culture had shaped me and I recall an older woman sarcastically remarking to me ‘nice to see you well dressed in the house of the Lord today…’
‘Well, that’s the main thing isn’t it?’ I replied, to which she huffed off insulted by that young pastor.
We made a pretty good crack of leading a youth ministry, but it was becoming apparent that I needed to ‘get out more’ and have an experience of church where I could lead unconstrained by those who still saw me as an 18 year old doing burn outs in the carpark. Or maybe that was just a self perception?…
John Randall nudged me towards study at Vose college – I shut him down. He also saw that I needed to get out from the culture I was in and begin to think for myself. As I look back I think he saw my potential but also saw the constraint of being ‘stuck’ in the church I had grown up in. But the thing was that I needed to see it.
It wasn’t that the church was forming me so much any more, but more that it had stopped me in my tracks and was limiting who I could become and where I could lead them.
Change was in the air