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Today’s guest is my mother! My mother, otherwise known as Roslyn Langlois, has three children. I have an older brother and a younger sister, so I’m the middle child, and she has two grown-up grandchildren: a favourite granddaughter and a favourite grandson. Very handy.

(laughs) Absolutely.

Mum’s worked in many different positions and done many different things. She’s a concert pianist, so if you’re watching the video you can see the grand piano behind us, and she’s a choir conductor, and she gives wisdom to many. I wrote that, but I mean it. And she’s been the vice-president of a radio station –

True!

– so she’s led worship in all sorts of different situations, and she composes music as well, and there’s more. There’s so much more. So welcome Mum, it’s good to have you with us.

It’s lovely to be here.

A different kind of interview, I think, but it’s fun.
How did you become a Christian?

Well. I think it started pretty early, because my parents, your grandparents, were both Christians when I was born. My father had been studying theology, and Mum, I think, had told me about when she became a Christian, so I was born into that atmosphere. But I was in Sunday School, and in choirs, and I loved the Lord, all the way along. There was every reason to love him and no reason not to. But of course, as I got older, there were situations that were sort of crises, where my decision was to go with following the Lord. I’m just trying to think what some of the major ones would be.

I think that there was a point when Billy Graham came to Australia. He went all around the nation, and dad decided to go, and to take me, and we wanted to be in on it – or I wanted to be in on it.

How old were you then?

By this time I was fourteen, so I’d definitely been a Christian for quite a long time then. It was an amazing meeting, because I’d never seen so many people stack a football ground in North Hobart for that purpose. It was just lovely to hear the gospel preached, and Dad and I both went forward, which was, I suppose, affirming the fact that I wanted to follow the Lord.

Because Poppy was an Anglican minister, wasn’t he?

Yes, so he was a Christian Anglican minister.

When you went to university in Melbourne – mum attended the Conservatorium of Music in Melbourne – was that a challenge to your faith?

No, I don’t think it was a challenge in the sense that I felt there was any attack on it. I think that I’d learned over those years – because I had to be away from home even in high school years to go to school – and I guess I’d had the opportunity to make either decisions that were following Christ or not. I was not [perfect] I don’t think any of us are. I certainly had things that weren’t right, and that I had to repent of in that stage. The whole thing of going to Melbourne was itself a gift, and it was amazing, because at the beginning of that last year of school, which was year 12, I didn’t know what I was going to do. I was given the privilege of being the Head Girl of the school, so I was pretty engaged with what was going on there. Lovely things were happening in the school in terms of other girls coming to the Lord, and that sort of thing. But when I was approached by the Education Department and asked if I’d like to have this scholarship and go and study music in Melbourne … I can’t remember mum and dad and I having a conversation about it, but it must have been a mind-blower for them as well.

But it was very exciting, and I knew that was the Lord. And also, the music teacher that I had at Melbourne had been my examiner for the associate piano exam, and I sensed that he believed in the Lord, and sure enough that was the truth. So I had a very good piano teacher and felt the support from him, and I think I linked up pretty quickly with the Christian groups at the uni, because the Con was part of the rest of the uni. I really could be who I was.

I had a lovely red coat, that was (laughs) it was sort of the mark of who I was. I was short, and I had my little red coat, and I came from Tasmania down there, and opportunities came along very quickly for the development [of my faith]. I always was able to express, in one way or another, that what I was doing was enabled by the Lord – which it really was. And there were plenty of situations in which I needed the Lord’s help. I did have relatives in Melbourne, but I couldn’t see them very often – they were in a completely different part – so I was very much on my own. So there were things that had to work out through prayer, which included financial things, and where I was going to stay, because things weren’t always easy that way. So there were lots of opportunities, and my faith was just being built in one thing after another.

I remember there was a situation in which I was acutely conscious of not having enough money, because my shoes were wearing out. I did a lot of walking, and I didn’t have the money to get them fixed up. I remember saying something to my teacher, I think, my piano teacher, about pennies from heaven – just joking around – and within a couple of days I’d received, from people who were close to mum and dad in Tassie, the first of a number of cheques which came regularly to help me get through. So the pennies came from heaven!

Unfortunately we can’t go through mum’s whole life story – we don’t have time! So I was going to ask what made you and dad decide to become missionaries, but it sounds like it’s a very natural outworking. You’re already sharing the gospel with people all the time, you already have faith provision and that kind of thing, so it sounds like it was a very natural next step for you guys.

Yes, I guess it was. That is a big leap, from where I just was! So my brain has to go on fast forward.

Sorry.

Well, I think it’s John’s story as well as mine, of course, but I think that John had heard from his uncle and aunty such fantastic stories of how God had provided for them in all sorts of situations, so John having – what’s that saying – hammered his flag to the mast, as “Lord, whatever you want”. He was very open on that level, and so was I. It was a wonderful time actually, that time of our life in the church as a whole, in Australia, and in our state. People were rediscovering just how near God really was, and how He did call very personally, how He did provide, so we were both very open to that. We didn’t know what that was going to mean, and it meant quite a number of different things really.

Yes, because when I was very little you started in a sort of rehabilitation centre, living by faith there, and then you moved to a children’s home, and then you joined Youth With A Mission –

Which again, is very much living by faith.

Yes, we haven’t had a lot of money, ever. Plenty of experiences, but not a lot of money.

(laughs) That’s right.

So, classical music is obviously a very huge part of your life, and sharing God is obviously a huge part of your life. How have you been able to share God using classical music?

Yes, that’s been lovely really. I’ve found that people in all sorts of situations are very open to hearing you play the piano – in my case, that’s been what I could do – so in a way I just had to be prepared to open my mouth. I didn’t always feel as if I was as overt as I might be. I was wanting to do that, and I would pray about that, whoever I was with, because I worked with some excellent musicians, and just playing to people … but after a while I got the message, you know? God knew exactly what he was doing.

There were situations where I could be very overt, and there were others where … people are not dumb, you know? They hear where you’re coming from, and it was a really fine musician – I probably shouldn’t name names – but someone who I worked with quite a bit who’s a brilliant Australian musician, a string player. We were in the middle of a practice, and somehow just talking about who we were came up into our conversation, and he said something to the effect of “It’s very evident where you’re coming from.” Not in a reactive way, it was just in the conversation we were having, which was very reassuring, because I’m not the only Christian who’s sometimes thought “How overt should I be?” Because sometimes you feel as if what you could say would be utterly not part of that particular conversation, but there is a way of just following through in a conversation, which is just very natural, and not forced, and doesn’t make the person feel “Uh-oh, here I am, I’m going to hear it.”

So not bible-bashing, but just as it naturally comes out.

Yes, exactly.

So after YWAM, you and dad joined Christian Performing Artists’ Fellowship. Can you tell us a bit about that?

Yes, I think one of the really exciting things about that was how God got our attention. We were at a radio conference – because that was when we were in Christian radio in Hobart – and I didn’t find those conferences terribly interesting.

They’re not exactly mum’s kind of music.

It wasn’t even just the music – there were technical things … but I was at them, so I was there, and there was this particular session – I think we were in Melbourne. Just before it – I don’t even know who this person was – someone came up to me and said “You’re a musician, aren’t you? You might enjoy this!” and handed me a book that was called Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers by Patrick Kavanaugh. I thanked the person, because I had something interesting to do now through the meeting, and I sat down in the meeting and flicked through [the book]. There were things on this composer and that composer from over the centuries, and then I got to the end and it had a mission statement of The Christian Performing Artists’ Fellowship. And as I read that mission statement, it was just like an electric shock went through me, and I thought “This is so exciting – this is just what we’re on about.” Because at that stage in Youth With A Mission we’d been – when I say “we”, there was another lovely staff member who was a musician – we’d had music camps, and reached out to young musicians in Hobart and so on. So this absolutely fitted in that, you know? When I went home from Melbourne, this other staff member and I talked together about what we’d seen, and I wrote a letter to Patrick Kavanaugh. A few weeks later, when I wasn’t in any way thinking about it – in fact I think he woke us up from sleep at about seven o’clock in the morning (we probably needed to be woken up) – it was Patrick Kavanaugh, and he said he was really interested in coming out to assist us with a music camp, and that started off this whole wonderful relationship with Patrick and his wife, who are both wonderful musicians, but also with lots of other great musicians in the US, and students who came from the US, some came from Australia, some came from Russia, and Latvia, and it was just wonderful.

CPAF has a big summer camp, doesn’t it? Where Christian up-and-coming musicians from all around the place, as you say, get together and learn music and also learn about God.

That’s right, yes. Bible studies were a very important part of it, and John and I were both available on the counselling staff. It was a very wholistic sort of thing, but it was really saying “God is the giver of all these.” Whether it’s operatic singing, or acting, or playing the piano – God’s the giver of the gifts, and you can revel in those, and share that He’s the giver of the gifts. That’s your witness.

I think there’s this thing in performing arts with Christians, where you’re concerned about whether you’re giving enough of a witness, and you’ve had that same question.

Exactly.

As a writer, the encouragement is then to write something really overtly Christian which often – or sometimes – goes badly wrong. It becomes cheesy. Or in Christian music, or in Christian movies, or whatever. In classical music, unless you only play Bach, I guess you’re a bit stuck. So that message, as you say, that God is the giver of all these gifts and just by using our gifts to His glory, we can be a witness.

That is exactly right. That was such a major thing in that whole ministry, and I’m sure it still is. So that was how things unfolded there.

So you packed up from Tassie and moved over to the US.

Yes, I’m sure you remember it!

I do, because I had little babies.

And that was a challenge. I think all Christians will have to meet that challenge at some point, where you do actually have to make a choice, if that’s what God’s saying. And it is very challenging, and it is very difficult, and sometimes I’ve found as I’ve looked back – not on that particular instance, but some other things in our life – I’ve thought now “Did we really get it right, Lord? Was that really You? We thought it was, I hope we were right.” And you can really only just hand it over to the Lord. So it was very difficult to leave family, to leave our immediate family, yourself and Catherine and Anthony, and particularly this new generation coming up, because you know you’re going to miss out on all sorts of things, but we couldn’t get away from the fact that the Lord had called. With every bit of understanding that we had, that’s what it was.

God has been faithful, in terms of your relationship with my children.

Yes, hasn’t He? So faithful. And also in terms of our relationship with your generation, as well. It’s not that there haven’t been things we’ve had to work through, as all families have, but we’re just so blessed by the relationship with our own children – who are not children anymore!

So speaking of challenges, can you talk a little bit about the challenge of Parkinson’s?

Yes, I can! (laughs)

Yes, it is a challenge. It’s an interesting thing to be told that you’ve got a disease like that. This is what sort of came to me in the initial years, was that I could pray for healing for me, and believe for healing for me, but it very quickly came to me that there are thousands of people just in Australia alone with Parkinson’s. It really is a disease that a lot of people have, let alone other parts of the world. Especially the western world, I’m not sure about other parts. Anyway, having this thought, that there were so many people with Parkinson’s, the thing to do would be to pray for research, and that answers would be found, because there are very few answers when it comes to Parkinson’s. But the interesting thing is in the years that I’ve had it now, that there really has been quite a discovery of potential reasons – it’s still not absolutely secure – but even without reasons, things that you can do. So I’m involved now in the LED light sort of – I’m trying to think of the actual term –

The infrared light study that you’re participating in.

Yes, it’s just using ordinary people to be part of that.

Well, you have to have Parkinson’s.

(laughs) Yes, that’s the only thing.

I’ll put a link to that in the show notes, so people can read more about that study.

For us personally, for John and myself – John is my husband, and he’s very very much a part of this whole experience, because with having something like Parkinson’s, you do need a lot of support. So John has embraced being not only my husband, but my carer, which is very challenging to think that you need to have a carer. If I’ve got to have a carer, he’s a very good carer to have, let alone the rest of the family.

So another wonderful thing with this prayer about the research, and the Lord giving a way forward – which we can see that various things are coming to light now – but we’ve met some fantastic people. It’s like when I went to the conservatorium, the Lord has opened the door on relationships. There’s this young professor – well, I think he’s young, he’s probably mid-forties or something – he’s at a university in Sydney, and he’s getting some light on the subject – but he was just so happy to be supportive to us, so we’ve gotten to know him and his wife. And another lovely doctor, who’s supposedly retired – she’s also a musician – in the north of Tassie, and she’s very much following and supporting me and us. It’s just fantastic who God leads you to.

So there are some very difficult things about the actual condition – I don’t recommend that anyone want it to happen! But it’ll be alright.

Good things can come out of it.

Yes! Good things can.

So when do you feel close to God?

That’s a really lovely question. That’s always a filler, that line. (laughs) It really is. While I love worshipping God – I love playing, and singing, and being with people who love Him – whether it’s by myself, but often it’s with others, I love that situation of having the freedom to sing, to speak our prayers, but I think that there’s been so many situations when I’ve been in need and I don’t necessarily feel anything in particular, except that I know I can call out to God, and I do, and it’s amazing. I’m sure John could tell stories – I don’t know if he’d tell them, but they’re great stories – like “Where is my phone? I can’t find it.” Or wallet, you know, and I say “Lord, will you just help us find it? Because we need to get out of here pretty quickly and John needs his wallet.” And he finds it really quickly. I love those things.

But there’s far more to relationship with the Lord than that sort of thing. He’s just so kind and humble I think, in letting us ask Him about anything, run of the mill, but also big things where you’re just crying out. And we’ve had some real cry-out situations, and we do right up to the minute, and it’s wonderful to be able to just let the Lord hear. It’s so amazing how in the Scriptures we’re really encouraged as to how real we can be with the Lord. It’s silly to pretend with him. Those wonderful stories with women, of Jesus – both before and after the resurrection – they are so marvellous. And when you think of the fact that women were not held in very great esteem at all, at that time. But Jesus, I remember hearing years and years ago on an ABC broadcast this young woman saying that Jesus was the first… what’s the term?

Feminist?

Yes, the first feminist. I thought “Oh, that’s a good one!” In the sense of honouring women. He just honoured women, and protected them. “Leave her alone, this thing that she’s done is going to be told all over the world,” and sure enough it is. We’re in the place to be able to say “That’s true.” That’s exactly right. Right up to date.

I never thought that I was brought up as a feminist, and then I realised that you were actually a career mum. It never occurred to me growing up that you were actually a career mum.

That’s true.

And as a woman I’ve been encouraged by you to follow my dreams and to do whatever was there in front of me, which I really appreciate.

What’s one thing about God or Christianity that you wish everyone knew?

(chuckles) This is very much off the top of my head – again, it’s a fantastic question – one thing I wish everybody knew is that God is utterly approachable. Awesome, and amazing beyond anything we can imagine in terms of character and understanding and knowledge – I mean it’s God we’re talking about, so you sort of run out [of words]. But it’s the nearness and the personalness of God. I’m really glad that in our hymns and in some of the awesome music that has been composed for the glory of God – little allusion to Bach there – I think the thing is that He understands us. Right from the beginning of the Old Testament on, you see God who is approachable as well as the awesome God. Somehow all of that comes together. It’s super.

Thank you so much! That’s all my questions.

It’s lovely to talk to you. Always lovely to talk to my beloved daughter. And the other daughter, and the son.

This has been awesome. And don’t worry, I’m having an interview with Dad later. Thanks so much, Mum.

My great pleasure.

Today it’s my privilege, my great privilege to introduce to you Sandessa, who is my good friend.

Hi.

So Sandessa, or Dess, we usually call her Dess. It’s a nice name Sandessa, a combination of …

Sandra and Vanessa, thanks Dad, you are awesome.

Well you could get a good website. I’m sure there aren’t …

One day.

Anyway, off topic already. This is what happens. So Dess is a good friend of mine. We’ve been friends ever since we did a science degree together. And Dess has worked as a scientist, and as an administrator, and she’s also (I’ve written here, but I totally agree) a damn fine singer and songwriter.

Thanks.

It’s great to have you with us. Welcome.

Thank you.

So let’s start, as we always start, with how did you become a Christian?

Yeah, so I was brought up in a Christian family, I’m the youngest of four siblings. And my parents would take us to church every Sunday. A little bit sadly though, I’m the only Christian out of my siblings.

So I’ve always known God and though I walked away for a little bit for a couple of years there I’d already been baptised into the faith and God was always in the background in my mind saying, ‘Hey Dess, you need to come back to me. I’ve still got you. You might not be walking in my path but I’ve still got you.’

So was there a particular thing that brought you back after your walking away?

I had moved down to Hobart to go to uni, which was where I met you. And I had a period of time where I had a boyfriend living with me. And we both called ourselves Christians and we didn’t really go to church. I’d kind of been looking for a church to go to earlier in the year but hadn’t found anywhere that I’d liked – even though you kept saying, ‘Come to St Clements, come to St Clements’ and I’m like, ‘No, no, no, I’m going to find my own church’.

Anyway, the relationship broke down and I kind of ended up with depression and was feeling really low and felt like a hypocrite and finally took your advice and came to St Clements. And that was really the start for me. I walked into St Clements, and our church has this amazing stain glass wooden thing up the back and a circular step up the front that had material on it. And I walked into church and I went, ‘Oh my gosh, this is the church I’ve been looking for.’ The actual building itself was the building I’d been looking for.

Because I’d actually been there when I was younger. And had been going on my search for churches around the place thinking, ‘I wonder where that church was.’ And I walked in and I’m like, ‘This is it. Right. OK.’

So I started coming back to church and recommitted myself to God.

And how does your faith work itself out in your life now? Are you a one-hour in the morning devotion type?

Oh no. So as you know I’m not a morning person at all.

My faith, I’m still a bit hit and miss with my prayer life and my reading of the word. I’m really good on my days when I go to work. I work part-time and on those mornings I travel by bus. And unless I’m having a really good conversation with somebody I’ll be sitting there reading my Bible on my phone. And as I reach the top of Tolman’s Hill that’s when I put my phone away and I pray down into work, into Hobart.

That’s really nice, so that’s integrated into the bus trip. It’s a good use of bus time. That’s fantastic.

Absolutely. So on my days off, yeah, it doesn’t happen as much. I still pray in every situation and all the time but it’s not as rigorous and I’m less likely to pull out the Bible. To read the word in those times.

Yeah, it’s the importance of habits I guess. Nice

So, work. What do you do for a job.

I work for the Department of State Growth as a senior administration officer. In the State Roads Division. So my job is as it says, administration. I don’t really know what else to say about that. It’s just doing things that we need to do. We update intranet notices on our intranet page, we do basic correspondence – a lot of editing of other people’s work.

I want to ask, how many times has the name of the department you work for changed since you started working there?

[Laughter]

It’s actually only changed once for me. It’s pretty good. But one of my colleagues who has been there for forty years now, it’s changed five times I think since she’s been there. So I’m expecting another change in the next couple of years.

Do you enjoy it?

Mostly I do. And I’ve just received a promotion this year so I’m much happier with my job.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

But it has its moments. It’s not something that I aspired to do or to be, but God has blessed me with the gift of administration and this is the job that I’ve been blessed with.

How does your faith show itself where you work?

I was thinking about this and I thought, ‘Oh, how does it work out?’ I think … So it’s a secular world that I work in, and it’s very difficult to share your faith with people within the bounds of allowability. So I have to be very careful of what I say to people. Even things like finishing off my email. I would normally email my friends with ‘Blessings’ or ‘God bless’ at the end of it. And I have to change the way I do that with work so it’s ‘Cheers’ or ‘Kind regards’ or something like that. And I’m like, ‘it’s so not what I’m meaning’.

So most of the time I’m pretty sure most people know that I’m a Christian at work. And I think the most time that I would talk about God would really be when people ask me, ‘what did you do on the weekend?’ or ‘what have you got planned for the weekend?’ And I’ll say, ‘well I’ve got something on Saturday and church on Sunday’ or ‘I’m leading worship on Sunday’. Those sort of things.

Every now and again somebody might ask me about my faith, or people might tell me that something tough is going on in their lives. And that’s when I will ask them, ‘would you mind if I pray about that for you?’ Not then and there over them. But in my own time to put them on my prayer list basically and pray for that person. Pray for the circumstance.

I haven’t had anybody knock me back yet. But I have to be very discerning about who I offer that to as well.

Absolutely. If someone’s very anti- it’s not going to lead them closer is it?

Exactly. And if they are very anti- and there’s something going on in their lives, I just pray about it anyway.

[Laughter]

That’s right. That’s always a good thing.

I have written ‘what has God shown you in your work?’ Because I think we were having a conversation about coming to terms with working in this area when you wanted to work elsewhere. Would you like to talk about that?

What has God shown me in my work? Yeah, so, he’s shown me that I need to trust him. And it is really tough. My chosen vocation would be in science. Somehow. But unfortunately I got sick and have chronic RSI in my neck and can’t, basically, do all the microscope work that I would need to do in science.

Hunching over and looking down and all that affects the neck, yeah.

Yep. So that path of options for me, and something that I’m really interested in, I can’t do anymore.

So I kind of fell into administration after about four years of not being able to work. And initially it was, ‘I just need to find work. I just need to find something that I can have an income and support myself and that I can do physically and sustain it in the long run.’ So I had a couple of years with the police and then I moved to what was then the Department of Infrastructure, Energy, and Resources (now, State Growth). And it’s been in the last two years that I’ve managed to increase my time to four days a week. I used to be three days a week. So it’s a sign that there’s healing going on still for me which is awesome.

But in terms of my actual having peace about my job that’s really difficult still for me. And it’s an every day … I just have to be trusting God in that.

We get deep quick here in this podcast.

[Laughter]

But it’s hard. I mean it’s a dream … it’s giving up on a dream.

Absolutely. Yeah.

So are you going to make me cry?

[Laughter]

I’m thinking. Do I go there?

But God has shown you that you’re using your admin gifting in that place?

Yeah, I’ve been very begrudging about that. But yes, he has. It’s certainly not something that I thought I would ever have the skills for. It never even crossed my mind.

And I think initially when I started doing administration type things I was actually a volunteer at the church. Going to the office and helping the Petes (Pete Adlem, and Pete Greenwood) to organise and run the evening service that we had at church back in the day. And it was from there that we took (I say ‘we’ because I went through the Commonwealth Rehabilitation Services) so we took those skills of administration and went, ‘OK, so we can’t work in the science thing.’ We did several job trials in different places and that just caused more pain for me. So it was an, ‘OK can’t be in the lab, can’t be looking down, so you need something where your head is up, and working.’

So God’s shown me, he’s still teaching me that I need to rely on him. I need to trust him. And that if he wants me to do something, he’ll still open up that door. But it’s still really tough. Like even yesterday I was looking on the government jobs website and there were a couple of jobs advertised for the Royal’s pathology lab (the Royal Hobart Hospital). And I was like, ‘I could do that.’ I know I have the knowledge to do that. But my body, I don’t think would stand it.

So it’s still a love of mine to try and do that science but … I just have to surrender that.

We’re halfway through the journey. And I guess you wonder if you’re going to get answers before eternity or not but this is not an end of the story interview.

But I think it’s encouraging for people to hear people holding on to God when you’re still in the middle. When you haven’t come through to the other side yet.

Dess is making me cry too.

Let’s turn to music. How do you use your musical gifting for God? When did you start playing and singing?

Start playing and singing for God? Or start playing and singing?

From the start.

From the start. So my parents were both teachers and music teachers. And so I grew up in a family where my parents would always grab the guitars and we’d be singing around the campfire. Or if there was a party at home it would always end up with whoever would bring an instrument and we’d just all in play and sing. And just awesome fun times like that, which I love.

So I started singing when I was really young. And because I’m the youngest of four, everyone had their own parts, so I had to learn how to harmonise, so my brain automatically goes to a harmony on any song, pretty much. So that was the start for me.

I play guitar, a little bit of piano, and sax, tenor sax. I picked up piano first, when I was really young. I had a teacher and learned some of that. I didn’t really get along with the teacher though so at the end of grade six I gave that one up in exchange for playing sax in high school. I was in the band when I was younger with Youth Music Tasmania for several years which really helped me learn anything and everything really.

When I moved out of home when I was fifteen I got into a house where I didn’t have a piano to play but there was a guitar there and I wanted to be able to accompany myself and sing so I asked my Mum, ‘Can you teach me some chords?’ So she taught me the four basic chords, and away I went. I taught myself from there.

I keep asking knowledgeable people at church, ‘how do I do this? How do I do that?’ I pick their brains and learn from them.

So when did you start using that for God?

I think when I was in high school I would play my sax at the church I was going to in Scottsdale back then. There were always so many singers, so it was always, ‘there are too many singers, I don’t want to take anyone’s place.’ So I would play another instrument and that was fine.

And then when I came down to Hobart and started coming to St Clements, I think it was about six months in, I finally got up the courage to go and talk to Andrew Legg and I think I cried on him. Because I tend to do that when I’m approaching someone whom I admire and whom I’m a little bit scared of. And he was so gracious and he was like, ‘OK bring your sax along and let’s play’ and he was so good because I was playing by ear and so it probably took a couple of years before they were confident enough in what I was doing to mic me up and have me playing that way. And then again I was so scared that everyone was hearing me and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh!’

But yeah I started playing the sax and then with the evening church when that got started I started to play guitar and sing there and that’s where I started leading worship was at that. And then when I came back to morning church I joined back in with Andrew’s band. And then it became a, ‘I can’t do this one, can somebody else fill in?’ So I’m like, ‘OK sure, I’ll do that.’ So I started leading at the big church, and that’s where I’m at now.

Which is lovely. She does a beautiful job of leading worship I have to say.

Thanks Ruth.

Would you say that voice is your primary instrument now?

Yeah. That’s my passion. And I really do have a passion for helping God’s people to praise him and sing their hearts to him together at church. I really do. I absolutely love it when I can stop singing and just hear the church and they go for it and it makes my heart soar.

There’s nothing like it.

It’s amazing, it’s amazing. It’s so good and it’s just the best thing ever to hear people worship God all together. One heart, one voice, one mind. All together. It’s just beautiful.

So this year, just this year? You’ve been back at the conservatorium?

Halfway through last year.

Halfway through last year, to get extra training. So why did you go back to the conservatorium? Almost why did you go back to that university? What drew you there?

Part of it is because the Bible calls us, if you’re a musician, to be a skilled musician. And so because I’m self-taught, mostly, I didn’t necessarily feel like I had confidence in what I’m able to do. Or the understanding to be able to communicate with others what I want or that I understood what they were telling me when they were telling me what they want when I’m playing with them. So that was part of the reason, to be a skilful musician.

The other side of it is that I’ve been asking God for ages, ‘what is your plan for me?’ Given all my work stuff that’s gone on, and what I thought the plan was, was not the plan. So ‘God, what is the plan?’

New plan!

Yeah. And it was actually at the start of last year, about Easter last year I was up at a young adults conference in Brisbane. And at the end of that they were asking people who felt like God was calling them to be an evangelist to stand up and they would pray for them. And I was sitting there, knowing that The Great Commission is to go and make disciples. But also knowing that I really don’t feel confident in being an evangelist, or a teacher, or a minister. That’s not where my gifts lie. But also know that he’s called us to do The Great Commission so therefore it’s got to be in there somewhere.

So I was sitting there and I was asking God, ‘I really wish that I could stand up, but I know that’s not what you’re calling me to. That’s not where my gifts are.’ And he said to me, ‘What are your gifts Dess?’ I said, ‘Well music is a gift that you’ve given me.’ And he said to me, ‘This is what I want you to do.’ So I wrote down in my journal that I had at the time: To travel Tasmania, to visit the small churches to help them find the heartbeat of God. And to use music to do that.

It wasn’t exactly those words but that was the gist of it. So I came away going, ‘oh my gosh, wow’. Totally overwhelmed and unprepared.

I came back and talked to Pete about it and shared it with the rest of the music ministry team and everybody was like, ‘Yeah, that’s really good.’ It lined up with what Pete had been planning with our church, as one of the visions of our church to go and support other churches around the place. And one of the key things he had put there was with music. And he was just like, ‘I think that Dess, that’s you.’ And I don’t know how it’s going to work out yet, I’m still praying about that.

So I’m trying to think about how I can do that. I don’t know when it’s going to happen but part of me going to uni is not only to become a skilled musician but also to receive training so I can go out and train other people who don’t have the opportunity to go to uni and receive that sort of training.

And the other side of it is that I’m majoring in songwriting. And one of the key things that I’ve struggled with, with the music ministry in our church is finding the right songs for church. And as Ruth knows, I’ve written some songs for church. And I really like the idea of being able to write songs that I can just give to people and say, ‘Here’s a song that’s Biblically based, that’s easy to play, that’s easy to sing, that can be fun. Here you go, if you want to use it please do. Here’s a track of it, here’s some music of it, make it your own. And may the glory go to God.’

So that’s kind of the thoughts at this stage.

That’s fantastic. So you’re really quite busy then, if you’re working four days a week and part-time at uni?

Yes. It’s going to take me a while to finish uni, if I finish the degree. Because that’s the other thing too. I’ve got a Bachelor of Science with Honours, and I did three years of a PhD, but didn’t quite finish it. So I’m going to uni, and sure it would be great to get the piece of paper at the end, but that’s not the goal. The goal is to be trained and skilled to be able to go and do what God’s called me to do.

So if that means that I get part way through the course and God says, ‘OK, you’ve got enough, now we’re going to go down this road’ then I’ve just got to trust him and go with it. Which also frees you up when you’re studying at uni. You know, because we went through together, I was a pretty high achiever.

Yes.

And only got the highest marks in chemistry because of Ruth. She taught me as we studied together.

[Laughter]

Whereas now I’m free to not have to get the high marks. If I get them, that’s really awesome, but at the same time, if I just need to get something in for the sake of getting something in, as long as I pass then that’s fine.

Because you’re there for the learning, not for the piece of paper?

Exactly.

It’s taken the pressure off to realise that, and go for that. I just need to keep reminding myself of that.

I had my first exam for the course only about a month ago now. And I think I probably studied for about maybe three hours for the exam. Whereas with science it would have been a good solid two days worth of studying, 14 hours each day.

Absolutely.

So it was very different walking into that exam. And I’m confident that I passed.

I was talking to Josh (in episode 7) and he was saying the same thing. That his self-worth is not tied up in his marks anymore.

Absolutely.

Your self-worth gets wrapped into God, and then the learning is for the learning.

Yeah.

Would you like to say anything else about music?

Music is when I feel closest to God. And if I’m having a really bad day, week or whatever, if I feel really far from God, it’s most likely because I haven’t been praising him and worshipping him in my own life.

At the moment at church I’m on most weeks, not every week but most weeks I’m on in some way, shape, or form. And being part of that really does ground me because I have to make sure before I get up there and be one of the people who is leading the church, I have to make sure that I’m right with God. So it leads me to that confession and that repentance and getting my heart and my mind right with God again before I can stand up there and authentically lead people to worship him, and to praise him.

So that really helps to ground me and to draw me closer to him.

Do you put worship CDs on in the background at home and things like that?

I did this morning.

[Laughter]

Not as often as I should. When I go for a walk or whatever it’s normally worship music that I’m playing. And even my workout set for the gym finishes with this praise lot of music, cool music, and it’s very difficult not to sing with headphones in. At the gym.

So if you’re in a gym that just bursts into spontaneous worship or on a bus trip down to town that suddenly bursts into singing, you know that it’s Dess that’s done it.

Exactly.

But when I’m at home I don’t usually have music playing unless I need to learn something.

So it’s in the act of playing and singing that you feel closest to God?

Yes.

So to finish off, what’s one thing about God or Christianity that you wish everybody knew?

I wish everybody knew that God loves them. Unconditionally. There’s nothing you can do that will separate you from the love of God. And no matter what you’ve done, even the worst thing that you could possibly think of, God can forgive that .If you turn to him and ask him for forgiveness he will forgive that.

I wish people knew that because so often we just condemn ourselves and think, ‘I’m the worst person, how could anybody ever love me? Let alone God.’ But he does. He loves you.

That is wonderful. Thank you very, very much.

My pleasure.

Sorry I made you cry.

That’s alright, you didn’t get the real bawling.

Not the ugly crying.

Not the ugly crying, I’m a good ugly crier.

That’s great, thank you.

My pleasure.

Welcome everybody, today’s guest is Matt. And Matt Garvin and I first met I think through Fusion – you were in Fusion and I was in YWAM (Youth With A Mission) and if you know Fusion at all then you know Matt’s name, for sure. And then, let’s see, I’m a bit of a Facebook addict, so Matt went to Canada and suddenly there are these things popping up on Facebook – sermons, recorded sermons and all kinds of things and I would listen to Matt’s sermons and read his blogs and that was really cool, following all your adventures, and then suddenly, big adventure: God was calling Matt back to tiny little Hobart where he is now pastor of a Baptist church and still posting sermons on Facebook so you can listen there.

Matt and Leanne have four grown up children, and it’s really good to chat with you.

No worries, it’s fun.

So can you start by telling us how you became a Christian?

Ah well, it’s a journey really. I remember being about three and inviting Jesus into my heart with my mum and then telling all my friends. But I think there’s also, there really was this journey of it gradually becoming more and more my own journey. So I chose not to get baptised until I left home and I was out in Broken Hill and I did this really boring discipleship course that the church ran there. But as I did it, it was enough for me to go, ‘this is real, this is mine, and Jesus, I want to follow you.’

And so from there I ended up doing the Fusion Bible college – I was in Broken Hill doing radio, working with TBH Broken Hill. Some friends of our family purchased that and I worked there for a couple of years, it was great. But then I did Fusion’s Bible college course, which became a Certificate 4 in Youth and Community Work and for me as we engaged with the Bible, all of a sudden, it wasn’t a big emotional thing, just all of a sudden you just saw more and things made more sense. And really from that point on I think it was no longer going to be possible for me to just work for money or, you know, I was then on an adventure.

Absolutely. So you grew up in a smallish Christian community?

I was counting up, I actually grew up in a number of them. Initially, my first twelve years were in the northern suburbs of Sydney – a place called Berowra – then we moved down to Sale in Victoria where Fusion purchased a farm and we lived there for about five years. There was a training course there, there was also an employment program teaching people how to do metalwork. It was just a fun place to grow up, on a farm as a kid.

And then after that we moved back to Sydney for a couple of years and in Broken Hill I lived in a convent with the church there and the Cornerstone mob at the convent in Broken Hill. And then came down here to Hobart and there was a bunch of Fusion people living in an intentional community, it didn’t last very long, but it was houses kind of linked together.

And then, eventually we purchased Poatina, and I, after living here in Hobart for about ten years, I married Leanne here, we moved to Poatina. And then ultimately we moved to Mornington in Victoria and there Fusion has an old officer’s mess that’s like a double storey building and at any one time there’s half a dozen homeless kids living with us as well as staff and everybody else. That’s an intentional community caring for the homeless. And then we came back to Poatina and ended up back here.

So I had a few experiences of growing in little communities around the place.

So my life is fairly similar, we started in a farm that was doing rehab and then we moved into a children’s foster home that was linked buildings, cottages for foster children and then we went to a monastery in Canberra and then when we moved back here, I actually prayed for a house with five bedrooms so that I could have my own bedroom, I forgot to pray that we’d be the only people living in the house.

[laughter]

So many of us in this house, you wouldn’t believe. And then we moved out to the farm again. So I was a really, I don’t know whether I’m strange or normal, but for me moving into a normal house in a normal street with a normal address, that was just one of the desires of my heart.

But how would you say having that, it’s hard to say because you lived it, but having that experience of community growing up, how that affected your life?

It meant I loved and hated community. I never planned to be a pastor, that was never part of the plan, but it meant I come into being a pastor with a sober understanding that people are messy, and that community requires grace. But it also requires difficult conversations. And just because we all believe in Jesus doesn’t mean it’s going to be simple. So I think it equipped me to be a pastor in ways I haven’t even been conscious of.

But it also gave me a vision, there’s a book that has shaped me (well, there’s a few books that have shaped me) but one is by a Canadian guy Jean Vanier called Community and Growth. He set up the L’Arche communities and he wrote this book just reflecting on the L’Arche communities for caring for the disabled that would go on to really influence Henri Nouwen. This book is just a reflection on the messiness and what is needed to build healthy community. And I think it gave me a vision, the best moments of community are like heaven on earth, and the worst moments are like hell on earth.

So I understand, we now own our house in Howrah, and there’s a whole series of miracles … we don’t own it, the bank owns it, we’re paying off the bank. But just having a little house in Howrah is lovely. But I know, I think I have a vision of what the church is meant to be. A picture of intentional community.

So you can see there are strong emotions associated with it, some are extremely positive and some are extremely negative. But all of it has shaped me.

For sure. Well, for sure, as in that’s my experience too.

So, how did you end up in Canada?

Well, it really was one of the most painful, it was a really painful journey. Because I had assumed I’d be working with Fusion for the rest of my life. Then we had this messy situation where my Dad ended up having to step down from leadership quickly. And a few of us stepped in to try and hold it together. And because my Dad was the founder of the organisation, when people lost trust in him, they lost trust – and things got really messy, it’s really hard to describe. There were people we had served alongside and they were family. When Christian community gets messy it’s horrible.

But a few of us stepped in to try to hold it together, and I stepped into the international leadership with a few friends for, in the end, two years in a row, with two different groups of people. But it seemed, after two years of trying, it became clear that, for some people, the experience and the pushing back against my Dad meant that being a ‘Garvin’ it wasn’t going to be possible to be productive.

So Fusion in Canada got to us and said, ‘we feel like God’s told us to offer you guys a sabbatical, to come and be with us for twelve months over here.’ I had done some teaching in Canada and connected with the Baptist seminary over there so I thought, ‘OK I’ll go and study my masters of theology for a year’.

And the whole journey was miraculous. Because with Fusion you don’t get a wage, you trust that the money will turn up and it does, similar to YWAM. And it was interesting getting on the plane with $200 in our pocket. We hadn’t had the money to buy passports but somehow God miraculously provided those. And then arriving in Canada with hardly any money and trusting and really walking through this journey and spending six months saying, ‘God, what’s going on?’

As part of the messy phase I’d actually written a book called Six Radical Decisions about what does it mean to live your faith? And it was really me trying to find my bearings. I looked at my best times in Christian community and in missions, and the worst times, and asked what is the stuff I was committed to. I was also looking at church history and saw that whenever the church was at it’s best there were six things that were true.

The first, and the main one was that people just loved Jesus, that’s the drive of everything. And it’s their love for Jesus that sets the tone for everything. But from that they discover a purpose, Jesus calls them into the world to do something. And as they step into that, they discover they need fellowship…

I ended up launching the book over in the UK and it was something special, going to the pub where CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien would sit down and having a cappuccino there. I wanted to have a beer but my son was with me. And just knowing the fellowship those guys had, it would have been dumb for the local pastor to try to tell CS Lewis how to write the Narnia Chronicles, but the kind of fellowship he could have with the Inklings was what he needed. And the same with Tolkien. And I understand that Tolkien would never have got around to getting the Lord of the Rings published had CS Lewis not kicked him up the backside.

And also, being in a church down in Clapham where Wilberforce helped build and seeing the Clapham set and how they were called to politics, but a politics that changed the world and changed England. And all that came from Wesley.

So seeing the place whenever the church has been its best, there is real fellowship at the heart of it. But it’s fellowship that comes out of an understanding that people are called. It’s not fellowship for fellowship’s sake. So that was the third one.

And then from that realising that the church is at its best when it’s being hospitable. And when it’s not been living for itself, it’s empowering others. And then ultimately it’s about hanging on. When everything in you is screaming to give up, whenever the church has been at its best people are hanging on and trusting Jesus. And it’s usually going through moments of hell.

There’s somebody who doesn’t want the church to be at its best.

That’s exactly right. So I’d written this book saying all this and we were over in Canada, and I was praying, and in the past we’d run out of money before and we’d prayed and God had used money to get our attention. This time we were praying and the money wasn’t coming. And we were saying, ‘God what are you doing?’ And we ended up getting called into ministry, that sounds a bit, but we really did, there was this sense that it was right to go into a church and try and see if we could build the stuff that God had shown me through my twenty years in Fusion and that I’d tried to name in that book, in the life of a church.

In the local church. So moving from para-church to church?

Yeah, that’s right.

And build it. Even though we’re all in different houses and different places and whatever, can we be that community?

And that’s what’s been driving me. And trying to understand, realise how much our understanding of a church has been culturally shaped.

I found an enemy, actually. He was a good man, he’s a man by the name of Donald McGavran who most people have never heard of but he wrote a book about church growth back in the fifties. And he just wanted to grow the church, he’s not a bad man, but the paradigm he communicated of what the church was meant to be, became our paradigm of church.

And it’s always nice to have a textbook, isn’t it?

Yeah. But there are fundamental flaws that have shaped the whole western church, building on his stuff since then. So people like Hybels and all those others would point to McGavran and say, ‘this is what we’re working on’. But McGavran’s idea was that the purpose of the church was to grow the church. And he actually said we only need three roles – we need pastors and evangelists and we need faithful church people who will pay for the other two, pretty much.

OK that doesn’t actually sound like the scripture verse I remember.

No, no, no. So it becomes a narrow ecclesiology. So if you’re in this paradigm, if you want to take your faith seriously, you have to become an evangelist. We actually don’t have, we haven’t had a strong theology of the arts or a theology of health care or being a lawyer or doctor. And some people are actually called to other things than evangelism. And it’s this paradigm that’s shaped organisations like Fusion, and YWAM, and Youth for Christ, they all sprung up around the same time and they are all very evangelistically focussed which is great, but we needed a broader theology, and we needed a theology that was more than the four spiritual laws.

So I think I realised, being over there, being in North America, seeing how cultural the church was, and this was really clear, that the way we’ve done church up to this point, cannot be the way we do church in the future. And some of the stuff I picked up and that you’ve picked up through living in intentional community and the wrestle for how you step into the mess of integrity and living faith in the mess of reality and all, I think that’s more where we need to head. We need to head to ‘what does it mean to be an authentic community of followers of Jesus?’

Which is a very different way of doing church. It’s much more than what happens on a Sunday morning.

So that’s what we were wrestling with in Canada. And it’s interesting, God had taken the church over there, really special people, we love them and we really miss them, on a journey. They’d done the Rick Warren phase, they’d done the Bill Hybels phase, they’d done the forty days of whatever, but they got to the point of saying, ‘who do we want to be?’ And they got to a point of saying, ‘we want to be followers of Jesus. But we know we need to help people step into mission and we don’t know how to do that.’ So they created this big open job description and said, ‘come and help our church move into mission.’ And it was on the basis of that that I ended up being their mission pastor for five years.

Fantastic. So one of my favourite moments with you in that church was the final farewell video where they said that when you turned up at the church they couldn’t understand a word you were saying.

Yeah that’s right.

Which brings me to, OK so you’re growing a church community there and it’s wonderful, why come back here?

It was a bit of an identity crisis. I think God took us to Canada for lots of reasons. We thought we were going there to change Canada, God was actually taking us to, I think heal, and grow, and go through the identity crisis that was becoming a pastor for me. I really never planned to be a pastor.

But after three years, there was something wrong. We tried to settle, we really tried to settle in Canada. We loved the people, we loved the church. It was interesting, Keith who knew your parents, he had arrived there and said, ‘Do you know the Langlois? ‘Yeah, I know the Langlois.’ Anyway, because he’d met with them and he was now our worship pastor and it really felt like we were getting somewhere. But we just couldn’t settle.

We went off to a conference, and again, the Christian Missionary Alliance churches in Canada are fantastic but the conferences were unlike any conferences we had been to before. They were at the Chateau Lake Louise, the Fairmont hotel there, they were fantastic. But we went to one every year, we’d go off and spend three or four days at the Fairmont. And this time we went and at a prayer time we got a bunch of people together and said, ‘We want to ask you to pray for us. We’re just feeling really unsettled and we can’t, the money won’t free up for us to buy a house, and … there’s something going on. Is there something in us that’s wrong?’

Anyway, we prayed into it and were given a bit of a picture that we were on this journey and that God was going to take us somewhere. And we just had a sense that God was going to take us out and maybe back to Australia. And the day we got back from that conference Stephen Baxter, who is the state leader now for the Baptists in Tasmania, sent us an email. This job at Citywide Baptist had been advertised and initially I’d looked at it and thought, ‘I don’t think so’ but I looked at it again and looked at the job description, looked at the heart of the church and thought, ‘you know I don’t know if you’d get a better match’.

And I sent him back an email and said, ‘Well, mate, we’d be open to it’ and so we began a dialogue and in the process of talking with the crew here, this church here at Citywide had been on a journey too.

And they were uniquely positioned, the Mornington campus which was Citygate Baptist church had been formed when the bridge fell down, and it already had this creative edge trying to respond to community needs. Because they were brought together, they were Baptists and Anglicans and all kinds of people together after the bridge and that was part of the DNA. And over here in Lenah Valley where we are, at the campus here, there really had been a journey for them too of working out what it means to love the community. And then they became one campus and we had a Nepalese congregation and actually we have an art exhibition here right now, one of our Nepalese guys who communicated his journey as a refugee and coming to love Australia.

We talked to the church here and it seemed right to come back. And again, God confirmed it in so many ways. So much so that we had a pastor’s prayer team around us in our little church in Canada, and we went and said to our six prayer people, ‘we think God’s asking us to maybe go back to Australia’ and three of them said, ‘Oh good. Because God’s already told us, and we didn’t know how to tell you.’

Oh wow. Isn’t that amazing?

And then, subsequently we’d find after we agreed to come back, that Leanne’s mum had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s and also after we agreed to come back I found out my dad had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s. And so at so many levels, and even the fact that we were able to, which is almost miraculous in the Hobart housing climate, to find a house that we could rent straight away and then after a while we could purchase, so we didn’t have to move again.

And there’s this sense, I think it’s probably similar to you, I am so pleased at the moment just to put down roots. I don’t want to move again, we’re here, and it feels like this is a big enough challenge. To work out how do we do this kind of church. How do we be?

Our best way of describing it at the moment is that we want to follow Jesus into the adventure of whole life and authentic community. That’s our best way of trying to explain the heart of what we’re trying to do. We’re want to follow Jesus into the adventure of whole life and authentic community.

And so we’ve been on this journey as a church, trying to name what we’re trying to do and how to get there. And if feels like we’re now starting to get somewhere, we’re starting to put some legs on it.

Because it just takes time, doesn’t it? I mean, it takes a long time.

It’s taken eighteen months for them to look me over and me to look them over and we’re becoming friends. And I think there’s this sense of, and again God’s timing, we came back and we had the 40^th anniversary of the establishment of the Mornington campus, the 70^th anniversary of here at Lenah Valley, and the 10^th anniversary of them coming together, all in the same eighteen months. And then we had the Nepalese guys who we officially welcomed as the third congregation and we’re learning so much from them.

So it’s a gift. I now feel, it was a horrible disillusioning time leaving Fusion, but I am so much freer now than I ever have been. And it’s fun. This adventure is fun.

Isn’t that amazing?

And you haven’t rejected Fusion, you run Foundations courses regularly here.

Oh yeah, look the truth is, Fusion in Australia has stopped running Foundations courses, they’re still running them all around the world. But yeah, absolutely, we’re still trying to work out how to support the Fusion crew the best we can, and stay in touch.

But clearly, I feel like we’re working for the same path, that hasn’t changed. But we’re not part of Fusion in Australia in the same way, we’re now on the outside looking in, and love what they’re about and want to do whatever we can at all to encourage it.

And work through the local church and build community here where we are.

And love working in partnership with the other churches, getting to know the crew on the eastern shore and hear at Lenah Valley. One of the challenges of having more than one campus is that at Christmas time we have carols here at Lenah Valley and over at the eastern shore, and things happening everywhere. But it’s fun.

And I think there’s a chance to find a way to do church differently. So it’s good.

So you’re still fairly active online, do you want to give us info about your blog and podcast in case people want to check it out?

Sure. The blog is faithreflections.org and that’s really therapy. It’s me trying to work out, make sense of stuff. And also trying, like at the moment I’m trying to work out what does church membership look like? What’s the relationship of the church to other churches? So I’m just writing about that stuff.

I wrote a blog about the same sex marriage debate, working that through. I’ve written a lot about leadership, and all kinds of things. I started it back in 2010 and it’s sort of been …

It’s like what you were saying with your book, it’s actually as you write it out, you start to understand what you actually think about those things.

Yeah

Well that’s what I find.

Absolutely. And it got me off and away. Like it actually started, my first book was just an anthology of blogs. So I started to realise that it was possible.

Now with the church we’ve got a podcast where all the sermons every Sunday get uploaded. And also we are now broadcasting the sermons live to Facebook and they also get uploaded to YouTube. And we’re developing a congregation of online viewers, which is fascinating. Like, a lot of services come from The States, but people are enjoying having a Tasmanian thing they can tune in to and be part of. So Citywide Baptist Church on Facebook, every Sunday the sermon gets uploaded and is actually broadcast live.

And that’s just been a functional thing, we’ve had to because we’ve got these two campuses and I was wrestling with, ‘how do we take this journey together?’ and what it means is we’re actually simulcasting. I’m normally two weeks at Mornington because it’s a slightly bigger congregation than here, and then one week here. But either way, wherever I’m preaching from, the other side is getting the same sermon. So that’s what we’re doing.

Fantastic.

OK, a couple of questions I ask everybody. First one: When do you feel closest to God?

It varies. For me, in the morning with my cup of coffee in my quiet time is essential for me. That’s like a lifeline.

Some of my most precious moments have been in mission. Where you just, where God turns up and there’s stuff happening you can’t explain and you’re shoulder to shoulder with friends. I’m not naturally an extrovert. Being alone recharges my batteries, but I think probably the most profound times have been with friends.

A number of times me and my friends, when we were working with Fusion, we didn’t have the answers but we’d go into a school and we had to run a program and we’d say, ‘OK God, what are we going to do?’

Turn up now, please.

And he did. And people’s lives were changed.

So those probably are the two edges.

What does your quiet time look like, can I ask? Going into the intimate moments.

For the first 25 years of my life I used to feel guilty because I knew I needed to have it more regularly, but I cracked the code when I realised that if I have it with my first cup of coffee, so I have my cup of coffee in my hand, and I go and find a quiet space.

And I’ve been through different phases, like I’ve read different versions of the Bible, I went through a Message phase, I’m back to the NIV now, and I usually, I’ve got book marks in the Old Testament, in the Psalms, in the Gospels, and in the rest of the New Testament, working through them sequentially, gradually. But also I’ve got a list of stuff, an ongoing list of particular things to be praying for. My memory can be all over the place so I need to find things trigger my memory for prayer.

And I also, at the moment I get an email from Richard Rohr. So I read his email, because he’s a bit left of centre and I find that challenging so I find it helpful. And I’m reading through this new catechism thing from the Tim Keller mob. The more New Reformed mob. Just to read a bit of those things.

And I journal. Mostly I say, ‘God help’ but also ‘Jesus what are you saying?’ and it’s almost always the same thing, ‘Relax man, it’s ok, I’ve got you.’ But the journaling for me is often getting out my fears and stuff.

I find it hard to do it in less than half an hour. So it’s usually 45 minutes or an hour. But that space is pretty essential.

It’s interesting that in the author community, we’re encouraged to do something that’s called ‘Morning Pages’. Which is three pages of free writing in your journal. And I think, ‘isn’t that funny? Christians knew that one already.’ You know, read something good, write in your journal. Got that one.

Finally, what’s something about God and Christianity that you wish everyone knew?

I think some of the stuff that I’ve learned over the last six years is I think I spent a lot of years trying to avoid the pain. I would avoid difficult conversations. And I think one of the truths that’s right through the Bible – Jesus says, ‘unless you’re ready to give up your life for my sake, you won’t find it, but if you’re willing to give up your life that’s where you’ll find your life’ – that you’ll find your life on the other side of the pain.

I’m not avoiding it, not looking for coping strategies to deal with it, but that Christianity calls you to maturity, it calls you to wholeness. In Galatians it says, it’s for freedom you’ve been set free but don’t use your freedom as an excuse to do anything you want. It’s when you have coping strategies to avoid the pain, or where you run away or whatever it just keeps you immature.

So I feel like, as I look back on my life, I am grateful for the difficult moments. I am not grateful for them in the moment usually, but there’s something, when I step into it and stop avoiding it, I think there’s the idea that we can see in Ephesians 4 (which I keep coming back to) when the church is working well, when the gifts are working well, people are growing up. People are finding their unique purpose in life. When the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers are working well people are finding their unique works of service. This is what Paul says. He says, come on boys and girls, the church is meant to be this place that helps us grow up.

And I think we’ve mistaken what the task of a church is. I think we’ve bought into the consumer mindset that says that the church is a product to help me feel better. It’s a product I can consume. Whereas the church is meant to be a family that helps me grow up and find my right relationship with God and the world.

And the outcome of the church working well, and the outcome of Christianity when it works well is mature people. People who are grounded. Who aren’t tossed around. Paul’s picture of immaturity is being tossed around by life like you’re a cork on the waves. So I think we’ve settled for a weak version of Christianity that is tempting. I understand the temptation, if there was such a thing as a prosperity gospel that was true, I can understand the temptation. But it’s dangerous, that stuff. And we end up with churches full of immature people because we don’t have the hard discussions and we tell them that somehow God should save you from the pain.

Probably about four years ago I realised that Psalm 23 says ‘even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil because you are with me’. God doesn’t save us from the valley of the shadow of death in our lives.

Anyway, I’ll stop raving on.

No, that’s so great. Well, there’s so much to think about there. Thank you Matt very much for talking with us today.

Yeah, no worries.