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The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
Christian leaders join Dominic Steele for a deep end conversation about our hearts and different aspects of Christian ministry each Tuesday afternoon.
We share personally, pastorally and professionally about how we can best fulfill Jesus' mission to save the lost and serve the saints.
The discussion is broadcast live on Facebook then available in video on our website <u><b><a href="http://www.thepastorsheart.net">http://www.thepastorsheart.net</a></u></b> and via audio podcast.
The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
The big 50 year impact of Campus Bible Study - with Tony Payne, Al Stewart & Tracey Gowing
Today we review the 50 year impact of The University of New South Wales’ Campus Bible Study on Christian ministries across Australia and around the world - in raising up gospel workers, sending missionaries, planting churches and in Christian publishing.
Former Anglican Dean of Sydney Phillip Jensen led the ministry for thirty years till 2005. Since then Paul Grimmond and Carl Matthei have been senior chaplains.
Alan Stewart started studying at the University of New South Wales just two years after Phillip Jensen arrived as Anglican Chaplain. Alan was saved by Jesus in 1979 and went on to assist in the ministry, before becoming CEO of Anglican Youthworks, Bishop of Wollonong, head of Church Planting for Sydney Anglicans and then national director of the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches.
Tony Payne and Tracey Gowing started as undergraduate a few years after Alan. Tony went on to run the influential Christian publishing house Matthias Media, while Tracey led the Christian ministry at Cumberland College Christian Group before returning to UNSW as a senior staff member at Campus Bible Study.
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it is the pastor's heart and dominic steel. And 50 years ago, marking 50 years of ministry. Looking back, today we're talking about campus bible study at the university of new south wales. Old friends alan stewart, tony pain and tracy gowing are with me. A couple of weeks ago, hundreds of former students of the University of New South Wales headed back to their old campus in the eastern suburbs of Sydney to celebrate together the 50th birthday of their campus Christian group.
Speaker 1:Fifty years ago, 1975, the newly appointed Anglican chaplain, philip Jensen, started Bible studies just a few students in attendance at the university chaplaincy. Now Alan Stewart started university in 1977. Alan was saved by Jesus in 1979. He went on to go to theological college and then came back on the ministry staff in 1992 and stayed till 2002. And disclosure I was Alan's first ministry trainee. Tony Payne started university a couple of years later. He went on to found Matthias Media and Tony was my first Bible study group leader in 1987. And Tracy Gowing? It was 1984 that she started uni and she's been and gone a few few times but is actually still on the staff at Campus Bible Study. Well, al Stewart, let's start with you. And can we go to 1977? And what was it like joining up with that Bible study as a young undergraduate.
Speaker 2:I came down from the north coast beginning of 77, stayed in New College 200 rooms, all sorts of adolescent stupidity going on but God had put me in a room beside a young guy called Bryson Smith who is now a Presbyterian minister, was at Dubbo and now at Bathurst Amazing.
Speaker 1:Bible teacher.
Speaker 2:The smartest guy in the room, first-class honours et cetera and his zoology degree. I didn't go to campus Bible study. Campus Bible study came to me. So Philip Jensen used to come down and do a study in the New College Library before dinner on a Tuesday night and Bryson dragged me along to that and we'd sit in a circle of about 10 people and I can remember in that room was the first time the Bible ever made sense. So, yeah, anyway, campus Bible Study came to me.
Speaker 1:Was it at uni that you met Andrew Hurd?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I met Andrew Hurd 83 and 84, I was a ministry trainer. We didn't call it MTS or anything so sophisticated.
Speaker 1:We don't believe in acronyms here, but you did call it a ministry trainer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, we used to call it Santa's Helpers, but we'd never tell Santa.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Andrew Heard was a university student then and I got to know him. We'd go to the gym et cetera, so I've known Andrew for a long time. Yeah, and he was your first student minister. When I worked at Mount Druitt as a minister. Out there, andrew was a student minister for that year yeah. Now I can't claim that I taught him everything he knows, but I would think a substantial amount.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now we're going to talk in a moment about Matthias Media, but I mean, just on him, I found this. I think it was your second publication for Matthias Media.
Speaker 3:It was a very early one and I'm not sure Andrew's ever going to forgive me for that I persuaded him to lie on Brodie Beach and for us to take a photo of him to illustrate the good life when he had hair, and so, yeah, I think he's hoping that's been buried and we'll never see the light of day again.
Speaker 1:But there we are. You found it, I did.
Speaker 2:I think he's got better looking over the years. Oh yes, that hair thing, totally unnecessary.
Speaker 1:But in terms of impact of the ministry, you were telling me that even back then he had dreams of a church plant on the central coast.
Speaker 2:Andrew worked with us in 1991 and he and Kathy then were very clear that they wanted to go to the Central Coast and plant a church, and I think he's even saying it should be in Erina. So he is. They as a couple were very focused about what they wanted to do.
Speaker 1:Now, tony Payne, let's hear your story of starting as a uni student.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I also came from the North Coast. You've got North Coast people here. This is great God's own country up there. I came down from Lism, starting as a uni student. I also came from the North Coast. You've got North Coast people here, dominic, this is great God's own country up there.
Speaker 3:I came down from Lismore as a very keen but very confused, I'd say I was a high church charismatic Anglican. How about that? When I first arrived in Sydney and lobbed for various reasons into St Matthias and campus Bible study and, a bit like Al, I had never actually heard the Bible taught. I was a keen Christian but clueless, and I heard the Bible expounded and taught in a way that just completely blew my mind. Not only that the Bible could be like this and you could understand the Bible like this, but that God could speak to you in this way and change your life in this way, and it reordered everything for me. And one of the things I remember most particularly I think I mean Philip Jensen and the whole ministry there had a reputation for very strong, clear Bible teaching.
Speaker 1:I mean, when did you arrive? 1981. Right, so this is six years later, but already a reputation.
Speaker 3:Yeah, very much so. And when I first got there and was hearing the preaching and especially coming to grips with the charismatic movement because the charismatic movement was a huge issue at the time, like it was dividing churches it was a massive question. And the thing that changed me enormously was the combination of strong, clear teaching that actually dug into the truth, dug into what the Bible said, combined with a very warm, patient pastoral care for me as a person as I thought through all those things over a 12-, 18-month period. So there was a wonderful combination of the Bible, clearly and powerfully taught that challenged my thinking, and a personal pastoral care for me as a person that helped me come to rethink and change my thinking over time.
Speaker 1:You say the charismatic issue was a big issue at the time. I mean, I'd probably say now, if you're like you've got the Pentecostal churches over here and the evangelical churches over there, it was much, much messier back then Very much.
Speaker 3:So it was very much more intermixed and it was a very live issue Should evangelicalism be charismatic? Was this a genuine reform movement that should change all of us? And it was very much in just about every evangelical church, this question, and so it was a massive pastoral issue and the way that it was dealt with, certainly for me and for many people, was very powerful and very helpful, because there was that combination of the word powerfully taught and the person who needs to be cared for and allowed to think things through, and that was a value of the ministry then. That just kind of has been part of it ever since, I think.
Speaker 1:Let's go to Tracey Gowing. It was a couple of years later 1984, that you came to uni, tracey, yes that's right, yes.
Speaker 4:And as I was walking along to Anzac Parade to go to UniSearch House to register, someone said, would you like to study the Bible at uni? And I said yes, I was actually looking for St Matthias because my scripture teacher at school had told me about Narelle Jarrett and Matthias and campus Bible study, so I'd heard about it. I was a very unthought-out Christian, didn't really know how to read the Bible God gave you a Bible study leader in Tony Payne.
Speaker 4:Well, yeah, tony was my staff worker in Goldstone College and Al was my first year Bible study leader on campus, and in that group there was well, by the end of the semester, it was just me and the two leaders. It was fantastic.
Speaker 3:The best pastoral care.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it was fantastic so that pastoral care and I think for me it was working out. Oh, you can actually read the Bible. There's a story from Genesis through to Revelation.
Speaker 1:And learning biblical theology.
Speaker 4:And learning biblical theology, yeah, and understanding what is it that I believe? So for me the charismatic movement had come through Kempsey, so North Coast Girl, and I didn't get involved in it because I'd written it off, but I didn't really have the theology or the understanding to work out why. And so Campus Bible Study helped me have a, I suppose, gospel vision, and a global gospel vision. I think that the gospel is not just for me, it's for everyone, and so for me to actually think about do I go to the nations for the gospel? So that call that we are to be people who are committed to seeing everyone know Jesus, not just here in Sydney, not just in Australia, but the whole globe, was pretty significant for me.
Speaker 1:The place you went was Cumberland College.
Speaker 4:It was yes. Yes, that's what it was called for a little while yes, tell us about the ministry there. Well, I'd been blessed by coming and working after Kim Little had been working there and also Andrew Reid before that. So Andrew Reid wanted to give a trial of having some staff on campus, and so I hit a campus which was also committed to reading the Bible, wanting people to know Jesus, and so I got to ride on the wave of students and staff wanting to learn how to serve others. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:I think you did more than just ride the wave Tracy, though, didn't you? That's very modest of you. You pushed the wave along a little bit yourself, well, I suppose.
Speaker 4:So I think Kim had set things up and so it meant what do we do? We had an opportunity to raise up men and women who wanted to know, wanted to serve Jesus with a lifetime, yeah, faithfully working away at yeah, helping people. I suppose people leave the campus not just wanting to look after people's health, but to see that we can, you know, maybe change the whole health system. That was sort of the vision to go out and, yeah, preach Christ in your workplace, full-time ministry in your families.
Speaker 1:And you've had a big impact both at Cumberland College and later in helping particularly young women think Christian ministry.
Speaker 4:Yeah, one of my big dreams is to see as many women equipped to teach the Bible and to take the opportunities they have to see whoever they run into know Jesus. So it's you know, why did God make me single? Well, this is the reason, isn't it that? The opportunity to persuade women that they can do it, they can teach other people the Bible, they can take risks and help people know Jesus.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a great cause for Thanksgiving, isn't it, to see that that sort of thing has been happening repeatedly. You did some training in God's kindness at UNSW, got some great training in the Bible and in ministry and in sort of the values and principles of Bible ministry. Off you go somewhere else Other people have been doing that as well. You jump on board, give it a push along.
Speaker 3:Other women get raised up, and then women that you've raised up and trained are now going other places to do the same thing in other places, and that's the way God works, isn't it?
Speaker 4:Yeah, it is, it's 2, Timothy 2, isn't?
Speaker 3:it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's passing it on the grace is the thing that gives us strength, and we have the honour and privilege of seeing people who are better at doing things than us doing it elsewhere.
Speaker 1:So that's what I love you, Matthias, Media. I mean, that's been a massive thing in the evangelical ecosystem for a long time now, but it kind of really began in your lounge room and under Philip Jensen's leadership.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was one of those many, many examples and we could tell many stories and I think in some ways our stories are all like this that ministry at CBS and the culture at that time and ever since has been a combination of the urgency to take the gospel to the world and people who just happen to come along and have particular strengths and gifts, and so what could we build around that person?
Speaker 3:What could that person do? How could that person take the gospel? And that's what happened with me. It's what happened with Archie Poulos when he came along, and so they started a ministry to the Greek community and we had Greek Bible fellowship. And this happened again and again.
Speaker 3:And for me I had a degree in communications I didn't think I was going to use that really. I was going to use that Really. I was just going to be a pastor and go back to the North Coast. That's what my plan was. But an opportunity came up. I needed to pause for a little while for some family reasons.
Speaker 3:Some money became available because that venerable old Anglican newspaper, the Church Record, sort of went into kind of receivership and they donated some money. And so Phillips said why don't we start a little publishing thing? You used to study journalism, did you? We could do that, and so, with not the slightest clue what we were doing, but with a vision to take the word out and to reproduce some of the thinking and resources that we'd been developing at CVS, we started a little publishing thing in a very small room in Kingsford in the most dilapidated, rundown rabbit warren of an office you've ever seen, and using a Gestetner printer that was positioned out in a little sort of alcove near the toilet. It was really high-class stuff, but that's where it all started.
Speaker 2:It was a classy publication. My first copies of the briefing were badly gastetaned A4 pages, not even stapled in a plastic bag.
Speaker 3:Oh, but we got sophisticated as it went along. We added a staple and then we started printing double-sided.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, no, it did get sophisticated very quickly, but I remember the first thing. I think oh, I paid for this, didn't.
Speaker 4:I you did go colour, do you remember that? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:First two colour, then four colour. It was all right. The vision was really to multiply. The whole thing is about multiplication, as we've been talking about, was to multiply what the ministry of the word was doing in that place and see how far we could spread it. And so, as we developed, for example, bible study resources and sermons that people were finding useful, why don't we package them up and spread them around to other people? And because there was nobody doing that really in Australia at that point, all our Christian books and resources came either from the US or from the UK. There was a very small Australian publishing industry, not much and we found that there was a real need for locally produced, Bible-centred, high-quality ministry resources like Bible studies, like Two Ways to Live is a training course, like Just for Starters, bible studies, like all these sorts of things. The churches said we can use this to multiply the ministry of the word and to train Christians to do that work.
Speaker 3:And so we very surprisingly found that there was a real need and, instead of going back to the North Coast as a pastor, I ended up doing that for the next 25 or 30 years.
Speaker 1:Now I came to church, evangelical Church to St Matthias, in mid-1985. And then in January 1986, my friend said we should go to this conference in Katoomba. And so I went with them to this, this conference in Katoomba. And so I went with them to this big conference in Katoomba a circus tent, I don't know, 5,000, 7,000 people, and actually became a Christian that weekend. But tell us about those early days. I mean because Katoomba Convention had been going for a long time. It was in the doldrums. Philip Jensen became the chair and then suddenly it made an explosive impact. Al, you were around watching.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think my first convention was 82 and then I got invited to be on a committee 83, and I was involved for 30 years. So, I think I did every like parking and bookshop and ended up. I was chairman of the board for a while and would have preferred to be doing parking really.
Speaker 1:So I kind of did everything. The circus tent was the highlight. Yeah, those days in the 80s in the circus tent, oh yeah, they were the glory days.
Speaker 2:My number one memory of, I think Katoomba is Don Carson's. I have a Dream talk that he did in the circus tent was just I think it must be nearly 40 years ago and it's still kind of sparking. I still think, wow, yeah, that was great. And the amount of work involved by the people behind the scenes to get that tent put up and et cetera, that was, yeah, amazing. Someone else can probably tell the story of the 1988 one where I think Philip Jensen spoke about the mentioned the first fleet and the storm was coming in and I was sitting on the platform and you could hear the canvases flapping backwards and forwards as he're talking about the first fleet and I'm thinking is this safe?
Speaker 1:or yeah. I mean, I remember Philip talking about that later and there's 6,000, 7,000 of us in the circus tent, the biggest circus tent that you could hire in Australia at the time and the storm was wild and you weren't sure if the tent was going to make it through the night. And you're thinking. Well, he described it up. I was speaking, I was teaching the Bible, I was the chair of the convention.
Speaker 1:Should I say, stop halfway through my Bible, talk everyone go out, everybody, out, everybody out and I'm trying to focus on my notes and trying to communicate Christ and got this other conversation going on in my head about what should we be doing, and I think that was the last year in the circus tent.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it wasn't lack of courage that stopped. It just wasn't available after that, and then we went and extended the auditorium up the top and yeah so.
Speaker 1:But there was a. I mean your memories, tony, I mean prophetic, bold Bible teaching.
Speaker 3:I remember some of John Chapman's talks, his talks about holiness. That ended up becoming some Matthias Media resources down the track, actually the little book A Foot in Two Worlds and from Sinner to Saint. His talk on holiness in the Christian life, how not to be a legalistic, perfectionistic holiness person, but how God calls us to pursue holiness. That was very life-changing for me in the mid to late 80s I can't remember exactly when it was.
Speaker 1:Well, I can tell you, because it was 1986.
Speaker 4:Was it.
Speaker 1:And the Saturday night in 1986, john Chapman on Hebrews 12, and the line was fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of your faith, and run with perseverance. The race marked out for us, not getting caught in the things that hinder or the sins that entangle. And I mean I think I'd been working grace out, but I hadn't worked out lordship. And that moment in the tent, I thought I was going out with a non-Christian girl and behaving badly with a non-Christian girl and going out with her was a thing that hindered and behaving badly was a sin that entangled and behaving badly was a sin that entangled, and John Chapman said the Christian life is not a short sprint but a long-distance race.
Speaker 1:And fix your eyes on Jesus. And the other thing he did was, he said, since we're surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses Now I now know there's a context of Hebrews 11 and all those saints, but at the time it just felt like the 7,000 people in the tent.
Speaker 4:They're all going to bear witness for you. What are you doing?
Speaker 1:And I just was. I could take you to where I was sitting in that auditorium and I heard the voice of God that night on the mountain in the we now call it a car park, but in that circus tent. And it was two hours later that I trusted Christ and sitting with my friend Russell Powell talking about what John had said from Hebrews 12 that night. And yeah, that holiness talk has been published, and when you published it I thought oh, there it is.
Speaker 3:It's the power of the word, isn't it? And that's as I look back over the whole ministry. That's the thing I'm most struck by and thankful for and I think changed me most is the trust in and confidence in, if you teach and preach what the word is really saying and you make it clear by saying it's not saying this and it's opposed to that and it is saying this and this is what it means for you. It's life-changing, because God's word is so powerful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean memory from you, Tracy Gale.
Speaker 4:I have a lot of memories, I think for the Leviticus talks on holiness really struck me.
Speaker 1:That was the same weekend, john Woodhouse, john Woodhouse, that went over my head.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think that was that profound sense of holiness. All of them are all sort of mushed together. I do remember being on Ustering and it was so wet we had to put pallets out. Here we are trying to deal with the weather, so I don't know whether that was the same weekend as that one. And I think the other time was John Chapman speaking and we lost power, but being struck by the silence as we heard God's word.
Speaker 1:As he tried to kind of shout, it just kept going, it kept going.
Speaker 4:And he shouted, he spoke, and we heard a wonderful message about Jesus. So I think the other thing that strikes me about the whole ministry too, is how it did bring people from everywhere together, and so you met people from Baptist, church, anglican churches, and so that unity around the word of God was, I think, quite significant for me, just meeting different people.
Speaker 1:Let's talk the pastor's heart, because I mean the three big guys there have been well, philip Jensen and Paul Grimmond and Carl Matti.
Speaker 4:This is at CBS, yeah, at.
Speaker 3:Campus Bible Study. No, you missed one. I don't mean me or Al or Tracy Cole Marshall, cole, marshall, cole Marshall was huge in the Ministry of Campus Bible Study and it wouldn't have been what it was without Cole, because it's almost like if you wanted to summarise these last 50 years and what that ministry was about, it was a combination of this powerful preaching and a people focus. That's all about training and that was really what really Cole brought to the ministry with.
Speaker 2:Philip.
Speaker 3:It was almost the meshing together of classic evangelical powerful preaching and personal discipleship training via the Navigators that Cole came in. It was kind of like the meshing of those two things. It was part of the secret sauce, I think in some ways.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 3:So you needed to add in an extra.
Speaker 2:It was the quiet talks with Cole. You know the arm around the shoulder and I remember many of those Likewise.
Speaker 4:yeah, and the pastoral heart. Yes, that when, if you broke up with your boyfriend, he was there and working out how to help sort that out. So yeah, no, you never broke up with your….
Speaker 2:I never broke up, anyway, yeah, but yeah you're right.
Speaker 1:You're right, absolutely. What are you thankful for about Philip Jensen in the pastor's?
Speaker 2:heart Many things Became a Christian. Through his Bible teaching he's really been kind of showing me how to live as a dad, as a husband, in so many ways. He married me to Kathy. He baptised me on the same day as my first child, put his hand on my shoulder several times about going into ministry work, so you know how long have you got? I think what's impressed me about Phil is not just entrepreneurial ability et cetera, but I know how soft he is personally. He really is a big sook and loves people and everything. And yet the level of pain he's been prepared to take to step up and say hard things and confront things and so on, and so I know how much he hurts but he still does what's necessary. That's what really has impressed me. Yeah, tracy, about me, yeah.
Speaker 4:Tracy About Philip.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think. Well, he was the one who helped me understand the gospel and so very thankful for him being willing to do that. I remember he came and did what was a dialogue meeting at Goldstein and his personalness in talking to us and modeling to us. How do you go about helping someone know Jesus better and what are the false views that you want to expose? To help people recognize they really don't understand what a Christian is. People recognise they really don't understand what a Christian is.
Speaker 3:So his sharpness and articulateness in helping us know how to preach the gospel. Yeah, tony, I'd echo both of those things. I won't just say the same thing again. I'll try and say something different. I think for me, I always appreciated how he taught the Bible and read the Bible and was happy to go. Taught the Bible and read the Bible and was happy to go where the Bible led him, even when it led him to not where he wanted to go or led him to new thoughts.
Speaker 3:It was his constant curiosity and trust in what was the Bible really saying and then a willingness to actually change and rethink what we were doing in light of that Because that's really the story of the ministry is this constant rethinking and relooking in light of what we're seeing in Scripture and in light of what's happening, of what we should do next. And so this combination of a kind of very strong conservative we will not shift from what the Bible is saying and yet this constant inventive, creative reinventing of how to actually do it along the way, in response to the current conditions. So, that combination in him is very unusual.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for coming in Our guests today. Al Stewart, tony Payne and Tracy Gowing all of them involved on the staff in one way or another of the Campus Ministry, campus Bible Study at the University of New South Wales. My name's Dominic Steele. You've been with us on the Pastor's Heart and we'll look forward to your company next Tuesday afternoon.
