The Centre for Christian Living exists to bring biblical ethics to everyday issues, and on each episode of our podcast, we seek to do exactly that. But every now and then, we like to share stories of how God’s people seek to apply biblical ethics to the everyday and specific issues in their own lives.
In this episode of the CCL podcast, we get to know yet another member of our student team: a Moore Theological College student named Michael Parker. Michael grew up in country Australia in Victoria, and in some ways, his path to ministry and Moore College was quite typical. But in many ways, Michael’s journey was not typical at all.
It is our hope and prayer that as you hear Michael’s story, you’ll come away encouraged—encouraged and eager to pray for and support not just Michael and his future in ministry, but also the College as it carries out its vision of seeing God glorified by men and women living for and proclaiming Jesus Christ, growing healthy churches and reaching the lost.
Links referred to:
- Episode 71: A different path to ministry with Brooke Hazelgrove
- Episode 74: Answering the call to faith and ministry with Jordan Cunningham
- Moore College Open Events
- The Moore College Student Support Fund
- Our podcast listener survey
- Support the work of the Centre
Runtime: 29:57 min.
Transcript
Please note: This transcript has been edited for readability.
Introduction
Karen Beilharz: The Centre for Christian Living exists to bring biblical ethics to everyday issues, and on each episode of our podcast, we seek to do exactly that. But every now and then, we like to share stories of how God’s people seek to apply biblical ethics to the everyday and specific issues in their own lives.
If you’ve been listening to the podcast for a while, you’ll remember our previous interviews with Brooke Hazelgrove in episode 71 and Jordan Cunningham in episode 74. In this episode of the CCL podcast, we get to know yet another member of our student team: a Moore Theological College student named Michael Parker.
Michael grew up in country Australia in Victoria, and in some ways, his path to ministry and Moore College was quite typical: he was raised in a Christian home, he attended a Christian school for high school, and he heard the call to ministry during his university years. But in many ways, as you’ll soon hear, Michael’s journey was not typical at all.
It is our hope and prayer that as you hear Michael’s story, you’ll come away encouraged—encouraged and eager to pray for and support not just Michael and his future in ministry, but also the College as it carries out its vision of seeing God glorified by men and women living for and proclaiming Jesus Christ, growing healthy churches and reaching the lost.
[Music]
KB: Hello and welcome to the Centre for Christian Living podcast, where we seek to apply biblical ethics to everyday issues. My name is Karen Beilharz and I’m the Executive Assistant to Centre for Christian Living for Acting Director Peter Orr. I’m coming to you from Sydney, Australia, and I’m joined today by a member of our student team: Michael Parker, who is now in his fourth year at Moore College. Thanks for joining us, Michael!
Michael Parker: No worries!
Family and upbringing
KB: We’re going to have a little chat about what God has done in your life and is doing in your life. So Michael, you weren’t always a Moore College student, living in Sydney. Let’s hear a bit about your life before you came here. You told me you grew up in Warrnambool [Laughter]—I knew I’d get that wrong!—which is a tourist town three hours west of Melbourne in Victoria, so south of the border. Who’s in your family, what did your parents do work-wise, and what was your upbringing there like?
MP: Yeah. “Warrnambool”: you don’t have to pronounce all the letters. [Laughter] It’s almost one syllable.
KB: That’s my problem.
MP: Yeah. I grew up with mum and dad, and then three siblings: older sister Beth, older brother Josh and younger sister Sally. My parents: my dad worked in a printing kind of shop and my mum was a primary school teacher, and she specialised in music teaching in primary schools.
My upbringing was fun: it was a pretty laidback. We lived in a beach town quite close to the beach, so we often walked over there. Yeah, it was great! We’d go to church. We’d have Bible stories before bedtime. I hung out with friends a lot. That’s what it was like, growing up there.
KB: It sounds lovely and idyllic!
Conversion
KB: You heard the gospel. Was it mostly through family?
MP: Yeah, family and church, I think. Those bedtime stories were mostly stories like David and Goliath and—
KB: Noah’s ark.
MP: —Noah’s ark, yeah, but then some from the Gospels. One I remember particularly was Zacchaeus in the tree and Jesus telling him to come down, and then him selling all his possession. So there’s a few that stick in my memory.
I don’t remember a time where I didn’t know the gospel, which is a privilege, now that I look back on that. But things like that—that family Bible time—but also our church was good as well.
KB: That’s wonderful!
Family tragedy
KB: So when you were eight years old, something very sad happened: your father was diagnosed with a brain tumour and he died. That obviously had a big impact on you and your family. What do you remember about that time—when he was ill? What was that like for your family? How did his faith influence you?
MP: Yeah, it was a big change. I was quite young: I was about eight years old. There’s a lot I don’t remember, but some of the things I remember are just him moving to different hospitals, and some long train trips as we’d go to different parts of the state to the different hospitals he was in. I remember there was a lot of support from our church—people making meals for us and babysitting us kids, as my mum would be with my dad in hospital for a lot of the time.
My father’s faith did certainly influence me, even at that young age. The tumour had a pretty big impact on his cognition and mobility, so he couldn’t communicate or—this is my memory of it—he couldn’t communicate very well, at least. But he was always very happy and content—especially when we’d come to visit. That’s what I remember. I can remember my mum telling me that the medical staff were just astounded that he was that way, since a lot of their experience of similar patients was that they were frustrated and scared at the position they were in—the illness they had. You can understand that. But for him, it was not that way, and I can remember my mum telling me it was because he had faith that Jesus was with him and that he was secure—that he knew that he was going to heaven. That has stuck with me since then. I think from that time, I thought, “I’m going to have that same faith.”
KB: Wow, that’s wonderful! Then after he died, how did your father’s passing affect you and your family’s lives?
MP: Yeah. It was quite different. We still had an enormous amount of support from the church, helping us—helping my mum as she was dealing with his passing. For us as kids, there was a difference: I think the bedtime Bible stories stopped happening. I don’t remember them happening as much. There was a change in that regard. But in terms of our Christian lives, we were still going to church and all that kind of stuff.
Childhood faith
KB: You told me your family continued to attend church and participate in church life. They had Bible study at your house—that sort of thing—as you grew older. How would you describe what your faith was like at this stage?
MP: Yeah, I guess it was almost like a stubborn faith. It wasn’t growing; it was there. I believed and I didn’t even entertain not believing, really.
I guess it wasn’t really tested either. No one was really ever having a go at me for my faith. It was kind of comfortable, I guess. So stubborn and comfortable [Laughter]. I was happy believing what I believed, and I was happy not exploring it further. [Laughter]
KB: Sure, sure.
Teenage faith
KB: Then as you grew up, you started going to a Presbyterian high school, because your mother started working there. How did things change for you, faith-wise, as you became a teenager?
MP: Yeah, so at the Christian school, there was Bible study kind of integrated into the curriculum. I don’t know if this is true for most teenagers, but at least when I was a teenager, it wasn’t cool to like school [Laughter]. It’s fun to be with your friends—hang out with your friends all day—but anything related to school and learning was just looked down upon a bit. I didn’t like reading the Bible. I didn’t like anything to do with it. I still had my faith. I was still happy believing it. But it was seen with the same lens as Maths or English: it was like, “Oh, I don’t want to deal with that!”
KB: Did that extend beyond school to church as well? Or was it completely different?
MP: There was a bit of difference there, actually, I think. It felt like church was the place for it! [Laughter] I didn’t want to deal with it at school, but it was more a comfort: “This is what church is.” Again, “I don’t need to explore my faith further. I don’t need to try and grow it or really see what kind of impact it should have on me. But I come to this place expecting to hear the sermon,” I guess.
KB: Yeah, sure. You also talked about becoming quite withdrawn during high school. Was there a particular reason why?
MP: I can’t pinpoint a moment. But I just progressively began to get quite annoyed with people—inwardly; it never expressed itself. I was always polite and friendly with people. But people just got on my nerves. I got quite irritated, and annoyance turned to bitterness and even seething anger underneath. I was always very inward. I don’t think many people would have seen that I was not having a great time. But I never made any outbursts or things like that.
KB: Yeah, that’s interesting. Was this attitude more to do with people’s behaviour, or the way you viewed humanity, or was it something else?
MP: I just didn’t have time for people, I think [Laughter]. I can’t really put my finger on exactly what it was—the way people talked, the things they talked about. I had a few good friends—close friends—who I really liked hanging out with and enjoying time together. But most people I didn’t have time for.
KB: Sure. Yep.
University faith
KB: After high school, you went straight to university, and you chose to go to Charles Sturt University in Wagga Wagga. For our international listeners, Wagga Wagga is in New South Wales, and it’s a bit of a drive from Warrnambool in Victoria, where you grew up. Why Charles Sturt? Also, you studied Science: why did you choose Science?
MP: Yeah, Charles Sturt. It was quite a drive from where I grew up in Warrnambool. I decided that I just wanted to leave, essentially. I didn’t like how many people knew me, and I didn’t like how many people thought they knew me. I didn’t know if they knew me, but I knew they thought they knew me. I don’t know if that makes sense. I essentially wanted a clean slate—for no real reason. I wasn’t a town pariah or anything like that, but I just wanted to get away.
Wagga Wagga: there’s two in the name. But if you go there, just say “Wagga”—just say one [Laughter], ‘cause they’ll look at you funny if you say it twice.
My older sister at the time lived in a town close by, so I felt like there was some kind of relational connection that I could lean on. Also, it didn’t feel like a big city, which was good, because that was what I was used to from Warrnambool. But it felt like there was stuff happening. It felt like a pretty vibrant university at the time.
KB: Yep, sure. And why Science?
MP: Oh yes! I liked studying physics and maths at school in the later years, and I didn’t know what I wanted to do. It was just a bit of a thing to go to university. In hindsight, I probably should have done a gap year to think about it a bit more. But I just wanted to go. I wanted to keep studying what I liked doing, so that was maths and physics.
KB: Yep. So while you were a student, you started going to church and the university group on campus, which is part of the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students. That marked something of a turning point in your life. What happened and how did it affect your faith?
MP: Yep. I still had this stubborn, comfortable faith, if you like. I saw a poster for the Unichurch there, and it made sense for me to go, so I went. I just started doing the things they were doing: I joined a Bible study, I went to the church they ran on Sunday nights, and then one of the ministry apprentices there asked me if I wanted to catch up during the week to read the Bible with him. Some of those things I was more willing to do than others. But for the one-to-one in particular, I remember when he asked me, thinking in my head, “No” [Laughter], because this was my attitude to the Bible: I don’t need to read it; I know what I know and I’m comfortable with that. I was thinking, “No”, but because I was there and I was just doing what everyone else did, I said, “Yes.”
Eventually that became my favourite part of the week: I realised, “Oh. There is a lot I don’t know, and it’s actually pretty good to uncover that and to think about the implications.” Really, that’s what it was—thinking about the implications of this faith I had on my life, because I had the faith, but it didn’t really have an impact. I wasn’t really living particularly Christianly. I wasn’t really following Christ all that well. But discovering the implications of the gospel and what that means for taking up your cross, denying yourself and following Jesus, that’s where it really started to change for me.
[Music]
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PO: Now let’s get back to our program.
Post-university faith
KB: You told me you didn’t finish your Science degree in the end, and you ran out of subjects that you actually interested in.
MP: Yes.
KB: What did you do next and why?
MP: Yeah, so through that time, I was getting more and more involved with the Christian group on campus. I started to realise that this is what I love doing. As the older Christians were doing it with me when I was in first year, when I got a bit older, I was doing it with other first years and realising that, “This is good. I like this pattern of discovery and application, and then helping other Christians do that as well.”
I was encouraged to try a bit of theological study, so I did a Diploma of Theology. That went well. I realised that was something that I could see myself studying further.
KB: Yeah. Was the Diploma of Theology very similar to what Moore Theological College does? Is it different?
MP: Yeah, very similar—very similar to first year.
KB: Oh okay.
Apprenticeship/ministry training scheme (MTS)
KB: So after you finished the Diploma, you got married, and also, like many of our students at College, you did a ministry apprenticeship with the Christian group at Charles Sturt. What made you want to do that, and what sort of things were you doing? Also, what were some of the things you were learning as you doing it?
MP: Yeah. The ministry apprentices when I was a student were faithfully serving, and God used them incredibly in my life. I became more and more convinced that I wanted to have the same opportunity for God to use me in the same way. That took a long time to come to that conclusion. Eventually I decided that would be a good thing to do, and others were encouraging me to do that as well.
The kinds of things I was doing: it all kind of revolved around that Sunday evening fellowship. That was the constant part of every week. But through the week, it was reading the Bible one-to-one with younger Christians and doing topical courses, like training Growth Group leaders, or doing apologetics or things like that. Also, leading Bible studies as well.
KB: What were some of the things that you learned while doing the apprenticeship?
MP: I learned a lot. I learned a lot—because this was probably the first time I was enjoying what I was doing [Laughter]. So it didn’t feel like work to me. But I quickly learned that even though I was enjoying it, it was taking a toll on my energy and that kind of thing. So even though it was fun, I still needed to rest. I learned that almost the hard way.
Another thing was when I was a teenager, I had that idea of being really annoyed by people. That started to go away pretty quickly as I got to Uni and understood the implications of the gospel. But there were still some remnants hanging around. At the time I started MTS, one of those remnants was I had this idea that if someone wanted to be my friend, they would approach me and they would engage me, because otherwise, if I did it, I might be annoying them [Laughter], because that’s how I felt when I was a bit younger At this stage, I’d already realised that was not a true thing, but I hadn’t gotten past it yet. So straight away when I started MTS, I was, like, “Okay, no, I need to be engaging with people. I need to be genuine in my efforts to get to know and love people.” That was the big focus of my early time in my ministry apprenticeship.
KB: So did the reception you receive from doing that surprise you?
MP: Not really, because it was something that I had already learned, but just hadn’t really put into practice yet. Another thing that’s important to know is that I’m a pretty massive introvert, so I knew that that would take a lot of effort and energy. It did, but the more I did it, the more I realised that it’s like I’m working out a muscle: it gets easier over time and takes less energy. It just required effort.
KB: Yeah, yeah. Your second year of ministry apprenticeship was very different to your first. Why was that?
MP: My first year of my apprenticeship was in 2019, which meant my second year was in 2020, and a lot of people’s 2020, well, yep! Everyone’s was different. That looked like the start of the year, everything was happening as normal. We were planning our kick-off camp—our first event of the year—to welcome first years into our group. It was about to happen, and then in March 2020, everything got shut down, and lots of things changed. You can probably remember early on, it was, “This will last a month [Laughter]or maybe three months, and then we’ll get back to normal.” But as it dragged on, we realised we needed to change the way we do things, and so, like for everyone else, it was moving everything online.
KB: Yep. It’s funny: my Facebook memories are now bringing up stuff from around that time, and it’s all the home learning I had to do with my kids. I’m glad that’s over! [Laughter]
MP: Yeah. The interesting thing is I was an introvert, and I enjoyed doing the people side and engaging with people, but realised it had a certain drain on me. When we went online, I thought, “Oh, okay, this is nice. A bit of reprieve from that!” But I quickly realised, no, it’s the opposite. [Laughter]It’s even more tiring! So 2020 was a hard year.
KB: Yeah.
Another family tragedy
KB: In addition to the pandemic, another sad thing happened to you around then as well: you and your wife Ruth had a miscarriage. How did that impact your lives and your ministry?
MP: Yeah, it was a tough year to have something like that happen. It really shook us. For me in particular, I was grieving, and then kind of trying to pull myself back up so I could get back into my ministry apprenticeship and help everyone else who was having a really hard year as well. But I kind of collapsed mentally.
It was pretty difficult: I lost a lot of ability to do my ministry work. I can remember my trainer sent through a list of the tasks I’d normally take care of, and he asked me to categorise them into “Very hard”, “Hard” and “Possible” or something like that. [Laughter] Or “Doable”. I looked at it and I sent back a reply: “Then I need to have an ‘Impossible’ category.” I think out of maybe 10 things, nine of them I thought were “Impossible” for me to do, and one was “Hard”. I thought, “I can try to do the hard one.” It was things like meeting and reading the Bible with people, and running Growth Groups and things like that, and helping run our online church.
The reason I think that all those things were impossible was I just couldn’t focus on things of faith or engagement with God. I’d open the Bible and try to read, and I couldn’t look at the words and I couldn’t concentrate. But all through that time, it never occurred to me to think that God wasn’t good. It just never left my brain. I think that goes back to that early time when I first decided that I was going to have that same faith as my dad. It was just “This is a really hard thing and I can’t even talk to God about it, but I still know that he’s good and I still know I will get through it on the other side. He’ll bring me through.”
KB: Yeah, yeah. So great. It’s a testimony to God’s grace in a very difficult situation.
MP: Yes.
Theological study
KB: After you finished your ministry apprenticeship, you decided to come to Moore College to study, which is great for us. Do you want to talk a bit about your decision-making process behind that? Why further study? You’d already done the Diploma of Theology. Also, why Moore?
MP: Yeah. Well, I guess it was kind of the logical thing: I did the Diploma and thought, “Yeah, this is good. Maybe I’ll try and see if I can do the activity of ministry, if you like, in amongst people’s lives in a ministry apprenticeship.” I thought that was good, even with a really hard second year. Then I thought, “Yeah, I’m going to continue to keep taking steps in this direction and see if God keeps bringing us this way.”
There were other options to Moore College and in considering them, we realised we couldn’t make a bad choice of college from what we were considering. So there were a few superficial factors in our decision-making that led us—leaned us—towards Moore College. But I think the one that really put us here over some other ones was Moore’s focus on going through the whole degree as a cohort together. That was because at the time, as far back as I was even considering doing a ministry apprenticeship, Ruth and I were thinking we might end up anywhere. We don’t have a particular desire to do a specific kind of ministry in a specific kind of place. But God might put us anywhere, and we’re willing to go anywhere. We thought there’s a good chance we might end up somewhere really isolated. Going through with a cohort of good friends—people in ministry—would be good in order to have some support for wherever we end up in the future.
Theological study during COVID
KB: Your first year at Moore was quite challenging, because it was during COVID. You said your first semester was in person and your second semester was online. What was that like, and how did living in College accommodation help with that—or not help? [Laughter]
MP: Yeah. Well, first semester was a big change: moving to the city, and meeting hundreds of people across our year and then at our church as well. It was a lot. Then going into lockdown in semester 2: that was challenging.
But there were some good things about it. It meant that we could get to know our community. Where we were living was about an hour away from where the main campus is: we live in some student accommodation, so there are a few other families out there. We have a study hall out there, and although everything was shut down in the city, the dimensions of the study hall and the amount of people we had meant that we could meet in there physically at our computers, with masks on, and attend class, but then in things like discussion groups, we could actually turn around in our chairs and chat to each other, which was good—a good way to break it up and a good way to form the relationships that we had out there, and feel more established.
KB: Yeah, yeah. I can imagine that would really help after just screens all the time.
MP: Yeah!
Lessons from God
KB: Now you’re in fourth year. What are some of the big things that God has been teaching you since you’ve been at College?
MP: Yeah, so many! I was thinking about this and I think what brings everything together is these two seemingly opposite things: the fact that God keeps growing me and equipping me, and I’m becoming more and more capable to do ministry and share the gospel with people. That’s a good thing for me to realise, because I generally do not have a great opinion of my abilities. So to see the way that God has grown me in that way has been good for my confidence in what he’s teaching me. But at the same time, I’m becoming more and more aware of my finitude and my capacity—or my limited capacity, I should say, as a human, but also just as me.
I recognise that the more I learn, the more there is I don’t know, and it’s kind of resulted in me having this disposition of confident humility—that I’m confident that God is going to use me the way he’s going to use me, but I’m humble in that it’s not me. [Laughter] It’s been a helpful thing to realise, I think.
KB: Yep.
MP: The other thing is he’s just taught me to be diligent. I was a terrible Uni student—a shocking procrastinator. So leaving study to do ministry apprenticeship and then coming back to study—the prospect was quite daunting for me: I thought I might slip back into that procrastination. But straight away, I realised that God had really changed me through my apprenticeship—given me the kind of work ethic to be diligent and to put effort into what he had put in front of me. There are easy tasks and hard tasks at College, but he’s given me a frame of mind that’s less procrastinate-y. [Laughter]
KB: Lovely!
Post-College ministry
KB: As I said, you’re now in fourth year, and you and Ruth have two little boys. Next year, you will leave College and go out into the world. What’s the plan? What are you thinking about, ministry-wise, post-College?
MP: Yeah. I mentioned for a long time, we were very open to wherever God might put us. Over the last three years at College, we’ve been trying to prayerfully discern where God might have us. Also, we’re trying to narrow that down a little bit. Taking into account various factors, there are a few things where we’ve said, “Okay. It feels like God doesn’t want us to go in that direction. Let’s turn over this way a bit more.” Out of all the possibilities of ministry all over the world, we’re currently thinking that God would like us to go into church ministry. We’re thinking regional ministry—country towns. That’s where we’re from. We feel like that’s where God wants us to go back to.
KB: Great! It’s almost like you’ve come—not quite full circle, but back to your roots, in some ways.
MP: Yes!
Advice for those contemplating ministry and theological study
KB: What advice would you give to someone who’s thinking about doing full-time ministry and maybe studying at Moore?
MP: Yeah. Keep thinking about it. Come and visit. That’s what Ruth and I did. They do Open Events—I think a couple a year. You can come any day of the year, really. Let them know. Call them up and see if you can come and have a look around. Like I said, you can just do the first year and get a bit of a taste—dip your toe in the water.
Ask the people around you as well: if you’ve got friends at College or in ministry, ask them what their thought processes were like and see if it might be something God wants you to do.
KB: Yep. That’s really helpful!
Conclusion
KB: Well, Michael, thank you for joining us on the CCL podcast—for sharing your story and your journey towards ministry. I look forward to seeing what God has in store for you and your family in the coming years!
MP: Thanks, Karen!
[Music]
PO: To benefit from more resources from the Centre for Christian Living, please visit ccl.moore.edu.au, where you’ll find a host of resources, including past podcast episodes, videos from our live events and articles published through the Centre. We’d love for you to subscribe to our podcast and for you to leave us a review so more people can discover our resources.
On our website, we also have an opportunity for you to make a tax deductible donation to support the ongoing work of the Centre.
We always benefit from receiving questions and feedback from our listeners, so if you’d like to get in touch, you can email us at ccl@moore.edu.au.
As always, I would like to thank Moore College for its support of the Centre for Christian Living, and to thank to my assistant, Karen Beilharz, for her work in editing and transcribing the episodes. The music for our podcast was generously provided by James West.
[Music]
