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What writings most influenced the way you view ministry and church?

This is a question I sometimes get asked by students or others wanting to explore a possible calling into full-time church based ministry. While I’d love to say it was a Biblical passage or some theological classic, I have to be honest and say it was a piece of poetry by iconic Australian author Henry Lawson. I don’t think Lawson ever claimed to be a Christian, and his life certainly ended up being a bit of a mess. But the respect he has for the bush preacher in this poem is clearly evident. A preacher who walks the tough road of the Australian outback rather than one who hides behind the comfortable pulpit of a church building.

I first heard of this poem when I was reading a book by God’s Squad founder, John Smith. I think the book was either On the Side of the Angels or Advance Australia Where? (age has dulled the memory as to which one!). In any case, Smith was talking about the need for us to be amongst the people we are called to serve - living the life they live, feeling the pain they feel, celebrating their joys and experiencing the things of everyday living together. In the lingo of today, we’d call it ‘incarnational’. I’ve always thought this was simple common sense when it came to following Jesus, but my first reading of the last stanza of this poem seared itself into my mind and has stayed with me ever since.

If Lawson were alive today, I hope he’d be able to say the same about me one day…

The Christ of the Never - Henry Lawson 

With eyes that seem shrunken to pierce
    To the awful horizons of land,
Through the haze of hot days, and the fierce
    White heat-waves that flow on the sand;
Through the Never Land westward and nor’ward,
    Bronzed, bearded and gaunt on the track,
Quiet-voiced and hard-knuckled, rides forward
    The Christ of the Outer Out-back.

For the cause that will ne’er be relinquished
    Spite of all the great cynics on earth—
In the ranks of the bush undistinguished
    By manner or dress—if by birth—
God’s preacher, of churches unheeded—
    God’s vineyard, though barren the sod—
Plain spokesman where spokesman is needed—
    Rough link ’twixt the bushman and God.

He works where the hearts of all nations
    Are withered in flame from the sky,
Where the sinners work out their salvations
    In a hell-upon-earth ere they die.
In the camp or the lonely hut lying
    In a waste that seems out of God’s sight,
He’s the doctor—the mate of the dying
    Through the smothering heat of the night.

By his work in the hells of the shearers,
    Where the drinking is ghastly and grim,
Where the roughest and worst of his hearers
    Have listened bareheaded to him.
By his paths through the parched desolation
    Hot rides and the terrible tramps;
By the hunger, the thirst, the privation
    Of his work in the furthermost camps

By his worth in the light that shall search men
    And prove—ay! and justify each—
I place him in front of all churchmen
    Who feel not, who know not—but preach!