I was privileged last month to spend an afternoon watching our prayers being answered. 

It is a constant prayer point of our Diocese to ask the Lord to raise up workers for the harvest field. In my recent Synod address (see SC, Sept-Oct), I said that if we were to succeed in establishing one new church for every 30,000 people in greenfields areas, we would need far more men and women training for ministry than are currently in our system. I asked for every parish to be intentionally prayerful about sending or supporting at least one suitable person to train for full-time ministry at Moore College or Youthworks College in the next three years.

A generation devoted to Christ

It was in answer to a more long-standing prayer, but prayer nevertheless, that in October I was able to spend a day with nearly 150 younger people, mostly in their twenties, who gathered for a weekend of teaching, discussion, prayer and structured conversation about how to spend their whole lives serving Jesus.

We shouldn’t think that the life of the disciple of Christ is anything other than a life wholly devoted to the Lord and his kingdom. The Bible doesn’t contemplate a division between “full-time” service and “ordinary” Christians. Rather, all those who are followers of the Lord do so full time and everything we have and do is to serve the cause of Christ. 

There was plenty of encouragement to be prayerfully intentional about serving in the context of the local church over the course of life. Our churches can fulfil their local mission only because of the countless “ordinary” Christians who give, pray, serve, teach, welcome, offer hospitality, evangelise and disciple, as well as serve in stewardship and governance roles like parish council. 

Some are set aside by the fellowship to serve specifically in formal ministries of word and prayer. It was with this in sight that I met with these young people. 

Making the decision to serve in this way for your whole life is rightly a matter to consider in fellowship with others: those who have nurtured you in faith; those who have the opportunity to observe your growth in godly character, mature Christian conviction and giftedness to serve the body of Christ and the mission of the Lord; especially, married couples must prayerfully approach such decisions together.

It was very encouraging to find such a fellowship doing just this and to see God’s hand at work. Along with those giving consideration to the shape of their future service of the Lord, there were also senior ministers from the churches attended by the delegates, and current Moore College students, on hand to offer prayerful support and the testimony of their own experience.

So, as well as praying for the men and women considering long-term, full-time ministry, I ask you to keep our college in your prayers. The significance of Moore College to the ministry of the gospel in the Diocese of Sydney would be hard to overstate. 

Equipping future leaders through theological training

It is true that it is my requirement that candidates for ordination complete four years of study at Moore College. Very occasionally, clergy are licensed for ministry in the Diocese who have not completed their undergraduate theology degree at Moore, but only on condition that they undertake further study at the college. Yet the real significance of the college’s role in the life of our Diocese is not simply a matter of the Archbishop’s ordination policy. Rather, it is the convictions and commitment of the college that are crucial.

In seeking to provide theological education we aim not merely at informing and educating, but transforming and equipping. Our theological education is for ministry. For that reason, our student body is as diverse as the servants whom the Lord is raising up – men and women, marrieds and individuals, students from many nations and cultural backgrounds, and from many Christian denominations. 

We seek to create a community of discipleship, not just a place of study, and we have a preference for as many students as possible, and faculty members, to live in community with one another. 

Over the course of 20 years of Anglican Church ministry outside the Diocese of Sydney I have learned not to take for granted Moore College’s deep reverence for the truth, trustworthiness and authority of the Scriptures, and its matching commitment to the usefulness and sufficiency of God’s word for the ministry entrusted to his church. Happily, around Australia, Moore College graduates are serving or influencing other centres of theological education that share such commitments.  

I am deeply thankful to the Lord for our college, for those contemplating study leading to full-time service and for those “ordinary” Christians who support them, as well as fulfilling their own ministry calling in parishes and beyond. 

I wish you all could have such encounters as I had with the answered prayers of the saints in Sydney, the Illawarra and the Blue Mountains. To see the Lord at work in his people is a precious thing.

A diocesan Day of Prayer for Mission has been called for May 4, 2025. Please save the date.