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'd 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 more
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.
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 the Director of the
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.
No worries.
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. So let's hear a little
bit about your life before you came here in Sydney. So Michael, you were a student at
your life before you came here. You told me you grew up in Warrnambool, or Warrnambool,
I think I got 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? Yeah. Yeah. Warnambool. You don't have to pronounce all the letters.
Just let it, it's almost one syllable. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So I grew up with mom 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 mom was a primary school teacher
and then specialised more in music teaching in primary schools as well.
And yeah, upbringing was fun. It was pretty laid back on a beach town. We lived quite close to the
beach. So we'd often walk over there and yeah, it was great. We'd go to church. We'd have Bible
stories before bedtime. That was, yeah, I hung out with friends a lot. That's what it was like
growing up there. Sounds lovely and idyllic. So you heard the gospel, was it mostly through family?
Yeah, family and church. I think like those bedtime stories, or mostly kind of stories like
David and Goliath and Noah's Ark. Yeah. But then some ones from the gospel. One I remember
particularly was Zacchaeus in the tree and Jesus telling him to come down and then him selling all
his possessions. 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 yeah, things like that,
that family Bible time, but also our church was good as well like that.
Yeah, that's wonderful. So when you were eight years old, something very sad happened.
Your father was diagnosed with a brain tumour and he died. And that obviously had a big impact on
you and your family. What do you remember about that time, like when he was ill and what was that
like for your family? How did his faith influence you? Yeah, it was a big change. Yeah, I was quite
young. I was about eight years old. So there's a lot I don't remember, but some of the things I
remember are just him moving different hospitals around the place, some long train trips as we'd
go to different parts of the state to the different hospitals he was in. There was a lot of support
from our church, I remember, making meals for us and that kind of thing. And babysitting us as kids,
as my mum would be with my dad in hospital for a lot of the time as well. But yeah, his faith did
certainly influence me even at that young age, because I remember specifically. So yeah, the
tumour had a pretty big impact on his cognition and mobility. And so he couldn't communicate or
this is my memory, 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. And I can remember my
mum telling me that the medical staff were just kind of 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, and 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 he would be going to heaven. And so that has stuck with me
since then. I think from that time, I was just, I'm going to have that same faith.
Wow, that's wonderful. And then after he died,
how did your father's passing affect you and your family's lives?
Yeah, it was quite different. We'd still had an enormous amount of support from the church,
helping us, helping my mum as she was dealing with his passing, us as kids. Yeah, there was
a difference. The bedtime Bible stories, I think, stopped happening. I don't remember them happening
as much. So 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. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. 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 got older. So how would
you describe what your faith was like at this stage?
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. I was happy believing what I believed and I was happy not exploring it further.
Sure, sure.
Yep.
And then as you grew up, you started going to
Presbyterian High School because your mother started working there. How did things change
for you faith wise as you became a teenager?
Yeah, so at the Christian school there, there was Bible study kind of integrated into the curriculum.
And 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. And so it's fun to be with your friends,
hanging out with your friends all day. But anything related to school and learning was just kind of
looked down on a bit. And so 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 I just didn't, it was seen with the same
lenses, you know, Maths or English. It's like, oh, I don't want to deal with that.
Did that extend beyond school to church
as well? Or was it completely different?
Oh, there was a bit of difference there actually, I think. Yeah, it felt like church was the place
for it. It felt like, yeah, I didn't want to deal with it at school. But it was more of 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 a sermon, I guess. Yeah, yeah, sure. You also talked
about becoming quite withdrawn during high school. Was there a particular reason why?
I can't pinpoint a moment, but I just
progressively began to get quite annoyed with people, just inwardly. It never kind of
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 just some seething anger
underneath. But yeah, I was always very inward. I don't think many people would have, yeah,
people might have been able to see that I was not having a great time, but yeah, never made any
outbursts or things like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's interesting.
So was this attitude more to do with people's behaviour or the way that you viewed humanity or
was it something else?
I just didn't have time for people, I think. I was just, 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,
a few close friends who I really liked hanging out with and enjoying time together. But most
people I just didn't have time for. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so after high school,
you went straight to university and you chose to go to Charles Sturt in Wagga Wagga. So 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. So why Charles Sturt and also you studied science,
so why did you choose science?
Yeah, Charles Sturt. So it was quite a drive from where I grew up in Warrnambool. And yeah,
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. But I essentially a clean slate, I guess, is what
I wanted. For no real reason. I didn't, I wasn't, you know, a town pariah or anything like that,
but I just wanted to get away. But Wagga Wagga, there's two there. If you go to there, just say
Wagga, just say one. So 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.
But also it didn't feel like a big city, which was good because that's 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. Yeah, sure. And why science?
Oh, yes. I liked studying like physics and maths at school in the later years. And I didn't know
what I wanted to do, but 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. And so that was maths and physics.
Yeah. Yeah. 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. And that
marked something of a turning point in your life. So what happened and how did it affect your faith?
Yeah. So I still had this stubborn, comfortable faith, if you like. And so I saw a poster for the
Uni church there and that made sense a minute ago. So I went and I just started doing the things they
were doing. I joined a Bible study. I went to the church they run 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. And so 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 just in my head thinking, no, 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. So I was
thinking no, but because I was there and I was just doing what everyone else did, I said, yes.
And so, yeah, eventually that became my favourite part of the week. I just realised, oh, there is a
lot I don't know. And it is actually pretty good to uncover that and to think about the implications.
And 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, following Jesus,
that's where it really started to change for me.
Would you like to sponsor a Moore College student? Your gospel partnership would help a student live
and study in College community to make the most of their communal and theological learning.
As a partner, you'll receive their personal prayer updates and you'll be blessed by a wider
vision of Christ's kingdom work at College and beyond. The Moore College Student Support Fund
directly assists students to afford living and studying at Moore Theological College,
and it does this through supporters like you. We administer the fund to make sure that the students
in the fund receive what they need. Gifts to the fund two dollars and over are tax deductible.
To find out more and to support a student in the Student Support Fund, visit the Moore Theological
College website at moore.edu.au and click on give, then Specialised Funds
and Student Support Fund. We thank you for your support. For the first time ever, we are conducting
a listener survey to help us to get to know you and how you interact with the CCL podcast.
We'd love it if you could fill it in. There are only 10 questions and there are stuff like how
long you've been listening to the podcast, whether you listen on your phone, your tablet, or your
computer, or if you just read the transcripts and what you most like and least like about the podcast.
It should take around five to ten minutes to complete and your responses will really help us
as we consider how to improve the podcast moving forward. You can find the survey link in the
episode description or the show notes or visit ccl.moore.edu.au/podcastsurvey.
That's one word. ccl.moore.edu.au/podcastsurvey. Thank you again for your support.
And now let's get back to our program. So you told me you didn't finish your science degree in the
end and you ran out of subjects you were actually interested in. Yes. So what did you do next and
why? Yeah, so through that time I was getting more and more involved with the Christian group
there on campus and just really started to realise this is what I love doing as kind of the
more older Christians were doing it with me when I was a first year and then when I got a bit older,
I was doing it with other first years and realising this is good. I like this pattern of
discovery and application and then helping other Christians do that as well. And so I was
encouraged to try a bit of theological study and so I did a diploma of theology and that went well.
I realised this is something that I could see myself studying further. Yeah. Is the diploma of
theology, is it very similar to what Moore College does? Is it different? Yeah, yeah, very similar.
Very similar to first year. Yeah. Okay. 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. So what made you want to do that and what sort of things were you doing?
And also what were some of the things that you were learning as you were doing it? Yeah, so
the ministry apprentices when I was a student, they were faithfully serving but God used them
incredibly in my life and 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,
but 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 was the kind of 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 apologetics or things like that. And then yeah, leading Bible studies as well.
Yeah. So what are some of the things that you learned while doing the apprenticeship?
I learned a lot. I learned a lot about, because this is probably the first time I was enjoying
what I was doing really and 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. And so I learned that almost the hard way.
Another thing was when I was a teenager, I had that idea of just 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 was still some kind of remnants hanging around. And one of them was the
thing that I was doing when I was a teenager, which was to be a friend of someone. And 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 because that's how I felt when I was a bit
younger. But at this stage, I'd already realised that was not a true thing, but I hadn't kind of
got 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. And so that was
the big focus of my early time in my ministry apprenticeship.
So did the reception you received from doing that, that that surprised you?
Not really, because it was something that I'd already learned, but just hadn't really put
into practice yet. Another thing that's important to know is I'm a pretty massive introvert. So I
knew that that would take a lot of effort and energy and 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. Yeah. That just required effort. Yeah. So your second year of ministry apprenticeship
was very different to your first. Why was that? So 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, yeah, everyone's was
different. And so that looked like the start of the year. Everything was happening as normal.
We were planning our kickoff camp, our first event of the year to welcome first years into our group.
And it was about to happen. And then, yeah, March, 2020, everything got shut down and lots of things
changed. You can probably remember early on it was this will last a month or maybe three months,
and then we'll get back to normal. But as it just dragged on, we realised we need to change the way
we do things. And so like for everyone else, it was moving everything online. Yeah. Yep. It's funny,
my Facebook memories are now bringing up stuff from around that time. And it's all the home learning
that I had to do with my kids and glad that's over. Yeah. Yeah. The interesting thing, 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. It's even more tiring. So yeah, it was a hard year,
that 2020. Yeah. Yeah. And 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? Yeah, it was a tough year to have something like that happen. It really shook us.
And 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 yeah, it kind of just collapsed mentally. And so 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, or doable. And I looked at it and was just like, I sent back and I said,
then I need to have an impossible category. Cause 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 and do the hard one.
And 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. But the reason I think all those things were
impossible was I just couldn't focus on things of faith or just engagement with God. I'd open the
Bible and try to read and I just, 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. And I think that goes back to that early time where I first decided I was going to
have that same faith as my dad. It's just, this is a really hard thing and I can't really even
talk to God about it, but I'd still know that he's good. And I still know I will get through it on
the other side. He'll bring me through. Yeah. Yeah. So great testimony to God's
grace in a very difficult situation. 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? Like why further study? You'd already done the
diploma of theology and also why more? Yeah. Well, I guess it was kind of the logical thing.
If I did the diploma, 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.
Thought that was good, even with a really hard second year. And then thought, yeah, I'm going to
continue, keep taking steps in this direction and see if God keeps bringing us this way. And so,
yeah, there was other options to Moore College and we, in considering that, realised we can't make
a bad choice of college from what we were considering. And so there were a few kind of
superficial or maybe 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 More'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. And so 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 to have some support for wherever we end up in the future.
Yeah, sure. Your first year at Moore was quite challenging because it was during COVID.
Yes.
You said your first semester was in person, your second semester was online. What was that like?
And how did living in College accommodation help with that or not help?
Yeah, yeah. Our first semester was a big change. Moving to the city,
meeting hundreds of people across our year and then at our church as well.
Yeah, it was a lot. And then going into lockdown in semester two, 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. It was about an hour away from where the main campus is. We live in some
student accommodations as 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 a good way to break it up and a good way to
form the relationships we had out there and feel more established. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. I can imagine that would really help after just screens all the time.
Yeah.
Yeah. 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?
Yeah, so many. I was thinking about this and I think what brings everything together,
is these two, they seem like 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. And
that's a good thing for me to realise because I just generally have a not a great opinion of my
abilities. To see the way God has grown me in that way has been good for my confidence, I think,
in what he's teaching me. But at the same time, I 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. And 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. It's been a helpful thing to realise,
I think. The other thing is, He's just taught me to be diligent, I think. I was a terrible
Uni student, a shocking procrastinator. And so leaving study to do ministry apprenticeship,
and then the prospect of coming back to study was quite daunting for me. I thought I might slip
back into that procrastination, but straight away realised 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 less procrastinate-y.
Yeah.
Lovely. So as I said, you're now in fourth year and you and Ruth have two little kids,
and next year you will leave College and go out into the world. So what's the plan? What are you
thinking about ministry-wise post-College?
Yeah. So I mentioned for a long time, we're very open to wherever God might put us. And so over the
last three years at College, we've been trying to prayerfully discern where God might have us. So
we're trying to narrow that down a little bit. And so there are a few things we've been trying to
do. And so there are a few things we've, for various factors, have said, okay, it feels like
God doesn't want us to go in that direction. Let's turn over this way a bit more. And so 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. And 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. Yeah.
Mm, great. It's almost like you've come, not quite full circle, but yeah, back to your roots
in some way.
Yes. Yeah.
So what advice would you give to someone who's thinking about doing full-time ministry and maybe
studying it more?
Yeah. Keep thinking about it. Come and visit. That's what Ruth and I did. They do Open Week,
I think a couple of years, and you can come any day of the year, really. Let them know, call them
up, see if you can come and have a look around. And like I said, you can just do the first year,
get a bit of a taste, dip your toe in the water, and 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.
Yeah. That's really helpful. 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.
Thanks, Karen.
To benefit from more resources from the Centre for Christian Living, please visit
ccl.more.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 that 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'd like to thank Moore College for
its support of the Centre for Christian Living, and to thank my assistant, Karen Beilharz,
for her work in editing and transcribing the episodes. The music for our podcast
was generously provided by James West.