Before coming to College, I worked as a lawyer at a large city-based law firm. I had become a Christian in my final years at Law School, and having interned at the firm at the same time, I became convinced it was where God wanted me to speak and live out His Word.
I really enjoyed working in Law. I loved the intellectual rigour of work, and working with really smart people who taught me to think smarter. I loved helping solve complex questions, training junior lawyers and building relationships with clients.
That said, the Law, and in particular my workplace, placed huge demands on me and my time. I lived a highly planned life, and was always conscious of looming deadlines, client meetings and budget targets that had to be met. It was difficult to switch tack, and be present with people or in situations that weren’t work-related, because you were very much aware of the checklist of work-related tasks that you still had to work through.
I eventually reached a stage where I could see that whilst I had developed significantly as a lawyer, I had stagnated in my Christian maturity. My understanding of God’s Word was limited, I had surface-level involvement in church, and a perfunctory rather than personal relationship with God. As a people-pleaser who thought that hard work would be a powerful witness, I had over time inadvertently become a kind-of careerist, diverting from my true work as a missionary. The outcome was that my mission field, the workplace, was not bearing good fruit for the Lord.
God, in His great providence, created space for me at this juncture to come to Moore, to re-orient my mind toward Him and His kingdom. I enrolled in the Diploma course and moved onto campus. It was my plan to grow my knowledge and love of God over the year, and to equip myself once more to testify to Christ in an urbane, post-modern, intellectual and cynical workplace. I wasn’t particularly keen on living on campus, and avoided the dining hall for the first three weeks of College!
But to my surprise, living and learning in community has been more than filling my head and heart with God to help others know Him. It has helped me know Him better for me. I thought I knew God’s greatness, but being at College has helped me realise how small my understanding of God’s greatness was.
Being at College has changed me holistically, revealing God to me in new ways, teaching me the wonders of His word, convicting me of sins I didn’t even know I had, and showing me through others how to live for Him with all that I have. It has been uncomfortable, and very humbling, but also a deep and real joy to know that God has been using my time at College to mould me to be more like Christ.
Although my initial plan was to stay at College for one year, I have now enrolled in the degree program. Holding loosely to my plans, I anticipate returning to work part-time, and serving in a church in south-west Sydney part-time. Whilst I remain convicted of the need for Christian workers in Law, my time at College has magnified for me the call to servanthood as a member of the body of believers. There are so many places in the world where the workers are few and the need is great. For me, it’s not Africa or the Northern Territory (at least not yet!), but as a lawyer in the workplace and as a member of a church in the south-west of Sydney.
