The Greatest Lesson I Ever Learned - Rev. Gordon Moyes

As I entered full-time ministry in 1995 I read a book compiled by Dr Bill Bright entitled, "The Greatest Lesson I Ever Learned". It was a collection of stories from Christian leaders. It inspired me to ask various Christian leaders in Australia that I knew (or, mostly, knew of) for their story. These have been sitting in my computer for 10 years waiting for publication, but I didn't collect enough to warrant publishing them. So, I am now posting them as blogs so the stories can get out there. I trust you enjoy them as much as I do.

Geoff

Gordon Moyes

Gordon Moyes is one of Australia’s leading evangelists and as Superintendent of Wesley Mission Sydney since 1979, he is one of Australia’s busiest administrators. He leads a team of fifteen ministers at one of the world’s great city churches. Regarded as one of the country’s top motivational speakers Dr. Moyes has addressed sales and management conferences in a dozen countries. He has conducted evangelistic crusades in Australia and overseas, and has an extensive schedule of lectures, writings, films, radio and television programs. Currently he is hosting “Turn ‘Round Australia”, a weekly national television program, and “Sunday Night Live with Gordon Moyes” a weekly four-hour radio talk-back program.

Married to Beverly since 1959, they have four adult children who are all involved in Christian service, and a number of grandchildren.

Wesley Mission is a Christian Church in the heart of Sydney where it conducts 45 services of worship every week, and offers care to people through 230 caring centres in a hundred suburbs of Sydney. Two thousand full-time staff and three and a half thousand volunteers are engaged in a unique ministry of caring for the poor, the needy, the aged, the homeless, the disabled, the sick and unemployed. According to the Government’s Industries Commission, the welfare outreach of Wesley Mission Sydney ranks third in size behind three national organisations, and has the lowest percentage of expenditure on administration and fundraising of all charities in Australia of any size.

{Gordon Moyes has since moved on from Wesley to pursue a career in NSW Parliament with the Christian Democratic Party}

EQUIPPED FOR MINISTRY

The most important lesson I ever learned after becoming a Christian so impacted my life and changed the course of my activities as a Christian Minister that I can point to the exact time and place when this lesson was made clear to me. I had entered Bible College as a young man fresh from High School, while completing studies at the Melbourne University. I was fully committed to working for the sake of Christ and His gospel. The call to ministry was very real and my dedication to Christ and His work was absolutely complete. Apart from studying at Theological College and University, I was also a student pastor of two rather run-down but warm Christian churches in the inner suburbs of northern Melbourne. The Newmarket and Ascot Vale Churches of Christ were less that a mile apart although they had little to do with each other and were many miles apart in their thinking and socio-economic backgrounds. I was to spend eight years ministering with these people among the slums of North Melbourne, Kensington, Flemington and the new Housing Commission areas of Newmarket and Ascot Vale. Those eight years were to be formative for the rest of my life. It was while ministering here in 1962 that I learned the most important lesson of my life.

In these days when a new translation of the Bible arrives on the scene every month or two, accompanied by all the hoopla of promotion and publicity, it is hard to realise what an exciting event it was in the 1950s or 1960s when a new translation, such as that of J.B. Phillips or the New English Bible, arrived on the scene. The New English Bible was to be released on a Monday morning in March at the Bible Society in Flinders Street, Melbourne. Crowds of people packed out the store, clamouring to buy the first available copies of the New English Bible. Having purchased my copy I was sitting on the train heading back to Moonee Ponds where I lived with my new bride, reading passages of the new translation. Suddenly, there it was - a lesson that was to completely revolutionise my ministry.

Up to this stage I had spent the previous five years as a student minister and now, as the first full-time minister in more than two decades of the churches’ life, in doing everything that was needed for ministry. I was preaching, teaching, running home groups, girls and boys clubs, a teenage youth fellowship, a young adult fellowship, an adult Christian fellowship; I was painting the church both inside and out, burying the dead, marrying young couples, working as a parole and probation officer at the local courts, visiting the wayward and erring, going flat to flat in the new high-rise Housing Commission flats seeking out potential new members; serving the needs of people who were poor and destitute, homeless and alcoholic, working on studies, cleaning up after the endless youth activities, stacking chairs, teaching Sunday School and religious education in the local high schools, and running myself ragged. On an average more than a hundred and ten hours per week! Ministry was exhausting. Yet this was what I was called to do, and after all I was the person who had been trained and ordained, and the only one in both congregations who was a University graduate. Leadership was essential, and leadership by practical example was what the people wanted. The more I did, the more they rejoiced.

Then, on an electric train heading for Moonee Ponds I read these words: “And these were his gifts: some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip God’s people for work in his service, to the building up of the body of Christ.” (Ephesians 4:12).

That was me. One of His pastors and teachers, somewhat of an evangelist, but hardly an apostle or prophet. Yet here was my ministry: “To equip God’s people for work in his service, to the building up of the body of Christ”. Up until this moment, I thought my task as pastor/teacher/evangelist was to build up the body of Christ. Now, this new translation told me it was my task “to equip God’s people for work in his service, to the building up of the body of Christ.” I had been running myself ragged doing the work of the ministry, whereas here was an insight: my task was to equip God’s people to work in His service.

I could hardly contain my excitement nor my scepticism. Was this an example of a poor translation? No-one has said to me previously that our task was to equip God’s people for work in His service. I had been advised to “do the work of an evangelist”, and to “fulfill your ministry”. Not only that, generations of Christians at these two inner suburban churches had believed that if only they would get a “good” minister, then their church would flourish. Now that they had an enthusiastic, competent young minister all would be well because the churches would grow.

I went home and in my study looked up every translation of the word, and every usage of the words “to equip” or “to prepare” which I could find in the New Testament. Furthermore, having graduated at University in both classical Greek and New Testament Greek I looked up all the available Greek dictionaries and to my surprise found that the New English Bible translation was the best and most accurate.

The word “katartidzo” is used widely in the New Testament: of James and John who were “in the boats getting ready their nets for fishing” (Matthew 4:21); by Jesus when He said that “no pupil is greater than his teacher, but every pupil when he has completed his training will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40); by Peter when he said that “Christ Himself will perfect you and give you firmness, strength and a sure foundation” (1 Peter 5:10); and by Paul who said that God “appointed some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, some to be pastors and teachers, to equip all God’s people for the work of Christian service”.

This word is used of getting nets ready for fishing, of preparing pupils through education, of perfecting the leaders with spiritual strength and a sure foundation, of equipping leaders for Christian service, describes the work that I had to undertake as a minister. This word “katartidzo” means to make ready, to furnish completely, to perfect a sure foundation, to equip thoroughly for service. I had the task of training people to fish for men, teaching them to understand the Scriptures, of giving them a sure spiritual foundation, and preparing them for work in His service for building up the body of Christ.

That theme revolutionised my ministry. It was the most important understanding of ministry which I had ever gained and I had learned it not in a theological college or in the university lecture theatre, but on a train reading the Bible.

But would it work in practice? The following week I immediately called twelve people together and asked them to let me train them in the task of reaching others for Christ, of witnessing to their faith, and to helping them to proclaim the gospel so that people might believe. Week after week we met on a Sunday afternoon and finally after having been through all of the relevant Bible passages, having lectures on understanding the cults, the psychology of conversion and the like, I sent them forth to visit two by two the homes of our parish. The program was an abject failure. The people felt incompetent and unwilling to visit and to witness.

I waited some months and called the same people together again and this time gave them twelve weeks of lectures. Surely this would prepare them for the work of the gospel. It was another failure.

It suddenly occurred to me that my method of equipping was wrong. Instead of lectures they needed demonstration. I would take one person with me and over a period of weeks visit with them the homes of non-believers, share the faith with them and gently lead the to commitment to Christ. After two or three months I would then visit with my companion who would then take the lead role and I would remain silent. It worked. Some ordinary persons became great evangelists. Over the next few years I took person after person and trained them in the art of leading others to faith in Christ and commitment to membership in our church. The churches grew.

But there was still something fundamentally wrong with my method of equipping God’s people for work in His service.

After taking one young businessman with me for eight weeks, I was struck by inspiration - why not now have him instruct someone else in how to lead another for Christ? From that moment on two of us instructed and two learned. We also matched each one of us with some other who could neither visit nor speak adequately, but who was willing to spend the same amount of time in prayer for us while we visited. Soon there were eight of us - four visiting and witnessing, and four praying. Then there were sixteen of us each Tuesday night visiting, witnessing, teaching another by example, or praying. Soon the number of new converts began to multiply. Every week I was baptising new adults into the faith. Over the next decade and a half a thousand people would make a commitment to Christ and come within the fellowship of the church. This was the most important lesson I had learned: to equip God’s people for work in His service for the building up of the body of Christ.

I then realised it would need to work in every other area of ministry that I was undertaking. I was writing a weekly devotional article in a church paper. Could I train another person to do that work well? I did, and Florence Rosier wrote the articles for years, eventually having them published in book form. I was writing weekly Bible studies. Could I equip a layperson to do that work equally well? I could, and Fred Drummond’s daily Bible Studies became the basis of personal devotion by hundreds of people each week. I was chaplain to the church’s four cricket teams, but could I equip a dedicated cricket-loving layman to do that work? I did, and Roy Barnett’s ministry was invaluable. I was visiting the widow and the frail aged and spending time helping them with many physical repairs to their houses or running errands or providing company for the lonely. Could I equip someone else to do that ministry? I could and did, and Trevor Adcock in turn eventually had more than seventy people assigned on practical Christian care. I was visiting the shut-in. Could someone else do that? They could and soon Fay Ferris had fifteen dedicated lay people trained on weekly assignment visiting the shut-in.

Every other interest I had - leading music, developing singing groups, doing art work, providing business oversight of the church, and so on - all were approached with this same philosophy. I would equip people who would do the work of building up the body of Christ.

In 1978 when I faced the task of becoming Superintendent of Wesley Mission Sydney, which by that time under the outstanding leadership of Sir Alan Walker, had twenty three centres of care and four hundred staff, with $4 million a year income, I had wondered whether the same philosophy could still work. It has. Today we have two hundred and thirty centres and services in more than a hundred suburbs of Sydney, forty five worship services a week, and two thousand paid staff with more than three and a half thousand volunteers assisting them in their ministry. The church keeps growing. My role is to select, to disciple, to equip, to dream dreams and see a vision. I spend a lot of time training those who will be the trainers of many more people. I spend much time in developing my skills that can be discipled with other people who in turn will be responsible for hundreds of others.

Like Peter and John, most of my time is spent praying, preaching and leading, dreaming and visioning with those who have been equipped building up the body of Christ. This is what the Apostle Paul meant when he said to Timothy: “You heard my teaching in the presence of many witnesses; hand that teaching on to reliable men (and women) who in turn will be qualified to teach others.” This is the most important lesson I have learned and it has guided my ministry every day since.