Caring enough to make a difference

Life is an amazing journey, but how often do we take time to stop and smell the flowers on the way?

How often do we stop to thank the God who has placed us here in this moment?
The last six and a half years serving as a Frontier Services Patrol Minister have taught me many things. Taking pleasure in the journey of life with God is just one of them.

Frontier Services' Centralian Patrol is huge; not just in area, but in the number of possibilities for ministry.

Patrol ministry is no longer just about visiting station people (if it ever was!).

There are, for example, some 230 Aboriginal communities in my patrol area.

Some 400,000 tourists visit Central Australia every year. Over 500 men and women work at an underground gold mine in the Tanami Desert.

All these people deserve the care and support that the church can offer.

I have always loved travel. Even as a little boy in England when we travelled so little, any journey in a car was something to look forward to.

As a teenager in Adelaide, I would count the days to the next long weekend when my friends and I could go camping in another part of country South Australia that we hadn't seen.

Then, as a student at theological college, I hitched a ride with Patrol Padre Trevor Lanthois.

During that journey, I fell in love with the desert as we travelled up the Birdsville Track, led a Christmas service there, and called in to all the stations.

I loved the space and the silence and was fascinated by the ancient sand-blasted gibber that covered the ground like purposely-laid gravel.

Those ten days were remarkable, not just for the people we met, but for the places we visited, including the Moomba gas fields.

I also learned a great deal from Trevor's easy way with people. Their response to him and to Frontier Services spoke loudly of the respect they had for both.

On my return to Adelaide, I thought to myself, "I could do this one day," and went back to complete my studies.

Engaged with people

My journey through life and ministry has not been all sweetness and light. Indeed, it was in part my disillusionment with the church that led me to seek out a full-time patrol with Frontier Services.

I had become disillusioned because so many of our congregations seemed only interested in what Jesus and the gospel could offer them.

Many seemed to want to belong to thriving congregations, but were not prepared to make the necessary changes or do the work for this to happen. Mission, in short, was something somebody else did somewhere else.

Being a Patrol Minister in Cobar with the New South Wales Synod Board of Mission, and now in Alice Springs with Frontier Services, has given me the freedom to follow my passion of being engaged with people outside the "four walls" of the church.

Many more people in the community are far more interested in "God stuff" than we inside those four walls realise.

Many are just waiting for an opportunity to discuss and explore God with someone "safe", someone who is prepared to listen, and not just tell them where they are going wrong.

It often takes me over an hour to eat a meal at the Granites gold mine.
I remember one night in particular where different people came and went over two hours and engaged in some amazing conversation. The discussion ranged from gun laws to the church during the Reformation, and finished with a robust discussion on the place of the Church in today's society.

None of these discussions was initiated by me!

Everybody has a story to tell, and most people are very happy to tell it. I discovered early on that being prepared to listen caringly and carefully to that story was a way of earning people's trust.

By listening, we are saying, "You are important to me." By taking the time to travel to where the people are, whether that's with someone working a diamond drill a kilometre beneath the earth, or leaning on the bonnet of a Nissan Patrol in the blazing sun, we are also saying, "We care about you."

By listening to others' stories we not only gain the right to tell them about "God's story", but we have a ready-made opportunity to connect "their story" with "God's story".

This is good news to a lot of people, who are searching for meaning and purpose in their lives.

Listen to our neighbours

These are simple techniques that anyone can use, anywhere, with anyone else. We do not have to spend five years in a theological college to do this.

What people find so attractive about the work of Frontier Services in "the inland" is that, firstly, we are there and that, secondly, we care enough to try to make a difference in the lives of those we meet.

Surely this is what Jesus meant when He said, "Go out into all the world and make disciples" (Matthew 28:19).

It seems to me that the work our many "field workers" do with Frontier Services, whether they are nurses, in-home carers or Patrol Ministers, is the model the rest of us should be following in our local congregations, suburbs and towns.

We need to discover what the locals need. We have to sit down with our neighbours and friends and listen to them.

Then we should "dare to dream" with God and see if there is any practical way we can help.

Sometimes just taking time to listen is all that's needed. Sometimes we have to act as well.

In all of this, I never cease to be amazed at how often God "turns up" and things begin to happen.

As I enter the last few weeks of my ministry in Centralian Patrol, I am grateful to God and to the many people I have been privileged to meet, both in my patrol area and in Frontier Services.

It really has been an amazing journey. There will be many lessons that I will carry with me from this Patrol as I move into my new placement in the Riverina Presbytery in New South Wales as their Mission Development Officer.

Fortunately, I will be able to return each year to the desert I love with my great friends at Spirit Journeys, where we continue to lead people into the quiet spaces of the desert to learn about themselves and about the God who calls us all.

(See www.desertjourneys.com for more information.)

Tony Davies left Frontier Services in August and was replaced by John Boundy, who previously ministered with Frontier Services' Murchison Patrol based out of Meekatharra, WA.