Too Hard?

Before formal training, as a keen young Christian 40 years ago, starting out on my first full time job in Agriculture, my wife and I thought we could help a small country church having come from a big city church. But it soon became disheartening without all the support we had been used to.

8 years later at Bible College, early in the course, it looked like there would be few opportunities to work with a church post-graduation— should I have kept pursuing my Agricultural career?

And when one did come our way after graduating, it looked impossible with disunity and lack of funds clearly evident soon after hitting the ground. Our next church, an old struggling one, didn’t look as up for necessary change as we had been led to believe.

And then, just shy of 11 years ago, to work as a Chaplain at Kirkconnell Correctional Centre — I confess I wondered how I was going to break into inmate culture in those first few weeks.

The profound thing is that each time I got to this point of realising how it was all way beyond my pay grade — not that I didn’t have some skills important in all of these scenarios, but when I realised I very much needed supernatural help — over time all of those situations turned around way beyond my initial most optimistic moments.

Working on the land, an amazing home group situation developed way out in the sticks reaching a number of isolated farming families that I had never envisaged. When I graduated, there were all of a sudden many opportunities to work with a church. The Gospel over five years overcame much of the disunity in that first church, with the church becoming more than
viable to this day. Many in that older church miraculously became more flexible — making it very hard to leave for prison ministry fourteen years later.

And at Kirkconnell Correctional Centre, God opened doors for so many Gospel conversations. Far more than I thought possible came to Chapel services, Bible Studies, Christianity Explored courses, Christian Lifestyle counselling, and countless ad hoc one-on-ones talking through what Jesus says. I got to engage with so many people that would have been highly unlikely on the outside. Seeing many continue on the outside with Jesus and linking up with a local church has been truly a miraculous privilege.

I did some things reasonably well. But it is God who did far more than I could have ever imagined — not least in giving me a dose of reality that He is the one in control, that it is a privilege to serve Him regardless of any worldly measures of success.

I think that’s something of what the Apostle Paul meant when he said to the Philippian Christians: “I can do everything through him who gives me strength.” (Philippians 4:13)

Whether the size of the harvest is modest or large is not the issue. It’s just letting God do His work.

So I am so thankful to so many through Jericho Road who have partnered in this work over the years, whose prayers and practical support have been used by God to wonderfully work these things through — of eternal significance for many who otherwise are shut off from mainstream Christianity.

May we all continue to be in awe of what God is doing, even through us, in this broken world, inside and out.

Tim Abbey, Kirkconnell, Jericho Road Chaplain