Did you know that the Period of Discernment is also for those wanting to do Lay Ministry?

Explore a range of ministries in the church such as:

• lay ministry in a local congregation
• pastoral care in a community agency
• youth or children's ministry
• worship leading
• chaplaincy in a hospital, prison, school or organisation
• lay preaching

Check out more about the Period of Discernment and print the brochure.

When I reflect on my early church memories I consider myself
most fortunate. As a five year old, amongst smiling faces
singing Kum ba yah, I remember the unveiling of the new
uniting church symbol as I sat with my family in what became Murray Bridge Uniting.

Maybe like a beacon, a call on my life was already being announced. We moved to Aldgate Uniting the year following, and here food, community and the full involvement of kids in the life of the church were to become formative experiences for me. With a love developing for science, I remember deciding as a teen that the role of a minister was not one I could do, for I could not fathom how you could possibly have something to say each and every week…plus it seemed in the mid eighties that brown suits were the fashion. Graciously, God was underterred.. 

I was born in South Sudan into a Christian family of Episcopal Church of Sudan and
grew up attending Sunday school. When I was a teen the war started in Sudan which
separated me from my parents, and then was taken by my elder sister.  

When I finished my high school in 1983 I did some training and started my first job as a Typist.  In 1986 I married James Tear.  From that day on my journey has been filled with both joy and challenge, as God faithfully guided me through many diverse experiences and helped me understand His presence in everything. 

In 1990 I finished my Diploma in Secretarial and office management, and was employed in 1992 as Secretary for Nile Theological College, Khartoum North – Sudan, where my call to ministry continued to develop.  

My faith journey began in the Roman Catholic Church where, from an early age and doubtless aided and abetted by my Irish heritage, I exhibited a questioning faith. Later I embarked on a career in the scientific area and, during this period of education and employment, my religious questioning continued unabated. By the age of twenty four I’d had more success in asking questions than in obtaining satisfactory answers, and decided to leave the church, going absent without leave for some fifteen years. 

Those fifteen years were years in which, at least for the first part, I lived oblivious of and indifferent to the God whom I subsequently came to know and love. Gratefully, God was never indifferent toward me, but instead used the negative consequences of my living to draw the unaware and indifferent me ever closer, culminating in a experience of God so profound that it shattered my previous conceptions of God, and summoned me to a quest to seek and know this personal and loving God whom I had experienced so powerfully.  

I first heard the call to ministry at the age of ten in response to a Junior Easter Camp. 
This sense that God was calling me to ministry had been with me then for a very long
time and grew during high school, university and as a teacher.  During high school I was challenged to share my faith with my friends more intentionally, but found that my understanding lacked depth.  So in a quest to discover what Christianity was on about I read the Bible from cover to cover.  It was through this that I came to understand God’s grace through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as a free gift for all, including me.  From here I have developed a passion for sharing my faith, and engaging people with scripture so that its message may become alive for them.  Hence my call to ministry grew.

As a 14 year old teenager I first heard about Jesus from a Christian teacher at high school. Jesus Christ Superstar was playing on the radio at that time and I became fascinated by this man who could walk across swimming pools! Interestingly I never doubted God’s existence (as soon as I became aware that God was a possibility) but it was Jesus who became my access to God. I have always had the need to satisfy my philosophical questions about life and so straight away I began to form a theology that helped to make sense of an otherwise confusing and meaningless existence. A passion for art had already been stirred in me and soon art and theology became my way of exploring the world and my place in it.  

At 20 I preached my first sermon. Preaching was a means of communicating ideas (just as art is), and I enjoyed preaching regularly. As well, we (I had married Mary) joined wholeheartedly in church life, serving in numerous ways. School teaching too sharpened my teaching and “up front” skills.