By Amy Galliford
“I don’t know what he does, but I know that when he does it, every time it works.”
These were the words of SES Volunteers Association President at the farewell dinner for Steve Hall, a core chaplain in NSW State Emergency Services who is retiring after 21 years of service.
Having begun as a volunteer chaplain in 2003, he was appointed to Senior Chaplain for the NSW SES in 2010. Steve has been involved in chaplaincy for every major disaster on Australia’s easter seaboard since 2003 – from fires to cyclones, storms to floods. As he sees it, his role in this context is to help people make sense of the chaos around them.
Steve (left) at a defence chaplaincy course.
“The stuff I’ve been involved in is right in the middle of some fairly major critical incidents and disasters. These are situations where everything is turned upside down; everything you think is the right way, everything that is stable, is overturned because of a cyclone, a flood, a fire. So, people are just lost; they’ve got no sense of how to begin putting things back together. The fabric of their world has been torn. We come in with simple tools around support, comfort and grounding, and start to build some sense back into their world.”
Much of the time, this was a work of being rather than a work of doing. Rather than carrying out tasks – although getting his hands dirty was part of the deal within crisis situations – Steve’s work largely entailed remaining a non-anxious presence in the midst of the chaos.
“My job is to be the dude that is not hurrying, not rushing, not worried – to be a reference point that they can depend on.”
This work was most significant for Steve when he worked alongside crisis response leaders who trusted him in moments of chaos. He points out that while leading the response to disasters, these leaders faced the same turmoil as everyone else. Steve’s guidance in these moments was as simple as, “Slow down, take a breath, you know how to do this.”
One woman he encountered during a short stint working as the chaplain in the SES call centre described the nature of Steve’s ministry of presence by saying,
“I never figured out what it was that you brought to the call centre until you weren’t there.”
So effective was Steve in his chaplaincy work that, in 2016, he became the first chaplain and SES member appointed as a Visiting Fellow with the Australian Institute of Police Management. This prestigious role saw him teach classes on topics from leadership to handling ‘wicked problems’.
Alongside his involvement in the NSW SES, Steve has been a crucial part of churches of Christ in NSW & ACT. In 1991, he studied at The Australian College of Ministries and served as a student minister at Telopea Church of Christ. In 1997, he ventured to Eden on the Sapphire Coast of NSW to plant a church and set up the Eden Youth Centre – a fixture of the community still in operation today. In 1999, he took on the role of Church Plant Coordinator for churches of Christ in NSW & ACT, a role he is most proud of in looking back over his time serving churches of Christ.
Acting Commissioner Platz presenting Steve with Certificate for Services to Chaplaincy
As he sees it, chaplaincy and church planting are not so different.
“You start with nothing. God calls you, you turn up, and you see what He does. It has to be bathed in prayer, you start to build relationships, and you see where the Holy Spirit leads. It’s the same skill in chaplaincy – the only difference is that as a Senior Chaplain, I had a congregation of 11,000, and barely any of them had met Christ yet.”
Steve feels humbled when he looks back upon his time serving in both churches of Christ and the SES.
“The reality is, I don’t own any of this; the Holy Spirit owns this stuff. All we can do is get out there and have a crack. All of my ministry is by grace. For me, one of the transformational biblical ideas that has gripped my world is the understanding of the relentless nature of grace. All of it is Jesus.”
Read more stories from churches of Christ in NSW & ACT HERE
