By Josh Gibbon
I love a good bush bash. Exploring new trails in a national park while hiking or running brings me alive and resets my headspace.
While I love a variety of terrain, I have found navigating the overgrowth of a forgotten trail deep in a gully to be immensely more challenging than a wide-open fire trail on the top of a hill. And I must admit, I’ve found myself lost in a gully or two in my time.
Hill-top trails offer long-distance visibility, allowing you to triangulate your location from surrounding natural landmarks. In a gully, though, when you’re swallowed up by the brush pressing in on you, your attention becomes absorbed by avoiding the next root or branch. The goal simply becomes about making it out the other side. When your gaze is locked on your feet, you can lose sight of crucial geographical markers passing by above.
It’s easy to get lost when you take your eyes off the big things.
In this cultural moment of widespread uncertainty and relentless adaption, the past two years of Christian ministry have been exhausting for many, if not all, ministers. When the week-to-week expectations of ministry change at the drop of a new mandate, invariably we have had to shift our gaze from the macro, long-term vision of our calling as pastoral leaders to our feet, keeping up with rapidly shifting terrain.
As I have reflected on this, I feel that it is easy to take our eyes off the surrounding cultural terrain in our ducking and weaving through the weekly challenges of ministry. Yet the call of the Church to be active in issues and injustices in our world remains. We have sought out leaders in Christian thought and advocacy in Australia to share the key issues and concerns that they believe the Church should be actively engaged with during 2022. Watch out for these interviews in the coming weeks.
Read our first Engaging the Issues of 2022: Tim Costello AO
Read more stories of Fresh Hope HERE
