On Saturday 7th April 1979 we were married, ten years after we first met.
Never could we have imagined the unfolding plans that God had for us as we felt certain that Sue would continue her career as a dental hygienist and Rod as project manager of a large new housing and recreational development along the coast of Adelaide, South Australia.
We made an interesting contact on our honeymoon plane flight when the person sitting alongside of us introduced himself. His name was Rowland Croucher, and he was the Lead Pastor of the largest Baptist church in Australia. We had a pleasant conversation with him but never thought any more about it. That is until some six months later when Rowland unexpectedly phoned us. After recalling our previous conversation, Rowland then surprised us when he said, “Rod, I have heard about you and want to ask you to consider an invitation to come to Melbourne and join my pastoral team as Pastor of Youth and young Adults. We thought we had our lives mapped out and it didn’t take long for us to let Rowland know of our unavailability to his kind offer.
Prior to that point in time Sue had been busy using her musical gifts playing the guitar and singing in one of Adelaide’s leading gospel groups with two other girl friends from her local Baptist church. At the same time, Rod had been leading the Baptist youth ministry in South Australia, organising camps and evangelistic rallies. In addition, he was leading a ministry called Venture for Victory Basketball which involved sending basketball teams to the Philippines and Hong Kong travelling from village to village, sharing the gospel and planting churches.
However, a turning point came early one morning when Rod was reading through Paul’s letter to the Colossians, and God spoke powerfully as he read the following verses:
“We proclaim Him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ. To this end I labour, struggling with all His energy, which so powerfully works in me.” Colossians 1:28-29
It was as if God was not only confirming our call into fulltime ministry, but that He was describing the nature of the ministry that would shape our lives in the years to come, a ministry of making disciples and raising up leaders.
We set about resigning our jobs and selling our home unit and ‘burning our bridges’, realising that we would never be returning to life as we once knew it to be. For Sue, it would be saying goodbye to her career, as at that time, South Australia was the only state in Australia where she could practice as a registered dental hygienist. Rod’s great dilemma arose from the fact that he had never undertaken any formal study to prepare for such a calling in such a prestigious church. He did however, feel motivated to buy two books and retreat to a seaside hotel for a weekend to read them in preparation for the great challenge that awaited him. They were Spiritual Leadership by J. Oswald Sanders and The Master Plan of Evangelism by Robert Coleman. On Rod’s return from his weekend away, he greeted Sue with the bold statement he was now ready to go to Blackburn Baptist Church.
It wasn’t easy saying farewell to family members and friends, but on January 30th1980, still feeling like newlyweds, we drove 800 kilometres eastward to start our new adventure with not much more than a calling from the Lord and lives fully surrendered to fulfil that calling. This deep sense of calling would carry us through many challenging moments that were ahead of us.
On our first Sunday at Blackburn, Rod was inducted into his new ministry and together with Sue, we were overwhelmed as we met more than one thousand people who lined up to greet us. Life was full of surprises and challenges as we settled into this new open door that our Father had prepared for us.
One memorable occasion that was quite daunting for Rod occurred when I was told I would be preaching the following Sunday night after our arrival, a task that was included in my job description.
Halfway through the message I began praying that the floorboards beneath me would open up and provide a quick exit for me. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be.
These early months were a time of prayerfully developing a strategy by which Rod could establish a discipling ministry among the 400 youth and young adults that attended Blackburn Baptist at that time. It was also a time of discovering who is the person that Jesus uses. It was a time of deep learning and also a time of painful shaping which formed a strong foundation for the ministry that was to unfold.
It surprised no one that Sue’s middle name is Grace, as her presence touched the hearts of so many people and her gift of hospitality made the Denton home a valued refuge for many.
Rod’s calling that came to him the day he read the first chapter of Colossians would serve as a strong foundation in his unfolding ministry. Very early in his ministry, Rod and Sue took leave to travel to America to spend time at the churches of leaders who were having an influence on his life. One significant contact occurred when Rod and Sue spent a week at Peninsula Bible Church in Palo Alto, California, where the Pastor, Ray Stedman,(whose book Body Life had greatly impacted Rod) and his ministry team all spent one on one time with them. Rod had discovered an important mentoring theme when looking for people he could spend time with. “Start at the top and work your way down, they might say no but they could say yes.”
Rod and Sue had burnt all their bridges and were highly motivated at this early stage of life in the ministry, which meant that they needed to develop a teachable spirit and walk by faith into the future that God had prepared for them.
One of the most important lessons that we had learned in this early stage of our ministry was the value of sharing a joint calling that opened up the door for us to minister together, complementing one another for our lifetime together.