Archive Article: Christian Leaders Of The Future. 4 April 03.
December 27, 2008

The Wesley Institute Graduation ceremony took place last weekend. It is amazing to see how much has been achieved in only 15 years.

Wesley Mission has been involved in education for well over a century. Indeed, at one point all the Methodist ministers in this state had been educated at the Mission’s Evangelists’ Training Institute. In due course, the Methodist Church – and then the Uniting Church – devised its own form of education. The Mission remained involved in education, such as through its International Christian Leadership College, whereby young people came from overseas to learn about the Mission’s work for application back in their own countries in Asia and the Pacific.

Incidentally, the Australian Government in 1986 decided to do more to encourage Australian universities to recruit students from overseas. The Mission had been doing that for decades – and proved how successful it could be.

For the last 15 years the Mission’s main role in tertiary education has been through the Wesley Institute. The Institute equips men and women for Christian service in contemporary society. Among the courses offered are ones of the visual and applied arts, as well as counselling, pastoral care, youth ministry and theology.

Wesley Institute has now about 1,200 graduates. There are currently about 300 students, and the number continues to increase.

A recent innovation is an overseas study programme for American students. The students will be enrolled in American universities and will have an “Australian term” at Wesley Institute. They will learn more about their own culture by being able to compare it with another. They will return home with both a better knowledge of Australia and a keener appreciation of what it is that makes an “American”.

At last week’s graduation ceremony, the foundation Principal Dr David Johnston commented that students at Wesley Institute are “loving to learn, learning to live and living to love”.

Another insight he used came from St Francis of Assisi: “Preach the gospel all the time – if necessary use words”. In other words, a person’s whole life can be a sermon of the Good News. Thus, a sermon is not just a statement during a church service but it is how a person lives. We are all familiar with some American television evangelists who preached one message – and yet lived another. St Francis meant that a person’s entire life can be a work of art to glorify God.

This illustrates what makes the Wesley Institute graduates unique. Their Christian witness helps them to stand out from the contemporary culture.

“By their fruits shall ye know them”. Over the long term, the best advertisement for any educational institutional is the quality of the graduates. Good graduates are far more important than glossy pamphlets and advertisements. Their actions help make them ambassadors for their educational institution.

In the longer term, these young people will be the next generation of Christian leaders. Christian service is not limited to work within the church. Just over half a century ago the British Christian leader William Temple, later Archbishop of Canterbury, said that an important role for a Christian is to be in the market place of ideas, mixing with ordinary people in ordinary jobs. A Christian can be working for the Lord in whatever place they are based.

Wesley Institute graduates will bloom wherever they are planted.

Broadcast Friday 4th April 2003 2003 on Radio 2GB’s “Brian Wilshire Programme” at 9pm.