Steve Cooper talks to Rod Benson

Steve Cooper leaves Queensland this month (December 1997) for the
cool tranquillity of the Blue Mountains in New South Wales. Rod Benson
caught up with him as he prepared to depart after six years in the
provincial city of Ipswich (in Queensland, Australia).

RB: Steve, you moved from New South Wales to Queensland in 1992 as
Senior Pastor of one of the state’s oldest and largest churches. How
would you describe Ipswich?

SC: My first impression was of a working class provincial city with
lots of social problems, and many people living on welfare and
unemployment benefits. Arriving in January 1992, the heat and humidity
was overwhelming, and I noticed that one of the results of that was
there were a lot of people finding it hard to control their emotions in
relationships.

Six years later there is still a lot of truth in that impression,
but I’ve also found that Ipswich is a very diverse place, with a
fascinating blend of rich tradition and culture and heritage as well.
One of the things I’ve appreciated about this city is the way the
facilities are so handy: you’re physically close to people, to
hospitals, to schools, shops, to doctors. There are so many facilities
for people to use, and they’re very easy to get to, a very convenient
city to live in.

RB: What changes have you seen over the last six years?

SC: Probably the main change is the direction of the city. Ipswich
was very much defined by the main employers in past generations – big
department stores, coal mines, the woollen mill, railway workshops – and
virtually all those have closed down now. There’s nothing like the
amount of employment that there used to be, and I think the general
Ipswich population wonder what’s the direction for the future? Have we
all got to go to Brisbane for employment? What’s the identity of the
city? What can it really offer to its own people and to outsiders?

I’ve seen that confusion and uncertainty and lack of confidence
growing over the six years. Although there are certainly some notable
people who have tried to reverse the trend, and give some significant
direction, including a number of Christian leaders.

RB: What shape has your ministry taken at Ipswich Baptist Church?

SC: When I came here six years ago, it was a church that was very
traditional, it had been through a number of pastorates where there had
been a lot of ups and downs. One pastor, Geoff Litzow, had died
tragically, and the church was still in some degree of shock over that.
The church had lost direction in the sense that it didn’t really know if
it wanted to stay in the central part of the city or whether it should
sell up and relocate.

The other thing that struck was that the church people were
comfortable in their friendships with each other, but they were
unfriendly to others who were different, especially anyone who was weak
or hurting in the community. Often those people were treated fairly
coldly because the church people were secure and could basically only
handle employed people or middle class types.

So what I’ve tried to do over the last six years is, very gently and
slowly, to move the church along so that it’s more open to contemporary
worship styles, to have a clear sense of mission and purpose, and also
to be a welcoming and friendly church, to accept people who are
battlers. Jesus talked about "the little ones"; I’ve often
preached on the theme of "the little ones" – those who are so
prevalent in Ipswich.

Our church has been through some hard times during my ministry,
especially in the second and third year, when two of the pastors on the
pastoral team were involved in moral misconduct (one was jailed; neither
is in ministry today). Through that time I aimed to be there with the
church as a stable, thoughtful pastor to help them through those hard
experiences.

One of the things I have enjoyed here in this city is the
interaction with other pastors where we’ve tried to present a relevant
gospel message to a city that very much needs hope and compassion. It’s
been a big challenge to try and work toward that.

RB: You’ve also seen the church send the first cross-cultural career
missionary in its 136-year history.

SC: Yes, Cathy Pickard, a young woman from our church who’s working
with OMF in Thailand, which is a great joy to us. She already had a
very clear missionary vision before I arrived, but I’ve certainly
supported her and helped the church to get behind her and pray for her
and support her. We’re her main sending church, and it’s been very good
for the church to learn to have a vision for cross-cultural mission,
especially overseas.

It’s been a church that has been very good at church planting in
Queensland, a commitment to planting churches in Ipswich over the 136
years, a commitment also to Mission to Queensland, but they needed to
have a broader vision beyond our state and especially across cultures.

RB: You came to Ipswich from a quiet beachside suburb of Sydney.
What led you here?

SC: I’m not sure of the answer to that, Rod. Dee Why Baptist Church
was my first pastorate, I was there for five years. Most of that time I
was part-time, and it was a fairly small church with about 60 to 70
regular attenders. After five years I was ready for a greater
challenge. I was especially interested in leading a pastoral team.

A representative of the Ipswich Baptist Church contacted me, and
when I came up and met with the leaders, the church here seemed to be
very much the kind of situation I was looking for. I could see it was
going to be a very diverse community and a diverse church, and I thought
that would stretch me in many ways, and certainly it has.

RB: How does Queensland Baptist culture compare to that of New South
Wales?

SC: I’ve been surprised to discover that there’s not a lot of
difference between the average Baptist person, or even the average
Baptist church, in both states, and one area in which this is
particularly true is the theological colleges. When I came to
Queensland I had a certain impression of the Queensland Baptist College
of Ministries, and the Queensland Baptists generally as being more
(theologically) conservative, but I think I’ve seen some changes while
I’ve been here, and I think my stereotype was a bit incorrect.

The difference between the Queensland Baptist College of Ministries
in Brisbane, and Sydney’s Morling College is very small these days in
terms of theology, emphasis, mission orientation, styles of training,
the academic qualifications and outlook of the faculty.

The Queensland scene is definitely smaller, about half the size of
Baptist churches in NSW, so for me that’s been a positive thing, because
it’s helped me to know people more quickly, and to feel part of a
family, whereas in NSW you can as a Baptist feel a little bit lost in
the middle of quite a gigantic organisation.

One of the things I’ve observed in my six years here is that
Baptists in Queensland seem to have separated into several camps.
There’s a charismatic group, there’s a Reformed group of churches and
pastors, there’s even a group these days who would see themselves as the
‘Baptist distinctives’ group. There are some people who are pro-Union,
some who are suspicious of the Union, some who are anti-Union. And
there are other groupings as well. All of that saddens me, and I don’t
think that characteristic would be so true of pastors and churches in
NSW.

I’ve always been very impressed with the leadership of the Baptist
Union of Queensland, with the General Superintendent and Directors of
other Service Groups who have always seemed to me to be more progressive
and more innovative and more in touch with real Baptist life than the
leaders that I knew in NSW.

I was greatly encouraged when I arrived in Queensland because I was
given opportunity very quickly to have influence in the Baptist Union
scene. For example, I was asked to be an Area Superintendent, and I
know that if I had remained in NSW, I would have been perceived as a
recent College graduate, and a pastor in his late thirties, and I
probably wouldn’t have been given a leadership role like that.

I’ve also been given opportunity to lecture at the Baptist College
in Brisbane, and I’ve appreciated very much the openness of the faculty
to allowing me – a ‘foreigner’ – to share with the students in that way.

RB: Some time ago you wrote in Adelphoi about the "unbusy
pastor." What does that mean to you?

SC: About 15 years ago I read an article in Leadership magazine that
influenced me more than any other article I’ve ever read, written by
Eugene Peterson, titled ‘The unbusy pastor.’ Peterson’s basic thesis in
that article is that most pastors are far too busy, and they try to
impress themselves and others by being super-busy in their lives.
Peterson says that for a pastor to be overly busy is a very dangerous
thing. He says that a pastor has to set their goals and priorities very
clearly.

The main business of a pastor is in three areas: one is to be a
person of the Word who studies scripture and teaches the Bible to
others; secondly a person who listens to others; and thirdly a person
who prays. He says they’re the three main priorities, and if you get
overly busy in administration or rushing around, then you don’t really
have enough time to dig down deep and do well in those three things.

Now obviously there are many times when I am busy, and life becomes
incredibly crowded, and that’s true, I’m sure, for any pastor. But
Peterson’s vision is a very haunting one, and one that I find very
attractive – I’d like to aim in my life to be an "unbusy
pastor" who has time to reflect on scripture, time to really pray
deeply with God, time to really get with people and sit beside them and
listen to them, and be a sensitive pastoral carer.

RB: At the end of a long day, what do you do to relax and unwind?

SC: Reading is something I love to do. I also love to be with my
family. It’s a good idea for a pastor to combine his leisure with
family time, because for a lot of men, if they’re very stressed out at
work, their form of leisure is to go off with other men and, for
example, go fishing, or have a game of golf, or go to the pub, or
whatever it might be – not that there’s anything wrong with those things
in themselves.

But the problem is that you’re going away from your family, and you
see less and less of your wife and your children. So I’ve tried to do
leisure things with my family, whether it be around the home, in the
back yard, or going to things together on Saturdays, so that I’m
relaxing, but I’m doing it in the presence of the ones that I want to be
close to and care for in my family.

One of the problems with that, of course, is that I don’t have a
real lot of non-Christian friends, because I don’t play sport, and I
don’t get involved in clubs and that kind of thing. So I’ve had to
compensate for that a little bit by trying to be friendly with men in
the street, and try to seize on whatever opportunities I get to befriend
non-Christian men. But those opportunities are not real easy for me.

RB: How do you balance the need to be aware of popular culture
through watching television, and concerns about wasting time?

SC: I don’t spend much time watching TV. I usually watch as I wipe
up the dishes. My wife Joy and I have an allocation of jobs, and she
usually cooks the tea and then I wash and wipe up after. I’ve got a
little black and white TV that I watch while I’m doing that, so I catch
up on the news. Apart from that I don’t watch a real lot of things. I
find TV pretty boring, and slow-moving.

Probably my main source of information is from listening to ABC
Radio as I drive around, and also on Sundays I receive the Sunday Mail,
and I find there are often a number of insightful comments in that, on
the nature of culture and society in Queensland. They’re my main
sources of trying to keep in contact with local news and information. I
find I just get overloaded, there’s so much stuff around that I’ve got
to be fairly guarded about how much information I’m receiving.

RB: You have four school-age children. How does your family cope
with the demands of Christian ministry?

SC: Not too bad, really, because my wife and I try to be fairly
disciplined in our approach to family. Right from early days of being
in ministry – and I’ve been in ministry now for 20 years, and pastoral
ministry for eleven of those – I’ve always tried to set parameters on my
working week. So each week I set goals, I work out priorities, and I
try to work hard in the time allotted for my church work, or my ministry
work, but I also try to make sure that I have plenty of time for family
and for leisure.

I’m usually home four nights a week, although obviously there are
exceptions to that when I’m incredibly busy, and I also try to make sure
I take a day off each week, and usually that is the case. I need that
for leisure, I need it to chat with my wife, I need it for time to
unwind.

Apart from days off once a week, I’m very keen with my family to
take our four weeks of holiday each year, and we plan those holidays
very carefully as a family, and we enjoy those four weeks thoroughly.
We go away, and we just have a great time, and a great adventure
together as a family, which I think is essential for a family.

RB: What is most significant about your time in Ipswich?

SC: Before I came here I had spent virtually all my life with middle
class to upper middle class people, and in particular spent many years
involved with tertiary students – five years as a university student,
and then seven years as a full-time Christian worker with Student Life.

So for me, coming to live in Ipswich has been a very broadening
experience. It’s forced me to sit down with a very wide diversity of
people and to try and understand them: unemployed people, people who
have psychiatric problems, victims of abuse, people who battle with
alcoholism and temper problems, Aboriginal people.

Before I came to Ipswich I’d never spoken to an Aboriginal person in
depth, and certainly had never had any Aboriginal friends, but here in
Ipswich I’ve been able to relate to Aboriginal pastors and Aboriginal
people, and try and understand them and get to know them. So it’s been
very enriching for me to be able to grapple with what makes these people
tick, what has brought their problems about, how can I serve these
people, how can I love them in God’s name, and how can I lead them into
the kingdom.

One couple I’ve had a lot to do with are both about my age, in their
early forties, and they’ve never worked in their lives, and they never
will work – both of them are on disability pensions – and they’re simple
people. Whenever I visit these people, I ask myself, "How do I
communicate the gospel to these people?" They can’t read a Bible,
they can’t read hardly anything at all; they watch TV and videos all day
long. What does it mean to make the gospel relevant to them? What does
Jesus offer to those kind of people?

And then, related to that issue is, if they become Christians, how
do you incorporate them into the church, especially a church that is
fairly traditional and middle class? How do you make people like that
feel welcome, and how do you have a worship style and a preaching style
that really connects with them and helps them really move on in their
Christian growth? I think that whole aspect of broadening and enriching
has been the most significant thing for me during these six years in
Ipswich.

RB: You’re not the only Queensland Baptist pastor without a secular
career background. Do you see it as a disadvantage?

SC: When I finished high school, I spent five years at university,
and most of my friends and most of my contacts during my university
years were not Christian, so I certainly wasn’t living in a kind of
Christian ghetto. And then seven years working with Student Life
full-time certainly meant a lot of interaction with Christians, but it
also meant an enormous amount of time in evangelism and interaction with
university students and faculty, most of whom were not Christians.

So by the time I arrived at theological college, I’d spent a fair
amount of my time in connectedness with the non-Christian world, even
though it wasn’t actually in a secular workforce role. When I went
through my latter years of high school, and all the way through
university, I worked part-time in my father’s shop, and during the
Christmas holidays I’d often work for a month or two full-time, and so I
think I’ve had a taste of what it means to work in the secular workforce
and grapple with some of the issues, even though it wasn’t a permanent
job, and there are some dimensions that I haven’t encountered.

One of the skills of any pastor is learning to listen and reflect,
to grapple with what the scripture says about issues. There are lots of
issues that people in their workaday world encounter which I’ve never
encountered. But at the same time I’ve never encountered suicide in my
own life or my own family; I’ve never been a drug-dependent person or an
alcoholic, but just because I haven’t grappled with those problems
doesn’t mean I don’t have something to offer.

In all of these dimensions a sensitive pastor should be able to
listen and reflect, go to the scripture and find some answers, and then
share some of those perspectives with people.

The other thing I’ve consciously tried to do as a pastor is try and
do all I can to enter the world of the workaday person. One of the good
things for a pastor, there’s a role of speaking out, and getting our
people to think about ministry in a city like Ipswich is a lot of the
people in our congregation do work locally here in the city, so I’m able
to go and visit them at their workplace and have lunch with them, or
just drop in and say ‘gidday’ to them.

Often when I’m visiting hospitals, for example, I’ll see a doctor
from our congregation, or a physiotherapist, or someone else who’s in
their workaday world who’s interacting with me, and those people feel
that I’m a professional like they are and I’m working with them for the
wholeness and health of people, and so there’s a mutual respect for how
my professional expertise can interact and complement that of other
people in our church as well.

RB: Overnight federal politicians have called on Australian
church-goers to boycott the churches in response to statements by church
leaders that are perceived as politically motivated. Do we, as
ministers of the gospel, have a political responsibility?

SC: It certainly is part of our responsibility. I remember earlier
this year our local federal member of parliament, Pauline Hanson, issued
a statement that it’s wrong for pastors and churches to make any
political comments, and we should confine ourselves to religious issues.

I wrote an immediate letter back to the local Ipswich newspaper (the
Queensland Times), saying that that’s a wrong perception, that when a
person follows Jesus, we become involved in not only loving God but
loving our neighbour as ourselves, and if I as a Christian love my
neighbour, then I’m concerned about my neighbour’s welfare and
well-being and health, and the community in which they live, and the
political structures that affect them, and situations of injustice and
unfairness for those people.

So certainly, for any average Christian, there’s a role for protest,
there’s a role for speaking out on issues of compassion and justice in
the world, and in our own country and local community. But especially,
for a pastor, there’s a role of speaking out, and getting our people to
think, and be people who are truly salt and light in the world in which
we live.

The only cautious note I would add to that is that a pastor needs to
be careful not to be seen to be siding with one particular point of
view, and I wouldn’t want people to think that the way that I’m
preaching or the things that I’m saying would brand me with any
particular political party or any particular Christian lobby group or
whatever.

I would like to think that I present issues, and present a general
framework, so that the Christian people can think the issues through and
make their own intelligent choices. I’m there really as a catalyst and
a resource person, a stimulator, if you like, to get to think through
their own issues, and grapple with what the scriptures say about the
issues of the society and community in which we live.

But it’s certainly not my role to take a dogmatic stance that’s
going to alienate one group and make another group think that I’m their
friend. I’ve got to be very cautious about that.

RB: You have about three weeks ministry remaining in Ipswich, and
then you’re moving to Springwood in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney,
to take up another role. What’s your vision for Springwood?

SC: First, let me say that I’m not doing a lot of planning for my
next ministry, and one of the reasons for that is that I’m convinced
that a new pastor in their first year has to mainly listen and
understand, and get to know the people, and the unique culture of that
particular church. Another thing that I should say, too, is that the
church that I’m going to, the Springwood Baptist Church, is a large
church, and a very vibrant one, so in many ways I’ll be able to keep a
good thing going, rather than try to change things or alter things too
much.

On the other hand though, from my connection with the church so far
this year, I’ve come to see that there are a number of ways in which
that church should be changing, and I would like to see myself as an
agent in that change.

One of the things that I’m concerned about is that the people of
Springwood Baptist Church don’t seem to be very well connected with
their local community. A lot of them send their children to Christian
schools, and a lot of them spend virtually the whole of their social
interactions with other Christians. As a pastor I’d like to model to
them involvement in a local community with the non-Christians, and
serving people, friendships, understanding the non-Christian world,
sharing the gospel, and probably another big need for that church is
prayerfulness. They only have a couple of prayer meetings, and they’re
poorly attended.

Next year, when, I arrive I’ve got a vision for being a prayerful
pastor, which of course is one of the three areas that Eugene Peterson
highlights as a role of a pastor, and really encouraging people to be
passionate about prayer, and passionate about intercession for their
local community, as well as for the wider world.

RB: You certainly have a lot of enthusiasm for your new ministry.
Thanks, Steve, for talking to Tempo. We wish you well as you return to
New South Wales.

SC: Thanks, Rod, and thanks to all my friends in Queensland who have
made these six years a wonderful experience.

[Rev. Steve Cooper concluded as Senior Pastor of Ipswich Baptist
Church and as Area Superintendent of the Ipswich and West Moreton region
of Queensland on December 14, 1997, to become Senior Pastor of
Springwood Baptist Church in New South Wales, Australia, in January
1998. He spoke to Tempo on 21 November.]

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