Preach Magazine Issue 4 - Preaching in the digital age | Page 50

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INTERVIEW

JS What does your role with Fusion

JS What part does preaching and

involve and how did you come to be
doing it?

speaking play in your role? What
contexts are you communicating in?

My role is anything to do with local
churches reaching students and students
sharing their faith with their mates in
everyday life. That’s what I’m interested
in – I love it. I absolutely love it.

It turned out to be a massive
part of what I do. And the funny
thing is that God has been training
me for this since the age of seven,
when my parents first went, ‘Oh
my goodness! This is a slightly
hyperactive child, let’s send her to
youth theatre and gymnastics to
channel her energy a bit.’

It has come as a bit of a surprise to find
myself doing it. I suppose if I had any
ambition it was to change the world for
Jesus. I maybe expected to teach drama
in prisons or something. When I went to
university I didn’t know Fusion existed,
and I didn’t know I could lead or speak in
church. I wasn’t oppressed by that, I just
wasn’t aware.

JS You thought you couldn’t because

of your gender?

Well I’d grown up in a church that
didn’t have any women in leadership. I
found out later they didn’t allow it. But I
had such a phenomenal youth worker that
I thought the sky was the limit because
I saw her as an incredibly gifted leader.
I just didn’t realise there was never an
opportunity to speak in church on a
Sunday, and I was never called a leader.
It was only when I moved church, when I
went to university in York, that the gift and
the opportunity came. I walked in, nobody
knew me, but they said, ‘This is what we see
of the gift of God in you’. They saw a leader
in me, and they encouraged that. And then
the speaking thing – an older leader took
a risk on me. A secure, brilliant bloke
called Luke, said to me ‘I think you’re
called to speak,’ and he got me reading
the Bible and noticed I didn’t use a ‘Bible
voice’ and went ‘Brilliant. I think you
should preach’. I ended up becoming a
regular preacher at my church.
We were engaging with students as
a church, and then I found out that
behind the scenes was this organisation
called Fusion that was a catalyst for
the local church. I started serving Fusion
any opportunity I got, because I could see
this big vision for students and the local
church and I thought it was dynamite.
This is my fourth year in the job, and I
could do it for the rest of my life, honestly.
I get to serve the church and help them
reach the generation in front of them –
what a privilege.

My profound moment came when I
was invited to speak at a conference,
when I’d just started working for
Fusion at the age of 23. I was just
starting to realise part of my job
would be to communicate, and maybe
sometimes communicate about
sharing Jesus from a platform. I
showed up at a conference because
I’d been asked to do a main stage talk.
I didn’t know what it was, what it
would involve.
On the Friday night I found myself
sitting in a venue with a thousand
youth workers! I panicked. I sat
there basically internally screaming,
because the head of Compassion

International was speaking, and I was
thinking, ‘I’m going to be him, but on
Sunday morning. What’s going on?’
And as I’m sitting there saying to God,
‘I don’t know what you’re playing at,
but I can’t do this,’ I felt like God said to
me, ‘Miriam, look around you. Where
are you?’ I looked around me and I’m
sat in a massive theatre. And he says
to me, ‘Miriam, I’ve trained you for
this. You know this space. This is home
for you.’ And I looked and I saw this
letterbox stage, and I thought, ‘I know
h