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Media Watch: Not Your Average Clergyman! ::
Using a local newspaper interview for the gospel? Sure Can! Here’s a good example…
Source: Perspective Vo1 No1 © Perspective 1999
_As Presbyterians, we’re good at criticising the media, but not so good at using it positively. Bryson Smith, minister of Dubbo Presbyterian Church, (in country New South Wales, Australia) has a good relationship with the editor of The Dubbo Mailbox Market, a local free Newspaper. The editor assigned a Christian journalist to interview Bryson for the paper’s weekly “Fascinating Folks” feature. “We basically sat down and talked about what we wanted to come out of the article,” says Bryson. “It was just before Easter, so we wanted the gospel to come through clearly.”
A rare opportunity indeed! And as you read our reprint of the article below, you’ll see they succeeded – the feature presents Bryson and the Dubbo Presbyterian Church in a positive, up-tempo light, and clearly highlights the central issues of the gospel._
NOT YOUR AVERAGE CLERGYMAN!
A young man with a Ph.D, riding a bike, wearing Reeboks and munching on a Big Mac may not fit in with your idea of what a clergyman should look like.
A modern, football-loving, squash-playing, family man, Bryson Smith is one of the guys: certainly not a formal black-clad figure who is preachy and religious.
“It’s interesting seeing people’s reaction when I tell them I’m a Presbyterian minister – you can see on their faces ‘boy you don’t look like one!’” Bryson laughs. “Just being who I am makes me different to the run of the mill Scottish-speaking Pressie. But I think the shape of the Presbyterian church is changing – being manned by younger people with a more informal approach.”
Bryson believes that the church isn’t very good at marketing itself. “We sort of put up walls and let people come to us instead of rubbing shoulders with people and letting them see we’re just ordinary.”
He is married to Sue, and the couple have two little daughters – Felicity and Olivia.
“We see it as a team sport – she certainly has strengths where I have weaknesses,” he said. Before entering the ministry, Bryson trained in zoology, completing his Ph.D in Australia before going to the United States to research the habitats of migrating birds. Sue trained as an accountant.
So what would make a young couple, both trained in professional careers, earning excellent money and travelling the world, living the life many only dream about? Not only that, but to enter the ministry, which is hardly easy: lowly paid, and under constant public scrutiny.
Bryson says the realisation that the death and resurrection of Christ was the most important event in the world’s history forced him into re-thinking his life.
“We decided there were bigger issues, more important questions than the metabolism of small animals,” he said.
“It was a hard decision. To be brutally honest, there was a lot more attractiveness in my career course: the prestige and the money I could earn. ‘When I told my science colleagues they thought I was an idiot – they found it frustrating that I would throw it all away,” he said.
For Bryson, Easter is not a fairytale, when some semi-mythical figure got hung on a symbol, to be celebrated only by cream-filled chocolate eggs and fluffy bunny rabbits.
As far as Bryson is concerned Jesus Christ was a real person, hammered hand and foot to a wooden cross, and his resurrection was an historical occurrence. It is his conviction that this is the truth which drew him into ministry. He believes that he and Sue have the gifts needed to tell people the implications of the Easter message, which Bryson describes as:
“the point in time where Jesus enables people to become friends with God.”.
Despite Bryson’s frankness about his beliefs, he doesn’t come across as boring or preachy in any way.
“I only hope that I’m normal!” he says, with a laugh.
Reprinted with permission of The Dubbo Mailbox Market
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