Lenore grew up in Bankstown, rode the East Hills Baptist Church bus to Sunday school as a kid, got bullied at school, and found her safe place in an organisation some have never heard of: Girls Brigade. It became a constant through surgeries, hard seasons and big life changes. Sixty-nine years after Girls Brigade started at East Hills Baptist, Lenore is still there.
In Part 1 of her Chip Lunch conversation, Joel and Brayden hear about a childhood shaped by life on the Georges River, a faith that was always present but took time to become truly hers, two surgeries in year 12, and a university degree that started in teaching, pivoted to business, and was interrupted by a week in Ghana at an international Girls Brigade gathering where she attended a four-hour church service, tried cow's feet, and had cold bucket showers.
Lenore talks honestly about the gap between going to camp as a teenager and giving your life to Christ, and then going back to school and not really living it out, and the moment in her early twenties when she sat down with a pastor over several weeks and was asked the hard questions. That was when the faith she'd grown up with became genuinely her own.
When Joel asks what made her think Christianity was the right one, given she'd been exposed to many other religions and worldviews at school and university, her answer is simple: it never felt like there was another option.
Stories of Jesus Changing Everything. This is Chip Lunch.