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Candid conversations for the church. Host is Ardin Beech of Windsor District Baptist Church, Sydney, Australia. Co-hosted by Jonathan Hoffman.
This week at Windsor, coming back for another week. Ardin, your host, doctor Jay. Thanks for coming.
Jonathan:Great to have you here, Ardin. How are you doing? Pretty good. That's good. Pretty good.
Jonathan:It's a Friday today.
Ardin:Yeah. Looking forward to the weekend. Nice. Big plans? Got a birthday party back in Bathurst on Saturday night.
Ardin:Wow. But other than that, pretty clear.
Jonathan:Wow. How did you stay such close friends with people a whole another city away?
Ardin:It's called communication, Jonathan.
Jonathan:That's what I'm saying. How did you how did you remain such
Ardin:iPhones and Facebook.
Jonathan:Okay. Alright. You are pretty
Ardin:prolific. Valued relationships.
Jonathan:Yeah. That's true. Yeah. In that order. Right?
Ardin:The right thing to say.
Jonathan:Yeah. You are pretty prolific at the Facebook. True. Yeah. Save the date.
Jonathan:Carol's this year, seventh December in the evening. It's a Sunday night. So save the date, seventh December. Carol's is gonna be spectacular. So looking forward to it.
Ardin:Alright. News is done once again. Excellent. Time for our guest.
Jonathan:Very excited to welcome on the podcast. This week at Windsor, we have Jermia Benny John. Welcome, Jermia.
Jermea:Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be on here.
Jonathan:Yeah. So, Jermia, why don't you tell people what's your role here at WDBC?
Jermea:So I'm one of the ministry interns here. I work at church on Wednesdays that looks like admin, but also partaking in some ministry roles on a Sunday.
Jonathan:That's great. Do you wanna maybe tell people how you heard about our church and kinda how you came to be involved? It's a it's a bit of a unique story.
Jermea:Yeah. So I'm currently enrolled at Alpha Crisis. It's a it's a college in Parramatta. And last semester, I was doing a unit called introduction to pastoral ministry, and I just so happened to be taught by doctor Jonathan in front of me. Doctor Jonathan.
Jonathan:I don't that that's not official. But yeah.
Jermea:But, yes, you were my lecturer, that's how we got introduced. And I was actually going through a bit of a period in my life where I was really praying and discerning what next steps looked like ministry wise. And it was during that sort of moment, Jonathan approached me. We had a bit of a conversation on what a ministry opportunity could look like. And I was like, no way.
Jermea:I've been praying about this. And so yeah. And thus, I was introduced to WDBC. Came out here a couple of times to sit check it out and visit the church. And I was approached with the opportunity of pursuing an internship here.
Ardin:And what about your faith journey back back in the beginning? How did you to come to know Christ?
Jermea:Okay. So I'm actually a third generation Christian. I come from a Pentecostal Malayali background. And so that's just a little state in South India called Kerala. So we're a group of Malayalis.
Jermea:That's what we're called. And my grandparents are church planters and missionaries. So are my parents. And so faith was a norm growing up. I knew Jesus from a very early age.
Jermea:Being part of a missionary family meant moving around a lot, traveling a lot. And so my earliest memories of life are prayer meetings and getting together as big groups at home and hosting, like, church at home in a way. I was born in New Zealand. And so, we spent a big half of, my life in New Zealand and we did a lot of missionary work there. And then we have actually moved to Australia.
Jermea:And so it wasn't until I I grew up though, more towards, like, being around 15, 16 that I experienced Jesus personally. Went through a lot of being a pastor's kid and being in that space. We had experienced a lot of church hurt and I'd also experienced some personal hurt. And so it was in those spaces where I actually got to know Jesus, Jesus, like, personally as someone who redeems and someone who heals. And so it became quite personal for me as well as, you know, a family thing.
Jonathan:I'll I'll be interested to hear you both reflect on this because you grew up on the mission field Mhmm. For part of your how many years were you on the mission field, Arden?
Ardin:Seven or so, I think. Okay. Yeah. Teenage years. Yeah.
Jonathan:Yeah. And my understanding is on the mission field, you're probably meeting more in homes, maybe doing more relational type of ministry. You're both nodding, which is which is good. Be interested to hear you both reflect how you go from doing church in a house setting, predominantly house setting or marketplace setting or, you know, out in the community, and then being in a place like Australia where church is almost institutional in some places. You know, here they have a big footprint.
Jonathan:We have, you know, services this time. People just come gather in that place. Like, what was that journey for either of you in terms of going from the homes and into the sort of the more institutional space?
Jermea:I think a big part for me was accepting going from something spontaneous and spontaneity into structure. Like, that was the biggest difference for me. I think I still experienced the same Jesus and the same spirit and the same community out on the mission field as in a in a structured church. I think the difference is more just the way in which a service is laid out or those kinds of, like, you know, more structural, like like you said, it seems more like an institution, something like WWDC compared to being on the mission field. So I think for me, the biggest thing was going from something that, you know, we would just get together on the back of no plans.
Jermea:Just a bunch of people get together and just start praising Jesus and we'd just go right into the word. Whereas come to here and, you know, we've got like things like a a sermon series and, know, there's a lot of prepare preparation that goes into that. So I think the biggest difference for me was that spontaneity verse structure kind of, yeah, setting.
Ardin:Yeah. I think for us, when we first went over there, we had a couple of little kind of church meetings at houses, different houses. But because there were so many missionaries in Bolivia when we were there, we became sort of our own kind of little tight knit community. So you had, I think, once a month, everyone from the mission, that particular mission, would gather together and kind of have a big service altogether in in English. And I guess then language became the language became the thing.
Ardin:So you got so once a month or however often it was, you got to have a service in English, sing songs you knew, that kind of thing. On the other hand, dad really encouraged us to embrace the culture and kinda get into the culture. So week to week church was just Spanish church or or sometimes even Quechua church. Wow. Yeah.
Ardin:Which is what the the native Indians over this week. So week to week, we were out in the community, just in a regular church in the village or whatever, and then we'd have communal services with expats altogether once a month or whatever.
Jonathan:So when you came back to Australia, were there things that you missed about that?
Ardin:No. No. I I developed early on a really close knit group of friends at the church in Bathurst and really enjoyed the fellowship in the community at the Baptist Church. Yeah. I felt I felt kinda plugged in there pretty early on.
Ardin:They were really good at looking after the weird little missionary kid who'd arrived on the boat with the bananas.
Jonathan:There you go. Jeremy, I wonder if you can share a little bit about your background. I mean, you know, parents, third generation Christian, missionary family, roots in South India, born in New Zealand. You've been all been all over the place. Here you are in the Hawkesbury, right, which predominantly Anglo sort of area of Sydney.
Jonathan:I think it's fair to say that. You're in our church, which is predominantly Anglo. I wonder if you can talk a bit about what that experience has been like for you. What are things that have you just what do you notice? What seems different?
Jonathan:What seems new? What's maybe difficult? And maybe what's something that people wouldn't understand?
Jermea:Well, I think in our missionary settings, we predominantly went into cities and towns and villages in India itself. And so, yes, there are so many different cultures and there's so many different people groups and there's so many different types of, you know, languages and foods even. And so in a way, we are going into new places, but at the end of the day, like, it's in India. I've predominantly done a lot of missionary work in India. And so there is that feeling of familiarity.
Jermea:Yeah. Just kinda going into a place that is new, but also feels quite familiar. There's always something we can connect on. There's always something that brings us that ties us back to to roots in a sense if that makes sense. So being in a in a more of an Anglo setting, I do find sometimes I am miss having something to, like, hold on to or those roots don't seem to necessarily be as evident as they are on the missionary field.
Jermea:And so things like, you know, it's a norm out on the field to get together and, like, our staple food is, like, rice and curry. That's that's our go to afterwards. That's our shared meal. And so it doesn't matter where we're where we're going, what part of the village we are. We all just we all just know just something familiar about the food and the ways in which we minister around food.
Jermea:And so that's something different here. I mean, yes, we have, like, food and family and those kinds of things. But again, it just it's different and it's it's new and that that goes for wherever you go. But I think the biggest thing for me is just not having that tether to hold on to or, like, it doesn't feel familiar. It does there is this distinct newness about being at WDBC.
Ardin:Does India feel like home then or because mom and dad were working there and traveling from New Zealand or from Australia or from wherever? Does it just feel does it feel more like a place where they worked or or is there a link back there that feels like
Jonathan:home for you?
Jermea:So over the years, I've had to come to the conclusion that a geographical location will never be home for me. And I spent a long part of my life trying to find home and trying to define what home looked like for us and our family. It was one of those big things that I struggled with because I never really felt like I fit in anywhere. I was always moving. Once I finally got in touch with the community, they was like, oh, yeah.
Jermea:I've made some friends. I was like, no. We were up and moving. Like, goodbye. You know, I finally found a really good teacher and I'm like, yes.
Jermea:I love you. No. Goodbye. You know? So I really did struggle to define what home was.
Jermea:And so I wouldn't necessarily say India's home and I wouldn't necessarily say New Zealand or Australia is home. It's just where we are right now, and that's where God's place us right now. But I it it could change, you know, whenever. For me, family has always been home. Wherever family is, we're home.
Jermea:And I mean that in, like, our kind of tight knit mom and dad and my two sisters, but also, like, our greater family. My grandparents play a big role in what home is for me. And so if you ask me what's home for you, it's always been family. Family's home.
Jonathan:Wonder if you could tell us a bit about your relationship with your sisters because you guys seem to be very close. I don't know if it's just how it appears to me, but that's what it seems. And and I'm curious, yeah, how do you think that closeness was cultivated? I have four children of my own that are very close in age, but sometimes I look at them. I don't know if they seem super duper close.
Jonathan:So, yeah, I'm curious. Where do you think that comes from if that's true?
Jermea:Yeah. So I think we're very close. We're each other's best friends, and we don't do anything without one another. And I think a big part of that is growing up together with the same sort of lived experience. And I think when you do move so much and when you do do life with such instability, you do anything as child to, like, find stability.
Jermea:And for us, that was our family again, like I say. But for us three girls, it was our sisterhood. And we're quite there's a bit of an age gap between me and my younger sister, but that never played a role. Like, we've always been very close. I think it's the way that we can relate on everything that we've been through.
Jermea:There's nobody else on this planet earth that understands our life the way that we've we do because of the way that we've experienced, you know, those happy moments, but also those sad moments. It's like there's always something we can relate to in our lived experience. And so I think that's where our closeness comes from. It's really hard to explain to someone who hasn't necessarily gone through what you've gone through to get on to that same level as you. I mean, I'm sure they can, like, sympathize with you, but it's totally different when someone can say, yeah, I've lived through that.
Jermea:Girl, I get that. And that just became a really, really deep part of our lives. This sisterhood that we have, that we rely on each other, that we fall back on each other, that we do everything together. Sometimes, we were on mom and dad were on the mission field and it was us. And so that also played a huge role.
Jermea:It was just the three of us and we had to figure out how to do life on our own while mom and dad were out on the mission field. So that played a part too. I think proximity was a big one. We've always always never not been together and so that played a huge role too.
Ardin:Will you continue to travel with mom and dad at all now that you're older?
Jermea:So that's one of the bigger changes that's happened over the past couple of years with us growing up and going through high school and and uni. When we were younger, we went on every mission trip with them and we went everywhere everywhere they they went. Went and it was just a part of our lifestyle. Yet, now that we've grown older and we've kind of we have our own passions and dreams and desires that we'd like to pursue, that's something that's taken a bit of a a step back. And so we still have, but uni and our own kind of life direction takes priority for us at the moment.
Jermea:And so mom and dad haven't done a lot of mission trips recently where it's just them, and we'll stay back home and do life here. But it's something that we wanna do in the future once we're sort of settled and, you know, years kind of behind us. But it's something that we don't ever see us saying goodbye to. The missionary life is very, very how can I say? It's very close to who we are.
Jonathan:As someone who's traveled a lot, seen a lot of different cultures, reflected on your own heritage, what would you say are some of the distinctives of Indian culture for people who are maybe not familiar besides, like, you know, differences in food and whatnot? As someone who's been around different places, what what makes culture of your heritage distinct, would you say?
Jermea:I think community. I think our emphasis on community, but our emphasis on intergenerational community. The way in which a community is designed to hold space for the older generation and the ones upcoming, but especially the emphasis on older generation. I think that's really important where we come from. And my grandparents, as I said before, play a huge role in in my life.
Jermea:And so one of the biggest things that we emphasize is their lived experience and their experience with the Lord and their journey and their walk with the Lord and and how they can impart their wisdom onto onto the younger generation. And so whenever we everything we do together as a community, elders of our community hold us such high regard.
Jonathan:You talk about generations. There's much being made nowadays of Gen Zed, Gen I don't even know what I am.
Ardin:What are you? Gen y.
Jonathan:Are you Gen y? Is there a I feel like they erased Gen y.
Ardin:I mean, like the question. Oh.
Jonathan:Anyway I
Ardin:don't know. Wouldn't have called it. Maybe maybe x. We x.
Jonathan:I don't know. I even read an article today that said there's now younger people are coming to church at a higher rate than people of my generation of people of of their parents. I wonder if you could talk about some of the things that you've observed within gen z or gen alpha. But what are some things that you think are distinctive about that? And would you say it's a fair characterization that there's a spiritual hunger Mhmm.
Jonathan:In the generations that are up and coming? And, yeah, maybe so what do you attribute that?
Jermea:Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I think there is a a great move of of the Lord across Gen z, Gen y, Gen f, or whatever it's called. And I think we see that in in the numbers.
Jermea:There's statistically, where we're seeing a huge amount of young people flock to the churches. And so I think that's a beautiful thing. One of the things that is very distinctive about my personality is I'm very black and white, and I'm very rigid in my ways sometimes. And I'm a truth seeker. I want to pursue truth.
Jermea:I think something that I see in our young generation is their pursuit for the truth and the ways in which they go about questioning everything and trying to understand why something is the way that it is. Whether that be in the church, whether that be out in the day to day. I think there's a huge hunger for people wanting to understand the truth being presented to them. And so I think postmodernism has a big thing to do with that, you know. But something that I've seen in the churches that I've been is maybe in other contexts where things would have just been taken at face value.
Jermea:Maybe there's been more of a shift towards a conversation and a dialogue. And so I can attribute that to the to the younger generation of the present day. Yeah.
Ardin:How do we as a church then with, know, multiple generations throughout our in our community, how do we cater to those to those generations then? How do we build a a church service or a church community or whatever, a place for them? Mhmm. How do we build that for those generations?
Jermea:Right. And then I think the biggest thing that I emphasize there is having a safe space for those questions to be heard and for those questions to to coexist with doubts and and, you know, I think the biggest way in which we can be a church that exemplifies who Christ is is a church that ensures that we're safe enough for these people to come to us with questions. And we don't judge them and we don't shun them away or we don't say, I'm sorry. There's no space here for questions. The way that we present the gospel to you is the way that it is, you know?
Jermea:And so there's been a lot of places that I've been to where it has been welcomed and I see the flock of the youth stay and actually stick at the church because these questions and these doubts that they're bringing are actually being held in tension, you know? And so there is a space for them to bring their raw, like authentic selves and it's not being turned away. And I have seen places in which there hasn't been a safe space for these questions to to exist. And those are the spaces in which we see a mass exodus of young people actually.
Jonathan:Well said. Talk a bit about your passions and dreams. What what goals do you have? What are what are the things that you dream about or would love to see God do in your life?
Jermea:So like I said, I've always been a bit of a I've had an obsession with the truth, you could you could say. And so from quite a young age, I knew that I wanted to pursue that in an academic way. And I've always loved the art of of writing. That's been a huge passion of mine. And so from very little, we'd be on the bus, like, to school and I'd be on my phone just, like, writing little poems or something that would that's how I kept my time, like, going.
Jermea:I'd be reading books or we'd be sitting in chapel listening to the sermon. And to me, it's like, how can I apply this into, like, a narrative? How can I make this a narrative? You know? And so I've always been a literature kinda gal.
Jermea:I've loved writing, the art of writing. And so it only made sense to me to pursue that as a career. And so another big passion of mine is the church and places in which the church have been hurt because I've experienced that myself. And now on the other side, having experienced healing, I want that same healing for for people who might be experiencing church hurt, especially women, young kids, young teenage women. And so blending those two worlds looks like pursuing academics in biblical studies or theology and focusing on those spaces in which, yeah, people who have experienced church hurt can find healing.
Ardin:Crikey.
Jonathan:I still don't know exactly what means, but but your eyes said something. It's like wow. Wow. Okay. There we go.
Jonathan:That's Aussie for a while.
Ardin:How, I mean, you might not be the best one to answer. Maybe we need to get mom and dad on for the for the next episode. Mom and dad working over in India, that's a massively different culture with huge religions like Hinduism, the Sikhs. These are, you know, millions and millions of people and heavily ingrained in the culture there. How do they make inroads?
Ardin:How do you how do you get the message of Christ into into a land like that with such such old really, really old religions?
Jermea:Mhmm. So if we separate India into North and South, South India is predominantly well, won't say predominantly Christian, but there is a larger population of of Christians in South India. And so we come from a place in which there's already plenty of churches established. We've had a our history is is pretty much built on Western missionaries coming into into South India and and planting churches and sharing the gospel. And so preaching the gospel in South India, say I'm not saying there's not persecution and there's not, you know, backlash, but I could I can say It's a bit easier.
Jermea:It's a bit easier. I feel like people have heard Jesus in some which way or another. But we still got places in North India that are unreached and have never heard of Jesus. And you're right. There's an immense amount of persecution going on in North India.
Jermea:We have rivalry between the the Muslims and the Hindus. We've got persecution of Muslims on Hindus, Hindus on Muslims, Hindus on Christians. Like, I I feel like everyone's kind of intention there. And so, the biggest thing though is that when we go into these villages, it's just I kinda explained to you the the hunger for something. Not physical hunger.
Jermea:You can just see like there is this internal hunger for purpose. And this internal hunger for what am I doing? Why am I here? And so when you go into these spaces with the love of Jesus, it's like they hear it and they it's like their eyes just light up and it's like you've given me the answer to something that I've been searching for lifelong. And yes, are they surrounded by these differing and opposing views?
Jermea:A 100%. But I think the difference is that we go into these places with love, and we don't go into these places by force. We don't go into these places with an intention of this is how many numbers of people we need to come out that need to be converted, you know. It's just let's have a conversation and let's show these people the love of Jesus. Whether that means going into a village and doing life with them for that day, most of them might be farmers and so, you know, might spend a bit of time with them on the farm, you know, or we might spend a bit of time with the women in the kitchen making some food together and it's in those spaces that we involve the conversation of Jesus.
Jonathan:You mentioned hunger and you mentioned your own experience of know, Jesus becoming real to you. What would you say to someone who and maybe a fellow young person who feels hungry for the authentic Jesus and who's maybe looking, wanting, but still feels like something's missing? What would you say to somebody in that situation?
Jermea:I think the biggest thing for me was to seek truth on my own. Mhmm. Because growing up in a Christian faith meant much of it was presented to me and much of it became my norm. And it came to a point where I started questioning things. And when I went to the community with my questions, I was only met with more answers than I could think of.
Jermea:And so it wasn't until I really prioritized pursuing truth on my own and pursuing a personal relationship with Jesus on my own in which he met me at where I was with my questions. It was when I opened the word myself and dig deep that I really understood, you know, the Jesus of the Bible and the Jesus of the gospel that we preach. And so with someone who's wrestling with that faith and questioning God in their faith and I'm not saying that you don't need community. Oh, yeah. You need community and you need people to back you and to support you.
Jermea:But it really isn't until you for me, it was like shutting the door and just like a personal like shutting everybody out and be like, I'm shutting out the noise. I'm shutting out the questions. I'm shutting out the plenty of answers that the world has to give me or community has to give me or church has to give me, and I'm just gonna surrender to the Lord and ask him to meet me where I'm at. And like the answers that were given to me, those were healing. Yeah.
Jonathan:Pretty awesome. Pretty awesome. Thanks for sharing, Jermia. No worries. Yeah.
Jonathan:Absolutely brilliant.
Jermea:Awesome. Thanks for having me.
Jonathan:Blessed to have you here. Blessed to have you and your family here and you guys, as I've told you privately, you guys bring so much to our community. So, yeah, we're very grateful.
Jermea:Thank you. Very honored. Yep.
Ardin:Should we get mom and dad on sometime, you reckon? Hey. Let's do it. When they're not flying around the world?
Jonathan:That means we can use channel number four.
Jermea:Oh. I
Jonathan:don't know if it's ever
Jermea:been used.
Ardin:We're growing. Our little our little baby podcast is growing. Yeah. Cool. Thanks for joining us.
Jermea:No worries. Thanks for having me.
Ardin:That was really good.
Jonathan:It was excellent. This is the this is the kind thing we wanna do, to show people Jesus is real. Yeah.
Ardin:And if you've got a story, let us know because everyone's got one.
Jonathan:Some are better than others.