Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: STARS (07/28/22)
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TITLE: Even Experts can Get it Wrong... | Previous Challenge Entry
By Noel Mitaxa
08/04/22 -
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This ninetieth birthday party was for Clive Stebbins, a personal star whose vision for Australian Youth For Christ moved him to commit to spending 1957 in America, so he might learn from the experts.
Apart from attending a few conferences that year, he was frustrated by having limited opportunities for youth work, with most of his time spent opening and sorting the mail at the head office. Compounding his frustration was a letter arriving from his committee in Melbourne, Australia, asking for advice about his suitability. It was not specifically addressed, so Clive replied on the ministry’s behalf, which did not sit well with the head honchos who told him that he should shelve any idea of taking up youth ministry.
It’s just as well he didn’t listen, because when he returned home in 1958, he set about proving them wrong.
With news that Billy Graham – another star - would be coming in 1959 for three months of Australia-wide crusades, Clive stepped into the planning for events that reached one third of our population and climaxed with 140 000 people packing the Melbourne Cricket Ground – our largest sports arena – and led to a huge nation-wide spike in applications to train for ministry or missionary service.
Before Billy Graham left Melbourne, his personal endorsement was such a boost for Clive’s leadership credibility that within three years, YFC in Melbourne had become the world’s largest YFC program, and it kept on growing.
Thirty-six years after being told he had no personality or ministry potential, Clive stepped down as YFC director, leaving an amazing legacy of monthly youth rallies and annual conferences that had regularly drawn crowds in their thousands, and seen young people respond to the gospel invitation at all but one of these rallies.
Away from all the excitement of these events, he also developed a national camping ministry; outreach into youth prisons and establishing halfway houses for rehabilitation; a weekly radio ministry; and television specials; which all ran through the leaders that he recruited and encouraged - seeingb them all as stars in their own right. My small part in all of this helped me to realize that Christians could actually be spiritual and have fun at the same time.
While all this kept happening, he was also instrumental in launching national youth ministries in India and Indonesia.
Though he was committed to spreading and deepening the scope of this ministry, he generously encouraged and released those whom he recruited to embrace any wider ministry that God was laying on their heart. One of them became world director of the Leprosy Mission, and another became head of World Vision Australia. With a much lower profile that these two men, I’m personally grateful that he advised me in my first year of Bible college to look beyond my desire for youth ministry, and embrace the wider scope of becoming a pastor.
At 58 years of age, he stepped up to serve another twenty-five years as a much-loved school principal for children of low-income tea plantation workers in Sri Lanka.
His star keeps shining, for back home, he’s teaching Sunday school classes at his home church.
Is he a star? Definitely. For though he can hold the attention of thousands at a time, his humility shows in being equally at home speaking one on one or with small groups. And with minimal formal training, he has embodied one of his favorite sayings:
“God is less interested in our ability as he is in our availability.”
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Such an important message detailed in your well written entry. Great job with this, and fabulous close,
Blessings~