Lindy’s Mission — to Serve the Poor, Mentor the Servants, and Stir the Church.

by Rowan Forster. August 2004

When Lindy Croucher was nine years old, she decided that one day she would start an orphanage somewhere in the developing world, probably in Africa. Travelling on a plane between visits to World Vision projects in several countries, Lindy put pen to paper to design and plan her orphanage in considerable detail.

She was flying with her family back to Australia after two years in Canada. The return journey was extended over several months by trips to a number of aid projects which Lindy’s father Rowland was visiting, in his capacity as the recently appointed Leadership Enhancement Consultant with World Vision Australia.

About five years later, Lindy accompanied her father on a trip to India, during which she turned 14. She witnessed levels of poverty she describes as very confronting and intense. She visited Mother Teresa’s home for the destitute and dying in Calcutta, where she met a girl of about her own age who was dying from tuberculosis.

Lindy’s exposure at an early age to the desperate needs of people in the Two-Thirds World, stirred within her soul a compassion for the poor, and a determination to serve them in whatever ways she could. And this has shaped the course of her life.

Lindy says: “Jesus had a radical priority for the poor, and if I am to take discipleship seriously, so must I. While I might excel more at other things in worldly terms, I consider the poor most worthy of my time. I believe this priority is integral to an understanding of the upside-down values of the Kingdom of God.”

Lindy hasn’t built her orphanage in Africa (yet). But in terms of preparing herself for, and carrying out, effective and compassionate service to the poor and marginalised, she has crammed more into her 30 years than most people accomplish in a lifetime. For example……

She has completed a Discipleship Training School (DTS), as well as a New Testament School of Bible Studies, with YWAM (Youth With a Mission) in Hong Kong, China and Malaysia.

She has completed a Bachelor of Arts (in English and Linguistics), a Diploma of Education, a post-graduate Diploma of Arts in Christian Studies, and is continuing to study for her Master of Divinity. She has also completed a course in massage therapy, and has worked as a therapist in this field.

She has served as a youth leader and mentor in a Baptist church setting, and in this capacity, while in her early twenties, she initiated, planned and led a three-month expedition to Hong Kong, China, Thailand and India. She was in charge of a group of 15 people doing voluntary work among the poor, and undertaking exposure to various forms of Third World mission and ministry.

She has served for eight years as a field worker and volunteer co-ordinator with Prison Network Ministries, working mainly with women in the Deer Park Correctional Facility in Melbourne’s west. She has also become foster mother to a teenage girl, one of many people she has helped and supported in many ways.

She has completed the one-year apprenticeship and the two-year novitiate, to become a senior UNOH member. For two and a half years, she was part of the UNOH team that affected the remarkable transformation of Kelvin Grove (see previous issues of Finding Life).

She has exercised leadership roles in several UNOH ministries, including the Rainbow Church, the Noble Park community, and the local Girls’ Club. She is currently serving as acting leader of the Melbourne chapter of UNOH. And there’s a strong possibility that in the not too distant future, she may be heading north to start a UNOH chapter in Sydney.

There have been several formative influences in Lindy’s life. They include her parents Rowland and Jan, and a frequent exposure in her teenage years to her father’s sermons and addresses, in which justice-related issues were a dominant theme.

A pivotal time came in 1996, in the period leading up to the three-month expedition to south-east Asia mentioned above. In preparing herself and the group she was leading, Lindy used Bible studies written by Steve Bradbury of Tear Fund. She found the studies on justice, mercy, poverty and wealth “incredibly confronting.”

“I felt deeply convicted about my lack of response to the poor in my own city and community. I became sharply aware of the need to bring together evangelism and social action, and for Christians to move beyond the comfort of sitting smugly in our local churches.

“One of the key Scripture passages for me at this time was 1st John 3:16-17, which says: how can we say we have the love of God within us, if we have more than our share of this world’s resources, and we see others in need, but don’t respond to them with compassion?

“I knew that one day I would be accountable to God for my response to the needs of the poor. And I knew I couldn’t ignore this issue, even though my culture, and my background as a student at a private girl’s school, had largely sheltered me from it.”

Lindy put her conviction into immediate action by approaching Youth For Christ and volunteering to participate in an outreach venture that soon became known as Prison Network Ministries, with which she was to serve for the next eight years.

It was this involvement that eventually led Lindy to UNOH, through “recruiting” Anji Barker to enlist as a volunteer with PNM. During 2000, Lindy had several involvements with UNOH, including living in Kelvin Grove for three weeks while teaching at a local school, and undertaking the two-week Mission Exposure course. At this time she was also gaining experience in supportive accomodation by serving as a relieving lead tenant in Youth For Christ homes for teenagers at risk.

After a pivotal conversation in Melbourne with the founding director of InnerChange [an urban mission group in America similar to UNOH], John Hayes — “he worked on me for two hours”, says Lindy — she realised that joining UNOH was the next natural step, and she signed up to do her apprenticeship the following year (2001). And the rest is history in the making.

Of her involvement with the Rainbow Church, Lindy says: “For me, Rainbow has been the most life-giving church community I’ve ever been a part of. It’s really family for me — a place of freedom to just be yourself, with very little pretence. We’re a community of strugglers, with no-one pretending to have it all together. There’s an incredibly deep sense of acceptance, and of companionship on the journey.

“The people of Rainbow are my true heroes, with their courage to face and battle through some very difficult life circumstances. They have definitely brought the Gospel alive to me as we journey together, seeking to follow Jesus through life’s struggles and celebrations.”

Lindy says she has sensed for many years a God-given heart of compassion for people who have never had a safe place they can call home — a place where they feel they belong. “So UNOH’s practice of hospitality and community building are integral to any sense of my own calling”, she says.

Another key thrust to her calling and mission is “to do what I can to challenge and mobilise mainstream Christians to become more radical in living simply, prioritising the poor, and taking discipleship more seriously.”

Lindy believes our churches could be doing much more to identify in practical ways with their Lord’s concern for the poor. In echoing the essential message of the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25, Lindy resonates with this quotation from Helmut Thielecke: “Tell me how much you know of the sufferings of your fellow man, and I’ll tell you how much you’ve loved him.”

And quoting Barbara Brown Taylor, Lindy says her experience of life is a real testimony to the truth that “the opposite of rich is not poor — it’s free”.

Free in what sense? “Free from the demands imposed by the values and lifestyles pursued by the world. Free to be with people who know their need of God, and eachother. Free from the many distractions that draw us away from the things that really matter to God. Free to pursue those things that keep us true to the path of following Jesus.”

Lindy’s first thirty years have been devoted to discovering this rare and life-giving kind of freedom, and empowering others to find it also. Whatever may happen next in her radically committed and Christ-emulating life journey, there’s no doubt that with Lindy in her current role as acting leader, the Melbourne chapter of UNOH continues to be in very safe and special hands.