5 minutes with Bev ...

Tell us a little about yourself

I have been a pastor for more than 35 years and with my husband Rick, co-led a church in Southern Highlands, NSW, and then a church in Chelmsford, Essex, UK where we moved in 1996. Over the 18 years we were there, I focused on raising and mentoring leaders and we planted or adopted and redeveloped 18 churches mainly based in UK but also France and USA, as well as having planted in Australia.

In the UK I founded Liberti, a Christian magazine for women of faith with attitude, desiring to see women who are called by God to do fantastic things have a magazine that would help them develop their godly ambitions, rather than encourage them to stay home and do the housework. www.libertimag.org

In 2001 I started Cherish Uganda, for HIV+ children who had been abandoned. That is now a massive project just outside Entebbe with a fantastic school, clinic, etc. www.cherishuganda.org

I am currently working on the development of Scarlet Women, based in Democratic Republic of Congo to work with women and girls who have suffered rape as a weapon of war.

I preach regularly both in Australia and internationally at churches and conferences and I mentor leaders and consult with churches over leadership issues. My Masters degree from Fuller Theological Seminary is in Global Leadership and I am convinced that if leaders are healthy, the organisation will become that way also.

I am the author of Speak Life and Shut the Hell Up, and Catalysts:You Can Be God’s Agent for Change, and I blog at www.bevmurrill.com

I have been married 45 years, have 4 children and 10, going on 12 grandchildren. Since I returned to Australia and am no longer leading a church, I have been encouraged to find that I have more room to write, speak, and mentor rising leaders.

What's your favourite bible passage & why?

I have so many favourites but my current favourite is Micah 6:8

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

The older I get, the more I realise that a lot of the stuff we worry and stress over as Christians is not as important as we thought, and that cultivating the qualities of justice, mercy and humility go a long way towards enabling someone who loves God to walk more closely with Him. It’s like seeing His heart with greater clarity and depth. He loves so much more than we do, and He cares so much more deeply than we understand.

How do you keep your eyes fixed on Jesus?

The answer to this contains an understanding of being really familiar with the Bible because that’s how we can be more aware of how He thinks, and stopping in the day whenever there’s room to talk with Him about how things are going. Worship is in there too, but mostly I try to stay aware that Jesus knows my every thought and my heart issues. I can’t hide any of it from Him, although I’d like to at times. That means that when my heart strays to things that are the antithesis of who He is - meanness, sarcasm, crudeness, lust for stuff, untruthfulness, arrogance or whatever, if I remember that He’s in this with me and I’m taking Him where I’m going, it becomes easier to pull back and change my course so that I am not embarrassed about Him being on the same path with me. I love Hebrews 11:16 Instead, they were longing for a better country--a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. I don’t want God to be ashamed to be called my God.