5 minutes with Jenni ...

- Tell us a little about you ...

I’m little. In every school photo I sit in the same seat. First on the left. The shortest. I am a school chaplain these days and the Pulpit dwarfs me. In every church I have worked in they have built a box for me to stand on so I can be seen when I preach. It is God’s gift – it helps you work on humility when you need a box. It reminds you that God’s word is powerful, not you.

I am a little preacher who is ordained as a deacon and has worked at Austinmer, South Coogee, Lavender Bay, East Corrimal, Pymble, Youthworks and Abbotsleigh helping people meet the big God who sent Jesus. I am a little wife who is still learning how to love my husband well after twenty years of practice. I am a little mother who is learning how to grow a child for God. I am a little child of God thankful that he has me in his hand.

- What's your favourite bible passage & why?

Jesus sitting with the Samaritan woman at the well. He says to her, ‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’ John 4:13-14. I need him. I also love that this feisty woman discusses theology with Jesus. God loves talking theology with women.

- How do you keep your eyes fixed on Jesus?

I am an extrovert so I need his people around me to keep nudging me in the right direction. I am an extrovert so I need to be faithful to reading his word personally and not just depend on others!

- What would you like the next generation of Christian women to know?

I am looking at them now as I write this. I am in a classroom of amazing young women. I want each of them to know that Jesus is worth fighting for. He is worth struggling with when his ideas don’t match your generations or indeed the generation before you has damaged his name by misrepresenting him. I want them to know when you let him change your mind to his way of thinking it is life giving. I want them to know that the church needs their thinking, their passion and their abilities. I want them to know not to make it about them but to make it about him.

- What's one thing that you love about your local church?

They love me, I love them. We shouldn’t because I come from a different place and have different ideas about what church should be like, but, in the end, Jesus helps us love each other and love others. There is nothing better.

- What did you learn about God at a time in your life you found hard?

God shows us in Jesus the true cost of love. It was not until I found myself in a truly costly relationship that I understood this with my whole self. Jesus means we can keep loving those that hurt us, we can even love those who no longer deserve our love, we can do it because that is how God loves us. We will be thought of us foolish in a world that doesn’t understand it. Yet it is truly beautiful.

- What are you passionate about?

Cooking and eating.

- What do you enjoy doing when you rest?

Sleeping as my husband cleans up after the cooking and eating. My husband and I make a great team.