Fiona and Matt Stokes, together with their three children, are long-term Tearfund supporters. Over the years, Tearfund has helped them understand and articulate the links between faith and justice, and what it means to engage in God’s work for a more just and compassionate world.
Fiona: I grew up in a family that supported Tearfund, and we had a bumper sticker on our car that said “Live simply so that all may simply live”, which kind of shaped my thinking as a kid. The youth group Matt and I grew up in would do the 40 Hour Famine every year, which I always took very seriously! So issues of justice were there, in the background of our thinking.
I remember not long after we were married reading an article in the Good Weekend by a woman who had been working in Africa with an aid organisation. She told this very compelling story about her interactions with the group of people where she lived in Africa, and the terrible conditions they were living in. I got to the end of it, threw down the magazine and burst into tears, saying “This should not be happening!” And at the time, Tearfund was one of the organisations holding a vision of how we could move forward from that.
After we married, we moved from a country town to Blackburn in Melbourne, and joined what’s now One Church. Steve Bradbury, who was Tearfund’s National Director from 1984 to 2008, was a reasonably regular visitor to that church. He managed to bring a lot of things together for us and present this very compelling vision of how justice fits with the faith that we already had.
Church looked different and felt different, and life was different. So as newlyweds, with minds ready for whatever was coming next, that was the message that stood out.
Now, we’re living on a farm and have three daughters. Two of our girls are in secondary school, and one is in primary. I’m studying with the intention of working in the mental health sector. Matt’s been working with the same firm for 23 years!
Tearfund has modelled for us a way to speak about justice.
Matt: We went twice to Voices for Justice, which was an advocacy initiative from Micah Australia, and the second time our eldest daughter came with us. I remember feeling, okay, we can make a difference. The sessions we attended were really helpful in making that link between the secular world, and our faith. It was that sense that it’s all connected: we shouldn’t separate out our life between our work and our faith.
Fiona: Tearfund has modelled for us a way to speak about justice. At various points, in various churches, we’ve had opportunities to share with others about justice. We’ve tended to imitate Tearfund’s way of bringing together scripture and justice, of speaking graciously about issues that are really confronting. That’s been very helpful to us.
Tearfund Magazine and other literature from Tearfund has been really helpful. It doesn’t shout. It comes from a centred place, which is what we want to develop with our kids, to say, be wise in our choices, don’t just respond with a knee jerk reaction.
Matt: As a family, there are two words that we think about a lot. One of them is love. God loves us, we love others. And the other word is wisdom. So we ask for wisdom, and we try to make wise choices in what we do with our resources in our life, and, and wise choices in sharing God’s love with others. And from our kids’ perspective, it has been very helpful for us to be able to take some of the language that Tearfund has inputted into us over the years, and to share that with them, and for us to guide them to say, “Well, let’s look at these people. Let’s give some of your pocket money. Let’s not just ignore what is happening on the news, but think about a wise way to respond to it.”
As a family, there are two words that we think about a lot. One of them is love. God loves us, we love others. And the other word is wisdom.
Fiona: We’ve just purchased Ash Barker’s latest book; he (and others who began with Urban Neighbours of Hope) has made a big impression over the years. Other helpful voices for us include Tom Wright, Joan Chittister and Tim Costello.
