The Journey Begins

Diverse people, fitly joined together

OUR LIFE STORIES are different. We speak different languages: English (American, Aussie, and Kiwi), Mandarin, Italian, and Tagalog. We have different cultural and career backgrounds: nursing, teaching, preaching, journalism, design, software development, illustration, communications, photography, and publishing.

From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part … (Ephesians 4:16)

At heart, we are all storytellers. We know the power of good examples and compelling content. But even as the pen is mightier than the sword, and words are the vehicles that open hearts, we pray that whatever we do points people to the word of God, sharper than any twoedged sword, and mightier than any human pen.

These are our stories:

Editor and publisher Thomas Liddle

Though he did not know it at the time, when Thomas resigned from traditional media mid-career in Sydney, to search for meaning in life, printed newspapers and magazines were in a death spiral. As he embarked on a spiritual quest, first through new age philosophies and then Buddhism, he unexpectedly found Christ. And with new life came new joys—and new opportunities in online media. He traveled to the United States to help launch the web-based MSNBC news startup in Seattle, then home again in Australia to work as producer in the Microsoft-Nine network joint venture. Next came a 10-year communications role with a Chicago-based leadership company. But as he prayed over Ephesians 5:16-17 about redeeming the time, the Lord led Thomas to John 4:35, and to the need for God’s people to “lift up their eyes” to see the fields white already to harvest. Hence, harvest magazine. What started as a concept tested on iPad, has become a full-time faith ministry whose goal is to produce a global mobile magazine app designed to win more laborers for the biggest battle for souls.

Creative director Soo Coughlan

From the moment she opened her first copy of Harper’s Bazaar magazine as a teenager, Soo knew that information-rich storytelling was for her. As she turned each page, she stepped into another world. “I drank in the text, the color, the fonts, and the photographs. I saw how the best layouts used minimal color—perhaps grays with a touch of red as the highlight— for maximum impact. I loved the shape of each letter used in headlines, particularly a font that I later identified as Bodoni.” She went into nursing as a career, but a chance meeting with an art director later took her in another direction. Soo took a Bachelor of Visual Communication degree course at the University of South Australia in Adelaide, graduating with a major in photography. Working with design studios led to newspaper and magazine redesigns, from Vogue magazine to The Australian Financial Review, and a multi-year project to refresh the content, structure and design of Harvard Business Review. With harvest magazine, Soo says, “our aim is to attract readers with a smart design that guides them into the world of missions at whatever level they choose. I love that it’s a project that benefits communities all over the world. We’re helping people to realize what they can do, how they can help. We are intentionally delivering little bites, longer reads, and easy accesses, to suit all tastes. And hey—there’s nothing like this anywhere. Our magazine is people telling stories among themselves in a way that encourages and inspires.”

Lead developer Zachary Hickson

A linear, inquisitive and problem-solving mind led the home-schooled Zachary to “look under the hood” of the websites springing up in his increasingly inter-connected world. He also spent hours poring over books filled with diagrams of pulled-apart engines. When his dad took on preaching and teaching roles, Zac went to Sydney Bible Baptist College to delve deeper into the word of God. As he learned about life from a biblical perspective, he yearned to use his talents to help shape the digital environment. He took contract work as a graphic designer, and prayed for God’s leading. Love came his way in the form of a pastor’s daughter, and marriage and children happily coincided with full-time work with a digital publishing house. Zac moved rapidly from developer to senior developer, to head of engineering, and now oversees teams that build platforms for Australian television networks, California news publishers, and the global trading platform, eBay. He says his work with harvest magazine, “allows me to be part of something that requires technical skills, but also has an impact for eternity.”

Chief photographer Chew Wei Chieh

When he was literally ascending to the top of his profession as an internationally renowned sports climbing coach, “Chew” came to realize that success takes not only skill and teachability, but also faith. “Climbing is such an awesome thing to do, it creates adrenaline in me, and makes me want to be out there with nature. I have faith in Christ when I climb.” That faith was tested when he trained with the Singapore Army: “We were in the open for four days with two hours of sleep a night and I’m like, if Christ went to the cross for me, this is nothing compared with that—his body bore that suffering, taking that sin for us, which was what was really torturing him—and so I got through it.” It was the same at university in his adopted home of Australia. “I found it hard to study, but I prayed, and got my Bachelor of Commerce with high marks.” He worked in indoor climbing gymnasiums in Singapore, and taught sports management. Photography was a sideline, a way of earning extra money by working in a production house photographing “pretty models.” He concluded that “it was all fake and boring” but pursuing his true passion of nature photography would require to great an investment in digital equipment. Reluctantly, he put his camera aside. But then he saw a presentation about harvest magazine” “My wife looked at me and said, ‘Maybe you have invested all that money for something good after all. You should contact this guy and make use of your camera again!’ ”

United States editor Monroe Roark

Working in radio at college, Monroe thought he’d combine his love of baseball with his skills in English and mass communication, and become a minor league publicist. But after sending out a series of tapes to teams across America, and finding limited response, the Lord led him into the newspaper business near his home in Atlanta, Georgia. “I covered everything from high school sports to local city councils and county commissions,” he recalls. His career in community journalism, with additional work in local cable television, gave him the flexibility to work on another passion—Christian biographies. He wrote about the Christian education pioneer Al Janney, followed by a book on the life of Bob Hughes, the pioneering missionary to the Philippines, who also influenced Rick Martin to go there. He has since completed several other biographies, available at mroark.com. “They glorify God, with stories that are miraculous, encouraging, and inspirational,” he says. In life, his goal is “to keep the main thing the main thing—just like the blind man in John 9:25—‘Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not: one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see.’ For me, this means I must glorify God, take care of family, and help others. The Harvest ministry is aligned with that, because it is to do with missions, and because the platform we’re using will give sight to people in our churches who have a heart for the lost.”

New Zealand editor Alex Guarizo

A chance encounter during a post-study holiday led Alex from the Philippines to a new life in New Zealand, and a new life in Christ. She’d just finished her bachelor’s degree in multimedia arts and traveled to the North Island city of Hamilton for a family reunion. There, she met a man from Fellowship Baptist Church. He shared the gospel with her, and she “questioned everything—I even Googled, ‘What is a Baptist church?’ but then started attending services.” The opportunity to pursue additional studies came up, and she stayed, and married, and grew in grace. Looking back, Alex sees the hand of God. She found work with a tech company as a graphic designer, and helps out with the church media ministry. She was attracted to the Harvest ministry “because of the way stories can be shared and can inspire more people all over the world to do more for the cause of the gospel”.

Graphic designer Delia Carriglio

It was waiting on the leading of the Lord that caused Delia to hesitate before plunging into paid work after completing her graphic design studies. “I’d always been into art, and drawing, and a church friend told me I should take a community college design course. Naturally I loved it, and wanted to get a job right away. But my tutors advised me continue my education, to get something at a higher level more easily. I kept praying, and one day my mother encouraged me to further my studies at uni if it was what I wanted. I found that a strange coincidence since I hadn’t yet told her anything of my thoughts and prayers about it. I immediately saw that as God’s answer to my prayer.” And so it was that Delia, who describes herself as a “full-blooded Italian Australian” whose interests are art, music, and food (mortadella being among them—“looks like ham but better than ham”), landed her dream role with a studio whose schtick is the use of storytelling to build brands. Her two specialties are branding and publications. Delia came to the Harvest ministry via a contact on LinkedIn. “I saw this was an Independent Baptist church-based project, and I felt God tugging at my heart saying, ‘This is for you’. I was excited at the idea of using my creative skills for the Lord, and I’m ever so grateful to be part of it.” Between God’s guidance in leading her to a design degree and his hand in the opportunity to put it into the ministry, she recognized the steps God was laying out for her, as he continues to guide her life.

Interviewer Linda Karkafi

Being a good listener, a good talker, a people person and a writer has led Linda into communications roles in the finance industry, and into a women’s ministry called Thrive, based on her book, Thrive to Make a Difference: A Christ-centered Approach to Intentional Living. These days she spends most of her time raising a growing family, teaching them what she has learned from life, and from the word of God. Linda loved school, where her mathematics skills were nurtured, and her public speaking skills were noticed. “I’m an extrovert,” she says. A Bachelor of Business degree led to a place on the internal communications team of a leading bank. A masters degree followed, and she later left the bank to build her own team, helping companies with their communications strategies. At church, she wrote articles for the newsletter, helped out where possible, and is in demand as a speaker at ladies’ events. She has joined the Harvest ministry team to interview missionaries for our From the Heart section. “I enjoy speaking with people whose faith and vision sets them apart, and inspires,” she says. “They seem to live their lives in the presence of eternity—and yet they are just ordinary people who are willing to sacrifice everything here on earth. Every day they’re out winning souls, and helping people enjoy a better life through Christ.”

Columnist Buddy Smith

The moment he read a book about Nate Saint being speared to death on a beach in Ecuador while trying to reach an unreached jungle tribe with the gospel, will forever be etched into Buddy’s consciousness. “It challenged me,” says the former pastor of Grace Baptist Church in the country town of Malanda in the Australian state of Queensland. The book, The Jungle Pilot, and the impact it had not just on a nation but on the lives of those who followed in Saint’s footsteps, persuaded Buddy to give up his life for missions, first Stateside, then in Australia. It also influenced him to join the harvest team as a columnist, “because I know from personal experience that stories influence people,” he says. “The mindset of sticking your neck out was already present in our family. My parents were not well-established wealthy people. They were always looking for opportunities, and when they saw one, they took it. Every year we’d go on two weeks’ holiday someplace we’d never been. We’d camp in a national park, and go all over the place. So when I went away to Bible college, I did the same thing—went all over the place to preach. I was invited to be the pastor of a little church in the Ozarks—Missouri hillbilly country. I thought, ‘Yep, let’s do it’.” He later started another church on the Mexican border. But his biggest leap of faith was a 10,000-mile (16,100-kilometer) trip to Australia. What prompted that? It was another story, this time from the missionary Randy Pike, “a crippled fella on crutches who told of leading people to Christ in a coastal town Down Under.” It was Buddy’s call to Australia—“and it just seemed like the right thing to do —the clearest thing in the world.” He started a church in Victoria, before heading north to Queensland. That was 1972. He’s been in Australia ever since.

Writer and researcher Sarah Lipinski

With a talent for reading and writing, and a giving, helping nature, Sarah moved easily into teaching, first giving Bible lessons to five-year-olds at her local church, and later, teaching English as a second language (ESL). When her father, Pastor Vic Tolentino, was called to preach, she moved to his church to help out, and also started teaching English online. She traveled to Japan to work in schools in three different states before taking on a teaching ministry in an Independent Baptist Church on the island of Okinawa. “At home, we learned that you don’t go to places to go sight-seeing—you go to places to be a missionary,” she says. “So when I was making plans to travel to Australia and visit my cousin, I read on the Metropolitan Baptist Church website about the Harvest ministry. I called my cousin and said, ‘I have something to do in Australia now. I have a purpose. I know harvest magazine will inspire people to win souls’.”

Home

Home

How to multiply a mission field

Cover Story

In shady, green pastures, so rich and so sweet, God leads his dear children along

From the Heart

Into the pulpit at 8 weeks’ notice

Stepping Up

Let millions of flowers of faith bloom and a thousand Bible schools contend

The Long Read

25 million souls in a 25-mile radius

Local Church

They prayed about where to eat, and a trucker met Jesus

Challenge

Yui was pronounced dead at four, and God revived her. Then 21 years later, she met a missionary from Australia.

Interview

Tearing down walls across Europe for the gospel’s sake

World

How Jesus won souls

Blast from the Past

The Journey Begins

The Journey Begins

Diverse people, fitly joined together

These are our stories: