Paul Marshall

Hi, I am Paul Marshall. Born in Sydney in 1962 a few years after the Asian Flu killed 110,000 people in the US and 1.1million worldwide (just by way of comparison to our exciting times), a time when big bands were just starting to be replaced by The Beatles, and a handful of years before the Vietnam War and rock & roll dominated Australian black and white televisions. After a few early years surfing on the northern beaches as a toddler, I was torn out of Elanora Heights when my parents pulled up stumps in 1966 to relocate as pioneers for the government (father) and Avon (mother) to the dusty, high-UV, limestone plains township that was slowly becoming Australia's national capital - Canberra.

I completed Primary School here with flying colours and moved on to High School where I descended into experimenting with drugs, learning Led Zeppelin on guitar, and playing soccer. Fortunately for me, I was surrounded by strong believers in my family tree and was invited as a 16 year old by one of my uncles, Mac Lindsay, to a Christian Summer Youth Camp near Newcastle. There I experienced the powerful love of Christian fellowship and the powerful teaching of the Gospel of Christ. The combination of these two led to me being gripped by God and I remain firmly grasped over 40 years later. Thank you, Jesus. Also, through that camp, I made strong friendships with great Christian men that continue to this day.

In Canberra, I attended a pretty good little church with a happening youth group, and received foundational teaching and inspiration. Then, while I was at teachers' college, I had some friends who had started attending an upstart and rowdy church run by a pastor who wore contemporary clothing and tuned his messages and music to 'relevant' on the dial: Ps Phil Pringle.

My wife, Melanie, and I tied the knot in 1986, and together attended Christian City Church, Canberra; one of the first church plants out of the C3 mother ship in Brookvale. After a year of running the worship there, Melanie song-leading and me band-leading, we moved to the big smoke to do a year of study in Leadership and Ministry at C3 College, in Sydney, in 1988. I don't remember too much of the content but I do remember the culture, which invigorates me to this day; alive, fun, positive, soul-winning, faith-filled, Bible-honouring, possibility thinking, supernatural-seeking, and real.

There were many lessons learned while at college in just one year, lessons that set pillars of faith into my life that have helped me as a believer and a leader, as a husband, father, and as a worker in whatever workplace I have been in. Because we were so hungry for God, he richly set our table with a casket of life treasures for our future. For example, we saw and absorbed all the practical behind-the-scenes values and processes of a functioning church, the challenges of helping someone plant at a new location, the need to be punctual, the need to be a life-long student of the Word, experiencing and contributing to a major building campaign, being rebuked for being silly, and many more. All in all, a bucket-load of downloads that have helped us set and fine-tune our sails in ministry and life ever since.

We returned to Canberra and assisted in one of the C3 locations here until 2003, when our senior minister, Ps Wayne Back, decided to leave Canberra and asked Melanie, who had been leading a campus, to take charge as the senior minister. We were left with a church of just over 200. Melanie has been the senior minister of our church, C3 Church Watson in Canberra ever since and we now have over 700 regulars. Meanwhile I was the principal of a Christian School here for 18 years until I joined Melanie on staff at church in 2015. I now focus on a portfolio of oversight responsibilities that keep me busy, including Kids, Youth and, when life returns to normal, the Canberra Campus of C3 College.

Right now, April 2020, our weeks are affected by the COVID-19 lockdown – this means a lot of time spent producing a weekly online service and, for me, a weekly Kids’ Church program online too. You can see them on our C3 Church Watson YouTube channel.

FYI, I have written a book about the realities of women in church leadership that you can find on Amazon - for those of you who are either women called to lead or married to one. It's titled, 'Thanks, Lappidoth' and C3 Ministry College graduates will already know what the title refers to, won’t you…?

Barely a week goes by when we don't, in some conscious, semi-conscious, barely conscious, or completely unconscious way, refer to lessons we have learned in ministry while either at Bible College years ago, or through our C3 church connections. Both help us set our heading to 'true north.' We want our church to have the same culture we experienced in 1988: alive, fun, positive, soul-winning, faith-filled, Bible-honouring, possibility-minded, supernatural-seeking, and real. We achieve these in our own way, reflecting our personalities, but these over-riding values are our goals, and it all started with our time at C3 College.