A wide-ranging interview with Richard Chin, National Director of AFES, about life and ministry – including why he’s on a crusade to promote extended Bible memorisation, why he refuses to give up his role in local campus ministry, the challenges and opportunities of ministry to Millennials, coping with the death of his first wife, and what it’s been like to remarry and become a ‘twicer’.

GR: Richard, you were born in Malaysia and you moved to Australia when you were eight 8 years old. What are your earliest memories of Australia?

RC: Meat pies, hearing people say ‘G’day mate’ but not realising what they were saying, and going to a primary school which was co-ed. The only schools I had attended were not co-ed, so it was strange seeing girls next to me in Year 3.

Did you grow up in a Christian family?

No, I grew up in a non-Christian family, although my mother had a belief in God and she was from a Roman-Catholic background – she went to a Roman-Catholic convent school in Malaysia. My father came from a synchretistic Buddhist family, but he would describe his own life or pilgrimage as an agnostic of sorts, or a free thinker. Continue reading →