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friends, and later leading on camps. I suddenly realised it was my responsibility to... I wouldn't have used the word, but to evangelise. Not only did I need to grow in my personal life, but I needed to tell others.”
“It was part of my upbringing,” James says.
Thankfully, James was able to attend a CRU Group at his school, Barker, which continued to encourage and equip him in growing and sharing his faith.
rom his very early life, James Ward has been involved with CRU®. As a child, his parents were leaders and camp parents on CRU Camps at Lake Mac, his father was one of CRU’s first employees, and James and his sister spent weeks every summer on sailing camps alongside their parents.
But more than that, it was on a CRU Camp where James first gave his life to Jesus. “I had the privilege of being part of a Christian home right from my earliest days… so it was the first time I had sat down and really understood that it was about me and the Lord Jesus Christ, as opposed to my family. There was a leadership team there [on camp] who really taught me it was about me, I needed to make those decisions.” After becoming a Christian, James discovered a new passion for helping others hear about Jesus as well. “Almost immediately I said, ‘I've got to have responsibility now in telling others,’” James recalls. “That was the biggest change. I went from being passive, like this was happening around me, to working with my peers, my
Both the camp and school group environment were a crucial part of James developing a strong faith that he wanted to pass on to others, and after he left school he remained passionate about providing a helpful environment to others in which they, too, could start to follow Jesus. Alongside his wife, Juliet, their children, and Peter and Rowena Bragg, James assisted in relocating CRU’s minibike camps to Attunga - a camp that continues today (now known as Easyriders and On Two Wheels). “The reason motorbike camps were interesting to me was that the kids who came on camp tended to be a bit more rambunctious. To me, it was most rewarding. We were dealing with kids who were a bit more out there. And that was always exciting. We weren't dealing with the easy kids,” James remembers.
Page Twelve Image source: NBRS Architecture, with architecture by Harry Seidler & Associates and sculpture by Robert Owen
