Meet Ed Surrey, Director of CRU West

Meet Ed Surrey, Director of CRU West

CRU is incredibly thankful for the provision of Ed Surrey to lead the CRU West ministry. Born and raised in England, Ed has spent the last 5 years working as Associate Pastor at St Leonard’s Church in Exeter. Prior to that, Ed spent 6 years training and working at St Matthew’s Anglican Church in WA. In June, Ed returned to Perth to serve full-time as Director of CRU West. Let’s hear his story.

Q.Hi Ed, please tell us a little bit about yourself!

A: My wife, Sally, and I are originally from the UK and moved to Perth with our 3 children in June. I’ve always known and loved Jesus, though there have been wayward paths along the way and moments where I didn’t like it. But Jesus is the main thing in our lives as a family, and my life too.

Q. How did you come to faith?

A: I grew up in a large English church just south of London. It had always been a wonderful praying, Bibleteaching, Jesus-loving church and always churned up people into ministry. But although I had the most wonderful teaching, I went my own way and was a stereotypical, bored teenager, and tried to be unique… just like everyone else. I did what I wanted and took everything for granted.

While I was at uni, my father was diagnosed with a brain tumour the size of an orange. The way he was dying over that year, simply trusting Jesus and knowing that Jesus was perfect, meant that he wasn’t worried about dying.

It made me look again at Jesus Christ and His claims. For the first time, it wasn’t hard to follow Jesus. I knew pretty quickly after that, that I wanted to spend the rest of my life telling people about Him.

Q. Tell us a little bit about your education, professional background and what ministry experience you’ve had.

A: Well, in uni, I wanted to read people’s minds so I studied psychology – I was a bit disappointed when I realised it wasn’t about that. So, I ended up doing an apprenticeship at a church in the UK. After that, I thoroughly enjoyed being a maths teacher for a couple of years at a posh school near Oxford and then I came to Perth to work for a church here…

It was supposed to be 18 months or 2 years but ended up being 6 years! I also studied at a theological college and once I finished my training, went back and served at a church in the UK. We were in the process of moving back to London when the prospect and opportunity of working for CRU West arose… and it was too much for us to decline!

Q. So, what do you think it was that made you decide to join CRU West’s ministry?

A: Some dear friends here, well-meaningly texted me photos of WA beaches and sunsets, and nice things, but I said to them, “That’s really nice of you, but my mum won’t see her grandchildren more than 10 times in her lifetime. I need more than a nice beach to do that to her.”

In the end, the challenge from CRU was, “Do you have a good reason not to come? And to try and persuade more students in Perth to come and give their lives to follow Jesus?” I didn’t have a good enough reason… and instead, actually had quite a few reasons to do it.

The job description is actually a great fit to my ministry experience and I’m at a point now where my energy and experience are at a good place to try lots of things – to take 10-12 years of church experience to a new territory. Some things won’t work, but we trust that the Lord does work by His Word as we pray and have prayerful dependence on the Spirit.

Also, visiting CRU Galston and Lake Mac, and just seeing the humble work that goes on there week by week was great. Seeing school students come for a week, or a few days, and hear the gospel - you can’t beat that as a job!

Q. What is your role as Director of CRU West?

A: I think what Perth needed was someone who could give their full-time energy to it. Sheri, Hannah and others who have set it up have done a brilliant job, but for all of them, it’s one of many jobs they’ve got.

I think what my job is, is to take over the baton of CRU West in all the various aspects of it, full-time, and experiment and see whether it can grow here, in the same way it has over 90 years in Sydney.

And therefore, what my role is, is to make disciples with the two tools of Bible and prayer - talking to people about God and talking to God about people. That’s all we’re doing, it’s very simple, but in the territory of camps and schools. Things in the west may look slightly different from the way it looks in the east, and we've got to not be scared of that, but trust that Jesus will grow His church to glorify God.

Q. Are there any particular ministry opportunities you can see in WA?

A: I think the specifics will happen over time and will appear as we get to know the area and the people, and what the needs are and where the focuses can be. But I think for the moment, we just want to establish it as - we pray and teach His Word, and then we see what happens.

One big thing we need is lots of leaders. Lots of people who not just know how to win people, but people who are won by Christ. The best argument for the gospel isn’t just winning arguments against others, but showing that Christ has won you. So, we need lots of people like that who are willing to give time, money, prayer, to the cause of winning people for Christ.

Q. Having moved from the UK to WA, what are you most afraid of?

A: My fear is that I’ll give into worldly temptations, just to get numbers up. My fear is that I’ll think I’m wiser than God, in trying to be a success here, and not being faithful to His mission field, and His mission tactics of Word and prayer. That’s my fear more than anything else.

Q. What can we be praying for you as you and your family settle into life in WA?

A: There are so many ordinary things to be extremely thankful for. Our kids have settled and God’s been very kind in helping them see that doing this for Jesus is worth it and God’s been helping us along all the way.

Also, we’re always just thankful that although we are sinners who deserve nothing from God except His rejection and to be isolated from Him, we are instead His children, filled with His Spirit.

The moment we’re not thankful for that is ‘game over’ I think. And if someone wants to pray for CRU West, it would be that we’d be thankful for that every day. Because that will fill our lifetime of ministry more than any stats or camps or anything will.