Mark Varughese: Episode Description

On this episode of The Inspiration Project, Brendan Corr talks to Pastor Mark Varughese the founder and senior leader of Kingdomcity about the humble origins of Kingdomcity, why Mark left Australia to start a church in Malaysia, Mark’s “burning bush” experience, how can someone have a deep understanding of faith, how Mark became a Christian, walking away from a law career to pursue a life dedicated to Jesus, having a crisis of identity and what that taught Mark about Jesus, we are all ordinary but have an extraordinary God, understanding the phrase, “God willing” and what that means and how Mark’s years as a lawyer prepared him for life as a pastor.

Episode Summary

• Why Mark left Australia to start a church in Malaysia
• Mark’s “burning bush” experience
• How someone is able to have a deep understanding of faith
• How Mark became a Christian
• Walking away from a law career to pursue a life dedicated to Jesus
• Having a Crisis of identity and what that taught Mark about Jesus
• The meaning of we are all ordinary people but we serve an extraordinary God
• Understanding the phrase, “God willing”
• How Mark’s years as a lawyer prepared him for life as a pastor

Mark Varughese: Episode Transcript

Sponsor Announcement
This podcast is sponsored by Australian Christian College, a network of schools committed to student wellbeing, character development, and academic improvement.

Introduction
Welcome to The Inspiration Project, where well-known Christians share their stories to inspire young people in their faith and life. Here’s your host, Brendan Corr.

Brendan Corr
Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of The Inspiration Project podcast where we meet people of significance, living lives of influence that have been able to blend a sense of purpose and vocation and their Christian faith. In this episode, we’re talking with Pastor Mark Varughese. Pastor Mark is the founder and senior leader of Kingdomcity, a group of churches that began in Malaysia but has spread to different countries all around the Asia Pacific region. In 2005, Mark had a personal encounter with God that he describes as a burning bush experience. And in response to that, stepped out in faith, bought a one-way ticket to Malaysia, and started the movement that is now Kingdomcity churches. Mark has authored a book called Ready, Fire! Aim, which is part of his journey and Kingdomcity’s story captured in writing. It is an inspiring life story woven with a threat of faith and the appropriate measure of risk. Mark is a preacher, an author, and also a devout or a devoted musician involved in the music and the worship of his church. Pastor Mark, so good of you to give us some time. You are over in Malaysia. Which part of Malaysia? Is that KL?

Pastor Mark Varughese
Hi, Brendan. Firstly, great to be with you. I’m actually in Perth. My wife currently is in Malaysia, but you are completely forgiven for rationally thinking I could be in KL right now. I am going on Saturday. So that’s a bit of what life’s like at the moment.

Brendan Corr
So that’s part of the current life, I suppose, being the leader of, I think you were telling me that there are 16 different countries that Kingdomcity has a presence in.

Pastor Mark Varughese
Yeah, there are 16 different countries at present. There are 36 different locations or churches around the world in those 16 countries. And I don’t spread my time across all of them, but there’s certainly a couple of the main ones that are the sort of hubs or the epicentre of what we’re doing, which is largely in Kuala Lumpur and Malaysia and Perth in Western Australia.

Brendan Corr
So I think I also remember some of the research that we were doing suggesting your journey as leading that into ministry as a church planter and as a leader of churches began in Perth. Is that one of the reasons that you’re back there? Is it sort of home?

Pastor Mark Varughese
Yeah. So my life has been a bit of a crisscross. So I was born in Singapore and grew up in Malaysia. My mom was born in Singapore, and my dad in Malaysia. So that was the origin. My ancestry or ethnicity is Indian, but I’d never had any connection with India, the country. So we met largely in Singapore, Malaysia. That was the region I grew up in. At the age of 10, our whole family migrated to Perth. I’m the oldest of four, so I did most of my education in Perth. And so for the best part of 20 years, we’re Australian. I’m an Australian citizen. So there you go, Singapore-born, Malaysian-raised, Indian-origin, Australian citizen. And there is that historical connectivity to KL, which is now obviously the origin of where our church is, but then of course Perth is home as well. So very much we live between the two.

Brendan Corr
So one of the things I was hoping we might have a chat about, as I was thinking about your experience, your life, the sort of things that you’ve lived was the notion of how you engage in what I assumed had been cross-cultural ministry. But it seems as though maybe that was an assumption that was not necessarily grounded in your experience. It sounds like you were already a multicultural entity and it’s just finding where you happened to be at the time. Is that right?

Pastor Mark Varughese
Yeah, I think one of the challenges growing up was that I was too Aussie to be Asian, but I was too Asian to be Aussie. And you’ve got, which is not that uncommon in today’s society, which is so multicultural, which means you sort of relate to multiple, but you belong to neither kind of thing. You’re sort of caught in this space, a bit like you think of Moses, he was too Egyptian to be completely Hebrew, but he was currently too Hebrew to stay an Egyptian. So I think what I saw growing up as dysfunction turned out in hindsight to be divine preparation because now the ability to relate cross-culturally to different cities and cultures and contexts comes quite naturally to me. After all, that’s part of how I was raised. And my wife is the same because she was born in New Zealand, grew up in the Philippines, sounds like an American, it’s got some Arab blood in her. So she’s genuinely as confused as I am. And so between us, again, what seemed like an issue growing up is God’s preparation because he somehow uses the unique mix of every person for the purpose that ultimately if you follow his ways, you’ll end up walking in.

Brendan Corr
Amen. I would like to come back and ask you that sort of question. It strikes me that the experience you’re describing where culture tends to recede into the background of prominence and just becomes almost a non-thing, is flying in the face of what is a new conception of multiculturalism and the strong identification of particular cultures. And I’d like to hear your thoughts about what does that mean and how does a Christian mind rationalise strong associations with nationalism and a particular cultural background or locality? And what you are describing is none of those. But let me rewind you back. Obviously, you are a person who’s come to a deep understanding of faith and the expression of faith and the leading of God in your life. Can you help us understand how you develop that? How did you get into a relationship with God and even want to be hearing his voice following his ways?

Pastor Mark Varughese
Yeah. So I grew up in a Christian home, but it was a fairly conservative orthodox kind of background. And the kind of church I grew up in as a young boy, the impression was God was sovereign but distant and removed and one day you’ll meet him and you’ll work it out I guess. So it wasn’t until we moved to Perth that I went to this church. I was only a 10-year-old, but the pastor uniquely talked about God. He talked about God like he knew him, and he talked about God as if God was intimate and involved with your life as opposed to just sovereign and distant and powerful. And it’s set off a burning desire, I think inside of me, even as a young man or even as a teenager to know God. I didn’t know God could be known. I thought God could be studied, God could be theorised, God, I didn’t doubt he was real, but I just didn’t know he was involved and engaged with my day-to-day life. And so I think the desire was not so much to do what I’m doing today. I didn’t have a desire to work for him, I just had the desire to know him, and I didn’t know you could know him. So I sat on this journey, this relational journey of what it meant to have a relationship with God, God being a person, not just in divine entity. And look, we’re all on that journey still on that journey, but that’s really been the obsession of my heart from a fairly young age, even though I had the highs and lows of every other normal person. That certainly was what guided my path more than anything, even in the times while I was working as a lawyer, et cetera.

Brendan Corr
So we will touch on your career as a lawyer first, but let me ask you, you have this experience as a 10-year-old and it stirs something or it awakens your understanding of a new possibility. You described your current or your background at that stage, your experience as being conservative. Was that interest of yours encouraged? Did you find that there were obstacles from your history, from your experience, from the community that you were part of at the time?

Pastor Mark Varughese
Yeah, look, I think my family is a godly family, so there was no discouragement. But again, none of my family, cousins, uncles, aunties, any of them had been in ministry the way I am now. They were all professionals, doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants, you name it. We probably have a relative in the field. And so really my path was more than just finishing high school, going to university, picking a good course, and studying and earning a decent living. And so that’s what I set out to do. And I set out to do law and commerce at uni and worked for five years as a lawyer in practice. But I think all through that entire journey, I had this desire to know God. Again, to me, that’s very separate from wanting to be a pastor or that was not on the grid at all. I thought maybe even when I’m 60 or something, I can become a missionary or I guess I didn’t have a path. This wasn’t set out as some sort of agenda or intentional step. Because I am very much separated from knowing God and just wanting to know what he’s like and just who he is. This is this entire journey of church planting or anything to do with that. That all obviously was a part of his plan, certainly wasn’t mine.

Brendan Corr
So that ultimate intervention, what I’m assuming we might come to is the burning bush moment of dramatic redirection of your life must have come in your mid-early 20s or so. But those 15 years in between 10-year-old and call to the ministry, what was your spiritual life like at that stage where you…

Pastor Mark Varughese
Yeah, I think I was an average kid. I was an average kid growing up and I went to a public high school in Perth and had friends and I went to church on weekends. And so a lot of young people around that time, sometimes it felt a bit like a double life because it wasn’t divergent, but it was certainly you’re trying to wrestle with it, walk it out, you know God’s real. And I had some real meaningful encounters with the presence of God, the way I would articulate it, but at the same time, very much planted with my feet on the ground, Dad and Mum highly valuing our education and wanting to make sure I did well in that sphere. So again, there was no real convergence until that point. I think the bigger decision, which sounds a little smaller in the context of the overall picture but was maybe more significant was at the age of 26, after five years of practice, maybe 27 in the church I was serving in, the pastor asked me would I give up my career as a lawyer to come on staff. Now that is a huge decision because I’ve been in practice for five years. If you’re going to go further, that’s the time to launch. And I had no real desire to do that, but something in me knew that was the right thing to do. So I sought the advice of my parents. I talked to a few of the people that I valued their thoughts, but I just knew this was what I needed to do. So I did it. I gave up my career, and there was no burning bush for that. There were no angels turned up for that. That was just an internal sense, a sense of peace, and I just knew this was what I had to do. So I gave that up and then I joined church staff for the very first time. Those three years I would describe as disorienting for me, not because the people there were bad, it’s because I was, the best way I can explain it is I love the restaurant, but I had no idea how the kitchen worked. And just because you love the restaurant doesn’t mean you want to work in the kitchen. So I’d grown up in the restaurant my whole life and I thought, oh, this is different. So after three years, I think some of my issues came to the surface, and then at the end of that point I thought, maybe I’m done. Maybe I need to just go back to the law, maybe I’ll go and do an MBA, maybe I’ll start a business. At this point, I was 30, single, and internally in a bit of turmoil. And it’s in that setting that I had my burning bush in September 2005, that was the redirection to move to Malaysia to start what is now Kingdomcity.

Brendan Corr
So talk us through that, what happened in September 2005?

Pastor Mark Varughese
So my pastor, who’s a good friend, he’s very gracious. I let him know where I was and he said, “Look, why don’t you come to the Gold Coast with me for a while? I’m going for a few days of meetings.” Because I had this strange urge to go on a rollercoaster, maybe it was a sort of prophetic metaphor for my future because life has been a rollercoaster ever since. But I did. He took me there and it was in those few days I had a very profound personal encounter. Again, I don’t want to, say burning bush sounds very irreverent because I’m certainly no Moses and I didn’t write the first five books of the Bible, but from a personal standpoint, it redirected my life the way it redirected Moses, because we’d left Malaysia to come to Australia. Dad worked hard. Yeah, family, as a 10-year-old. We had worked hard so that I could get an education, and now in one foul swoop, I’d first quit law, and now I’m about to quit Australia. So I’m literally reversing everything my poor parents had worked hard to set up for us in Australia, but they were supportive. They knew it was God. And so I did that. And so literally came back after those moments, told my parents, told my friends, sold my house in Perth, and bought a one-way ticket. And in April 2006, which is a few months after I’d wrapped everything up, well, in February, I went to KL. I was still single then. And a couple of months later started our first service in a university theatre in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, after a few weeks of just meeting people and saying hi and gathering in houses, and yeah, it literally started as organically as that.

Brendan Corr
Do you see, Mark, joining the dots between that ultimate manifestation of God’s taking hold of your life in a very dramatic way, locating you and pail to pioneer this grassroots from nothing? You mentioned before the bigger decision was walking away from law. In some ways you can see clearly, isn’t it? That was the dramatic letting go of what had been secure, expected, the approved, logical, rational Christian life to something quite dramatic.

Pastor Mark Varughese
I think so, because at that point when I gave up law, basically whatever the Lord said after that would’ve been somewhat secondary, meaning, because I was burning the oxen so to speak. I was burning the bridge. I was saying, okay, that’s it. He said, go start a church in Malaysia. No worries. Go to Africa and feed the poor. Sure. Go to Europe and dine with the kings. Okay. Go to South America and plant a church. Maybe. It wouldn’t matter because the rest of my life I’m saying is yours, having said no to that, well, whatever you want, so be it. Let’s go. So that way it was.

Brendan Corr
You’re describing it with no ease, but a suggestion that it was, there wasn’t a struggle, is that how you found it at the time? Or did you really wrestle with, “Hey, this is my identity, this is my security. I’ve worked hard, I’ve studied. This is what my parents expect.” Was that part of a wrestle?

Pastor Mark Varughese
Yeah, it was a wrestle. I mean, I’m not a risk-taker by nature. I’m actually quiet. I’m the eldest child, which means I’m a bit conservative. I come from a conservative home, which means I’m conservative. And my personality is like that. Some people jump out of planes when they want a holiday. I barely jumped out of bed. Some people climb rocks and mountains. I don’t climb out of bed. So it’s not like I’m a maverick personality and I thought, let’s go take crazy risks. I am quite methodical, strategic and intentional. So it doesn’t make sense from an outsider’s point of view when they look at our journey, especially even the Kingdomcity journey over the last 17 years, and see all the directions and the redirections and the rate and the route to risk in terms of some of the choices and decisions we’ve made. But I think that is what God almost I think delighted in. He uses foolish things to confound the wise. And I’m not saying I’m an idiot, but I certainly didn’t have the tenacity or the personality to do any of what I’m doing now, even though I had a path and I thought I was on track. I think the point when you surrender to God completely is, that it’s then he who decides the direction, not, Lord, bless my direction, but Lord, help me to follow your direction.

Brendan Corr
So I’m imagining, and again, not wanting to put words in your mouth, that you have this fundamental encounter with God that demands you release your control of life and the trajectory that life’s on. End of the ministry, three years, another encounter with God that further or takes you further into that area of trust, and you’ve been talking using the word risk, and you land in Malaysia with nothing. What was going on in your heart at that stage? What were the things that you were?

Pastor Mark Varughese
It was let’s see how we go, because I think, and my book suggests the same, my book obviously tells a bit of the story in a bit more detail. For the sake of time, I’m sort of being brief, but there was no sense of, wow, I know how all of this is going to work out. It was let’s put one foot in front of the other. And there was an adventure. I think even for personalities like mine when there’s this urge to do something for God, but then on the other side there’s this calculated sense of risk, and should we do it, should we not? What about the pros, and the cons, or what if it doesn’t work? What if it’s not God? What if you’re just imagining it? All of these things circulate in your head and you stay within the realms of safety, at some point, if there’s an agitation internally, if there’s any move of God inside your own heart, the fear or the frustration of doing nothing will eventually outweigh the fear of failure. And at that moment you’ll step out and do something. And it might not make complete sense to anyone else, but I guess that’s the personal nature of trying to wrestle this sense of, okay, God, what do you have for me? I’ve got one life to live. I mean, if I get to 70 and then I’m like, “Oh, I remember at 30 I had this inkling to do this,” there’s no guarantee it was going to turn out. And here we are, 17 years in, over 40,000 people in the church, 16 countries. I mean, I had no guarantees of any of that and still don’t. But I think the adventure of following God is such a beautiful relational journey of trust. And I think it’s not unique to me, it’s for every believer, it’s for every follower. Jesus, the first thing He did when He turned up on earth after He started his ministry, He looked at people and said, follow me. You didn’t tell them where we’re going, how long it’s going to take, or the directions we’re going to get there. And all of us want to know all those details before we leave anything. And He just said, follow me. And really following me wasn’t even just a journey of destination, it was a journey of transformation because He said, “Follow me and I’ll make you.” Normally if you’re following someone, it’s because they’re going to take you somewhere. If I said, “Brendan, follow me,” you’re following me to a location. But only Jesus says follow me and I’ll make you, because there’s something about following him with that, okay, where are we going? Follow me. When do we get there? Follow me. How do I know? Just follow me. And in the journey, I’m not just going to take you, I’m going to make you. I’m going to actually shape who you are supposed to be in the journey of this journey of trust. Mine is what it is, but I think every listener, every believer, and every person who wants to know God has an adventure with their name on it that is going to take a little bit of unique faith and trust.

Brendan Corr
Yeah. Maybe not as global or as grand as the one that yours has ended up to be. But I hear what you’re saying. In the, I couldn’t help but think of a well-known book from a few generations ago of Christians by Watchman Nee, The Normal Christian Life. And he was arguing the same sort of point that the extraordinary should be the ordinary for disciples of Jesus.

Pastor Mark Varughese
That’s right. Well, it’s because we’re all ordinary, but we have an extraordinary God. So there’s actually nothing extraordinary about what’s happened if God’s the one doing it. It is ordinary. And our part in the equation is simple, obey. Trust, obey, yield, surrender, and just let him do the heavy lifting and try to get out of the way and be faithful.

Brendan Corr
So I hear what you’re saying about that. Come follow me and I will make you, I will form you. There must be some, or I’m projecting, Mark, that there must be some assurance or some knowledge of God and his character that you already had, that you had a measure of confidence that what’s the worst could happen, God would still be safe.

Pastor Mark Varughese
I think so, and I think that is where I believe faith is actually very relational. Some people associate faith with big risk-taking, but even risk is relative. Let me give you an example. So if I needed a thousand dollars and I didn’t know where to get it from and I walked out into the street and I saw a stranger and I said, “Excuse me, can I have a thousand dollars?” My faith or my expectation that I’ll get it is quite low because I don’t know who I’m talking to even though I’ve got a real need. Now, he might be a great guy, he may give it to me, but chances are he won’t. If I walked outside and I saw my father or I saw a loved one or someone who I trusted and I said, “I’m so glad I found you, I need a thousand dollars. Can you please…” My faith, same person, same personality, with the same need, and yet my expectation or my faith that I’ll receive it is much higher. Why? Because I know who I’m asking. And even non-believers know that. That’s why they’ll often say to a Christian, “Can you have a chat with the man upstairs?” That’s their way of saying, “Hey, we know that you have a closer connection.” It’s who you know, not what you know. And I think that’s what faith is. It means faith is now within the realm of any personality, male or female, young or old. But the more you know God, the more you will take the risks because it’s less of a risk when you know who you’re dealing with.

Brendan Corr
Yeah. So again, my mind goes to that verse, perfect love casts out fear. That notion, if God is for me, I can trust him to look after the details and keep me safe, and come what may, nothing will separate me from his love.

Pastor Mark Varughese
Absolutely. Yeah. There’s wisdom. And of course, I think you see counsel and you make sure that you’re not being reckless, but I’m not talking about making unrighteous choices versus righteous choices. I’m talking about, okay, there’s a lot of things that what’s the will of God for my life? Am I to be a dentist or a lawyer? Am I to marry this person or that person? Should I take this job or that job? Should I rent or buy? And so much of it, the will of God feels like a tightrope and we feel nervous to walk it because I don’t want to miss it, I don’t want to get it wrong, I don’t want to end up in a problem. But that’s a little bit like someone who has no security, that there’s a father underneath the whole thing who actually just wants you to enjoy life. And I think I’ve got two sons now and I think about it. I’ve got their back, and if they take a step, one wants to be a musician, one wants to be a lawyer, and if he doesn’t quite make it, we will have a chat and we’ll work out how we can help him in another area. And my father in heaven is a thousand times infinitely better than I am as a father on earth. So I think this is where knowing God becomes the foundational platform for any journey you have in following him.

Brendan Corr
You’ve been talking about the notion of risk and contrasting that with recklessness. At the moment when you are making this decision about what’s the next step, and I get the fact that you don’t have a goal, there’s no guarantee of a big finish. How do you decide whether something is a godly risk or whether it’s reckless?

Pastor Mark Varughese
I think you have the safety rails of counsel, and if, look, everybody in your life thinks you’re crazy, what are you doing? Then you should pay attention. But you do have to have your own internal sense of peace. You have to have your own internal sense of conviction. Because there are some things you do that everyone may say, are you sure about this? Are you crazy? And questions aren’t bad, they should survive scrutiny. But I think in a lot of the decisions I made deep down, whether it was instinctive, whether it was a sense of how I hear God’s voice, whether some of it was confirmed through other people, I think everybody has to come to that place where you’re like, “God, I’ve got to do something with this.” And I’ve got a whole bunch of stories that we don’t have time for to illustrate that. But I do think there is a frustration that will build when you don’t do anything that will eventually get greater than this sense of, “Oh no, I could get it wrong, whatever. It’s reckless.” I think it’s a simple issue of yield and trust. That’s why I called it Ready, Fire! Aim. That’s irresponsible advice if you’re holding a firearm, you’re meant to be ready and then you’re meant to aim it, then you’re meant to fire. But obviously, the implication is when it comes to God, once you’re ready, he just calls you to fire. And the problem is, I know a lot of Christians, I know a lot of people who are ready and then they’re aiming, they’re aiming, they’re aiming, they’re aiming, they’re doing all the due diligence possible around every decision to work out how do I make this fail proof, the bunny has left the country and they won’t pull the trigger. And then yet what you realise is most people have more trust in their own aim than God’s ability to guide a moving bullet. And so I think obediently, Peter didn’t go, “Well, let me work out how water holds up my weight if I had to step out of a boat.” Are you ready? All right, now step out and we’ll work it out. The aim is not irrelevant, the aim just follows obedience. It’s like it triggers something. And I understand this sort of advice could set off irresponsible thoughts in the minds of the reckless, but I do think if God is the foundation and the basis of what you’re doing, there is safety. And I feel like there’s far more adventure waiting for so many people if they’re willing to just listen to God, trust him, and take the risk that he’s prompting them to, even if it comes with a sense of, “Oh gosh.” And I love what Joyce Meyer says. She said this one day in a meeting and I can’t remember where, but she said, “Well, God, what have I missed you? What if I miss it?” And she said she heard the voice of the Lord gently say, “Well, Joyce, I’ll find you.” And I thought, wow, what a beautiful, simple parental way of summarising this fear as if we’re the Lord of our own destiny.

Brendan Corr
Yeah. And it all depends on us. That is so good. And I just love the way you keep bringing it back to the notion that this is rooted in a relationship. You have, it is the prerequisite, is what I’m hearing from you, Mark, is that it’s not sometimes this unknown and unfamiliar God is going to craft an opportunity that you in your own capacity of going to have to decide to take action about. It’s the product of listening, walking, being moved by the spirit of God so that you’ve got this conviction that you’re talking about, this stirring that is an irresistible impulse to what he wants for you that ends up being irresistible.

Pastor Mark Varughese
And I think so much of life isn’t fairly normal. You work it out. I’m not one of these people where God speaks to me every three seconds about what you wear and what you do. And he’s given you brains, he’s given you intellect, he’s given you desires, you walk out your life. But I think there are junctions and there are points where if you stay sensitive to God, whether it’s a small thing or a large thing, he’s more interested than we think. And I think if you start the day just saying, “God, I want to surrender to you today, help me to follow you. I don’t know whether it’s a conversation with someone I’m going to run into, whether it’s a major decision I’ve got to make, or something in between, help me to the best of my ability to follow you, to hear you clearly and to follow you nearly. And let that be something that I know at the end of the day, you’re still my father and you’ve got my back. And yeah, help me to enjoy this journey.” When my kids were young I sent them to the park and I was behind them to see the open field and see them run, which brought joy to my heart. Imagine if I dropped them in a big open field and they thought it was a tightrope and they nervously clung to me and took one step at a time, I’m like, “Run. I brought you to an open space where the fields are, the path will form under you. Just go for it.” So look, it is different for everybody, but that’s certainly been my journey.

Brendan Corr
The other thing that I’m reflecting on, Mark, is your acknowledgment there that these are moments in your walk with God. It’s not every moment. You don’t wake up every day and throw a dart at what God is asking me today. There is the counterpoint of saying I have these moments of dramatic encounter, and if God is as real in my life as I know he can be, it’ll be a big decision. But then there’s some hard work, there’s some planning that’s got to go on. There’s actually some nitty-gritty.

Pastor Mark Varughese
Yeah. And I think that’s a huge part of it. I feel like it’s easier to guide a moving horse than to kickstart a stagnant donkey. And I feel like that’s the same with us. If we keep moving, and that’s what I mean about God guiding a moving bullet, he’s not stressed that you fired it in your direction. If you do it in obedience, he can cause all things to work together for good. I think there’s something about walking out your journey rather than working out your journey that is really at the crux of this. However, you have to start walking. And walking does not need, to be of it as a sign of maturity. If I told my son, “Son, can you walk to the corner deli and buy me a bottle of Coke?” That’s an instruction and he can just get up and do it himself. But if I had to say, “Now get up now, put your left foot in front of your right foot, now go past the couch, now turn right, now turn left, get outside the door, stand on the carpet,” that’s a sign of immaturity. He knows how to get to the thing. So I think there’s a sign of maturity that you can get on with your life and God’s asked you to be a teacher or has asked you to be a mom who stays at home and raises your kids or he wants you to start a business or whatever, that you’ve got to use initiative, use the God-given brains and intellect and abilities he’s given you, operate in the grace he’s put under you, but do it with the sensitivity, and you’ll have some wonderful surprises on the way.

Brendan Corr
Because you’re right, Mark, to have started off in a university hall with nothing and have found yourself leading a group of people with a presence in 16 locations, however many campuses you’re describing, that doesn’t just happen. There’s a lot of work and planning and structure that must’ve been in place to give form to what God was asking of you to do.

Pastor Mark Varughese
That’s right. And we have a wonderful team and it’s a lot of hard work, but I think the mission is clear. I feel like we know what the Lord has asked of us, and there are certain points we have to come back to when we hit road bumps or challenges and go, “God, are we missing it? Is this you? We’re still on track. Can you give us…” So I think inquiring about the Lord is a relational journey and it’s a wonderful discipline, but absolutely there’s work involved, there’s just common sense and there’s just walking out your faith. So it’s not either or. It’s not all striving with no God involvement and you’re trying to do it in the flesh, and it’s not equally this thing like you said, where you’re throwing darts at the board and you won’t do anything unless God speaks. And I think that’s part of, I think the release of what’s triggered what has happened in our world. I tell the guys that live on the green, and what I mean by that is traffic lights have a green, amber, and red. You live as if God has a green light for you rather than live as if every light is red and you need five signs before you move. So it does not mean that you always go and you always do, because if you feel like God is for you and there’s a green light and then you feel a check in your spirit or a check in your heart, that means there’s an orange or a red coming, then you stop. You pause. But the default setting is he’s for me. The default setting is to go into all the world and make disciples. The default setting is I’ve commissioned you. And he said that to Paul. He told the disciples to go into all the world. Paul said, “I’m going to go to Asia.” And the Holy Spirit said to him, no. So he felt a check. And I find the way God works for me anyway is in the form of a check, meaning do what’s in your heart. And then if you’re going a little too far that way, I’ll put a check. Okay. Whereas some people are like, “Are you guys going to have a church in China or America?” And I’m like, “Yes.” Are we Lord? Are we? The answer is yes, unless he puts a checker on red. It’s not, “Well, I need nine signs and seven prophetic words and four confirmations before I say yes to that.” The answer is yes, but the Lord may shut it. I’ve said, no, not you, not now, and I think that’s important, but I do feel there’s freedom and liberty and joy that comes with living your life knowing God is for you.

Brendan Corr
There’s an old expression that Christians used to adopt, Deo volente, God willing, which is sort of what you’re describing, right? Yes, God willing.

Pastor Mark Varughese
And that’s a great phrase, Brendan because I think some people use that word God willing as well, I need to know he’s willing. And I think, hang on. No, he’s willing. It’s how you read the phrase.

Brendan Corr
And again built into that is an ongoing relationship. I trust that I am doing this with good motive, and this is not self-seeking, this is not glorying, it’s not improper ambition. It’s advancing the kingdom and then it’s up to God to put a halt if that’s not what he wants my next step to be.

Pastor Mark Varughese
Absolutely. And I think that’s what we’ve found. What it’s triggered is faith in other people. So this is not just my journey, my journey started in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 17 years ago, and it triggered faith in other people. Now we’ve got churches in Africa, Europe, all these different cultures and settings, first world, developing world. We’re in some of the poorest countries as well. So you’ve got this divergence and just cultural confusion around, this is not one stereotypical kind of thing, but one thing that is common to everyone is the language of faith. The language of if there’s God, and he doesn’t have nationality, he transcends all of that. And if that’s who he is, following him, whether you are in a tribe in Africa or whether you are in a first world country or you are in another setting, he speaks to everybody in a way that they can understand. Faith has this common bond when you start to see it awakened in people no matter what their risk appetite or culture or their context is.

Brendan Corr
Yeah. Mark, we’ve been presuming the notion of having a deep relationship, a faithful, trusting relationship with God. How do you help the people who are part of your community develop that ongoing, meaningful, intimate experience of God in their lives?

Pastor Mark Varughese
Look, that’s a great question. And I think it is a return to the foundations and the basics. Like any relationship, if you think of a relationship that you’d have with someone you love or someone you’re close to or a friend, it’s communication. It’s quality time. Somebody wrote I think Gary Chapman wrote the book of the love languages, and I think of it that way. It’s not scripture, but again, it sort of describes the ways you thread a relationship together if you want to invest in it. And I think with God it’s the same. It’s a relational journey. So quality time is spending time with him, acts of service, getting involved, and words of affirmation and encouragement. You can call that praise and worship, I guess. Gifts, people serve and they sacrifice in terms of their tithe and offerings or whatever that looks like for them. And physical touch, you probably can’t touch them physically, that’s a bit much. But I think there’s just something about valuing the relationship enough to do it. And in a Christian context, you’re talking about reading the word, you’re talking about spending time in prayer, being in a community of faith where you actually have others so you don’t grow in delusional isolation thinking, well, and I think that there is just a healthy balance about walking with God because your relationship with God is personal. It has to be, but it was never intended to be private. So I think there’s something about it that can only be fashioned in the community. There’s some people who love the head, but they don’t like the body. And the body of Christ is the body of Christ. Other people are very connected to the body, but they’re not really deeply connected to the head. And I think you need both. You need to have a personal relationship with God, but there needs to be function, utility, and unity within the body as well. And I think if you can stay in the middle of the road with all of that, you’re generally going to move in the right direction.

Brendan Corr
Yeah. And associated with that, I’m hearing this, the theme of in community is where the fruit of the spirit, the humility, the forbearance, the rubbing off of self-centeredness or self-interest happens, which is a guard against willful ambition or striving or competition.

Pastor Mark Varughese
Absolutely. Well, I like to say this way. When I’m by myself, I have all the fruits of the spirit. I’m loving, patient, joyful, tolerant, self-control, all of that. It’s only when I run into people and I deal with them that I realise I’m missing half of them. Because it’s only in proximity, iron sharpens iron in the community, which is why God designed it that way. He said before sin ever entered the world, he said, it’s not good for man to be alone. That wasn’t a marriage verse, that was a relational community verse. And so I think there’s something about that encounter that happens with the head, but discipleship happens with the body. There’s something about us in the community that rubs off. And I guess if you can’t work it out in that context, growth cannot happen in a vacuum. It cannot. You can’t just isolate yourself and hope to grow with God. You need to have solitude time with God, but it needs to be in context in community with believers of faith.

Brendan Corr
Mark, the experience you’ve described, the 16, 17 years on from that stepping out the first launch to where you are now has been extraordinarily rapid and extensive. How have you managed that? How have you kept up with just the pragmatics of holding this all together?

Pastor Mark Varughese
That’s a great question. I think it’s a great question. We’ve obviously had a lot of favour and the team, God has always seemed to bring the right person at the right time to strengthen the team. There are 250 staff around the world now. Every one of the locations and countries have their own pastors and leaders. I was obviously the pastor when I first started, and I was the pastor for the Perth church when I took that on. And there’s a lot of travel, there’s a lot of sacrifice, a lot of hard work, but also good counsel, the right people around me. And really I found my responsibility was to steward this, my prayer early in the journey when I started to see such an increase and almost unusual, it’s not the normal story. I started to pray a prayer like, God help me not stuff this up. There’s a sport that I don’t really play, but it’s called curling, and they throw a disc or a puck or something on the ice, and it seems like the only job with the competitors is to clear the path in front of it so the thing can keep going. That’s what I feel like I’m doing. I feel like my only job is to clear out the obstacles because the Bible says Jesus said he’ll build his church. So I get to cooperate with someone who’s actually pretty good at what he does. So I’m just trying to make sure I move the obstacles. And look, there are a lot of pragmatics. It depends on how long you have, but there’s been, I’d say, great faithfulness by a great team, but ultimately it’s the grace of God. I’ve clearly empowered lots of people. I don’t want to make it sound like we’ve done nothing and we’ve just thrown a whole bunch of stuff in the air and it’s landed. And yet I don’t want to sound like we’re so diligent. It is funny when I often sit at round tables or pastor’s gatherings, and I had one guy ask me this, and this is a little comical, he sort of looked at me, it was a small gathering of the biggest 30 churches in Queensland. And he invited me. He’s a good friend now, but this was seven years ago. He said, “It’s a mystery. We look at Kingdomcity and then I look at you and I can’t work it out because it’s clearly not you.” This is the first time I met him. So I don’t know if it was a compliment or not, but he basically asked me, he said, “Tell me the convictions. I want you to speak to our 30 pastors. Tell us the convictions you’ve got that have undergirded the risks you’ve taken.” And a lot of these round tables, if I go there and they ask, how’s this happened, and I say, it’s God, they all look disgusted because they’re like, we all have the same God. That’s not the explanation.

Brendan Corr
But where’s the playbook?

Pastor Mark Varughese
Yeah, exactly. So then if I give them the six things or the seven things, they’re like, “Yeah, but we do all of that.” And I’m like, “You probably do better than me.” So I don’t know. It is this combination. I do think there is co-labouring. There’s the grace of God, the sovereign side of it, and then clearly there’s a side that we have to labour. We just don’t want to labour in vain.

Brendan Corr
Mark, you started some of our conversation by referencing Christ’s call to his disciples on the lack of Galilee, come follow me and I’ll make you. You’ve been following Jesus for a long time. What part of your career as a lawyer formed you? What was the making during that period that you now see the fruit or the outworking of?

Pastor Mark Varughese
What a great question. Okay, so this is how it’ll make sense. I grew up, I’m a complete introvert. People will not believe that now, but I grew up as a total introvert. My greatest fear is public speaking. I hated public speaking. I was a musician, so I played the piano. And even when I played the piano in public, my shoulders would droop and I had a lot of timidity in terms of the way I was. And my mom would say, “Put your shoulders back, stand up straight.” And I just hated being the centre of attention. I hated public speaking. So what law did for me, which in hindsight I saw because I was good with maths and numbers and science in school, so I thought I was going to be an engineer or an accountant or something like that. So why would I choose law when I hated public speaking? I wasn’t very good at reading. And English was okay, but comprehension wasn’t my best subject. But again, there was a prophetic word when I was 10, and the pastor said, “I think you’re going to be a lawyer.” And I had no idea what I wanted to do. I enjoyed arguing, I think, but that was at home with my brother and my sister. So honestly, doing law and the years, the training, I can see how it taught me to think, how it taught me to analyse, whether it’s not just Bible and scripture, but also doing court appearances and standing in front of the judge. And there’s so many parallels. I can see how God uses your profession. If he’s got something more for you, nothing is wasted. And I think that was a big part of it.

Brendan Corr
Amen. So they’re not forsaken years, they were preparation.

Pastor Mark Varughese
Not at all. Absolutely. In fact, I now look in hindsight at the scale of what I’m leading, going to law school in some ways would’ve been better preparation than going to Bible school. And obviously, I’ve read the Bible and I’ve gone to school, but they used to say in the ’80s and the ’90s, “If you love God and you love people, you can be a pastor. Just go plant a church.” And I’m thinking now in 2023, if you love God and love people, that doesn’t make you a pastor, that makes you a Christian. We’re all supposed to love God and love people. But you got to understand balance sheets, you got to understand boards and governances and constitutions and leadership, got to be a public speaker and encourager, motivator or pastor. You have to build teams and cast visions. There’s so much to it in the scale of what we’re doing. Now, that’s not necessarily the experience of every pastor, and there are so many wonderful pastors all around the country, and around the world that just do what they do in their community. So I think they’re the champions of the planet. But I think the preparation I went through was absolutely vital for what I’m doing today.

Brendan Corr
Yeah. And again, I touched on your last comments about the caution of comparison. Just hear what God’s saying to you. Stay in your line. Be true to what your purpose is, and don’t compare yourself to the guy next door.

Pastor Mark Varughese
Absolutely. No, I could not be more accurate. I mean, it’s a dangerous thing to compare. In fact, nothing good comes out of comparison. You either leave feeling superior and proud or inferior and worthless, and neither comes from God.

Brendan Corr
Amen. That’s good. I asked you a question a little bit earlier in our conversation. I want to come back to the idea of where does culture fit? Where does multi-culture fit? Where does cross-culture fit? I wonder whether you’ve had to think that through as you’ve pioneered a church in Malaysia and it’s spilled out into other parts of the world and other ways. Have you had to adjust, adapt, adopt, modify? Where do you feel the culture of the kingdom is something that is fundamental? Where is the culture of context?

Pastor Mark Varughese
That’s a great question. And I think every country places a different emphasis on culture. So there are some countries that are very multicultural and it’s not a big deal, other countries that are very monocultural. And so you’re dealing with a whole different dynamic there. And there’s ethnic culture, there’s family culture, there’s so many layers of complexity when it comes to culture. But I think to answer it simply, I have a fundamental belief that if a believer understands they’re first made in the image of God before they’re made in the image of their nationality or their parents or their profession or their industry or their circles or their nature or nurture that has formed them, then that I think is the starting point. Because then you see the primacy of identity is important. So for example, I’m a dad, I’m a husband, I’m a pastor, I am a friend, I am a cousin, I am a lawyer, I’m a Varughese, if you don’t want to use my title, my family name, I’ve got people who have all sorts of ways of describing themselves. But if number one, I’m a child of God, if that’s my primary identity, then everything else is valuable, but it follows. And I think the order of identity is very important because, in the event of a conflict, the primary identity should win. So there are some people who go, I’m a lawyer, I’m an Indian, I’m part of this family. But any of those things can be destroyed. The only thing that cannot be destroyed is that you’re a child of God. If your identity is in your job or your success, then you lose your job, and you fall apart. If your identity is in your family and you find out you’re adopted when you’re 35, then you fall apart. If your identity is in your nationality and there’s something bad happening to your nation, I mean, see some of the terrible things that are happening in the world now. There’s something about finding your identity in God that transcends whatever culture or country you’re from. And I just think that’s the simplicity of the gospel. If we get people back to the fact that they’re first made in the image of God, now the diversity of how it’s expressed might vary in Africa, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe. But are we first brothers and sisters in Christ? Are we first? So really, kingdom culture must trump Australian culture, Malaysian culture, African culture, or any culture. So there are people who are more loyal to their ethnicity than their faith, and they’re on dangerous ground. There are people more loyal to their profession than their faith, they’re on dangerous ground. Because I think all those other things are sinking sand. All those other things are temporary. All those other things are wonderful and maybe even a gift from God, but it’s not your primary identity. When you’re at your deathbed and you’re about to cross over to the other side, it’s not how many titles you have, it’s not which skin colour you got because that’s going into the ground. The only thing that matters is the fact that you were made in the image of God and you know the one you’re going to. All of those other things are part of the gift and the creativity and the uniqueness, that’s important. But I think the order of identity is the most important thing, which is actually what’s allowed us to do what we’ve done. So people say, “What do you know about Botswana?” I’m like, “Yeah, I don’t know the depths of the culture, but I know the gospel that I’m supposed to bring there.” So you find a Botswana and they contextualise it for their culture. But I know that see, our name is Kingdomcity. And it’s one word intentionally because we’re not meant to have a gap between our kingdom life and our city life, our spiritual life and our secular life. It’s one life. And really it’s not a city kingdom. You’re not meant to bring the city into church. You’re meant to bring the kingdom into the city. And I think that’s the point. We’re not Kingdom Church. We’re not trying to bring the kingdom to a church, we’re trying to bring the Kingdom to a city. And I think whatever city it is, it’s wonderful. I love the expression, I love the diversity, I love the food, I love the different ways of culture… I love it. I actually love it. I just need to help people see that if you’re going to follow God, he’s your primary. So you are a believer who happens to be a lawyer. Are you a Christian lawyer or you’re a lawyer who has faith? Are you an American Christian? Are you a Christian who happens to be born in America? So I think what is your primary identity goes a long way to determining whether you will live out your faith as the primacy of value.

Brendan Corr
So good. Mark, we’ve been talking about your attitude of trust in the face of challenge and opportunity. What’s the thing that presents a risk for you at the moment? What’s next for you?

Pastor Mark Varughese
Yeah, look, I think it’s always trying to keep the fire burning. It’s always trying to look ahead and see what’s around the corner. A few years ago, we started a school, so there’s always new initiatives, there’s new countries, there’s new ground, there’s new territory. And you think it gets easier over time, but because we’ve pioneered most of what we’ve started, there’s always this raw excitement around, I wonder how it works here. And every time you go into a new territory or a new country or even a new culture, there is this raw excitement. There’s this R and D edge around how we’re doing life and church makes it never boring. And yeah, there’s always the risk. I mean, I suppose the risk in some ways is bigger because of the scale. In other ways, it’s smaller because if something goes wrong in one country or one city, it’s not going to sink the whole ship. Whereas when we first started, when you have one location or two locations, if that all goes south, well, that’s the end of the whole thing. So I think, and now I’m getting close to 50, which sounds like it’s relative, depending on who’s listening and how old they are, whether that’s young or old. But I feel like, okay, God, well, I want to set this up because this has to outlive me. This has to outlive the generation of leaders that are currently there. And so with the youth, with the kids, with the young adults coming through, it’s just making sure the pipeline’s healthy and strong. I don’t feel the weight of it. Every now and then it gets a bit too much when I think of the complexity and the scale, and one of the things I do is just give the shepherd his job back. I just go, that’s right. He was never unemployed, but I somehow thought I took it on and I thought, maybe I am doing this. And then he reminds me, well, just follow me. My job was to follow.

Brendan Corr
Amen. Yeah, that’s good. Pastor Mark, it’s so good to have this conversation with you. I’m genuinely thankful that God had your burning bush moment and set you on this course. I am thankful that you’ve not outgrown your sense of the adventure faith that every day unfolds as you live in a relationship and you follow that Lord and master. And if Kingdomcity starts a church in America, you heard it here first, right?

Pastor Mark Varughese
Yeah. Well, anything’s possible.

Brendan Corr
Yeah. Amen. Well, thank you very much for your time. Know that we’re praying for you, and God be with you.

Pastor Mark Varughese
Thank you, Brendan. Really appreciate it and I thoroughly enjoyed talking to you.