Before Arrow Blake felt a disconnect between his hopes and visions as a leader and his immediate circumstances. This yearning for a more aligned and impactful path ultimately led him to seek a new way forward. Blake’s days now start at 5.20am, with prayer before he leaves the house. Four mornings a week you can find him at boot camp, exercising and connecting with friends from many different backgrounds.
When Blake started Arrow in 2022, he had already been pastoring for more than two decades. He was longing to deepen his spiritual formation, and pursue being a leader that continued to learn and evolve as he looked ahead to the next stage of his ministry career.
Arrow provided the space and practices needed to facilitate that spiritual depth and set Blake up for success into the future. “I’ve had my mentor and other people say, ‘your 50s and 60s are going to be the best decades of your life,’ and I really feel that is true,” Blake says. “Without Arrow I’m not sure I’d be where I am today.”
A call not just to hear, but to do
Blake Moore lives in Devonport, Tasmania, where he has been the senior pastor at Devonport Church of Christ for twelve years. He and his wife, Allison, have four adult children, and have served in pastoral ministry for the last 28 years.
As Blake headed towards 50, he was becoming more and more convicted that the Western church needed a new focus on spiritual discipleship. His vision and heart for his congregation began to shift, to not just feeding his listeners information, but equipping them to live in obedience.
“Spiritual maturity is not based on information. It’s based on obedience. We hear the words of Jesus all the time, but we don’t obey them. Jesus said, “If you love me, you obey my commands.” Not if you know them, but if you actually embed them and do them,” Blake explains.
Blake also realised he couldn’t lead people somewhere he hadn’t gone himself. Before he could help the people he was leading, Blake needed to begin a process of spiritual formation of his own.
Blake had heard of Arrow from other ministry colleagues and contacts around Australia, and he had always heard positive things. But he also knew that at 48 years old, he did not fit the mold of an emerging leader that Arrow usually worked with. Regardless, a friend told him that Arrow was trialing a senior leader’s cohort for the first time. This turned out to be exactly what God knew Blake needed for the second half of his life and ministry.
A chance to stop and reflect
During the first residential retreat of his Arrow course, Blake felt God was laying bare some truths about his life before him, about what he would need to really continue thriving in his life, ministry and spiritual development.
“It wasn’t a midlife crisis, but it was my midlife awakening,” Blake describes. “It felt like just drawing a line in the sand and asking, what do I want to do with my next decade? What do I want it to look like? And that started a whole snowball of effects that positively impacted my walk with Jesus, my ministry and my health.”
For Blake, Arrow unlocked a depth of spirituality formation and vulnerability that he hadn’t experienced in a leadership program before. During the three residential retreats, Blake was encouraged to dig down to the base of his character and look at what needed to change. “I’ve always had the posture of a lifelong learner,” Blake says.
As Blake wrestled with the changes he needed to make in his life, God also convicted him of his responsibility to the people he leads, “You can only give to others the same depth of character and intimacy with Jesus that you have yourself,” he shares.
By remaining disciplined and obedient to his core convictions, Blake saw his hopes and vision for the church he led evolve. Rather than a simple Sunday gathering place, he wanted to see a shift toward a culture of spiritual growth and discipleship, where regular believers view their everyday surroundings as their personal mission fields. “Every Christian is a disciplemaker. It’s not for the elite or a select few,” he explains.
A reordering of priorities and return to basics
As Blake entered into his “midlife awakening,” he started noticing a traceable transformation in his approach to leadership. Through the spiritual growth Arrow facilitated, Blake realised his priorities needed a dramatic reordering if he was going to successfully lead people into discipleship ministry. “I used to teach things before I lived them. Now I have to live them out before I teach them.”
Blake recognised that he couldn’t ask his church to do something he hadn’t done himself. So when he started encouraging his congregation to do the Discovery Bible Method with unbelieving friends, he also started reading the bible with a non-Christian friend in a cafe every fortnight.
During Blake’s time at Arrow he also started noticing the importance of spiritual discipleship, and the need for the Western church to find new and creative ways of deepening their relationship with God, or even by returning to ancient practices of spiritual discipline.
Arrow introduced Blake to Lectio Divina, a very old tradition of reading the same passage of scripture over and over again, and praying through the words of a specific text repeatedly. Blake brought this practice to his staff and governance team, who have all benefited from concentrated time in a specific part of God’s word, and a new and fresh way of communing with God.
Most of all, Blake’s time with Arrow has helped him prioritise remaining firm in Jesus. “John 15:4 says, ‘remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.’ I can do some things in my own strength, but eventually I come to the end of myself and realise I need Jesus. And if I remain in him, he will remain in me and I will bear fruit. But apart from him I can do nothing. I can’t control anything, only my responses.”
Looking back at his time doing Arrow, Blake confidently shares that “Arrow was the starting line for the rest of my life.” God has set up Blake to be able to focus on discipleship and raising up leaders for the church by not just teaching, but through living what he teaches. It’s because of Arrow that Blake shares confidently, “If there needs to be a reformation in the church, then there has to be a reformation in me.”
Recent Comments