ELKHART, Ind. (Mennonite Mission Network) – On the 30-hour connecting flights from Australia to her first home in the United States this past December, Moriah Hurst had plenty of topics to reflect on, including the recent loss of her 89-year-old grandfather, Stan Hurst, and her January 2014 ordination.
But no thought was more frequent for Hurst than her students in Melbourne.
“I’m not ruling out that I will do church ministry, but right now I feel really called to continue working with young people at Praxis,” said Hurst as she pondered whether being ordained as a minister meant she would soon pursue becoming a church pastor.
Praxis, a network of youth workers in churches, mission organizations, schools and agencies, helps people serve their communities. The organization runs an accredited youth and community development program for young adult students. Hurst, who is supported by Mennonite Mission Network, helps coordinate the program. It is her ministry to walk beside students as they learn to mentor Australia’s young people.
“We are helping them to become adults, and they will be able to help others to become adults,” Hurst said. In a post-Christian culture, “they’re figuring out who they are, how faith fits in where they are, and where they are going.”
As a youth, Hurst, the daughter of American mission workers to Australia, Mary and Mark Hurst, began to identify her ministry to work with young people. Born in Harrisonburg, Va., and reared between America, Canada and Australia, Hurst was active in youth groups, schools and camp ministries. Mission work runs in the family.
“Grandpa and Grandma hosted missionaries in their home whenever they could,” Hurst said. “All of their children have served as missionaries. I know that they prayed for me regularly.”
Download full-resolution image.In 2008, she finished her Master of Divinity degree with a Youth Ministry focus at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. She joined Praxis in 2011.
In Australia, youth work is a professionalized area. A person can obtain a bachelor’s degree in youth work, just as one would obtain a degree in counseling or social work in the United States. Praxis offers a two-year course that leads to a diploma certificate (similar to an associate’s degree) and credits that can be applied toward a bachelor’s degree. Students learn mentoring skills, and how to understand and reflect upon why young people tend to do perplexing things. They learn how to make good choices for themselves and to teach young people to follow suit. The curriculum is rooted in Christian principles, Hurst said.
“There are Christian programs that focus on working with youth in church. There are secular programs that focus on working with young people, for example, as a counselor. Praxis fits a unique niche. It is somewhere in between, enabling graduates to go in various directions,” she said.
Hurst said the practical discussions they have are often rich for personal development. The issues many of the students face are deep. (Hurst declined to provide the names of students to protect their privacy.) She recalled the brilliant Sudanese immigrant, who would never have gotten accepted to a college because he grew up in a refugee camp and lacked an adequate academic transcript.
There’s the Australian native whose mother was ashamed of being Chinese, so she downplayed it during his upbringing.
“During the [Praxis] program, he created a space where he was actually able to get to know himself better,” Hurst said.
During his growth process in Praxis, he gained pride in being what he now calls “an Asian kid,” and asked his mom to perform the tea ceremony in his recent wedding. The ceremony is a highly significant event in a Chinese wedding.
One female student deeply touched Hurst. As a child in the third grade, the young white Aussie woman was told that she had a learning disability for which she never received much help.
The school system gave her aides to assist her with school work, but the woman didn’t feel like the aides helped, said Hurst. Over the years, the student dropped out of several schools, was removed from her family, and was even homeless for a while.
“She grew up basically believing that she was stupid,” Hurst said. “As I started hearing this story from her, when she finally started telling what formal education had been like for her, I just started crying.”
Hurst promised the young student that workers at Praxis would try their best to make her educational experience better. The student told Hurst that it was the first time that someone acknowledged that learning had been hard for her.
The young woman is beginning to thrive, Hurst said.
“It’s special to see these students learn about themselves and be willing to approach the world and God with openness,” Hurst said.
And though excited about her ordination, and joyful and appreciative of the time spent visiting with family and friends in Pennsylvania and Indiana throughout December and January, Hurst was eagerly anticipating the long flight back to Australia in February.
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Mennonite Mission Network, the mission agency of Mennonite Church USA, leads, mobilizes and equips the church to participate in holistic witness to Jesus Christ in a broken world. Media may contact news@mennonitemission.net.
