Field Notes: Pauline Simonsen

Dr Pauline Simonsen is Dean of Emmaus Bible College in Palmerston North. A gifted teacher and leader, she’s also a spiritual director. Over many years she has worked for the growth and flourishing of the Church, particularly in the Manawatu. Talking with Pauline is a grounding, heart-expanding experience: you become aware of someone who has learned to keep company with God in the dark depths of human experience as much as on the heights. Here, with winsome frankness and joy, she talks with John about learning to trust God, about leadership and disappointment, about the prayer of relinquishment, and the real presence of Jesus—Ed.

Tell me about your family and your early years. Where does the story begin?

So, I come from a long line of pastors in the Lutheran church, going right back to when the German immigrants came out to Australia in the 1840s. All my family is Aussie—I’m the rogue kiwi, I was born here. The Germans came out for religious freedom—we have this in our DNA, I think. My forebears, six, seven generations back, settled in the Barossa Valley and planted the vines and the market gardens—that’s on my Dad’s side. My Mum’s family also came out on the first two ships to Australia—they moved into the country in New South Wales. Six generations later, Mum and Dad marry. But as I say, through all of that there’s been a long line of Lutheran pastors. And so I grew up as a pastor’s kid—three older brothers and a younger sister. None of us became pastors, which I think is rather telling. Dad’s a Type-A personality, a leader, a wonderful pastor-teacher. He’s a delight and a joy to us now, but I think as kids he was this distant figure, because he was always out doing the pastoring thing. Mum’s a really natural teacher as well. So, all five of us kids are teachers, with no pastors! I’m in Tertiary, with three brothers in Primary and a sister in Secondary, and a scattering of Principals in there as well. The teaching-leadership thing is part of our heritage; it just runs in our family.

Dad got called here in the 60s to be a Lutheran pastor here in Palmerston North. Mum was heavily pregnant with me, and I was born three months after we arrived. So my first six years were in New Zealand, which actually really influenced me. Dad got called back to Melbourne. I grew up in Box Hill—Dad had a long pastorate in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne. I then married a kiwi, Roger, an old friend of the family from their time here. Roger and I came back to live back in Palmerston North, and it was like coming home, you know? Oh, I know this land! I know this land. It was just in me still, which is lovely because it’s been home ever since. I go back to Aussie regularly, probably a couple of times a year, particularly because my parents are really elderly now. I check in with all the rellies, all the siblings and the nieces and nephews, and so forth. But this is my place. New Zealand is my home. Actually, Palmerston North is. Over the years, I’ve come to realise this. This is the area that the Lord has called me to.

Some of our readers won’t know much about the Lutheran Church in New Zealand, or about the history of the denomination. Can you tell us a bit about this?

Lutheranism goes right back to Martin Luther and his desire to reform the Catholic Church of the time, in the late 1500s-early 1600s. Germany was Catholic. Martin was a monk, a scholar, and having real personal struggles with his own sense of unworthiness and sinfulness before a holy God. He felt he was never able to do enough to truly know that he was right with God. He also had public struggles with the Church of the time, particularly after a visit to Rome when he saw the corruption and the way the common people were being kept from the things of God. Long story short, Martin nailed his 95 theses to the church door at Wittenberg to start a public discussion. The whole thing blew up, and the printing press, newly invented, disseminated all his questions. Before long, he’s called to front up to the papal authorities in courts in Germany and eventually gets excommunicated for his radical protesting views. The reforming heart of Luther’s concerns gets overtaken by the politics of the time. The Protestant movement began, and the Reformation unrolled across Europe. From that came the Lutheran Church, which horrified Martin Luther himself because he just wanted to reform the Church, the one Church of God; to have a breakaway church named after him was never, I think, what his heart was. So, that’s the history.

The Lutheran Church in New Zealand is considered a diocese of the Lutheran Church of Australia. We’re very much connected in with them. Most of our pastors come from the Lutheran Church of Australia, for example—it’s much bigger. I’ve had quite a few people ask me over the years: Why are you still Lutheran? Why don’t you come and join the Anglicans? We’d priest you! Why don’t you come? Why am I still a Lutheran? It is deep in my DNA, it really is. And deep in it is the theology that I love. At the heart of Martin’s theology was that God acts for us: we don’t act to win God; God acts to bring us to God’s self. You know, Philip Yancey got it: nothing I do can make God love me less; nothing I can do can make God love me more. God just loves, and in Christ acted on that love to draw people to himself, to redeem and to restore them into the Abba Father relationship with him. The deep grace in that: grace that covers me, my past, my present and my future, grace that knows who I am and loves me regardless, grace that is utterly untouched by how I respond. You know, that’s shocking, that’s outrageous, that’s so good. And I can never go past that.

I love some of Luther’s other theology. His theology of the cross, I think, is a huge thing for me: the sense of a God who acts in the broken—that paradoxically, Christ’s victory is won in utter brokenness and apparent defeat. And that we are called to a cross, you know; the crown is later. We live in the now and not yet; we live still with the shadow of the cross over our own lives. So, there’s really good theology of suffering that arises out of that. All of that I find really helpful with my spiritual direction work.

Tell me about you and Jesus. How did you come to be a follower of Jesus?

Yeah, goodness me, I’ve never not known Jesus. He has always been a personal part of my life. I remember earlier in my walk, beginning to relate to people from other denominations, being asked Where did you make your decision for Christ? And I thought: I never did! It was just always part of my life. I remember talking a couple of years ago with a man who had been one of Dad’s vicars, an apprentice who comes from seminary and spends a year with a senior pastor and learns how to do the job. I connected up with him recently and he said: I remember you as a little girl sitting next to your Dad and praying, and your prayers were just heartfelt knowledge of Jesus. And I thought, well, that’s alright—I don’t have to find a spot when I became a Christian! That said, there have been times of deep renewal. In my early 20s there was a real renewal time: I was connecting in with prayer retreats in our Lutheran Church. And these weekend retreats were very powerful in terms of bringing traditional Christians to a fresh personal recommitment, re-connection with the living Jesus. I remember a couple of retreats that were deeply impacting for me. And then, I think there have been times of real deepening with God, often around crisis or loss or having to relinquish—relinquishment is a thing that’s coming up a lot for me.

I feel to ask you: What was happening in your life before these times in your 20s of coming to deeper friendship with Jesus?

So: teenage years, avid member of our big youth group at our church in Box Hill; loved God; served in the church. You know, I loved Jesus. I dread to read back over journals from that time—teenage angsty journals, full of pourings out to Jesus. And then, of course, I hit university and the crises of the late teenage years. This would be the early 80s. My secondary schooling had been in a small Lutheran College run by my uncle and auntie, you know, 400 students—a cocooned Lutheran world. And then I emerged into the public university system and woah, I’m surrounded by non-Christians! And so, the sheltered Lutheran girl got really shaken, I think, at that point. I dropped out twice. My faith was probably the one thing that was holding me. But the crisis (Who am I in this larger world?) precipitated me finding God in a deeper way, in a way that wasn’t the inherited faith of my parents but a genuine faith for me and for who I was going to be in this world.

What’s one thing you’d say to yourself back then, if you could sit down with her?

The thing I would say to my young 20-year-old self is: You are known and loved for who you are, and you do not have to prove anything or perform. I don’t think I would have listened to myself! I would have nodded and smiled and said, “Oh, that’s, yeah, that’s really profound (no idea what you’re talking about!)” You know, it’s probably been a deep, underground journey of my life: realising that when I can’t perform, or when I’m not good enough, or when people don’t like how I’m presenting, or who I am—when that rejection comes, I am held in the arms of a God who is unchanging towards me. Wow, even as I say that, my heart turns over. That’s just the rock in my life: God is unchanging towards me in his grace and love. Oh, that’s a good thing!

So how does the story unfold?

Dropped out of university twice, once in Melbourne, once in Adelaide. Got married as a really young 20 year-old. I’m horrified when I think of it now, but I think the Lord just knew I needed some stability and needed Roger. And we came back to New Zealand. I did six months being a young 20, 21 year-old housewife, bored out of my tree, and thought: There’s a university over there. Should I? Can I give it a third crack? I’d been doing teaching degrees over in Australia, and I enrolled at Massey just in a BA and loved it. And from then on, it hasn’t it never stopped, the learning just continued: a part-time BA, and then the full time Masters, and then the PhD, and then things kind of broadened out and, and I did a Dip. Grad. in Theology.

I was at Massey finishing my PhD, and involved in teaching and tutoring work, and at that time quite heavily involved in my local church. Then we hit the great 1990s contraction of the universities, and the staff was being shed and shed and shed, and I could see all the other casual staff going (I was casual); the work became more and more just session marking and not teaching, which is what I love. And I came to this great crisis: I’ve done all this study, God, and now there’s no opportunity from you, it’s quite clear that there’s no pathway here. What is that about? I mentioned that relinquishment thing before. Richard Foster in his beautiful, classic book Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home has this chapter on the prayer of relinquishment. That was the first time I really had to pray a deep prayer of relinquishment. And it was six months of wrestling: “What have you got me doing all this academic study for when it’s clear there’s no academic pathway ahead of me?” After six months, I came to a place of peace, of saying: “It’s yours, Lord. If I never do any more academic stuff, that’s okay. I’ve got this idea to go and start a small Bible study group, a discipleship group, with some ladies at my church. I’m happy to go and do that.” And I meant it: a genuine prayer of relinquishment. Took six months to get me there! Extraordinary: within a month, Bible College of New Zealand approached me to come on the board, and to then lead their ministry internship program. And the Lutheran Church of New Zealand approached me to fill this national training role. They’d been looking for a pastor and couldn’t find anyone, and then they rethought it and asked me to come and do that. And so, the next season of my life involved this double role: Lutheran national training teacher, and at BCNZ (later Laidlaw).

They closed at the same time—2009 was the year of great closure. It was a very tough year. Laidlaw was closing the Manawatu branch. They’d closed all the others, leaving just Auckland and Christchurch; we hung out for a couple of years, and then we were closed. As Dean, I did this year of finishing and closing—doing it well, I think. And then I also finished with my role with the Lutheran church. So at the end of 2009 I was pretty-near burned out, I think. And I thought: I’m going to go and do this spiritual direction formation program I’ve noticed (I’d been receiving spiritual direction for some time). I spent the next two years doing the SGM spiritual directors formation program. And basically, in that first year, God unwove me, and then knit me back together, stronger and better, I think. And then began a different kind of journey. At the same time, during those years, the local churches around here, who were pretty sad at the closure of Laidlaw Manawatu, decided to set up something local. So Emmaus was birthed, just a small, local Bible college, non-accredited. I was in on the ground floor of that as the churches talked, and then co-deaned it with Nigel Dixon for a while; and then Nigel stepped back and I took over. So since then, then I’ve been in this next phase of my life, leading Emmaus Bible College—we’re in our 15th year now—and spiritual direction practice, which has become a large part of my life. It’s a lovely balance: you know, one involves being up the front, leading, facilitating, waving my arms and teaching, the other is just quietly listening with another person. That’s the external life journey, in many ways—up to now.

I’m interested in the question of leadership and disappointment. From what I’ve seen and experienced, leadership seems to entail not just authority and ability but suffering and disappointment. How do you do that? How have you learned to lead, and be disappointed, and then continue to lead well?

Oh, you’ve put your finger on the nub of it. That’s such an acute question. I’ve closed a number of things as a leader, having poured my life into them. One was the Manawatu branch of Laidlaw Bible College. Now, I was standing on the shoulders of others—it wasn’t just me; but I was there. I gave it a good funeral, and the other was the Lutheran Support Ministries. I built that, and poured my life into that for 12 years, and tried to hand it on—and a couple of years after I left it folded. I lived with the acute disappointment of that. And this, on top of the earlier academic career. I realised a year or so ago that in my down times I could make a narrative about my life: a narrative of building something with God—really pouring myself into it (because we don’t have kids—there’s another relinquishment: we couldn’t have children)—but only to have to close it or to see it die. This year at Emmaus, we’ve had a really tough start, the hardest yet. And I’ve spent a bit of time with my own spiritual director, just processing. Lord, where are you in this? What are you doing? Seriously, Lord, I’m really over that narrative. So, I’m in this place of wrestling and of relinquishing again. I’ve always known that Jesus is the head of Emmaus Bible College, not me. I’m the second in command, and he just tells me what to do—that was the deal when I took on the deanship. So, I’ve always known it was God’s. But my heart is learning that bitterly at the present time.

I am so grateful for my deep journey into contemplative expressions of Christianity over these last 20 years. I think that’s been my salvation in many ways: learning, being able to just rest, release, express, wrestle with God—express it all. There’s been some fierce journal entries over these last weeks, but I’m slowly coming to a place of, you know: I’m in God’s hands; he’s sovereign. Either I trust that he’s good, or I don’t. I had four or five days of what Catholic contemplatives called desolation: the absence of God in the most fearful way, when I couldn’t look at him and I couldn’t talk to him and when I was so angry and hurt, that I understood what hell was—the turning away from God and the absence of God. It was a very fierce few days. I’m glad I had the experience, but I couldn’t stay in it. It was hideous. It was just hideous. In the end, it was Jesus just gently drawing me. It was the broken Jesus, Jesus on the cross, saying, “My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me?” Jesus in the garden who said, “Surely there’s another way”. It’s that defeated and broken Jesus, who sat with me and who drew me very slowly. It probably took about two or three weeks before I could again, you know, face my heavenly Father, and let his love come to me again, and realise again that his love is unchanged. And so, I don’t know where the external situation is going, but I’m in a place now of consolation. There is great consolation in remembering who my God is, and that he is faithful. You know, “I will never leave you nor forsake you”.

You asked me: how do we leadership and disappointment? How do we do that well? I don’t know, I really don’t know the answer to that. You know, I can say the obvious thing: staying close to God. But I couldn’t! I couldn’t stay close to God when I was in that place of profound disappointment. I knew God was staying close to me. You know, in places of profound grief and loss, all of the disciplines go out the window—or they become the one thing that we’re hanging on to. But this is why—this is where we began our conversation—this is why Jesus matters. He’s the one who has lived it with us. He’s the pioneer of my faith: he walked this path before me; he knows exactly what this is like—even worse, they all abandoned him at the cross. So, if anyone knows about leadership and disappointment it’s Jesus. And my only advice—to myself!—is: Look to Jesus. Talk to him about it. Because he knows. He’s the way back to consolation.

If I say Scripture is a country, a place, and I walk into this country and go looking for Pauline, where do I find her?

You’ll find me lurking in the gospels, any one of them. Funnily enough because that’s where I find Jesus, the person I need the most in my life! So that’s my first port of call. There’s usually always a gospel going on in the background in my reading—which is fairly sketchy, my reading, you know—but there’s usually a gospel going in the background, just because I need to hear Jesus’s voice. I just need to hear him talking. I just need to watch him for a bit. Just need to walk with him for a bit, because I just need him, you know. Just need to be in his company.

I love Paul. I really love Paul. I like his theology, love his passion, love that he gets angry about stuff, that kind of thing. And yet, at the same time, he can be profoundly pastoral and warm; so I love Paul’s stuff. I’m probably more of a New Testament… I was going to say scholar—I’m not, I’m not really a scholar—but that’s where most of my real study has sat. Love the Old Testament and, you know, you need the Old Testament to get all of the New Testament—we know this. But if you were looking for me in the country of Scripture, go to the gospels, or to those craggy ranges that are Paul!

I’d love to ask you about teaching. How do you understand teaching?

Illuminating is the word that just comes into my mind. Each time I reflect on that question, the word illuminating comes into my head: turning lights on—allowing people to see for themselves. Yeah, I like that: helping people to see for themselves. That’s most simply what I what I love with teaching. When a person makes discoveries or observes something for themselves. One of the reasons I love adult teaching is because people bring all sorts to the teaching conversation. I flick a light on, and people are seeing all sorts of things and throwing them all in together; it’s like we get this magnificent vista now because someone just flicked a light on somewhere—everybody can see more clearly. I love the discipling. I love the growing. That’s why I love internships: I’ve been involved in internships for most of my adult teaching life, and watching people grow close to God, go deeper into their relationship with God and their knowledge of him and of themselves.

Pauline, you talk about Jesus like he’s a real person—like he’s there. How would I seek this for myself? What does that look like?

Yeah, gosh. Well, I often do this in spiritual direction sessions with people, but I’ll just speak for myself. This is a crucial thing that I will do: I close my eyes and I imagine Jesus in the room with me. I close my eyes. Jesus, where are you? You know, where are you here, right now? You’ve said, “I will never leave you or forsake you”. Where is Jesus right now, with me, you know? And then I will often sit quietly. What is Jesus wanting to say to me? Are you speaking to me? Lord? How is Jesus looking at me? It’s an ancient practice, an Ignatian practice, the practice of using our redeemed imaginations to allow Jesus to speak with us. And I think, as Ignatius knew, that the Holy Spirit-directed imagination is a very powerful thing, a very powerful thing. I actually believe that there’s a point at which the imagination ceases to be just my imagination, and that Jesus meets me in this experience. Jesus meets me in this, and I’ve come to trust it, because it’s been directed by the Spirit; it’s filled with Jesus.

And so, as a spiritual director I’ve come to trust what happens there. I watch it. I get out of the way. I invite a directee here in my study: Close your eyes; Jesus is coming into the room. Where is he? What’s he doing? And then I just shut up. And the thing rolls: I’m not doing this. Then things happen that surprise the directee. They sit there and wait. And there’s this surprise: Jesus says something that they did not think or dream of—something is said, or something is done. “He’s kneeling down and he’s taking my shoes off”, you know. Where’d that come from? It’s been overtaken by the Spirit of God, ministering Jesus to me, to this person. That becomes life-changing, because Jesus becomes real: Jesus is engaged with me; Jesus is looking at me; Jesus is speaking a word to me. And suddenly he’s not just this being in the pages of Scripture who we have to try and get our heads around. He’s a person in the room here with me, looking at me, noticing me, seeing me, wanting to address me. Ah, Ignatius gave us a really good gift in the imaginative prayer thing, I think. It’s certainly been powerful for me. It’s one of the ways that makes Jesus come off the page and become a living, breathing person in this room with me. And you and I both know when we read a Scripture that suddenly—ah!—seizes us: there it is again. He’s present, the reality of Jesus speaking his word to me through the Spirit. It’s just… it’s a thing! It’s a genuine thing.