School teaching to Bible teaching: Amy’s leap of faith

When Amy Stopher took one year off work without pay to study full-time at Trinity, she was only six weeks in when she decided to resign from her teaching job altogether so that she could study at Trinity for three years instead. As it turns out, Amy never went back to high school teaching—instead, she’s been full-time in church ministry ever since, and she absolutely loves it.

Born and bred in Western Australia, Amy is grateful for her parents, who brought her up to know and trust the Lord. She doesn’t remember a day of not trusting Jesus, and that set the foundation for the rest of her life. 

A vision for gospel ministry

Amy was first sold a vision for full-time gospel ministry while she was at uni, where she initially started a law degree before ending up as a high school English teacher. High school teaching was a great fit for Amy—she absolutely loved it, and it wasn’t an easy decision to leave.

It came about through a conversation with Amy’s assistant minister at the time. She was quite heavily involved in a lot of ministry at her church, Kallaroo Anglican, and she was really enjoying it.

“I said something about how much I was loving reading the Bible with women, and I must have said, ‘Oh, I wish I could do this all the time,” and he said, ‘Oh, you can,’” Amy reflects. “And kind of before I knew it, he had done all this background work to set me up to do an MTS (Ministry Training Strategy) apprenticeship.”

A leap of faith into theological study

After she finished her MTS apprenticeship, Amy took a year’s leave without pay to study at Trinity. Her principal did request she return after that 12-month period, but within her first six weeks at Trinity Amy realised she wanted to stay for a full three years, so she made the decision to resign.

 ”My striking memory from the start of college was that God’s so much bigger than I realised, and I want to spend as much time as I can getting to know more about him and more about his Word,” Amy explains. “I still probably wasn’t persuaded at that point that I’d end up working in a church, but I knew I wanted to spend three years at Trinity, even if I was going to then go back into a school context.”

Finding her fire for women’s ministry

By about halfway through her second year of study, Amy had realised that what she really wanted was to work with women in a church context. As Amy puts it, “The fire in my belly was to see women grow in their knowledge and love of Jesus, their ability to handle God’s Word.” In God’s kindness, she ended up on staff with Providence City after graduation—and she’s now been there for the past 10 years.

Amy is deeply grateful for her time at Trinity. The personal relationships she developed with faculty were incredibly encouraging for her, particularly the way the lecturers took a genuine interest in her and her ministry. She was also grateful for her cohort and the relationships she built with peers.

The transformative impact of Trinity

One of the most important things Amy took away from Trinity was a theological framework for ministry.

“My theological framework from Trinity helps me to engage with whatever is the presenting issue at hand,” Amy shares. “So whether that’s kind of a tricky question as I read the Bible with someone, or something more personal, it has given me the ability to do applied theology with people as they’re trying to work out what it looks like to be faithful to Jesus. I feel like my study at Trinity has given me this very solid foundation, which I’m constantly dipping into to help people think how to live faithfully for Jesus.”

The other gift Amy received during her time at college was that of curiosity—specifically in regards to reading the Bible.

“That has been really helpful for me, personally, in continuing to engage with God’s Word in a way that I keep learning and growing, but it has also really shaped the way that I teach people to read the Bible,” Amy says.

According to Amy, Trinity is a wonderful choice for West Australians who would like to study theology. She believes it provides a well-rounded, robust theological education that prepares students to handle God’s Word well.