PETER COLLINS PERSONALLY WRITTEN CHRISTIAN HISTORY

I am 69 years old, have a 46 year old daughter, and 3 adopted grand children 27, 24 and 21 from a previous marriage. I live in Sydney, Australia, and am semi-retired, but seem to work harder than ever these days.

I was born into a Catholic family, but left the church at 21 when I began to ask questions about the way his local church did not line up with what I had been reading in the bible given to me by a Catholic Priest elsewhere. Shortly after the Bishop overseeing the parish deemed me a heretic (for quoting the bible) and suggested I should leave his church – for my own sake. In those days 50 years ago, some mainstream churches did not encourage anyone to read the bible, and because I had no instruction about what I did wrong (except read the bible and then query what the church was doing – as opposed to what the bible said) I only went to church for Christmas, Easter, Weddings and funerals. The rest of the time, church was irrelevant to me.

In 1982 I was challenged by a Melbourne Christian Businessman named Keith Driller, who over a period of some months worked hard to move my life into a new dimension and restate my then somewhat backslidden former faith. In February 1983 I gave my heart to The Lord (through Keith) after experiencing a personal miracle. From that night, I did everything I knew to prove to myself and others that I had made a mistake and needed to correct things, but the more I read, the more audio I listened to and the more sermons I attended, the closer those things drew me to the Lord.

Fortunately, my early days were influenced by the instructions and philosophies of the then internationally acclaimed Australian author Kevin Conner (just after he returned to Melbourne, Australia from Orlando USA) at Waverly Christian Centre. After three years there, the Lord called me to Sydney, where I joined Christian Life Centre under Frank Houston, that not long afterwards became Hillsong Church under the direction of one of the best preachers worldwide, Brian Houston, that has the ability to mould the bible into every day lifestyle needs and real life challenges.

In fact, I was fortunate to visit Brian Houston’s church in the Hills District of Sydney (before it became known as Hillsong) many times when I had a congregation of 30 people. Then a few years later it grew to become Hillsong Church, and 30 years later Hillsong is a church that is now world-wide and has a congregation today in the millions. It also now has it’s own 24 hour TV channel on CNN Television worldwide. And I am still at the original Hillsong Church (and world headquarters) more than 30 years later.

It was in 1984 that I began writing Christian Material. A transition that wasn’t to hard, as I had been writing for a while at that point and had already had 5 books published – the 5th was an international success selling in excess of 1 million copies in the second year and many more after that. And it was from that background that the majority of my books (Sales, Business and Christian), together with my audio tape sets, articles, newsletters and other materials were penned.

I am not a theologian, nor a Bible School graduate, but over the years have had a burning passion to do things that I could pass on to others in my simplistic understanding of many subjects. Yet to my amazement, many of my friends that read my works asked for copies of my works to read, and then, many of those passed on would be photocopied and handed around.

The first of my works were my rewrites of the Psalms. I just wanted to get to understand the heart of King David, so I armed myself with around 10 or 15 kinds of bible and commentaries and read, studies and then rewrote each Psalm line by line. I did this for my own understanding, and then would write and rewrite these passages until I felt I could benefit from what was written. Then one day, an interstate pastor, David Tamkin, and his wife Carmen, stayed at my home, she found notes to around 30 Psalms I had rewritten left on a coffee table. She began reading them and liked what she read. When she found that I had written them she asked for copies of all I had done at the time. Carmen then took them back home and started handing them around her congregation. They were popular, and she kept asking for more material.

In a short time I was asked to write articles, motivational verse, short stories of a Christian nature and other material for youth groups and church newsletters. And that’s where this and other similar works come from. The way my work is structured today is the result of personal notes that others liked, and the work I penned just kept on expanding.

Over the 33 years, I have had the privilege to support many church works, and I have preached, addressed youth groups, run a businessmen’s fellowship and spoke at a number of businessmen’s fellowships on the east coast, addressed a national businessmen’s fellowship conference (for the best part of two days), and helped other foundations and Christian concepts grow.

I have also spoken at Great Hall, at Australia’s Federal Parliament House, and addressed a political business gathering at the New South Wales Parliament House.

I have also been lucky enough to also provided training, my books, articles and newsletters to (and at) many churches, and have worked with committees, fund raising opportunities and other church oversight’s.

However, my fondest memories (and I would say, my hardest work) was when I helped with raising funds to pay for the construction of several new church buildings, extensions and facilities, and with that experience, I was asked to head up and mobilise the fund raising for the construction of a new church building where the congregation pledged funds in the millions.

Even today, with this facebook page, I am still ministering to pastors, evangelists and elders who come to me to ask for advice. Moreover, I am also fortunate enough to bring prophetic words in season and encouragement to those who need it – whether they be parishioners or leaders. Within the first few weeks after I launched the Facebook site I led a young woman (who was disgruntled with the religiosity and worship of icons in her church) to give her heart to the Lord and start on a personal journey with the Lord Jesus Christ as her personal Lord and Saviour. There have been more since then.

Because of my business and sales background, in which I have been fortunate to have managed, taught, trained, coached, mentored and encouraged many thousands of individuals, teams and groups over a 50 year career, in fact, over time I had devised short handouts that incorporated Christian teachings with business and sales overtones.

Slowly the concept grew and grew and grew, and in the process I was able to write two notable Christian Works. The first is my “SUCCESS THROUGH THE BIBLE” series and consists of four publications (four volumes) where there are over 200 Success Groupings. They may seem repetitive, but that too is done on purpose, as repetition encourages personal memorization of ideas, passages and some Bible Scriptures. The second is the 5 volume set ‘BOOK OF PSALMS” rewritten and adapted for my own personal use

These writings are not perfect, and were never meant to be, but as a collection of sales and business ideologies moulded around Biblical Principles, and they somehow work. In fact they seem to work so well, these days many pastors are using these works, sector by sector, as an outline for some of the sermons they prepare.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Peter Collins