Who is Derek Brown?

For the past ten years Derek has worked in publishing. He was the editor and publisher of a nationally distributed Christian newspaper called the Alternative with a readership of several hundred thousand. Derek’s background in church leadership has seen him speak regularly to church congregations, lecture in Bible Colleges and speak at seminars both within Australia and other countries.Derek also runs a Internet marketing business called Using the Net at  www.usingthenet.com.au   Derek lives with his daughter Samantha on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland Australia.

Over the past 10 years Derek has also developed a growing passion for the Kingdom of God. Let’s hear how this came about.

“I began in Christian ministry as a teenager in the 1970s in a church environment which taught that our primary Christian responsibility was evangelism and building the church. However in the 1980s I began a journey of theological discovery which led me to realize that Christianity is relevant to all of life and that we as Christians have a wide responsibility for the world in which we live.

In 1990 I read a book by E.Stanley Jones called “The Unshakeable Kingdom and the Unchanging Person”. As I read this book I saw that the message of the Kingdom which Jesus proclaimed had been lost by the church and as a result our impact in society had been marginalised. From that time on I began to study and preach on the Kingdom and as I did I had a growing sense this was a critical message for Christians to embrace.

The next few years we very difficult for me personally as the Christian organization in which I was a leader imploded and then a couple of years later my wife Del died from cancer. By then I was living in Canberra and it was a hard and lonely journey as I worked my way though the loss of my wonderful partner of 16 years. Eventually I found myself wanting to not only preach about the Kingdom but to find a way to take the reality of the Kingdom into the market place. This led to the development of a national Christian newspaper called the Alternative. It was geared to reach non Christians in a way that made Christianity relevant to their lives and was distributed right across Australia. It was launched in 1995 and continued through until 2000 when over a half a million copies were distributed at the Olympic Games in Sydney.

During this period I married again and my wife and I had a daughter Samantha. Sadly this marriage did not last and in 2002 I found myself on my own again and having to basically start my life over. Due to the deep pain of my divorce I did not have the heart to go back into active Christian ministry so eventually I started my own internet business called Using the Net which began in July 2004 – www.usingthenet.com.au During this time my sense of Kingdom vision and purpose really died and I was primarily focused on survival.

In September 2005 I was given the opportunity to speak at our local church Goodlife Community Church in Buderim on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. The pastor Doug Drinnan encouraged me to speak on the Kingdom as he had heard me speak on this theme before. I felt this was a sign from God that I was to rekindle this message. So before I spoke I asked God for two confirmations – first that I would have a fire in my own heart to preach again on the Kingdom and second that the message would generate a positive response from the listeners. Both of these things happened so I now felt a sense of responsibility to steward the message God had given me.

So I recorded some teaching on the Kingdom on CD and began to make these available.  To make the message available to a wider audience a website on the Kingdom was developed – www.rediscoveringthekingdom.info”