Mark Tronson is a retired Baptist minister who founded in 1982 the Sports and Leisure Ministry (under Heads of Churches), was the Australian Cricket Team chaplain for 17 years to 2001 and a receiptent of the Olympic Ministry Medal presented by Olympian of the Century Carl Lewis in 2009, an author of 24 books and a prolific writer.
In this series on Miracles, Mark Tronson is taking the reader of a journey of faith through his own ministry illustrating time and time again how the Lord's touch blossomed a situation where the only response was to offer praise to the Almighty.
Christian Ministries and Missions across the centuries can point to similar outcomes which has resulted not so much in new buildings but in both the intangible and tangible such as changed lives for Jesus or the excess of alcohol converted into children's shoes.
The seventh in this series on miracles is how Mark Tronson developed the notion of the Christian boutique conference for very specific areas of ministry.
As he established the sports ministry he soon realised that as more and more sports chaplaincy appointments were made across Australia, there would come a time where it would be imperative for them to gather together for mutual support and expression.
There were simply not enough people in sports ministry at that time, on the ground, or who were available to meet together, to engage in what one might refer to as a Christian Conference.
Yet, philosophically, it was imperative that such people have the opportunity to meet together for specialised ministry engagement whether there were ten people or fifteen, the value of the process was to meet together and work through our mutual experiences as chaplains in Australian professional sport.
No one had done this before in Australia, and the Australian context of professional sport and Christian culture is quite different from anywhere else, and therefore it seemed that some format was required to meet this need.
What Mark Tronson came up with was the concept of the boutique conference in that there were several quite specific aspects to what he sought.
It was highly specialised, in that only those with specific ministry in that field would or could be invited.
Specialist speakers in that field of expertise would be invited and their subject would be honed to the cause.
All the publicity was directed to its focus in order to gain interest from the wider Christian community to this ministry. The object was to create an interest in those "out there" who might want to explore sports chaplaincy.
The first such conference for sports chaplains was held at the Panthers Rugby League Conference Centre in Penrith in 1988. Mark Tronson invited Margaret Court from Perth, Western Australia as the guest speaker and had various sports chaplains including the Christian rodeo ministry offer seminars.
In 1991 it was expanded to a specialist Christian athlete conference held in Melbourne at the North Melbourne Football Club conference centre where our guest speaker to Christian athletes was Ron Ross, the former WIN4 Sports Editor and by that time a missionary with YWAM.
By 1996 we invited delegates to Poatina Tasmania where a bus collected people from the Launceston airport and bought everyone to Fusion's town centre headquarters. At this conference it was former Rugby League star Ian Barkley who addressed the Christian athletes and Cronulla Sharks chaplain George Capsis who addressed the sports chaplains.
In every case they were pitched to the specific arena to meet all three criteria. The people who came were within sports ministry, the speakers were in tune and the promotion was such that we had people beating on our door to be involved in sports ministry.
There are many Christian conferences given the most alluring titles to engage the laity and these are positive and exciting. But none of those hit anything like the mark when it comes to a highly specialised field such as sports chaplaincy, and therefore to this arena the boutique conference proved itself, over and over again.
Now, all these years since, Mark Tronson is holding a different sort of boutique conference, not for sports chaplains and Christian athletes, rather for Well-Being Australia's volunteer young Sport and Comment writers for Christian Today Australia.
Last year it was held on the Gold Coast as it will this year, and a full day conference at that, Saturday 4 June. Well-Being Australia's young writers are from Perth, Darwin, Alice Springs, Cairns, Mackay, Tasmania, Melbourne, Sydney, Newcastle, Canberra, Brisbane, Sunshine Coast, Central Coast and the Gold Coast.
This boutique conference will have Christian Today Australia representatives along with specific sessions for both the sport and comment writers.
The miracle of the boutique conference is that it allowed specialisation with those involved in the specific ministry so as to meet those needs, rather than trying to find positive principles out of a main stream conference. This has been put to the proof and tested.