Sometimes he wears his shiny, patent-leather, black and red dancing shoes with his sombre blue suit of a Salvation Army officer. And when kids are around, it is the minister who takes to the playground with gusto at the army’s Mill Park centre.
“Yeah, I’m quirky,” he says.
At 25, Lieutenant Aaron Stobie is among the army’s youngest ministers; when he was “commissioned as an officer” (became a minister) in 2008, aged 21, he was the youngest in the world.
“It was unheard of,’’ he says. “It is still annoying that people think we [army ministers] are all like Harold Bishop [a stuffy Christian character] from Neighbours.
“It’s a challenge to some people because I am so young.”
Stobie is the new corps officer, or minister, at the Salvation Army Plenty Valley Corps based in Mill Park and covering the whole City of Whittlesea.
He says local families are in great need. “We have a lot of international families, immigrants, refugees; I don’t think there is a nationality or religion we don’t see here and many people have complex needs,” he says.
“There are so many people whose lives are in disrepair and if only we encourage them and give them hope, we can see their lives transformed.”
In the job less than a month, Stobie says the Mill Park centre, which is on 2.5 hectares, has room for activities and he will reach out to community groups.
“I am a community player. When you’re part of a community you want it to be the best community possible,” he says.
He says people do not have to attend the army church to use its services.
“We’re building a community and we want our centre to be a place where people feel included and loved, where they can participate without discrimination, and join in regardless of whether they go to church or not,” he says.
The Doorways community support program provides welfare support three days a week. “The demand is so great we have to turn people away because our resources are stressed,” Stobie says.
“We might open a thrift shop on site to finance more things for the community.”
The welfare program provides food parcels, food vouchers, an interest-free loan scheme, free Myki cards, counselling and spiritual guidance.
There’s a community garden, traditional Bible studies, craft groups, seniors’ groups, ladies’ and men’s groups and free breakfasts.
A new playground, with two slides, a fireman’s pole and more, provides as much enjoyment for Lieutenant Stobie as the children.
“I have a ball, I love going down the slide,” he says.
The centre has playgroups and Stobie wants to develop holiday and after-school care programs.
He also wants to work with local schools as he did when he was a minister in Clarence, Tasmania, and before that an assistant minister in Geelong.
Stobie sings and plays piano, trumpet, guitar and percussion with the Mill Park centre’s band.
In the year before he started training as an army minister, he taught music to children. He was also a rock’n’roll Victorian state champion and qualified dance instructor.
“You know like Grease, Dirty Dancing – I do the jumps and makes the moves,” he says. “Sometimes I wear my black and red rock’n’roll dance shoes with the uniform. It challenges people.”
But life is not all rock’n’roll for the kid from Hoppers Crossing who became a Christian after joining a Salvo’s youth group with his brother as a teenager.
He has helped a Sudanese couple bury their 18-month-old daughter – challenging times, as he has his own two-month-old daughter, Bella. “It was tough and confronting,” he admits.
He also helped to secure accommodation for a couple with seven children who were living in a car.
“People sometimes just need encouragement to get back on their feet,” he says.
“They need encouragement to see their talents. God gave us specific gifts and if you’re not living that life and bringing to the world special things, then other people miss out.”
He recalls a program he ran called “warm fuzzies”, where children each had their own paper bag on a board and each child wrote anonymous notes of encouragement to each other. One little girl started writing notes to her mum, then to her classmates.
“Soon her teacher implemented it for the whole class, and then the whole school adopted it,” Stobie says. “From one note of encouragement, it snowballed; that’s how things change. A little bit at a time.”
■ The Salvation Army Plenty Valley Corps is at the corner of Morang Drive and Fred Hollows Way, Mill Park. Details: call 9436 4681.
