Rowland Croucher
Rowland Croucher (born 1937) is a retired Australian pastor, counsellor and author. Early life and education. He was brought up in the Open Brethren in Sydney. Croucher graduated as a teacher from Bathurst Teachers' College; BA University of New England; LTh., Dip.RE, Melbourne College of Divinity; ordained as a Baptist pastor, NSW Baptist Theological College; Master of Education University of Sydney; (post graduate) Bachelor of Divinity MCD., Doctor of Ministry Fuller Theological Seminary. Personal life. Croucher and his wife Jan were one of the earliest couples in Australia to be ordained to ministry in Baptist churches. She  had several ministries - mostly part-time or voluntary - at Heathmont, Syndal, Boronia and Doncaster East Baptist churches and was for several years also involved in prison ministry to women. She died in 2017 after 57 years of marriage. They had four children. Career. After a five-year career as a high-school teacher, Croucher began training in 1964 for the Baptist ministry in New South Wales. He worked for the InterVarsity Fellowship (1968–1970) (now the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students (AFES)); then pastored churches in Australia: Narwee and Central Baptist Church - both in Sydney - and Blackburn Baptist Church in Melbourne , which became a "megachurch" in the late 1970s, with seven pastors, a salaried staff of 25 and 1,000 attending; plus several interim ministries. He was then, briefly, pastor at First Baptist Church, Vancouver, Canada. From 1983 to 1991 he worked for World Vision Australia. Since 1991, Croucher has been founding director of John Mark Ministries, serving pastors, ex-pastors, church leaders and their spouses throughout Australia and elsewhere.Les Scarborough (NSW, now retired) and Psychologist/Trainer Tim Dyer (Tasmania and elsewhere) are colleagues. The John Mark Ministries website, with 20,000+ articles, claims to be one of the most accessed  non-denominational religious websites in Australia. In 2011, Croucher added his voice to those of other Christian leaders calling for the introduction of same-sex marriage in Australia.