Mark Simmonds: called to be, not just to do

“People often say ‘I'm called to be a military chaplain’, or ‘I was called to be a pastor’. ‘I was called to do this’,” Mark said. “I actually don't think that we're called to do a job, but that we’re called to be something, as a vocation.” 

Mark’s conviction has formed over decades of service spanning continents and jobs. 

Raised between Australia and Papua New Guinea, he was drawn to aviation from an early age, partly inspired by his parents’ missionary work. 

After high school, Mark joined the military, spending nine years as a Signals Officer building large-scale communications infrastructure, and later moving on to software development and project management before leaving the army for Bible school.

After Bible school, Mark pastored a couple of country churches, and then returned to the military as an Army Chaplain, where overseas deployments took him from Indonesia to Afghanistan to Bougainville. 

The transition to Mission Aviation Fellowship started unexpectedly, following a chance family conversation with his young son Joel after a deployment to Afghanistan. 

“My wife and I and my youngest son were just chatting about things, and we said, ‘What would you like to be when you grow up?’”

At the time, Joel’s career aspirations included the roles of postman and pilot. Mark, thinking of the MAF pilots he’d know as a child in Papua New Guinea, replied, “I know about postman pilots, they’re like MAF pilots.”

But it was his wife Jodie’s response that set the Simmonds family on a path toward MAF when she said to Mark, “You sure God’s talking to Joel there?”

At the time, Jodie’s comment seemed random, but in hindsight Mark has understood it as a life-changing prompting from God.

“And yeah, at that point we started looking at joining MAF and what role we could take on,” said Mark.

Since joining nearly ten years ago, Mark, Jodie and their three children served in Africa for four years, from 2016 to 2019, in South Sudan and Kenya, and now as MAF International’s Safety Manager at the Cairns Support Office, Mark supports local safety teams around the world. 

The MAF International Support Office in Cairns, Australia, provides operational and professional support to MAF International programmes globally in areas such as Aviation Operations, Human Resources, Finance, Quality, Safety, Security, Communications, Legal Services, Strategic Development, IT, Engineering, Fleet Renewal, and Learning & Development.

In describing his role, Mark says, “My responsibility is to help in setting safety standards, making sure that we keep our standards aligned with the local regulators’ standards, as well doing audits and the training for our local safety managers and officers.”  

Whether he is mentoring staff in Madagascar or conducting safety audits in Papua New Guinea, Mark’s presence is quiet yet vital—a steward maintaining high standards so MAF can reach the isolated safely. 

Behind the scenes, he keeps MAF’s operations safe and effective, enabling others to fly where help is needed most, but his approach remains focused on vocation over position, and for Mark, leadership is about more than processes or policies. 

“My motto in life was set years ago: helping others reach their full potential in Christ,” he said. 

When visiting a MAF programme, Mark intentionally takes time to be with staff, to observe, listen, pray, and encourage before ticking any audit checkboxes.

And back in the Cairns office, Mark’s work is punctuated by an ongoing series of highlights.

“The highlight of my work is each week catching up with each of them and just being able to offer time for prayer or working with them on a difficult situation.” 

For Mark Simmonds, the greatest impact comes from who you choose to be, not just what you do. 

“That's what my motto means. I can do many different roles, many different things, to actually fulfil the calling God has given me.”