Dale Murray

Dale Murray fulfilled a childhood ambition when he entered the Queensland Police Service straight from high school in 1982. Twenty-two years later, and with the rank of inspector and a promising career ahead of him, he left the service to follow God’s call to become a Salvation Army officer.

“It was the toughest decision of my life, but the best one, and I don’t regret it at all,” says Dale now a Salvation Army captain.
“I felt I had been a covert Christian and now needed to have the courage to step up and do what God had been calling me to do, be the man he wanted me to be.”

Dale, a third-generation Salvationist, had originally been accepted into the Army's School for Officer Training at Booth College in 1996.

“I pulled out about six weeks before it started as I was already well into my career as a police officer and couldn’t make the final step out of it at that time,” he says.

It was only in 2003, at a Bill Hybels conference sponsored by The Salvation Army, that Dale felt he could no longer ignore God’s call to full-time ministry. With his wife, Darlene, he began officer training in 2004 while on long-service leave from the police. It was during that time that Dale received the news that he had been promoted to the rank of inspector.

“This equated to being in the top 200 police officers out of 10,000 which was huge,” he says. “I was so tempted to leave college and resume my police career, but I knew God wanted me to be a Salvation Army officer, so I resigned.”