St Swithun's Anglican Church

My Adventures with God
CHAPTER 7: We go to an Anglican Church

Sue and I were married in the Turramurra Methodist church 30^th November 1973. But by that time we had actually been worshiping for some months at St. Swithun's Anglican Church just down the road from where I (and after marriage we) lived in Pymble.

The first difference I noticed was that Anglicans couldn't sing! Methodists sang with passion: by contrast the singing in the Anglican service – even though they had more quantity – canticles as well as hymns - was pretty half-hearted.

The second difference was in the sermons. A number of Methodist preachers tended to talk about their ideas (or I suspect the ideas from the latest book they had read. They seemed to be intellectually stimulating. By comparison Anglican sermons were simple – often they seemed to be merely paraphrasing one of the Bible readings. Yet it was these simple sermons that made us grow in our faith.

I am dwelling on this point because for me it was formative in more ways than one. Yes, I experienced growth in faith and understanding of God myself through these simple sermons. But I also saw the futility of tickling people's ears with sermons which pretended to be (or even were) erudite but only teaching human ideas rather than the Bible.

To use an analogy from physical food: Kids love junk food. But if junk food is all they consume they won't grow strong and healthy. Mum's “meat and three veg.” cooking may be boring by comparison but it is a balanced healthy diet. Growing Christians need “meat and three veg.” teaching even though they may find junk teaching is more enticing!

So I have been quite unashamedly a “meat and three veg.” preacher despite criticism from people accustomed to spiritual “junk food” who complained that I was not being intellectual enough for them!

During the first three years of our marriage while we were going to St Swithun's there were a number of people who were in very special ways God's agents in helping us along the road of faith and life.

Bishop Clive Kerle and his wife Helen came to St Swithuns towards the end of our first year there. Both are dead now, but they were the most outstanding ministry couple, and just spiritual giants.

Clive had had spent a decade as bishop of Armidale in central NSW. He felt he had finished his task there so came back to Sydney Diocese and parish ministry. To my shame I did not at first think Clive was an impressive a preacher. But whatever he did, it worked! So I had to revise my ideas about what constituted a “good” preacher and as I have said this profoundly influenced how I preached during my ministry! He was also a great man of prayer, he prayed and things happened. Helen was short stout energetic and had such astuteness to what was going on around her that we used to joke abut her walking up to a group with her “antennae” waving to pick up the vibe. After church she just circulated, if someone was standing on their own she would appear with someone else she had just taken in tow and say “I’d like you to meet so and so” and then once she had seen to it that a conversation had started up would excuse herself and go on to the next one.

Sue and I had many long talks to them. They were incredibly hospitable; both of them had a sheer gift for putting you at ease and making you feel – well like part of the family. Just being around them and talking to them (and them praying for us as they did for all their little sheep) had this amazing effect that we grew in our Christian faith and life.

Then God started on at me again about going into the ordained ministry. That was not in our plans!

To be fair, we had both decided that we would not pursue our careers to the exclusion of other things. We decided ‘us’ and eventual family mattered and we would have to put those ahead of career when necessary. Still I was an engineer, Sue was going to be a doctor, we wanted a very nice house in best suburb (well Upper North Shore Sydney was the only possibility) and private schools for kids and so forth.

God didn’t let up.

I told Sue I thought I should become a minister. I didn’t quite understand then how much my unconscious attitude hurt her, mercifully God sent another of his people. This time his provision was Rev. Owen Dykes, who was rector of St James’ Turramurra where Sue’s family now went.

Sue went to Owen in tears for help with our marriage problem. As she said to Owen, if she was loosing her husband to another woman she could fight it. But as it was she was loosing him to God. How could she fight God?

Owen was a great help to both of us. At one stage he even lent us his holiday house in the Blue Mountains so we could go away for a weekend together.

We both eventually came to terms with my call from God. As we were Anglicans now I would offer for Anglican ministry. Both our families were disappointed. One elderly lady who Sue’s younger brother did gardening for summed it up succinctly. She said: “Well I suppose you have to have clergy, but it is terrible when it breaks out in your own family!”

But we eventually gave in to God – with just a few of our own conditions! It was September or October. The next year Sue would be in final year Medicine but the year after she would be an intern and earning money, so we planned that I would stop work and go into college then.

We expected God to fall in with our plans. Guess what, he didn’t.

We had saved up a bit of money and we were planning a trip to England over Christmas. One morning as I was driving to work I was arguing with God because the feeling that I had to go into college the following year – using the money we had saved up for our trip to England - not the year after as we had planned. This feeling just would not go away.

In exasperation I said to God: “Well I’m not going to go and tell Suzie that the trip to England is off because I’m going into college a year before we planned! If you want me to go into college next year, you get me fired today!”

Feeling better for my outburst at God, I parked the car and went in to the office. A few minutes later the boss called me into his office. “Business is bad” he started, “you are one of our more highly qualified engineers. We are not going to have work for you after Christmas; I suggest you look for another job.”

Well, that convinced me. Even Suzie accepted it after telling God what she thought of Beings who took away trips to England and expected people to survive a year without either of them working. Our families took it less well. I could always look for another job they urged. But I didn’t, I was sure.

One more miracle was required. God needed to virtually smuggle me into ordination training.

Now in most dioceses applicants for the ministry would contact the Archbishop. In Sydney they go to the principal of Moore College. He decides who is or is not to be ordained. I found this much out, so I went to see Dr. Broughton Knox who had been principal for the past twenty years. I had an interesting interview with him. He told me at the outset that I was too late: the screening process, which involved numerous interviews with various people to probe the applicant's suitability, was already over for that year.

Given this fact, it looked at first as though either I or God had made a big mistake. But no, it was not an oversight on God's part. Rather God had NOT overlooked problems that I didn't even know existed and he had a cunning plan to get around these problems.

Although we were now attending an Anglican church I was still pretty ignorant of Sydney Anglican polity. It never crossed my mind that there would be any difficulty being accepted for training for the ministry. They should … they would ... be glad to have me - or so I thought. Big mistake! Sydney Anglican Diocese is exceedingly fussy about who they train and who they ordain. The screening process is theologically rigorous and the proportion of rejects at every stage of selection and training is very high. Just as well God had not overlooked this difficulty.

Sydney Diocese is almost obsessively theologically conservative. One passion is to protect the diocese from “theologically unsuitable” clergy. Even in training for the ministry, skills such as preaching are relegated to the sidelines in favour of theology. As one Moore College lecturer who later became an Archbishop of Sydney commented “We teach theology rather than preaching skills because it is much better if we produce ministers who preach the truth badly than ones who preach false doctrine effectively”

Liberal Theology, (Roman) Catholicism, and Charismatic or Pentecostal beliefs were an anathema to them.

I had trained for the Methodist local preachers exams. That training had been total ratbag liberal theology. It had also nearly destroyed my faith. In hindsight God getting us away from the Methodist (or Uniting as it had just become) Church and into biblically sound Anglican fellowship was an incredible kindness!

We had been going to an Anglican church for over two years and we had grown spiritually a great deal with the help of much more mature Christians. But my theological knowledge still left a huge amount to be desired. I can even (embarrassingly) remember Sue and I discussing whether or not Jesus was really God! If I had gone through the normal process they would have very early on asked me questions such as: “is the bible the word of God?” and I would have innocently said “well not strictly”. That would have marked me as “unsuitable” in large red flashing capital letters!

However Dr Knox rated academic qualifications highly, so was partial to the fact that I had a Bachelor of Engineering degree and whilst working had started studying part time and almost completed a Masters degree. He also seemed amused when I said that I wanted to be an Anglican minister, but wanted to study theology at Sydney University. (Yes Sydney University did have a Theology department – but as with most universities in Australia and England at least, “Theology” was a misnomer: it had been taken over by a culture whose devotion was to dabbling in speculative philosophy rather than knowing God!) As I recall he chuckled amiably at my naivety and said: “Well of course you can study Theology at the (Sydney) University, some of our own staff even give lectures there; but if you want to be ordained in Sydney Diocese you will have to study at our college!”

Finally Dr Knox made an executive decision, he accepted me as a student for the following year without any of the screening process.

Round one to God!