My Adventures with God: 41: God Changes my Plans

Chapter 41 ... God Changes my Plans

Towards the end of 1990 it was obvious that our finances were not going to hold out for me to do a Ph.D.

To cut a long story short I came to that sad conclusion that the “Ph.D.” bit of it had been more in the line of my take on what God wanted. His plan seemed to more along the lines of a one year sabbatical. And just to make sure I got the message there was our bank balance slowly but surely dwindling away. I got the message and I eventually even gave in!

So I went to see a Melbourne bishop (one did not easily get to see the archbishop!). He was sympathetic but pointed out that right now they had a glut of priests, and what jobs there were had to go to Melbourne men (I was from the 'foreign' diocese of Gippsland!). He did however think he might be able to put a locum or two my way.

He did. And I was hired to fill in a vacant parish for a few months until the new vicar arrived. All right, I had forgotten: parish ministry was fun!

After that he offered a locum at the recently vacated parish of St. Luke’s Vermont. Now comes the scary bit. I had a revelation. I cannot recall, if indeed I ever understood, its exact mechanism. I think it was a sort of a vision. Anyway the content was that a) it was God’s purpose, which he would carry out, that I would become vicar of Vermont and b) I would have a fight with the choir or musicians (I’m not sure which it was).

What could I say? That did not sound exactly enticing, but God had a gun (or rather a bank balance) at my head – and besides I was by now mostly in the habit of doing what he asked, after the usual amount of “kicking and screaming” of course.

We were still living at Caulfield. If I had doubts that God was serious, the owners managed to sell their house, and we were, understandably, given notice. I thought we should move into the vicarage “while I was locum”. Sue thought differently. Well the vicarage was new, and in many ways an ideal vicarage, but aesthetically it was – well “barren” is the word that comes to mind! We tried hard to find another house to rent in Caulfield. (Perhaps Jonah had similar, though of course much stronger, feelings) Eventually even Sue had to accept that “a house in Caulfield” (wasn’t going to happen.

When you are in the habit of obeying God he is tremendously kind and considerate if you occasionally dig in your heels and try to go the wrong way. He just shuts the gate until you have thought better of it! That is infinitely kinder than letting you go ahead and make a mess of things believe me! So eventually we gave in and asked if we could rent the vicarage while I was to be locum. The Church Wardens agreed and we moved in.

I will describe our experiences at Vermont more or less chronologically over the following chapters. But since we were presented with a baffling puzzle which seemed to change and shift every time we thought we had a handle on it, and which took all our skill and energies for four or so years, I will make life easier for readers. I will give you now, at the beginning, my “in a nutshell” analysis which is the fruits of those first years of strenuous effort constantly trying to solve the puzzle, and the further distillation of nearly two decades of hindsight.

My predecessor had been there ten years. He had done something very similar to what we had done in the first two or three years at Lang Lang, but over a slightly longer time scale.

What he had built up was better integrated and more stable as he had not had the problem of trying to mix different social strata (suburbs tend to be socially homogeneous whereas country towns are socially heterogeneous and very distinctly stratified) also the longer period allowed adjustments to be made.

His achievement was really impressive. I may have this wrong, but I think he trebled the size of the church. Anyway at its peak (which was about four years before he left) there were over three hundred people attending every Sunday. A really impressive achievement.

Vermont had understandably gained a diocese wide reputation as a leading Evangelical – Charismatic church. The late Archbishop Penman had enjoyed attending it when he could. To everyone outside this was a model church, but in fact like Lang Lang, it contained the seeds of its own destruction. It was already past its peak. Whoever followed Jack Humphries was going to be blamed for the inevitable crash. A crash that they probably could see coming let alone prevent.

Part of the problem was that just as Bayles fellowship had attracted a “wolf” when it became known as a place where things were happening, so Vermont had attracted, if not actual wolves, then at least people infected by wrong ideas and motives.

These people had come to the now big and impressive church over the past four or five years. They had come as staff and as parishioners. They were better at “office politics” and at promoting themselves than the people who had actually worked with Jack to build up the church to what it had become. So they replaced these people in key and “up front” church roles. They thought of themselves as a spiritual elite, but the were really not a patch on the people they had supplanted.

The next problem was they had introduced doctrinal error. The “original” team that had helped Jack build up the church were – at least the ones I met were absolutely sound. Some were crispy Evangelical some were very Charismatic even Pentecostal but they were tremendous people and I could not fault their Christian and moral excellence. The newbies who had supplanted them exhibited all the problems of Charismatic-theology-gone-wrong I had faced at Bayles.

As one grows to maturity as a Christian, God deals with your vices and weaknesses in the order he determines so one should not generalise too much, but worship of “self” – self centered-ness, self aggrandisement, self adulation, selfishness, being easily offended and so on – is so antithetical to the character of Jesus that it usually comes under the hammer sooner rather than later. These people were living and promoting a gospel of “self” but thought they were more “spiritual” than everyone else

I can caricature their beliefs this way:

True Christianity says:

“I know Jesus loves me because he died for me - This means he is the most wonderful Being and so I will get rid of that old selfish me and live to please him.

They said:

“I know Jesus loves me because he died for me – this means I must be the most wonderful being and so I should go on living to please me”

So close and yet so far apart!

In hindsight, the special aspect of the “mission” God had in mind for me at Vermont was this:
I was to rescue his church and as many people as possible from this false doctrine. Additionally this would have to be done whilst trying to survive and even stave off the collapse of the church which was already in progress due to its pre-existing problems.

In hindsight, this was always going to be a suicide mission!