A life of 9s - 1999

A life of 9s – 1999

June 6^th, 1999

At about 9.30pm (my D-Day?) I stepped off a Qantas flight to Singapore. At 0600 that morning I had put a suitcase in a car at our Mittagong home, bid farewell to my wife, driven to Wahroonga in Sydney’s north where I fulfilled a longstanding preaching commitment) dropped the car and then boarded the Singapore flight to a farewell from some family and friends.

I had arrived for what was a ‘strictly four-year term” as senior minister of Orchard Road Presbyterian Church Singapore. The four years became 11.5 years and so I entered on what became my third pastoral ministry and, in my view, my most significant ministry.

This post tells the story of my ministry for the 10 years leading up to the Singapore move.

January 1989 to June 1998

By mid-January 1989 I was the recently resigned pastor of Strathfield Presbyterian Church in Sydney.

For the next 10 years I was given to the following:

·       Part-time employment by the NSW Christian Education committee of the Presbyterian Church

·       Convener of the federal Christian Education committee

·       Part-time teacher at the Presbyterian Theological Centre

·       NSW and Federal Trustee for the Presbyterian Chruch

·       Convener of the Colleges and Schools Committee of the Trustees

·       Activist in church circles

·       Student

·       Wider ministries

Amidst all this, our family moved on. Glenda was Head of English at the Frensham School, which enabled our survival on my part-time income. Our children moved through their schooling and our firstborn into uni and marriage. We lived in our own home at Mittagong, adjacent to my widowed mother and within 40 mins drive of Glenda’s widowed mother. These were good family years.

I will now comment on each of my activities as listed above.

Part-time employment by the NSW Christian Education Committee of the Presbyterian Church. As noted in the last post, I was convener of this committee from 1983. In time the work grew with particular reference to curriculum publishing and church-based training. Funding was secured for a part-time position and so I left pastoral ministry first as a one-third appointment as a training officer and then for a half-time appointment as Director. I enjoyed the role and worked hard to serve the ministry of local churches through the position. This necessitated much travel and so the committee provided me with a vehicle. At one stage one-third of my nights were spent away from home on this and the other ministries mentioned below. This was my major single post in this period. I built up the commercial operations of the committee, which produced an income that helped pay my salary and expenses.

Convener of the federal Christian Education committee. As NSW convener I had a seat on the federal committee and then became its convener. This involved a publications programme and an annual interstate visit to one of the weaker states for a committee meeting and local training activities.

Part-time teacher at the Presbyterian Theological Centre. My range of teaching subjects changed as I taught less church history and broadened into Christian world view, philosophy, literature and culture and Christian education, as well as continuing with Westminster Confession. In some semesters my teaching load was seven hours weekly - getting near that of a full-time teacher, but without the ancillary duties.

NSW and Federal Trustee for the Presbyterian Church. In 1996 I became one of the 12 trustees who legally held all assets of the NSW, ACT and federal church. This involved many Monday meetings at church offices. I was out of my depth in the financial aspects of this role and had some frustration with what I saw as poor governance practices which I was unable to address.

Convener of the Colleges and Schools Committee of the Trustees. Within the trust, I was appointed to chair the committee that oversaw the church’s four schools. During my time the trustees removed two school Councils and replaced them with Management Committees, one of which I chaired and the other in whom I had an active interest. In both cases we also replaced Principals. For a man who had not attended a private school and who had only previously served on such a school council for a few years, there was a steep learning curve. This role drew a lot of my time at certain periods, had some very interesting moments and involved much conflict and much time away from home - as both schools were in rural areas.

Activist in church circles. Somewhere in my early 20s I wrote a price on the obligation to use means for the reform of the church. It was a justification and explanation of using political strategies within the church for higher ends. I did not know it at the time, but it proved to be manifesto for a major them in my whole Australian ministry … of being a strategist and activist in church courts. In 1989 the PCA and PCNSW were still balanced between evangelical-reformed and traditionalist-moderate influences. Key issues were theological college appointments, the ordination of women, the Peter Cameron heresy trial and such like. This was played out presbytery meeting by presbytery meeting and Assembly by Assembly. I became part of a small inner group who were on many committees, often on our feet and who acquired a reputation for using the denominational rule book to advantage. To my later shame, I often did this with much focus on product and less on process. I had yet to learn how to balance process and product.

Student As I became involved in educational ministry, I realised the need of some educational studies. Hence a Diploma in Continuing Education and then a Master of Education by part-tie study from the University of New England. My Master’s work was in adult Christian education and ministry training and led to my first look at Theological Education by Extension, with which I later became involved. Enrolment in a doctor of education followed. The distractions of ministry and my personal circumstances (see the next post in this series) meant that it advanced in fits and starts, with changes in direction and a glacial rate of progress.

Wider activities. During this time, I broadened my writing profile. Thus there were articles in various church and wider publications, presentations at some educational conferences and the co-writing of a book on the Presbyterian In Australia which was published by the Australian Government. I also had the first of what was to be an enduring pattern of overseas ministries. Hence a visit to Kenya to speak at a youth conference, a visit to Vanuatu to teach a course on Christian education and a trip to the highlands of PNG to teach a NT course.

As the above shows, this was a period of much activity and of being spread widely across several theatres of action. This both suited my somewhat restless nature and fed into it. I had what I regards as exceptional opportunities to make a difference in several strategic directions and to be part of the successful battle for identity in the denomination. That battle was largely won by 1999, but there had been a high personal cost. It could not be sustained, and nor was it in God’s providence, as he redirected me in 1999.

Getting to Singapore

I was on my knees one Monday morning in late October 1998 when the phone rang. I’d like to say that I was knelt in prayer, but rather it was my turn to clean toilets. The person on the phone introduced himself as the Session Clerk (senior elder) of Orchard Rd Presbyterian Church (ORPC) in Singapore and asked if I was free to talk about becoming their senior minister.

I was not looking for a move, let alone a return to the pastorate, but I was open to a move. After 10 years in my then post I was periodically approached about other positions, including “attractive” pastorates and a colleague had urged me to consider such a return. None of the approaches met any inward interest or conviction in me, but rather a sense of grief at what I would be leaving. After one of these approaches it occurred to me that when the right thing came along, one sign would be that anticipation and desire for what was coming would outweigh the grief at what I was leaving. This happened over the next few months.

So, I accepted that Monday phone call and listened. As I listened, I thought: (a) I can see why you are calling me (objective fit to criteria re education, experience etc); (b) I’m interested and can see myself there (inward desire) and (c) “This is going to happen” (intuition or wishful thinking). The phone call ended with me agreeing to consider the possibility.

I went for a long prayer walk that afternoon and at its end was resolved (a) that I was interested to pursue the matter; (b) that Glenda or our youngest son could veto the move because it had big implications for them. Neither vetoed.

And so over the next few months we went through a selection process involving documentation, sermon recordings and then finally, a week-long visit. That latter meant arriving one Saturday night in late January 1999, preaching morning and evening and then a round of meetings and meals around the church over the next five days. By the Wednesday night I was ready to say ‘yes’, even before the Board interview.

Two memorable moments from the interview. One was that I was ill from heat stroke and needed to leave the meeting and vomit. Nothing was said, but questions went to Glenda for a few minutes. Another was an elder asked me if I liked food. I inwardly wondered what planet he was from but made light of the questions. I soon learned that this elder was a divergent thinker, sometimes helpfully so and sometimes just plain puzzling. Some years later I went to him, reminded him of the question and remarked that it was the most insightful question of the evening. Food was culturally important and if I was fussy or restrictive, that would be a barrier to ministry.

Before long the church voted to call me as senior minister – four-year terms were the constitutional norm and I accepted. The vote and acceptances happened by late February 1999 and so I commenced disengagement both the various roles mentioned above. In fact, I left 31 different posts – a mark of how enmeshed I was in denominational affairs at a state and federal level.

Looking for meaning      

This was a big move. It meant Glenda leaving her work; Nat changing school, all leaving friends and a very big change of direction for me. It meant breaking up the family home we had built at Mittagong and leaving two widowed mothers behind, along with our other children, one of whom was going through troubled times. It was full of unknowns and risks. Would it work? What would happen when we returned after the specified four years?

As mentioned, I had expected a move. After 10 years in the same role I had realised that I was    danger zone of doing my job (apparently) well without having to try hard. I knew that this was dangerous at age 47-48, because it could mean cruising to ineffectiveness in the ministerial graveyard zone of my 50s. I had long observed that 50s to be a dangerous decade for ministers ordained young and had seen this in my father. Early in 1998, Glenda and I separately spoke to someone at a social function and had mentioned that we expected God was going to move us on soon, even though we had no sense of what it would look like and some prospective pain at moving.

So there was sense that God was taking us on, even as he went before us. By now we had experienced enough (see my 1979 and 1989 posts) to know that he went ahead; that he prepared the way and that our past chapters would equip us for the next one.

During the 1989 to 1999 decade, the roles described above had given me exposure to ministry among Chinese background people and experience at large organisational leadership. These helped at ORPC, even though they were not an exact fit. Hong Kong background and Cantonese diaspora Chinese in Sydney were not the same as majority-culture Mandarin speaking Chinese in Singapore! Leading committees and being a Trustee in a western church organisation was not the same as leading a large, multicultural high socioeconomic church in Singapore! Nonetheless, in God, the past readied me, in part, for the future. I was ill-equipped for ORPC, as I soon discovered, and there was much to learn, but God in his kindness provided. That, however, is a story for the next post.

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