A life of 9s – 1969

A life of 9s – 1969

Several significant events in my Christian life happened in years that ended in 9. These are 1969, 1979, 1989, 1999, 2009 and now 2019. This post recalls the first, and most significant of those.

It is March 1969 and I am soon to turn 18. I am seated in a corner of the lounge room of a house at 12 George St Liverpool one evening. It was a planning meeting for a regional church camp at which I had a minor role. Across from me, the speaker was summarising his talks. I vividly recall thinking “this guy really believes this stuff” and a micro-second later thinking “so do I”. And so, I realised that I was a Christian.

Behind that day

It was not always thus. 

My dad was a Presbyterian minister. When I was born, I went home from hospital to a Presbyterian Manse and thence to a childhood and adolescence lived within the church.

I dutifully went to countless church services, said grace at mealtimes, graduated through Sunday School, Pathfinders Club and into the local PFA (youth group). Aged 15 I was appointed to teach a Sunday School class and stumbled through lessons as my first exercise in teaching something to someone. I recall occasional prayer for divine help in some minor duty in the PFA group. Aged around 16 I passed through a confirmation class, took the vows and became a church member without great awareness or conviction.

I would not say that I was a pagan at this time, but rather someone with a second hand faith that was lived through my parents. There was nothing vital about my soul and I was religious rather than Christian. I don’t suppose that my behaviour was worse than many teenagers of my era, but my conscience only troubled me occasionally.

Aged 17 there were some spiritual stirrings. A slightly older man with strong and definite Christian convictions joined the youth group. This encouraged others to show themselves including a particular girl from a non-Christian home. I didn’t know what was going on, but was blindsided and perplexed. I knew they had something that I didn’t and, furthermore resented it. I was the minister’s son and thought I had a monopoly of religious status in the group’s pecking order.

I argued against this man and his ilk with fervour. To worsen my attitude, the girl mentioned above went out with me briefly then dropped me – in part, because she saw through my religious veneer. Bah – my first girlfriend was gone!

In late 1969 I finished secondary schooling and had a few months waiting to see what came next. My hopes to train as a military officer were on hold because of my young age and so I applied for a scholarship to do a uni course that would qualify me as a secondary teacher of economics. While waiting for uni I held short-term jobs in a post office and then a factory.

Christmas 1968: my parents gave me a new RSV Bible (that’s what happens when your dad is a pastor). My menial occupations over that summer left plenty of brain time and so I started reading the thing. And kept reading. And then started asking questions and talking with the  man mentioned above. God was searching me out.

And so I was led to that corner of a lounge room in March 1969.

After that day

I recall going home that night and knowing something big was different. I sat up quite late reading my Bible, praying and making some notes.

That became my pattern with some intensity. I could not read enough of the Bible and Christian literature and routinely sat up into the small hours. Within a few months I wrote 200 pages of handwritten commentary notes on John’s Gospel. I bought and devoured L Berkhof’s full Systematic Theology and still see it on my study bookshelf as I write this post.

I soon became very active in the youth group and started on a path of ministry and leadership roles that have developed over the years and which will be spoken of more in later posts.

My intellectual interest in Christian things crowded out my studies in economics (God replacing mammon?) and I was to have a time out from economics studies and a shift to a different programme within two years.

Meanwhile, the girl who had dumped me came back into my life with weeks of March 1969 and we agreed to resume our relationship with an expectation of marriage. That happened soon enough, but fortunately this did not wait for the next year of 9s.

I, of course, had much to learn about being a Christian. I recall thinking that now that I believed, I no longer needed Jesus. I soon discovered otherwise as any young man will. I am sure I was an irritating, opinionated precocious prat to my parents and people around me as I opined on matters religious with forceful arguments that brooked no alternates. God yet had much to do, but he had started the journey that continues in 2019.

Making sense of March 1969

I don’t see March 1969 as my conversion from pagan unbelief. However, it certainly was the year of my spiritual awakening.

My parents’ faith became my own.

I moved from second hand faith to first hand.

I moved from being religious to being Christian.

I read my story through that of Jacob in Genesis 28, when a careless son of covenant- keeping parents came home to the Lord of the covenant.

And I say that this was all of God’s doing. I quite expect that ,without his Spirit leading me to the Bible, placing those people around me, I would have drifted along asleep. Doubtless the outward form of religion would have stayed with me as it was so deeply ingrained from childhood. But this was the Age of Aquarius and I expect that in time I would have drifted to one or another of the idols of my day.

So that is my testimony from March 1969. All else about my life since is shaped by that evening 50 years ago this month.

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