A Very Logical, Practical Theologian
I was 26 when I left my work as a country parson to take up the prestigious position as the Minister of Cheltenham Church of Christ Victoria. This Church had the reputation of being a very large and alive Church. But that was a mirage. The reality was quite different as this young country parson was soon to discover. The life of a suburban Minister has some real surprises.
It was felt when I commenced the ministry at Cheltenham, that I was a young man still learning who had potential for development and who was ministering in what had already become the largest suburban church of the denomination in Australia. Maybe it was time that I was taught a thing or two about denominational leadership. So it was that I was approached to join various boards looking after the oversight of the denomination’s hospitals, homes for the aged, nursing homes, benevolent fund, ministers’ association and the like. The one that meant most to me was being elected by my peers to represent the ministers on the advisory board of Churches of Christ in Victoria and Tasmania.
This advisory board recommended to churches suitable ministers to be called, whose personal abilities and characteristics would best fit in with that church. On the other hand, it would recommend to ministers, churches where they ought to exercise their particular gifts. The advisory board was also the group to which churches and ministers, either separately or jointly, could approach for guidance in time of conflict.
This particular board was regarded as the most significant and influential one in the denomination, because with four hundred churches and a similar number of men across Australia, the task of fitting round pegs into round holes and keeping square pegs out of round holes was regarded as a very significant one. Over my entire ministry at Cheltenham I served on the advisory board, growing particularly close to one of the older members, the man who was the Principal of the Churches of Christ Theological College in Melbourne under whom I trained as a student minister. Not only did I serve on the committee with Mr. E. Lyall Williams, but we were the two who inevitably had to visit church boards to discuss their needs and visit ministers to resolve their difficulties. It was upon our reports and recommendations that the board frequently made it’s decisions. This meant that we travelled together to suburban and country churches, and occasionally interstate churches. Other members around the board table, all of whom were older than I, referred to Mr. Williams as either “the Chief” or more familiarly as “E L”, or for those who were close companions, “Lyall”. I didn’t belong in any of those categories.
As the most junior minister on the team I referred to him as I did throughout the rest of my life as “Mr. Williams”. It wasn’t just that he was more than thirty years older than I, it was the fact that I held this man in the utmost awe and respect. If any man influenced me intellectually and theologically throughout my life it was Mr. E. Lyall Williams.
Mr. Williams had taught more than five hundred ministers who sat before him as students during his thirty five years as a theological lecturer, twenty nine of them as Principal of the Federal College of the Bible in Glen Iris. He had led the denomination as its President both at State and Federal conferences, but was a much more significant person in leadership in that he led the denomination intellectually.
His early life was that of a farmer in Kaniva in the wheat fields of western Victoria. He was one of three brothers who trained together for the ministry and was the youngest of seven brothers growing up on the farm. Lyall Williams may have left the farm, but you could never get the farm out of Lyall Williams. Through all of his years as lecturer and Principal, he maintained a farming interest, eventually retiring on to a farm. Throughout his life living in the Theological College, he milked the cows, cared for the fowls and on one memorable occasion, taking swift aim from the corner of his residence shot a marauding fox which had been savaging the chooks. He loved the rural life and encouraged all of us to take an interest in the rural sector.
But Lyall Williams was an economist by training. After graduating as a minister he completed his Economics M.A. with Honours at Melbourne University, and our students were all given a sound basis of economics that certainly, not only helped us to maintain a disciplined and financially faithfully lifestyle, but also helped us develop churches which were known for their fiscal integrity.
Mr. Williams was a sportsman as few others. A successful athlete in his early life he went on at university to become a particularly successful Australian Rules footballer, playing both for the university and then later captaining a VFA team in Melbourne. He continued to play football throughout his days. I can remember him playing at an inter-college football match which was attended by the then Dean of the Anglican Cathedral of Melbourne – that remarkable Sydney theologian who had been Dean both of Sydney’s St. Andrew’s Cathedral and St. Paul’s Cathedral – Rev. Dr. S. Barton Babbage. Dr. Babbage was reputed to have asked, when sitting in a grandstand watching a football final between the theological college where he lectured and the Churches of Christ theological college, “Who is that bald headed elderly man with the bandy legs who runs rings round all the younger fellows?” To which someone replied “The Principal!” It was hard for Dr. Babbage to envisage his friend the Principal still actively playing football at 53, but E. Lyall Williams played every week and gave as much as he took from the rough and tumble of the young men on the football field.
Lyall Williams was a theologian of note and we had our daily dose of Bart, Baille and Brunner with insights from C.H. Dodd and Reinholt Neibuhr with lashings of Paul Tillich. His theology was distilled in his book “The Biblical Approach to Christian Unity”. His great emphases, as I reflect upon them, were upon the integrity of the Scriptures, the distinction between the covenants, and the authority and inspiration of the Scriptures.
Lyall Williams taught us that many denominations fell into serious error when they tried to develop practices based upon the Old Testament law. Whereas, the Old Testament looked forward to a new covenant and the Book of Hebrews and Paul’s writings indicated that the new covenant had been agreed in Christ, which superseded the old. Principal Williams would say “Christian institutions, practices and judgements should not be based upon isolated texts or passages or precedents drawn from the Old Testament, the book of the old covenant. The Bible is not a flat book. What is eternal in the old is re-stated in the new, and sometimes heightened.” If some denominations only understood this point there would be less trouble within Pentecostal churches and the Seventh Day Adventist Church would be recognised as a mainstream Christian church. He also emphasised the authority of the coherent whole. So many people grasp one aspect of the authority or the inspiration of the Scriptures. Lyall Williams saw the authority in the coherent whole of Scriptures.
As a teacher he always stressed personal integrity among the young ministers who were trained. He gave us heavy lectures on personal morality, on sexual purity, on being absolutely transparent in our financial dealings. It wasn’t any wonder that he had majored in ethics and logic at university and his great emphasis upon those subjects sent me in turn, when I went to university, to study ethics and logic. It’s not surprising that his biography was entitled “Living Responsibly”. His integrity to Christ meant that sometimes he took unpopular positions. He could never see Christ as a war monger and became an ardent pacifist, even through the difficult days of World War Two when many members of the church felt that it was right for Christian men to bear arms. Lyall Williams maintained that Christ came to bring peace not to bear a gun.
One interesting sidelight was that typical of the product of a farm, he was a great mechanic. Many a Saturday afternoon I saw him working on the engine of some poor student, helping to resurrect the dying remains of an aged car because they couldn’t afford to have a mechanic complete the repairs.
Lyall Williams was a committed ecumenicist. He was chairman, at various times, of the Victorian Council of Churches, the Australian Council of Churches, and served on senior bodies of the World Council of Churches. He was totally committed to the unity of Christ’s church. But during the fifties and sixties there were violent arguments within various denominations which felt the World Council of Churches was a plot by Satan to ruin the church. Lyall Williams never covered up the weakness or the untheological position of some member churches within the World Council of Churches. He believed that we who were evangelical and conservative had to be there in the Councils of the church to make our witness for what we believed was right and true. I remember attending a meeting of some eight hundred people who were condemning the World Council of Churches Assembly decisions that had been made in New Delhi in 1961. There were many bigoted and very violently spoken men condemning the involvement of our denomination with the World Council of Churches. Lyall Williams gave a stirring rebuttal to the criticism and I will always remember his closing remarks “Churches of Christ must be known for their witness to Jesus Christ. I was there in New Delhi. I made the witness!”
I served with Mr. Williams on a small committee which examined the proposed basis of union for the Uniting Church and over a period of about fifteen years met in many study groups studying what the Methodists, Presbyterians and Congregationalists were planning and the Churches of Christ response to these plans. I was a total enthusiast for the Uniting Church, including those bits of the Basis of Union which the three denominations eventually threw out. We explained and lectured together on the proposed Basis of Union at conferences and study seminars and in various churches that were interested. Frequently we were invited by Methodist and Presbyterian churches to teach their members what the proposed union was all about.
It is little wonder that the World Convention of Churches of Christ which represented three million members around the world honoured him in 1970 with the World Convention Honour for Distinguished Leadership.
At some of our meetings of the advisory board when we would be discussing a particularly ordinary fellow who had little abilities as a preacher or pastor and yet who was faithful in his responsibilities, I saw a side of Lyall Williams I have tried to emulate. He would always talk up the very ordinary faithful man. Over a period of years I learned certain phrases that indicated that a man was very ordinary indeed. When we would be looking at a suitable place for this ordinary minister, Lyall would advocate him enthusiastically. He saw possibilities in the most limited of people. I discovered that when nothing else could be said, Lyall Williams would say “Oh, he is a very faithful man, he has great integrity with finances, and he has a nice wife!” When all else was limited these three things were enough to ensure the man was given a good opportunity at another ministry, no matter how poorly he had performed in the previous ones.
In the councils of the advisory board we also had to discipline certain people for personal or moral failures. For some reason or other such men were sent to churches in the southernmost part of Tasmania. It was the closest you could get to Antarctica, the Churches of Christ’s version of the Gulag Archipelago. If someone had committed indiscretions or needed some discipline, Lyall Williams would be the first to say “What about Dover? Or Geevestown? Or somewhere down the Huon Valley?” It always seemed that those churches had a ministry in straightening up anyone who was slightly bent.
He had a great love for his old home church at Kaniva and always looked for the best minister for this church. I remember one night when the needs of Kaniva had been discussed without a suitable person being found and later in the agenda he was advocating that a very limited fellow with a poor track record be given another chance. He made an impassioned plea on his behalf finishing up saying “He is a faithful fellow. He has good integrity with money and he has a nice wife.” He sat back in his chair apparently convinced he had delivered a telling blow, at which point I promptly nominated such a person of integrity, faithfulness and marital respectability to his home church at Kaniva. It was then that the true Lyall Williams was seen because like a shot out of a barrel he leant forward saying “No! No! Not to Kaniva! Not to Kaniva!”
In 1977 the Uniting Church came into being with the union between the Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregational churches. For fifteen years I had studied the proposed Basis of Union, shared in writing the official denominational response to it, and had even taught member churches of that denomination what the union was all about. I felt it was right that Churches of Christ should move from being observers of the union talks to being participants in the union. However, at the federal conference of that year the proposal was turned down when New South Wales and Queensland strongly voted against it. Rather than split the denomination as happened with the Presbyterian church we decided it was best not to seek to enter the union.
It was at that moment in 1977 that I was invited by the Central Methodist Mission, Sydney to succeed the Rev. Dr. Alan Walker as the eighth Superintendent of this important part of the new Uniting Church. I only discussed this call to ministry with one person other than my wife, and that was with Principal E. Lyall Williams. Walking around his farm he knew what was on my heart, my commitment to the principles of Uniting Church, and to the ministry of the Central Methodist Mission. I will always remember his final word “Churches of Christ will never make an impact by their size, but by the quality of the graduates they produce. Go to the Central Mission. For to believe in unity and then stay where you are is to build a wall around the truth and take it out of circulation. Instead, join the Uniting Church and spread Christian Truth to which we have witnessed.”
I came home from that meeting with him and wrote a letter of acceptance.
Principal E. Lyall Williams passed away to be with his Lord at the age of 88 – a great Australian Churchman, a great Christian leader. I honour his memory. That night in my study I spent some time writing up my journal and looking out of the window at the never ending stream of cars stopping at the traffic lights at the corner of Nepean Highway and Chesterville Road, that wide intersection that was dominated by the lovely white Church with the high white tower noting down the events of another day as a suburban minister.