Introduction
As a young teenager in The Box Hill Boys High School in the early 1950’s, I was challenged with my class, by our geometry teacher, to work out the angles and make a polygon. Most of the boys decided to make a cube as that was easiest. Some decided to make an octagon. I decided to make a do-decahedron; a solid figure with 12 equal faces or planes. I calculated the angles, cut the pieces from very thin wood then sand papered, glued and painted the model.
To make it personal, I decided to paint each of the twelve sides with symbols of my interests. For example one side with a pair of running spikes represented my sport, athletics. (I held every schoolboy record – 17 years from the 100 yards to 1 mile). One had the symbol of a swimmer representing that sport; another, music notes representing my interest in singing (I was a soloist in the Australian Boys Choir, singing in concerts and in radio broadcasts each week); another, a palette and paint brush representing my interests in painting, particularly watercolours; one side had a Bible for my interest in Christian faith; one a Kappa Sigma Pi badge for Christian leadership; another piles of coins representing business (I helped my widowed mother every night count the day’s takings – she always hoped I would be a business man and take over the family business); one symbol was a gavel, a sign of politics (my mother catered each month for the political party which met in our tea rooms above the bakery and cake shop, attended by Mr Robert Gordon Menzies) and I think the remaining ones represented my interests in the stage (I was a soloist in Gilbert and Sullivan operas); a love heart with “B” standing for my girlfriend Beverley; a book, symbol of learning and teaching and so on.
Many people believe that a minister of religion would lead a very dull and uninteresting life conducting church services and caring for people in a parish. I discovered just the opposite was true. That as a minister of religion a person could undertake to develop skills and abilities, to learn new insights and to attempt impossible activities which would generate more excitement and enthusiasm than one could ever possibly imagine.
This book tells how each of these interests developed over the years and became part of my life. The minister of religion has a wonderful freedom to expand aspects of his ministry as he feels God is leading him. My life has been like a do-decahedron with 12 major emphases. Each of the following chapters pictures what happened in one of those 12 sides. But together they make for an exciting, blessed, effective, and growing ministry in the word of the Gospel and in the care of people needs. I never could imagine that such a satisfying and adventurous life could flow from a commitment to follow in the service of Jesus Christ.
Over the years this minister of the Gospel would be given many privileges. We would build, during the late 1980’s, the largest building to be constructed in Sydney, Australia’s largest city, permanently altering the city skyline. We would work as an advisor and friend with the Prime Minister for more than a decade, having immediate access to the most powerful office of the land.
I would be responsible for raising and spending in the last twenty-five years more than a billion dollars, more than any other church minister in the world.
We would be elected by a panel of distinguished judges, to be “Entrepreneur of the Year”, and on another occasion “Father of the Year”, and on another occasion, “Australian Public Speaker of the Year.” We would be hailed by the nation’s top financial newspaper, the nation’s most successful movie producer. We would be honoured nationally and internationally with honorary degrees and fellowships in diverse fields. We would be made a Companion of the Order of Australia, Australia’s highest an Honour, an honour never before granted to a clergyman in active service or a politician in any Parliament.
We would have weekly national television programs and the most listened to religious radio program in the nation.
Over a million citizens gave me their vote to become one of the top twenty-one selected from 290 candidates for our oldest parliament. A Christian newspaper in 2005 polled Christian leaders for their list of most influential church leaders, and I was the only person named in every list submitted from across the nation. It has been a varied and interesting life.
I would acknowledge all of those who have helped me from the earliest days who have worked along side of me in the tasks of ministry and will mention many by name at the appropriate places. But above all my life partner from our earliest teenage years, wife and mother of our children, Beverley, has been an outstanding companion and without her none of this would have been possible. The expanded word and deed ministry has impacted on hundreds of thousands of people over fifty years. Nothing learned is ever wasted when it is given to God to use.
I would thank Goldie Down who came into Intensive Care when I was hooked up to life support after open-heart surgery to leave six books for me with the statement: “These are biographies of the famous I have written. I am now starting one on you!” and who wrote the sell-out biography Gordon Moyes, The Man, The Media and The Mission (Open Book). She details all the aspects of my life.
I would thank my typist, Carolyn Holmes, who took my typing and patiently made corrections and additions, my Personal Assistant Blossom Vickers who made some time for me to write, to her husband, Michael, who proof read the text and to Matt Danswan and Emily McIntyre of Ark House Press who saw it through to the bookshops.
In the following pages I share my thoughts on the growth of a modern minister who has created many unusual opportunities to share the Gospel in the hope of encouraging others.
REV. DR. The Hon. GORDON MOYES AC, MLC..
