A Step Towards Church Unity
When I was a young minister freshly graduated and ordained, my first ministry in the mid 1960’s, after seven years of the slums of Newmarket, was in a small country church, in the small country town of Ararat, the gateway to the Wimmera in Western Victoria. There I learnt the difficult art faced by all city bred ministers, of becoming a country parson.
It all started the day I received a call from Melbourne. It was the Director of the Board of Christian Education of Churches of Christ in Victoria and Tasmania and he wondered whether I could spare some time the following Monday to go up to the Board of Education’s property in Halls Gape. There was a Camp Site there which was used in holiday time to run youth camps. They had had a request from the Presbytery of the Wimmera of the Presbyterian Church if a group of Presbyterian ministers could meet for study in the Halls Gap property. They would bring their own lunch, but someone was required to open up the camp property for them, and to provide the hot water facilities for tea and coffee. Would I be kind enough to go and spend the day with the Presbyterian ministers at the Halls Gap property?
I replied immediately that I would look forward to the opportunity. It would give Beverley and I and baby Jenny an opportunity to have a day off in the beautiful Halls Gap Valley and the tasks of providing the caretaking service and arranging for the hot water over morning and afternoon tea and for lunch time would certainly be a very meagre contribution to the goodwill we would experience with the visiting Presbyterian clergy.
The Director from the Board of Education indicated to me that the Wimmera Presbytery was meeting to discuss the new document concerning Church Union that had recently been produced called “The Faith We Affirm in Common”. I knew that document intimately for I was on part of a committee of Churches of Christ ministers and laymen who had been appointed to write a response to that particular document on behalf of Churches of Christ.
The proposed Union between the Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregationalists was having a fairly rocky road toward Union at that time. The Churches of Christ and the Anglican Church where not involved in the Union negotiations directly nevertheless we were official observers to the Union talks, and where invited, gave official responses to the documents.
With some of my colleagues I had composed a response to the proposed basis of Union, and to the document “The Faith We Affirm in Common”. The Churches of Christ particularly had a contribution to make at the point of the necessity of personal faith required for Baptism and Church Membership, and the witness that we had that Baptism was of believers, by immersion following the New Testament example. Of course the Presbyterians were not convinced by this argument at all. There had been a number of very strong Presbyterian reactions to the questions of the Baptism of Believers by immersion.
In the back of my mind I thought I might invite myself into the Wimmera Presbytery’s discussions on the matter and where applicable make a comment or two on the issue of Baptism by immersion of believers and of the significance of personal faith at conversion.
The Monday was a typical hot Wimmera day but we had travelled early to the site and had it opened and ready as the cars bearing the various Presbyterian clergy from across the Wimmera pulled into Halls Gap. Presbyterian clergymen came from Stawell, Dimboola, Horsham, Brim, Minyip, Warracknabeal, and a few other places. Eventually 7 Presbyterian clergy arrived all dressed very much alike with their satchels, notebooks and copies of “The Faith We Affirm in Common”, with various passages dutifully underlined which would be the basis of the discussion.
I encouraged the leader, the Moderator of the Presbytery to conduct worship in the beautiful outdoor chapel which only the previous January we had built following a youth camp that Beverley and I had led. As a permanent contribution to the camp site a hundred and twenty teenagers spent all one day hauling rocks up from the deep creek that flowed at the back of the property. The rocks were passed hand to hand up the sheer cliffs and over the rope bridge to a cleared section of land where we cemented them into a large natural rock altar and pulpit. A cut tree trunk became a preacher’s chair, and a long flat square rock became the top of the pulpit. Behind us just on the edge of the swiftly flowing creek, we erected a huge wooded cross and cut slab seats for the body of the Open Air Bush Chapel. The Presbyterian ministers gathered in their common uniform black suits, a black stock with white collar, and black dusty Windsor Smith leather shoes. To see seven of them standing in a row was like looking at seven black peas in a pod. In those days of conformity, the Presbyterian Church of the Wimmera was one of the most conforming of all churches.
After the outdoor Chapel the discussions got underway inside the main general purpose hall alongside the kitchens. In the kitchen the morning tea was ready for them all and I sat at the back of the hall while the seven Presbyterian ministers, each with coats off but black shirt stock and white collars firmly in place, got underway in discussing the many facets of that important document which was part of the preparation for the Uniting Church.
I had more or less assumed that seven Presbyterian ministers from the Presbytery of the Wimmera would have a fair degree of unanimity of opinion. However, we had no sooner got into discussion about the confessions of the churches of the Reformation period when I discovered that there was a great deal of controversy and dispute over some of the issues. People meant different things by the understanding of the ‘Grace of God’ and there certainly was quite a lot of heavy theological comment on the biblical teaching of justification by faith through grace. Apparently a common training in the teaching of John Calvin did not exactly mean that every minister believed exactly the same thing.
I listened with great interest from the back and enjoyed the cut and thrust of the debate.
After lunch, they settled back for the second round of discussions. There was a new warmth towards me personally as we had spent lunchtime eating and talking together about our respective ministries.
I appreciated this opportunity to get to know my Presbyterian colleagues.
Only those who worked in local churches during that period leading up to Church Union could possibly understand the superior air that Presbyterian ministers seemed to have. Of all the ministers engaged in the discussions concerning Church Union they seemed to have the best of theological education. It was the Presbyterian leaders that were giving much of the leadership in the plans for Church Union, and we were very quickly put in our place by Presbyterian colleagues when we raised points of theological difference. After all, didn’t the Presbyterian Church produce the “Expository Times” which all of us ministers regardless of whichever church we attended read? And didn’t we all have the Daily Bible Studies that were produced by William Barclay and printed by St. Andrews Press? And wasn’t Professor John Baillie one of the leading theologians of the day and didn’t we all have sermons by his brother Donald Baillie on our shelves? It was a golden era for Presbyterian theology and anybody who wanted to question any theological issue very quickly found that the ranks of the Presbyterian Church supported by the big guns of Calvinistic Theology from Europe and Scotland were very quickly trained on any objection.
However, over lunch the distinctions disappeared somewhat and I was treated as a colleague, albeit a very junior colleague, by those seven Presbyterian ministers from the Presbytery of the Wimmera.
After lunch the discussions centred around the Affirmations of the Evangelical Revival. For Methodists this was the birth place of their theology and the touch stone of their tradition. The teaching, preaching, hymns and personal example of John and Charles Wesley were dear to the heart of Methodists and the particular emphasis of the Evangelical Revival received only scant attention from the theologians who had been trained on the writing of John Calvin.
At one point one of the Presbyterian Ministers had made some scathing reference to the Methodist practise on the Mission fields of baptising believers by immersion and indicated that really was not a Baptist or a Church of Christ position.
Suddenly I was drawn into the debate and for the next few minutes the debate waxed loud and long. Until I committed the ultimate sin. I quoted Karl Barth’s position on the Baptism of Believers by immersion. Barth was the greatest of the European theologians who came from the same reformed tradition. Yet he held the view that as far as the New Testament was concerned “no one was brought to Baptism: one came to Baptism”. For Karl Barth the baptism of believers by immersion was an important part of New Testament theology. The mention of his name put a stop to the discussion instantly. Most present knew what would happen now if anyone took up and started to take the conversation any further. Half the men were very strong on the theology of Karl Barth while the other half were critical of many of his positions.
The Presbytery Moderator looked at his watch and informed everybody that it was time to call the afternoon to a halt. He suggested that after afternoon tea, we might have a group photograph taken and he would write a summary report to be sent to the Assembly Hall in Collins Street, Melbourne, expressing the view point of the Presbytery clergy.
After the afternoon tea I offered to take the photograph of all the clergy and they moved to the open chapel where they might stand round the rock built altar with the cross behind them. The setting was indeed beautiful and as they grouped together for photos, I took the camera from the Moderator and snapped several shots of the group gathered round. It was then that one of the men indicated that they all should have their photograph standing on the rope suspension bridge over the creek. It seemed a good idea so the seven Presbyterian ministers clad in their black suits, black stock and white collars all moved over to the rope bridge.
The three rope bridge had spanned the creek as long as I had been coming to the Halls Gap property. The water there was about 6 foot deep and flowed pretty swiftly across the wide creek bed. All seven Presbyterian Pastors walked out over the rope bridge with one wide strand beneath their feet and with one strand on either side giving a good hand grip, with some lashings of rope between the bottom rope and the two hand ropes. They stood in a row. Stepping back onto the bank I held the camera up and called out “Take a deep breath now. Everybody smiling. One, two…”
At that point the back rope broke. The rope bridge which had seen many a young Tarzan at youth camp swinging across the creek before many admiring Janes’ gave way under the weight of seven Presbyterian ministers from the Presbytery of Wimmera. As the back rope broke three pitched forward straight into the creek, taking their first positive movement toward baptism of believers by immersion. The other four involuntary throw their weight backwards, but the rope was gone. Two slowly toppled backwards into the water.
The foot rope released of much of its weight went up into the air with the remaining two Presbyterian ministers from the Presbytery of the Wimmera holding grimly to the front forward rope with their hands with their black Windsor Smith shoes firmly planted on the foot rope. The rope beneath their feet, no longer held in place went up in the air and the rope held in their hands went down so that the two remaining Presbyterian ministers were arched horizontally over the water. The lashing between the ropes slowly unwound and the distance between their hands and feet grew wider until they, almost in slow motion, also dropped into the water. Seven Presbyterian heads bobbing as people struggled to the surface and towards the bank. What else could a Church of Christ minister, interested in the Faith We Affirm in Common, and the biblical teaching, do but stand on the bank, raise his hand and declare “On your commitment to Christ, I now baptise you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen”.
We had to light a fire in the main hall and a circle of chairs held black trousers, black coats, and black stocks, while around the fireplace were an assortment of black Windsor Smith shoes. Shivering in spite of the warm afternoon were a group of Presbyterian ministers clad very largely in old pages of “The Weekly Times”.
As they undressed and wrung out their wet clothes I observed that the faith was not the only thing we affirmed in common. I also noticed that after baptism it did not matter whether you were a Moderator or the parson of the smallest country church, God had created all ministers equal!
The best thing we could do was to get people as dry as possible as quickly as possible, get them in to their cars and on their way. As for me, I laughed all the way back to Ararat, with the keys of the now locked camp site securely in my pocket. It had been a good afternoon in the interests of church union.
So I headed back to the country manse at 90 High Street, opposite the Railway Station, having learnt another lesson in the difficult art of becoming a country parson.
GORDON MOYES
