Part of the Problem or Part of the Answer?
When I was a boy growing up in Box Hill my old home town, I had not the faintest notion that I would ever go into the ministry. My family had no connection with the church, my parents never attended during my father’s life and after his death my mother supported us while we went to Sunday School as children but never attended herself.
The slender line of contact with the Sunday School, was the only continuing contact that the church had with me until the time when I was 13 and I met a new blonde girl who came to our church by the name of Beverley, and fell head over heels in love with her. As she and her mother asked questions about the Christian Endeavour, I determined that I would join as well. So I became an active member.
After my commitment to Christ and baptism I became a member of the church but there was still no thought of entering the ministry. I was having too much fun.
High school days for me were some of the happiest days I could possibly imagine. I took no part in any Christian group at high school, I was far too mischievous, caused too much disruption with teachers and other pupils, loved sports, musicals and, in particular, athletics far too much for the meetings, discussion, Bible study and prayer of the Christian groups.
High school, however, played an important part in my decision to enter the ministry. It was in the secular influences of the high school that some Christian gentlemen had a profound effect upon my life.
My music teacher and leader of the Australian Boys Choir, Mr. Vincent J. Kelly, always went to Mass every week, encouraged us to sing some of the great religious oratorios by Mozart and Handel and saw a religious purpose in everything.
My Latin master for six years, Jack Guthrie, was as tough as old leather, a disciplinarian and a man of rigid moral principles. He did not know it, but his influence on justice for the underdog and fair play was to make a profound influence on my teenage years. Saintly Mr. Toussaint, a quiet Christian man, had a profound effect upon everybody he met. He died during our school years and 900 boys lined the main avenue into Box Hill cemetery to pay respect to this quiet, non athletic kindly schoolmaster who influenced so many of us into the Christian way of love and compassion.
Our church youth clubs were sheer fun. Of course I was learning Christian teachings as we went but the main purpose was nothing less than a continued list of outings, parties, picnics, banquets, social activities interspersed with Bible studies, prayer meetings, religious dramas and studying for some religious examinations. I elected to do a study on the life of St. Paul and when I began to read books on his life, was profoundly impressed with the reality of Jesus Christ in his own life.
The turning point came when I was 17. At a Christian Endeavour meeting two rather nondescript students from the Churches of Christ theological College of the Bible came and spoke to us about what life was like as a theological student. I realised that people training for the ministry were just every ordinary people like myself.
Sometime in the fifth year of high school I was going through a period of intense inner rebellion against the school and many of the influences in society at large. My mate Ziggy and I discussed the merits of Marxism, socialism, the degeneracy of capitalism and democracy, and the plight of the poor within society. At the same time I was rebellious against authority and doing all I could to disrupt the course of events at school.
But a sentence bluntly turned my life around. I will never forget the sentence. Pointing out the consequences of my disruptive behaviour and radical attitudes my Headmaster, W.M. (Bill) Woodfull , the former Captain of the Australian Test Cricket team, said: “In this life you are either part of the problem or part of the answer. Which are you?” He was a committed Christian.
I pondered that question as I became increasingly more involved in trouble. I decided then and there that I was going to be part of the answer to society’s problems rather than part of the problem. I determined to help other young people and threw myself immediately into running all kinds of youth programmes, organising and compering city wide youth concerts that attracted hundreds of young people on the first Saturday of each month, and began taking active leadership in church youth camps. I wanted to get alongside troublesome mischief makers in the community, young delinquents and breakers of the law in whose number I had been so recently prominent. I determined that as soon as I reached the age of 21 I would become, as I did, a probation and a parole officer, and go to courts and sit beside those young men and women who were going off the rails in their teenage years.
Suddenly my whole life began to turn round. I had purpose and direction. Half way through the Fifth Form my marks escalated immensely.
I enjoyed study and after years of just struggling to get a pass mark I suddenly found my results placed me among the top students in the class. Year 12 saw a firming of the purpose to go into ministry, to study at Melbourne University and at the College of the Bible to become a local pastor involved in a ministry of helpfulness to young people who were part of society’s problems.
Three things made the difference. I had the support of the most wonderful steady relationship with a fine Christian girl, Beverley, with whom I had been going steady since our thirteenth year and who today is my wife of 46 years. The second influence was that I now had a purpose and direction in my life. The third was that I began to understand the reality of the presence of Jesus Christ in my life. He was my hero, a man who stood above every man and one whom I would serve as master.
The reality of the manhood of Jesus came home to me with profound impact and as I understood more his divinity my allegiance to him became rock firm. In my 17th year I decided that there could be no other task in my life than to be a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I told other people joyfully. I was invited immediately to be a temporary preacher at a little inner suburban church at Newmarket and I took my first services in my 17th year. I preached with conviction urging people go commit their lives to Jesus Christ. I brought my friends to services. It was not a big church, and in my first service there were only 14 people present and 11 of them were my friends or relatives! But I was going to be a preacher of the gospel.
My commitment to Christ and to ministry was confirmed by a number of people.
One of my teachers who for the past six years had taught me English Literature, Mr. A.A. Allinson, started talking to me seriously during a spare period at 3 o’clock one afternoon and kept talking to me until 6 p.m. trying to argue me out of becoming a minister. He urged me instead to get into the infant television industry that would soon arrive in Australia, or go to acting school and go upon the stage, or to teachers college and help young people by being a teacher in fact anything and everything that may fulfil my particular interests and talents other than the ministry. At 6 p.m. the cleaners wanted to lock the door of the class room and finally he said to me: “I am a practising Christian. I am absolutely thrilled you are going into the ministry, but I wanted to make sure that the conversion that has occurred in your life was for real. I believe you should go into the ministry only if you have no other possible alternative. I have offered you every conceivable alternative but you keep insisting on answering Christ’s call and going into the ministry. Well, you go with my prayers and my blessing.”
Unknown to me for the three hours he had been praying that I would become a minister but determined that he would keep out of the ministry any person unless they had a depth and reality of call.
My local minister was not at all helpful. Mr. W.A. Wigney told me bluntly: “You are too young. I cannot recommend you until several years have gone by and I have seen this new stability in your character and enthusiasm for Christian things supported by some years of evidence.”
Those words were to haunt me. Twenty eight years later in a car talking to my second son who had gone through a similar difficult time in his rebellious life I repeated those same words to David. We were hurting for him. He seemed so uncertain about his future direction and was not concentrating on his studies. I decided to take time out and speak to him privately and in a beautiful way he told me he wanted to succeed in his studies “because for more than a year now, Dad, I have known what I have wanted to do with my life. I have told my closest friends and they agree, but I have not wanted to tell you in case my studies were not good enough and you would be disappointed. I want to be a minister like you Dad and I want to work in a local church as a parish minister helping people.”
It was a moving moment in our family but I found myself saying “You are too young, son.” to which he looked at me with firm eye and said “But I am older than you were when you decided to go into the ministry Dad”. A few years later, I would I lecture in a Theological College of 70 ministry students including my son David and son in law Ron Schepis, both of whom have become outstanding ministers.
From that moment of my decision to enter the College of the Bible I began work practising preaching on upturned banana boxes in my lounge room at home and taking as many services, youth camps and youth activities as I could. At the beginning of the year I packed my bags, left home, moved into the College of the Bible and commenced studies for theology and at Melbourne University.
An entire new chapter of my life was opening up. The Box Hill era had suddenly come to an end.
Who would ever have thought as one of the young mischief makers of Box Hill that I would in later years come back to conduct evangelistic missions in the same town hall? I never thought that I would be a minister as I used to walk home, pondering my future, along Bank Street, beside the railway line to the top of the hill and to No.5 Miller Street, or up Devon Street, opposite the cow paddock, to No.55 Birdwood Street, Box Hill, a great city which was then only a village, where the adults were kind and the children grew up responsibly.
GORDON MOYES
