Weekend Evangelist and Colour TV
The arrival of another son marked the Moyes second year in Cheltenham. On the 27th of July, 1967, David became the adored baby brother of 2 1/2 year old Peter and 5 year old Jenny—to say nothing of a whole church full of proxy uncles, aunts, cousins and doting grandparents.
Gordon, of course, basked in the reflected glory generated by the arrival of a second son.
“Anyone’d think he did it all by hisself,” one of the old ladies whispered good-naturedly to her neighbour as they watched Gordon proudly bearing little David around to be admired.
“These men!” responded the other old lady tartly. “It’s us women as does all the work.”
The old lady was correct as far as the child-bearing and caring was concerned, but no one could accuse Rev Gordon Moyes of not being a hard worker. As his fame spread so the requests for his services increased. Dubbed “The Week-end Evangelist,” Gordon criss-crossed Australia so often that he lost count of the number of flights he made in a year.
A typical week-end began with Gordon arriving at his destination on Friday morning. Dictated by the size of the town and his time of arrival, he and the officers of his host church spent the morning or afternoon giving an interview to the local newspaper reporter, speaking over local radio or being interviewed by the nearest TV compere.
Friday night he spoke at a well-advertised evangelistic rally held in the largest venue available—be it a public hall, a high school auditorium or a church.
Saturday morning began with a Men’s Breakfast at which he challenged his hearers to become God’s men. The remainder of the morning he met with Church leaders of all denominations, or Sunday School teachers—whatever had been arranged by the local committee.
Saturday lunch time was reserved for the ladies. All Protestant churches have Women’s Fellowship, Ladies’ Aid, Dorcas Society or something similar, and Gordon reserved a special message for them.
Saturday afternoon he either conducted evangelistic seminars—teaching laymen how to reach people for Christ, or leading them out door-knocking and personally witnessing from house to house.
Whatever shape it took, Saturday night was for meeting the people in a relaxed, family atmosphere. Depending on weather and circumstances, as many as possible gathered around a barbecue or a basket tea, or a formal dinner. After that came a Youth Rally in a local hall.
Until he was in his late thirties Gordon had no problem relating to young people and they to him. He could not possibly conduct a full blown Teen-Week in the couple of hours available on a week-end visit, but often his message created so much interest that after the meeting many of the youth lingered on to talk over their problems.
How much sleep Gordon managed on such Saturday nights is debatable, but Sunday morning found him up at first kookaburra laugh and ready to preach at one, two, or three small country churches. Or to another huge combined meeting held in a wool-shed or an RSL Hall or, because it was the largest building in the district, a Roman Catholic Church.
Sunday afternoon usually found him flying back to Melbourne in time to take the Sunday evening service in his own church.
A lesser mortal would have been completely drained after speaking at so many public and private meetings and expending so much nervous energy, but not Gordon. He appeared to thrive on it. If he ever became tired or grouchy no one except Beverley knew about it—and she did not tell.
“I knew they’d have to do it,” Gordon observed looking up from the daily newspaper one morning.
“Do what?”
“It says here that Colour TV has become popular so fast that Station GDV Channel 9 has just spent millions of dollars on colour cameras and TV equipment. Hmm, I suppose that will call for a lot of programme changes, too.”
Gordon knew that Channel 9 featured mid-nightly epilogues as the one at Ballarat had done, with different speakers appearing on brief religious segments, but he had not approached the city station. Hence he was surprised a few weeks later to be invited to present himself at GDV for an audition. Excitedly he read the letter to Beverley and then exclaimed,
“It must be because of the work with BDV Channel 6 in Ballarat, Bev, someone must have suggested my name.”
Circumstances seldom embarrassed Gordon, but the morning he arrived for the audition and found the Anglican Dean of Melbourne already in the studio’s waiting room, he felt himself blushing.
The Dean was one of the best known men in the city, Dean of the Anglican Cathedral of St Paul’s and a Christian leader par excellence far ahead of Pastor Moyes in every way.
Now as they sat together at GDV studio making small-talk while they waited, Gordon became acutely aware of the contrast between them. At this time it was the fashion for young men to wear bell- bottom trousers and Gordon’s powder-blue suit had the widest of flares. With the blue suit he wore a maroon shirt and a wide white necktie that complemented his snowy shoes. Longer-than-normal hair and long sideburns completed the picture of an exceedingly `with-it’ young man about town.
Given three guesses no stranger would have said that Gordon was a minister of religion: whereas the Dean was a picture of dignity in his black suit and stock and his gleaming white clerical collar.
As the conversation continued the ill-ease increased. Although the Dean did not say anything Gordon felt uncomfortably sure that the great man did not consider his younger colleague’s stylish outfit befitted a member of the clergy.
Along the hall from the waiting room a red light went off, a door opened and Sam Chisolm, the manager of GDV, strode into the room. He eyed the two men, “Reverend Thomas and Reverend Moyes, I presume?”
At their affirmative nods he turned to the Anglican Dean, “We have just paid nearly six million dollars to equip this station for colour TV and you are dressed in black and white.” He smiled and shook his head. “Thank you, sir, we’ll call you if we need you.”
Stunned, Gordon stared at the door closing behind the Anglican Dean. With all his experience at Ballarat TV and his appearances on other TV programmes he thought he knew a lot about facing the camera, but until then he had not realized that TV was all about the medium itself, not the message.
He had stumbled across a television truth first uttered by Marshall McLuhan: “The Medium is the Message.”
That night, after the children were tucked into bed and Beverley had time to listen, Gordon told her about the experience. “TV is vastly different from radio. You’ve got to be young and presentable to get onto TV. It doesn’t matter so much about your voice or your message, you’ve got to look good.”
Beverley smiled. “That must be why I’ve never seen a grand- mother reading the news.”
Gordon nodded. “Do you remember seeing the American elections on TV? Poor old Nixon came over really drab, five-o’clock shadow and all that. He made such a negative impression on viewers that the Opposition made up a slogan to go with his picture, `Would you buy a used car from this man?’
“On the other hand John Kennedy presented well: young, handsome, curly hair. He won the election, not on his political platform, but on his looks.”
“Then you’d better go for it now,” Beverley teased, “before you get too old to wear white shoes and flares.”
Gordon didn’t need her advice, his mind was already in top gear working out how he could get more TV coverage for the Gospel.
As time passed he learned that even though his religious segments were at the unlikely hour of 12:30 a.m more than a quarter of a million people in Melbourne watched GDV until the close of transmission. He felt humbled when he realized that he was preaching to more people in one night than Jesus had preached to in his entire lifetime.
