Shifting
My life has fallen into a few stages.
As a child, I lived in Box Hill when it was a Village. I then became Pastor to the Slums of Inner Melbourne for eight years. I was then a Country Parson and a Teacher at a One Teacher Bush School out at Jackson Creek in Western Victoria and then for thirteen years, I was a Suburban Minister in one of Australia’s largest suburban ministries.
And now, for more than 20 years I’ve been Superintendent in Sydney of Wesley Mission, Australia’s largest church ministry.
I’ve told you stories of people in each of these places.
Tonight I want you to come with me into the heart of the city.
Shifting into the parsonage at Roseville just prior to my commencement of ministry should have been an easy affair. It wasn’t.
I didn’t understand many things about Sydney people in those days.
The first time when I was asked where I lived and I replied “Roseville” I was met with an unexpected response; “Oh! So you’re a North Shore snob”. I had never encountered before the North Shore and south of the Harbour tensions. I hadn’t realized how clearly defined the North Shore, Eastern Suburbs, Inner West and Far Western Suburbs were in the life of Sydney.
There are very definite demarcation lines. Anybody who is used to ministering over a whole city very quickly comes to note and appreciate the differences.
Someone growing up and working in the Eastern Suburbs has quite different attitudes and often inflections in speech from those growing up in the outer Western Suburbs. It was also obvious between the North Shore and those who lived on the Southern Shore of Sydney Harbour.
We certainly weren’t North Shore snobs and the only reason I was living in a house at Roseville was that I was expected to live in this house, which had housed the Superintendents of Wesley Mission since 1928 – long before there was even a Harbour Bridge. The Three Superintendents before me for over 60 years had occupied this house.
As a matter of fact I had never before seen a house in which we would live before we had agreed to become minister of that church. I always said that I was prepared to live anywhere the church provided and as a result, in the previous 21 years had moved into three manses in deplorable condition sight unseen. Churches are generally not good property managers for their employees.
This time I decided to look at the Manse or Parsonage first. My first visit appalled me. The house built in 1928 was very much a house of its era. It was very dark. It had a small, inadequate kitchen, which was not large enough to put in even the smallest of tables. It had small windows, although beautifully glazed in lead light. The interior was dingy and lights had to be put on whenever you moved from room to room, even in the height of summer. The laundry was totally inadequate and was built at the back of the garage at the very far corner of the back yard. There was only cold water. Hot water had to be carried in buckets from the kitchen to the laundry every day for washing. Immediately outside the back door on the verandah was an old hot water service looking totally out of place. The carpets were worn threadbare in places and in some places the stitching had parted, leaving the floorboards showing and constant use had worn away the underfelt.
The Central Methodist Mission had a Property Committee, which was responsible for looking after the condition of the houses in which its ministers lived. I couldn’t imagine how Rev. Alan & Win Walker had lived in this house for so long. The problem was that the Property Committee had delegated its responsibility to one man and he was not keen to spend any money on properties. Consequently, as I was to discover, the three houses used by the Mission to house it’s ministers were all in equally bad repair.
Meanwhile the man in charge of property maintenance remained in favour with those responsible for the church budgets because he didn’t spend any money. The result was that the ministers put up with what I described as deplorable conditions. I cannot understand how a church would have allowed Mrs. Win Walker to carry buckets of hot water everyday to the laundry at the rear of the garage in order to do her washing.
The trouble was we were rather spoilt. We had lived in a brand new Manse, which had been built, during our ministry in Cheltenham. It was very large, had ceiling to floor windows and was centrally heated. It had new carpets and wall hangings and was indeed very comfortable. However, I had always been anxious to get my own home so that in the event of my death, my wife would have a permanent place in which she could call her own. So consequently in spite of low salary and a fairly difficult financial position, we had purchased our own home in Melbourne. We had recently upgraded it and had moved into a very fine solid brick house only recently constructed.
Churches have traditionally provided a vickerage, manse or parsonage in much the same way as banks used to provide accommodation for managers as they shifted around the State.
It’s important to understand that a minister did not live in a parsonage or manse rent-free. In real terms the rent was deducted before the salary was paid. Ministers were often quoted as receiving a salary plus free accommodation but, in reality, the cost of rent was deducted from the salary. In general it was a very bad deal for the minister and a good deal for the church. The churches were able to move their men regularly from place to place with the ministers merely shifting into fairly similar styles of housing. But by always living in rented premises the ministers were subsidizing the churches. The churches got the appreciation of all of the property value. Our North Shore parsonage for example had appreciated over the years tremendously but no minister had benefited from that, it was the church only that took the benefit of capital appreciation while the ministers subsidized the church by paying rent. Upon retirement, after 40 or more years of service, the minister and his wife did not own any property, but continued to rent for the rest of their days. Church denominations did have retirement housing allowances which were usually enough to pay a deposit on a house but because they had retired, no bank would lend the rest of the purchase price.
My immediate impression in coming into such a dark and dingy building was to say that we would live in our own home which we would buy somewhere in Sydney. The Officers of the Mission at the time thought that that would not be possible, certainly, not desirable for the Superintendent to live in his own home. One of the Officers said “what would other parishes think of Wesley Central Mission if we did not provide a home for it’s Superintendent?” The Officers were so adamant about us living in the provided property and had written to me extensively on the subject that we decided we would give way on the issue. So provided the carpet was repaired (it was restitched and eventually replaced about 12 years later). The kitchen was extended to fit a table for our children and a new laundry and toilet was provided at the rear of the house complete with hot water, we were happy to move in. Twelve years later the Mission added a magnificent study, the envy of every other minister or writer, and re-carpeted the whole house.
As it happened we sold our home in Melbourne and we bought a new house on the Central Coast which we have maintained over the years.
It would have been financially better if Wesley Mission had sold their parsonage, invested the proceeds or else reduced the Mission debt at the time and paid us a housing allowance for living in our own home. Mind you, the housing allowance in those days was so low it wouldn’t have helped us much but it would have given the Mission a considerable financial advantage. The housing allowance paid for to a minister who lived in his own home in the beginning of the 1980’s was only $50 per week – as if you could ever rent a house for $50!
But shifting into Roseville did not cause either Beverley or myself a great deal of problem. It was the children who faced a difficult shift.
We had intended that our children should attend local high and primary schools. I had written in advance to the principals of the nearest local high school and primary school. We received a wonderful reply from the primary school and we knew our children would be happy from all that we read and learned of Lindfield Demonstration School. We never received a reply from Chatswood High School.
When I came, having written two letters without reply, I went to visit the school. I walked past graffiti covered walls and ringing in my ears were the comments made by two local people who told us that drug usage was rife among some students of that time. Walking into the school I was so depressed by its surroundings that I decided to walk back out and go and look at two of the Uniting Church private schools in the area. I was very committed to public education and for 13 years had taught every week in the Cheltenham High School, teaching religious instruction to every student in every class at every level in the school. I was also on the Advisory Council of parents and local citizens who advised the Principal on the conduct of the school. But now I was turning my back on public education and went to two private schools.
I did so with some trepidation because the fees would take between one third and one half of my entire salary. Whether we would have enough to live with the other half of the salary and pay the mortgage that remained on our own home, was going to be a problem.
When I commenced at Wesley Central Mission, the Mission salary was $10,300 per annum. My previous salary at the Cheltenham Church of Christ was $15,000. Now a third of $10,300 would go to school fees. Another third would go to house mortgage payments. It was going to be extremely difficult to survive on $3,500 a year. I didn’t know of any one in any senior position of management who would actually go from a place that paid $15,000 per annum to a place that paid $10,300 per annum. Many people would think us mad to drop one third of salary and not live in our own home – but we were convinced that God had called us to this ministry at Wesley Mission Sydney and we were prepared to come on those terms and not argue about them.
Thank God for Phyllis Evans and Ian Patterson. Miss Evans, the Principal of Ravenswood, willingly admitted our daughter Jenny on the first interview and gave us a discount on her fees.
Unfortunately things did not go smoothly with Jenny’s education because she had just finished year 11 at Cheltenham High School in Victoria and had scored high marks. Miss Evans looked sympathetically, “you got extremely good marks young lady, but unfortunately the New South Wales Education Department does not have Australian History as a subject. I see also that you got top marks in English literature. Well unfortunately the New South Wales Education Department doesn’t believe in English literature either so none of those marks can count towards your H.S.C. combined mark for years 11 and 12. There is nothing else that you can do but repeat Year 11”.
I protested, “New South Wales is not interested in Australian history? I cannot believe that. They don’t have any English literature, no poets, no novels, and no great writings? I cannot believe this State”. However Jenny submitted and she willingly repeated Year 11 in spite of the fact that she had already passed it with flying colours. I cannot say that Jenny was happy at this stage. Her boyfriend from Melbourne had not written as promised. She was going to be in for some sad weeks but girls in the school proved friendly and she had no difficulty with subjects, especially those she had already passed.
The boys however landed on their feet. Dr. Ian Patterson at Knox welcomed Peter in willingly and to my surprise, when he learned that we would over the next couple of years add two more sons to the school insisted that I be given a very large discount. Suddenly the problem of fees faded away and Ian Patterson assured that our three sons would become valued members of Knox Grammar. Mind you Peter also had a rough first day or two. He had said to me for two weeks everyday that he would never wear a straw boater. Our children had never seen straw boaters as worn by a few of the private schools in Sydney. No private school in Melbourne used the old straw boater. “I’m never going to wear one of those straw boaters”. Of course he did but on every occasion he took it off. His first couple of days were pretty rugged because Dr. Patterson called for a junior teacher to take Peter to the appropriate class. Taking him around the large school he eventually dropped him off in a class. Peter all day sat in the classroom with his fellow students and followed them around from room to room as they undertook various subjects. But nothing made sense. It was only at the end of a couple of days did he realise that the junior teacher had by error taken him to the wrong class of a much more senior year.
Our two youngest boys at Lindfield Demonstration School found a school that really suited them in every way and their schooling very quickly became a most enjoyable experience. Those boys later on went to Knox and our three sons received a fine education.
I have a great deal of sympathy for children who shift States or countries. They have to learn a new language, learn new sports (and in our case change from Australian Rules Football to Rugby Union). Of course there were new uniforms, new subjects, friends, customs and culture. Melbourne is not that far from Sydney but in terms of school culture and educational standards our children may have well come from Iran or Bangladesh. One of these days we are going to learn that Australia is not only a Federation, but that it is one country.
That first week of settling in to the new parsonage at Roseville was extraordinarily difficult. There is a struggle enough in shifting to break some families, but in our case it strengthened us as a family. We had a habit in those days when our children lived at home, that each night, after the evening meal, we would each take down from a kitchen shelf six Bibles and we would take a Bible reading each. Each person would read a verse in turn. We would then hold hands and each person would pray for each other or for problems or difficulties another person around the table might be having. Sometimes this led to uproar as when one brother would pray for an emerging pimple on his sister’s cheek. Sometimes one son – always a son – would consider himself a comedian and mispronounce words in the Bible reading which lead to a great deal of laughter from his younger brothers. And often there were tears around the table as some troubled member spoke of some difficulty. But this process which to be awkward at the time, built a real sense of community between members of the family. It was in the kitchen that this evening ritual held us together when all of us at times felt like fleeing from the scene and the house and Sydney.
One thing held us fast, an unchangeable belief that God wanted us here at Wesley Mission Sydney. Nothing would shake that conviction and in spite of all the difficulties of shifting we were going to stay.
The city of Sydney would grow to be one of the world’s great cities and Wesley Mission would grow to be one of the world’s great churches and I was privileged to spend each day in the heart of both.