Sir Alan Walker
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.
In the mid 1960’s as a young minister working in the slums of Melbourne, so many of my colleagues and friends were leaving the pastoral ministry to become social workers, workers among the poor and generally good humanitarians working outside the church system. Constantly people used to say to me, ‘Why do you continue as a pastor in the slums, there are better ways of getting things done by working with refugees, with trade unions and changing policies of governments. One of the reasons I stayed working as a pastor was the example of Rev Alan Walker at the Central Methodist Mission in Sydney. I thought if he was able to make an impact on Australia through working through the Central Methodist Mission then I in my turn should be able to make a go of it in the slums of Melbourne.
Through Alan Walkers books I became inspired and encouraged to continue in the pastoral ministry and in the preaching of the gospel as an evangelist.
In the 1970’s I invited Alan Walker to some of the functions that I organised for ministers in Melbourne. He came to our Summer School for successful ministry and made a big impact on the hundreds of people who came to those special lectures. I was always greatly impressed with Alan Walker. That honouring of a great man, which began in the 60’s in my life, continues to this day.
Alan Walker came from a very old Methodist family. He was one of more than a dozen ministers in the Methodist church that had come from the Walker family. He attended Fort Street High School and the University of Sydney and the Methodist training college for ministers, Lee College at Enfield. He was obviously an extraordinarily bright and promising student. Such was his promise that a couple of businessmen decided that they should send him and his new wife to London to become acquainted with the best of the Methodist Church in the home country.
As a theological student, Alan Walker had ministered in the Hornsby area where he met and married his wife Winifred. He was ordained in 1934 and from their marriage has come one daughter and three sons. Their children are a credit to them.
His first significant ministry was in Cessnock in the Hunter Valley where he worked among the miners. Out of that he wrote a book and did a study project which led to his Master of Arts degree. During the war years, he was an ardent Pacifist having been influenced on a first visit to the United Kingdom by Donald Soaper who later became Lord Soaper of Tower Hill the great leader of a Mission Hall in East London. Working among the coal miners Alan Walker became committed to the principles of socialism, a political commitment that was going to have ramifications later in his life. It was at this time that he was spotted by Dr H V Evatt who ultimately became the first President of the United Nations, and Alan Walker was invited to be an adviser with the official government delegation to the formation of the United Nations in New York in 1949. The year before, he had been a Methodist church delegate to Amsterdam for the formation meeting of the World Council of Churches. Alan was already getting a lust for travel, which would continue throughout his life and for a liking of meeting important people in high places.
While he was in the United States he gave some lectures in Theological Seminaries and developed a strong network that was going to provide him with opportunities for travel in the years to come.
During the early 1950’s while he was ministering in the Waverley Methodist Church in a most acceptable way, that church grew to be a powerful local congregation. He also developed a number of programmes, which would later be enhanced when he came to the Central Methodist Mission. But while he was there he developed a programme entitled “Mission to the Nation” and with key executives from the Methodist Department of Evangelism developed a programme of running evangelistic outreaches and Missions supported by local Methodist Missions in every part of Australia. This would be at a time before Billy Graham came to this land, the biggest co-operative evangelistic outreach in our nation’s history. Alan worked a great deal on the programme and of course everything centred around his public profile in preaching the gospel, in making statements on public social issues, and in using the media to get his message across. It was the most successful co-operative evangelistic endeavour undertaken by Australian Churches in their history.
With some daring, Alan got to speak to waterside workers and to even give a brief message from the centre of a ground at an Essendon football match during half time. I remember listening to dramas produced on the radio, which had a Christian impact. You would think that the Methodist Church would have been over the moon with the national publicity that was being achieved for the Methodist churches through the work of Alan Walker. You would be wrong. In fact Alan faced within the church hierarchy and bureaucracy continued pressures and resistance. People who are bureaucrats can handle the homeless and the poor and know how to send lowly ministers to country parishes but they cannot handle high profile public figures who achieve the support of the population without it coming under the control of church bureaucracy. Alan faced resistance and even at the most successful time of the “Mission Of The Nation” when he wanted that programme continued under the auspices of the Methodist church, the church pulled the rug from under his feet and the “Mission To The Nation” came to a halt.
However, other countries beckoned and Alan Walker moved on to conduct “Mission America” which was no where near as successful as that conducted in Australia but it again supported his public profile in the United States and was in the United Methodist Church. Later he was to undertake similar missions and one in particular in South Africa where he was so outspoken against the government for their continued support of the Apartheid policy resulted in him being banned with threats upon his life.
It is hard to imagine that all of this time he was maintaining the normal responsibilities of a parish minister but Alan had the capacity to spend long periods of time away from home and family and away from his church appointment and yet still keep the people happy for the amount of time he spent in the congregation on his return.
In spite of the success of his ministry at Waverley, he had his heart set upon the top spot for Methodist preachers in Australia – The Central Methodist Mission in Sydney. However the incumbent Dr Frank Raywood had built up an enormous following of people who were loyal and supportive to his very deep people ministry. It was said that Dr Raywood never forgot a name or a face, was able to recall people’s birthdays’ and personal pastoral matters of concern, which endeared him to people. Alan Walker was not that kind of a people person. He battled with ideas and concepts of social injustice and political stupidity and was willing to take on and slay the dragons of political opportunism. I observed both men for many years up close. Dr Raywood would hold you by the hand and look you in the eye and make an inquiry about your mother or your sick uncle whom you had mentioned in passing four months earlier. When you were talking with Alan Walker he looked over your head at the crowds of people milling around looking for significant faces. Their styles of ministry were quite different.
To great sorrow Dr Raywood announced his retirement from the Central Methodist Mission and instantly Alan Walker wanted that position. Some of his friends campaigned for him but within the Central Methodist Mission Councils and governing bodies there was great resistance to his appointment.
When it was announced that the Methodist church had decided to appoint Alan Walker to the Central Methodist Mission, there was great consternation. The time for Dr Raywood to leave had come, because in 1958 he belonged to the old era of Methodism. The 1960’s would demand a new approach. However the appointment of Alan Walker did not go smoothly. Within the quarterly meetings of the church and the executive committee there was opposition, which demanded the submission of further names to be considered of other ministers. The executive rejected his name and declared that an appointment should be left to the conference.
In the upper house, a member of the Legislative Council, the Honourable Richard Thompson declared that they were not willing to call a man who was a pacifist, and internationalist and a socialist who was prepared to let communists speak at church forums and was regarded as pink in his political allegiance.
However the Methodist church held their breath and the conference appointed Alan Walker to the Central Methodist Mission. His work through the 1960’s was going to be a landmark achievement.
The change was for the people in the Sunday evening congregation, which was the largest evening congregation in Australia at the time. Alan Walker brought a social dynamic and an intellectual commitment in his preaching that made people think about themselves, the faith and the social issues that were occurring in the country at that time. The old pleasant Sunday afternoon radically changed into what Walker called the Lyceum platform and there he brought speakers from every organisation throughout the country to give viewpoints on various social justice issues. Alan Walker may not have agreed with these speakers but he gave them an opportunity and then gave a strong personal viewpoint on the issues concerned. Because this Lyceum platform was broadcast over 2CH, it reached a wide audience and sometimes Walker’s social justice statements created consternation over the airwaves. The manager on 2CH on one occasion during the rugged days of Vietnam pulled the plug on him.
Alan Walker was interested not only in the great social issues of the day but meeting the needs of people in Sydney. One of his daring introductions was the development of the teenage cabaret where many young people came to an evening of rock music and dancing at a time when many churches still opposed dancing on church property. He worked with the Christian Television Association in a half hour television series “I Challenge the Minister” which reached excellences audiences and showed that he had the image and the capacity to tackle controversial subjects in a way that made him interesting to a television audience.
Alan was always willing to start something new and even if it didn’t last, it was an attempt to meet another group of people within the community to hear the gospel. He worked with Fred Nile to develop the old Evangelist Institute and to take advantage in the early 1970’s of the Jesus People Movement to develop a student commune in Francis Street. Fred Nile gave great leadership to the programme although few people actually were resident in the Institute.
By most standards of comparison, his work among the children of the Dalmar Child and Family Care and among aged people and the homeless was quite extraordinary. But it wasn’t in Alan’s heart to be totally committed to institutional activities. What did interest him was the concept of a Christian Country Club and the development of Vision Valley. These were some of his greatest achievements. In 1963, Alan walker oppressed with the number of people who needed counselling and support, hit upon the idea of using telephone counsellors who with training would be available 24 hours per day to counsel people with whatever need they had. Thus was born LifeLine which would go on develop from the Central Methodist Mission to 270 cities around the world and win for Walker the prestigious Institute de La Vie award given in Paris jointly to Alan Walker and to the founder of the Samaritan’s telephone counselling service in Great Britain.
The development of LifeLine and Vision Valley and the rebuilding of the front of the Lyceum theatre with a new Wesley Centre following a disastrous fire in 1964 were the great achievements of his ministry.
But even at this time Alan Walker had itchy feet. He was still travelling overseas every year and preaching in missions and lectures in many different countries. In 1970, his peers elected him President of the Methodist Conference of NSW an honour which should have been bestowed on him decades earlier. He turned his presidential year into a re-run of the “Mission to the Nation”, visiting churches and conducting similar type programmes under the theme of “Now for Newness” campaign. It was at this time that Gough Whitlam asked him to stand for Federal Parliament for the old area of Waverley with the promise of if he was elected Gough would appoint him to the Cabinet. Walker thankfully turned down the offer.
Alan Walker had only been at the Central Methodist Mission a matter of half a dozen years when he wrote that the work was unsatisfactory and that he wished he could move on to something more significant. The day to day grind of caring for the poor and the homeless and needy children was not the kind of work in which he found the greatest satisfaction. The trouble was there was no other work in Australia that could match the status, the prestige and the public profile that he was gaining at the Central Methodist Mission so although his heart was not in many of the day-to-day activities of the Mission, he continued on as Superintendent to equal Dr Raywood’s twenty years of service. Most of the management of the Mission was handed over to lay managers.
In the middle of the 1970’s then in his fifteenth year or so of service to the Central Methodist Mission he approached the World Methodist Council with the idea of establishing a new department for evangelism on an international basis of which he would be the director. Over a series of years he argued for the formation of this programme to be known as “World Evangelism” and for himself to be appointed as the first director. In 1978, he was appointed as the director of World Evangelism while he was still Superintendent of the Central Methodist Mission.
That is where I came in to the picture. During 1976 and 1977 I had had a number of contacts with Alan Walker, had visited him in Sydney and he had visited the ministry I was undertaking in Melbourne. I was thirty years younger than Alan Walker but had developed ministries that were strongly influenced by his model of ministry. Upon his appointment to World Evangelism, Alan Walker was to establish another office in Sydney taking with him some of his most loyal and trusted supporters and staff from the Central Methodist Mission. The Mission was left with the task of finding a successor and I was the 46th person who was interviewed and eventually was given the job.
Alan Walker’s ministry at World Evangelism was an extraordinarily significant one. He travelled constantly with Win, his wife, going to the most difficult parts of the world like Cuba and Croatia and into the heart of Africa. He conducted evangelistic missions, taught pastors in schools for pastors and encouraged local churches to develop outreach programmes. He was an evangelist in the sense of Billy Graham although he had none of the infrastructure, organization and support network of Billy Graham. Billy Graham had the extraordinary capacity to build a team of very loyal and supportive workers who worked with him for more than forty years. Alan was supported by a small base in Sydney of loyal supporters and an incredible wife who travelled with him constantly, lecturing and speaking to women on her perspectives of the gospel and enduring the most primitive of accommodation arrangements.
I could never see Alan Walker retiring and the fact that his retirement age at the Central Methodist Mission had arrived when he resigned meant that he needed to look for something new. In one sense the creation of an international programme would look after his retirement for the next ten years after a normal retirement age. Alan wasn’t one to sit back in retirement. However by the time he was 76 you would think he would want to retire and so did a number of other people who were directing World Evangelism.
Alan retired from World Evangelism only to commence a new ministry in establishing the Pacific College of Evangelism in Northmead. That Pacific College was established in 1988 with Alan as the first principal. This time students would travel to Australia from across the Pacific where Alan would lecture them in evangelism and churchmanship. He continued that work until his late 80’s when the Board of the Pacific College of Evangelism decided to name it in his honour The Alan Walker College of Evangelism. He was still doing the work of an evangelist and training young pastors in proclaiming the gospel. This week it was my privilege to preside over a meeting of 60 old and dear friends who came together in Wesley Centre where after some speeches of congratulations we invited him to cut his birthday cake celebrating his 90th birthday. Perhaps Alan Walker has now retired. Certainly he and Win have this year moved into a retirement village, but knowing Alan Walker, I wouldn’t count on any retirement.
I believe that Alan Walker has been the most significant parish minister in the 20th Century in Australia. He is one of our living legends among all Australians and one who has been honoured by the Queen with the order of the British Empire and a Knight Bachelor, which helped open many doors for his ministry around the world. He was a man who was the equivalent of a Ferrari racing car on a track when there were mainly Fords and Volkswagons. I honour him.
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.
