Summer School
My life has fallen into a few stages.
As a child, I lived in Box Hill when it was 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 13 years, I was a suburban minister in one of Australia’s largest suburban ministries.
And then, for more than 27 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 1980 I ran the first of a series of programs the Wesley Mission was to run over the next year for ministers. Although they were fully trained and ordained ministers working in local parishes, I had always been concerned because so many men in ministry did not know how to develop some of the practical skills needed to run an organisation like a church. A local church can be a very significant affair. For example the church I had left to come to Sydney had 15 paid staff, well over a thousand people a week involved in activities, hundreds of volunteers, had just completed building 4 large retirement centres costing millions of dollars. I taught more than a thousand young people and students a week and had hundreds of people engaged in sporting teams in competitions. We had a whole range of social services to the community, were counselling the mentally ill, were visiting the frail and the aged and I had shared with countless tens of thousands in some 2000 weddings and a thousand funerals.
To do all of this effectively and efficiently as well as to raise the money needy, acquired considerable ability.
They never taught you those abilities in theological seminaries or theological colleges. I had observed from lecturing in many theological colleges over the years in this and other countries, that the people who were usually given the task of teaching young men and women the arts of ministry were those who had skills and abilities in very esoteric and specialised subjects like Hebrew, Anthropology, New Testament Greek, Early Church History and so on. The esoteric subjects were of great interest to help a person become theologically astute, but none of these subjects made them an effective and practical minister. Furthermore I notice that in the main lecturers who were given jobs in theological colleges were never people who had had successful pastoral ministries themselves. The most successful and able ministers in local churches preferred to stay there. Consequently the new generation of ministers were being taught by people who didn’t have the skills and abilities themselves in the first place. Something more was needed, particularly when the minister already had a few years of experience so that he would know what his problems were.
I had a written a book in 1972 entitled “How to Grow an Australian Church” that had started an avalanche of requests to come to local areas to talk to groups of ministers and lay church leaders on how to develop their congregations. Invitations came from every State of Australia and virtually every sizeable city in the nation. I gave hundreds of lectures on church growth to gatherings of ministers all over the nation. About 15,000 ministers attended these lectures. The trouble was while I was trying to lead a growing and increasingly busy ministry myself I was getting on planes to fly at all across the nation and to New Zealand and other places to lecture others. It was a very inefficient way of spreading the news. What if I reversed the process? I would stay in Cheltenham Victoria at my church, we would open up all of our buildings and bring hundreds of people from all over Australia to our church where I would assemble a team of people who would lecture with me. I would call this approach “Summer School for Successful Ministry.” This kind of thing had never been done before in Australia.
Here was a group of people, successful in their own ministry, lecturing others who came from all over the nation, during January when things would be quiet enough for most to be able to leave. It was a big venture, because I wanted to bring together outstanding leaders of growing Christian congregations from across the nation. I advertised in all the church papers around Australia and indicated that I had already secured the services of Australia’s outstanding ministers as guest lecturers. In the first programme Rev. Dr. Alan Walker from Sydney was attending and a host of others. People like Bishop Jack Dane, Rev Bill Adams, Mr Kevin Crawford, Rev Michael Denis, Dr. Bruce Peterson, Rev. Dr. Dudley Ford, Rev. David Cohen and dozen more joined my lecturing programme. The response was amazing. Ministers came from all across the nation and from every denomination. Some stayed in hotels and motels nearby but most we billeted in the homes of church members who really enjoyed having these ministers in their homes. I ran special programmes on “Australian theology”, “How to Improve your Communication Skills”, “Strategy for the Church Growth”, “How to Harness Youth Power in Evangelism”, “Better Ways of Teaching Children in Worship Services”, “Developing ministries to Single Adults”, and so on. The Ministers would share meals together and then go into workshops, which would be running concurrently on all of these themes. At night they would listen to some of the finest preachers from all denominations in the nation.
The first such course I ran attracted 500 people and all of our facilities were absolutely packed. The following January and for the next four January’s I ran these “Summer Schools for Successful Ministry” with the last one I conducted in Sydney having 300 ministers and 1500 church leaders attending.
The last couple of “Summer Schools for Successful Ministries” were held at Vision Valley after I having come to Sydney. Vision Valley was superb and there was no cheaper family holiday rate available anywhere near Sydney. My idea was, the minister would come and spend the week in study programs while his wife and children took advantage of the delightful settings of Vision Valley for rest and holiday activity. We had horses for riding the trails, canoes on the lake, rock climbing, bush walking, a lovely swimming pool and unparalleled bush beauty. People could live in motel like family lodges with family rooms with ensuites. In our main three-story central building there would be the dining room and cafeteria, the lounge, the auditorium, lecture rooms and the shop. Those ministers who owned a caravan could bring their caravan and stay on the Valley. That way the minister and his family would enjoy a good holiday and at the same time he would be able to brush up on his skills to improve his ministry in the local congregation. To Vision Valley we brought the most outstanding team of Christian leaders at that time ever assembled in Australia.
They all had one thing in common; in their own field they were outstandingly successful because they had developed their skills and had the capacity to pass those skills on to those who were attending.
The response of ministers from Churches all over the nation was amazing. We ran courses conducted by some of Australia’s best-known church leaders in practical lectures, in seminars in church growth, in administration, management skills, the better use of time and leadership, we provided one on one personal guidance in acquiring skills in evangelistic outreach with a strong emphasis upon community service, counselling and ministry development, with specialised guidance on children’s, youth and singles ministry.
One thing always valued when I ever went to a conference, was picking up new ideas from other people. I have before me as I speak to you now, a copy of the paper I presented to every participant listing a hundred new ideas which were able to be used in local congregations. These were not old and traditional but fresh and brand new concepts. Over the next few years I received scores of letters from ministers telling me how they had put into action one or more of these ideas effectively in their own parish.
About this time I was speaking to Billy Graham. Over a meal together he asked me if I would be willing to go overseas twice a year to lecture ministers in cities wherever he was taking major evangelistic crusades. I indicated to him that twice a year was too much, what with the growing demands of our own work, but that at least once a year or so would be happy to join such a pastor’s school and lecture ministers on the work that I greatly loved. So it was a few months later I set out for the first of these ministers schools which was held in Silicon Valley in San Jose California. I had about a thousand or in 1100 ministers in the seminars, which I addressed. This in turn led to other invitations to do similar lecturering to ministers including two very large conferences in Amsterdam. These were international conferences for itinerent Evangelists with about 10,000 ministers and evangelists present on each occasion. This was a wonderful experience of getting to know leaders from around the world and to work hand in hand with so many grass-root pastors, teachers and evangelists.
About this time I was approached to see if I would lecture in a more serious note for students who were receiving their Master of Theology or Doctor of Ministry degrees in the field of “Urban Mission”. This is how to build up substantial churches in the hearts of large cities. This of course was exactly what I was doing at Wesley Mission in Sydney. I was surprised that in many parts of the world, for example in the United States, churches of all denominations had largely fled the downtown areas of the city and relocated in suburbs leaving in the downtown city to ethnic groups, small store shop frontages and to the ever increasing numbers of people engaged in crime and violence. I regarded effective and successful ministries in the heart of down town areas of the world’s great cities as one of the most important things the church could do. If the church failed to win the cities to the way of Jesus Christ then it would fail in its total mission.
The church during the 19th and 20th centuries had placed significant resources in overseas missions building hospitals, schools and preaching points in villages of the two third thirds world. The trouble was it wasn’t villages that were growing. Right around the world in countries that had rapidly expanding populations, the rural and village life was being decimated as people left to work in the big cities. And in the big cities there were not enough ministers who knew how to effectively reach the city for Christ. 18 of the largest 25 cities of the world were in poor developing countries.
Over the years I have continued with the Emanuel School of Religion in Johnson city Tennessee, giving lectures to mature ministers from major cities across America on Urban Mission. I would normally stay for two weeks and lecture those students everyday from early in the morning to mid-afternoon when we would conduct a seminar examining their particular situations.
This gave me a network of contacts in urban Missions around the world that proved to be extremely valuable. Emmanuel School of Religion appointed me their adjunct Professor of Christian Ministry.
It wasn’t long after this that it was suggested that I give lectures to ministers in the growing churches of Korea.
Korea is the most amazing success story of church growth of the 20th century. The largest churches of almost every denomination are to be found in Korea. They are quite used to having congregations of 50,000 people and when Billy Graham visited Korea on two occasions more than 2 million sat in carefully marked out squares on a huge airport tarmac in order for him to address them. These were certainly the largest church gatherings ever held in history and probably the largest gatherings of any kind held in the history of mankind.
My first thought was that the ministers in Korea would not need help in their work because so many of them were so effective and so successful. But once more I found the same old problem; ministers were being trained by people in theological colleges who were not successful themselves but were very competent in their esoteric subjects, and the ministers were not being trained in the most practical skills and arts of ministries that they required.
The people promoting this particular series of lectures in Korea came from “Ministry” magazine—an interdenominational worldwide publication, staggered me with their thoughts.
I would not only lecture the ministers in an auditorium of a University in Korea, but via satellite my lectures would be taken live to some 35 different countries of the world and be translated simultaneously into 13 or more languages. This would cover all of Eastern Europe, Russia, China, South East Asia, Japan, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand and the west coasts of South America, Mexico, United States and Canada. There were several hundred such seminars organised around the world with tens of thousands of ministers present as I spoke to them.
In April 2002 I went to Edinburgh and deliver some lectures on ministry in the University of Edinburgh. These again will be taken via satellite and televised to hundreds of seminar being held at the same time in countries throughout Europe, Africa, South Africa, the East Coast of Canada, United States, and down to the countries of South America. In 2007 I repeated the series in Cambridge University, I am absolutely amazed at how the idea that we have developed over the years in these “Summer Schools Successful Ministries” are now being expanded and used by ministers literally all around the world.
From what we have developed here in Sydney with a church that has now reached 3000 paid staff in 486 buildings, we are taking the message of church development to ministers in churches in countries literally right around the world.
Although this has only been one aspect of a normal ministry it has been a most effective and satisfying wine.
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 life.