Our greatest church planter
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.
One of my greatest joys in becoming Superintendent to the City was to be Chairman of the Pacific Islands Council in Sydney—a meeting place for hundreds of people whose home and racial original lay in the islands of the Pacific Ocean.
I became the Superintendent of a rapidly growing work among Pacific Islanders, spending my time worshipping in languages I did not understand, sorting out visa problems which I did understand, and attending to hundreds of people with unemployment and welfare problems.
Fijian services were first held in Wesley Chapel in 1961 after Rev Stanley Cowled and his wife conducted them on a regular basis. In 1972 Rev Mosese Latu of the Tongan Church was appointed part-time minister to the growing congregation. Subsequently, the General Secretary of Methodist Overseas Missions, Rev Cec Gribble and the then Superintendent of the Central Methodist Mission Rev Alan Walker, saw the need for more recognition of a Pacific Islanders congregation. The islanders were formed into the Leader’s Meeting within the Mission and a full-time minister was appointed—Rev Jone Langi, a Rotuman.
The growth continued under the dedicated leadership of Rev Savinata Mahe, from Tonga.
Large congregations meet in Wesley Chapel at 3pm each Sunday (First Sunday—Fijian; Second—Rotuman; Third—Combined; Fourth—Tongan) when I arrived in 1979. On the fifth Sunday of any month, four times a year, I preached at a combined service. There was only one hymn common to all four languages—“The Hallelujah Chorus”. And how they all could sing that!
Pacific Island members were also encouraged to be part of the English speaking service every Sunday night. In 1979, I gave Rev Savinata Mahe specific instruction and guidance how to set up a second Tongan congregation in Sydney. That was not achieved during that year, but later.
Also in 1979, I invited Rev James Mau to join me in the oversight of the Cantonese group of people I was gathering together. I was the preacher each week in this service and also in the Mandarin service when Rev Fu Kain Chen came to work with me.
In 1982, Rev Fa’atoese Auva’a joined us from Samoa. I invited Fa’atoese to undertake a five-year program to establish groups of Pacific Island congregation within Uniting Church. We paid his salary and set him aside to fulfil the Mission’s plan to accomplish this.
In July 1982 Rev Fa’atoese Auva’a reported that he had made contact with up to 6,000 Tongans in Sydney, 2,500 Fijians, 1,500 Samoans and 300 Rotumans. We developed the strategy that over the next years we would plant churches from these people groups whenever there was a willing Uniting Church congregation who would receive them and shepherd them. Groups were planted in Wollongong, Mascot, Cronulla, Dee Why, Newtown, Annandale, Ashfield, Ryde, Burwood, Auburn and Fairfield. We paid for Fa’atoese to go to more than 30 regional and rural communities where it was reported relatives of Pacific Islanders were living and to attach them to the Uniting Church and if there were sufficient people, to commence language services. Some of these have gone on to become congregations.
In 1982, Rev Dr Tony Chi arrived from Singapore at my invitation to take over the International Congregation, which I had commenced in the first week of my ministry in 1979. We had by this time established three congregations and Tony was responsible for the Singaporean part our Asian Christian Fellowship.
In 1983 I invited Rev Peter Davis to be the Deputy Superintendent and to continue the work of planting congregations across Sydney. Rev Peters Davis undertook to plant two Fijian congregations at Leichhardt and Annandale, which he did.
In 1984 I commenced a Spanish congregation for people from Argentina, Chile and the Philippines, at which I preached every week. After a year the congregation was growing to be vibrant one and we called a Mexican, Rev Oscar Cadina, to be the minister. We later on planted that church in the Fairfield Uniting Church. It has subsequently established other churches and also sent missionaries to Spain.
By this time Wesley Mission was conducting service in eight different languages each week.
In 1984 we appointed the first Pacific Island Welfare workers working fulltime in Wesley Mission among Pacific Island people seeking not only to care for the welfare of Pacific Islanders, but to attach them to the local Uniting Church congregations. The two workers were Meleane Moala and Adriu Rogoimuiri.
In 1985 we hosted a Pacific Island conference on “Future Church plantings Within the Uniting Church.”
In 1986 we commenced a Sri Lankan congregation.
I also invited Rev Taulafo Avei from Samoa to minister to some of the Samoan congregations and the Rev Iveni Fatiaki from Fiji to work Fijian congregations. These fulltime ministers were totally supported by Wesley Mission.
In 1989 we established a new Mandarin speaking congregation for Chinese students. This grew out of the student protests in which we were a visible presence in Town Hall Square during the Tiananmen Square massacre.
As a result of this I invited Rev Wilfred Chi, whom I had added to our staff, to develop a new Mandarin speaking student service together with a Chinese Employment Agency and the Chinese Evangelical Library. Both of these have been phenomenally successful.
In 1990 we set aside Pastor Jordon Jamieson to help develop ministries overseas with pastor training in India and Pakistan.
In 1992 we established an Indonesian congregation.
In 1994 we invited Rev Fesaitu Massau and subsequently Rev Sydney Taito as fulltime workers among the Rotuman congregation.
In 1998 we established a Japanese congregation.
All of these are meeting in Wesley Centre where we have four worship centres meeting simultaneously.
In the meantime we have a continuous development of support for Aboriginal workers in indigenous congregations, particularly at La Perouse.
Some of our graduates from the Sydney College of Divinity and Wesley Institute of Ministry and the Arts have undertaken cross-cultural mission and training are now serving in Africa, Cambodia, and other parts of South-East Asia and South America.
We have now been involved in more than 15 mission trips to Malaysia and Indonesia.
We sent a work party to Fiji to build houses after the cyclone, and left behind a dozen cyclone-proof houses.
We sent 16 members to Rotuma for one month to build a community centre and library and stocked it with 5,500 donated books. The gift of a mobile library van took this to a $100,000 commitment.
Rev Ken Cornwell of the 10:30 am congregation led in the development of support for a Filipino village which is now in it’s twelfth year of support.
Over the years it has been our privilege to have the Heads of Churches throughout Asia, Papua Guinea, Bougainville, and all of the Pacific Islands attend our worship. The King and Queen of Tonga spent a weekend with us. The Governor General of Fiji has stayed with us on several occasions, as well as the Prime Minister of Fiji, we have hosted people like Dr. Sione Havea from Tonga. Rev Fa’atauva’a Tapuai from Somoa; Rev Paula Niukula from Fiji and more recently Rev Dr A Mone as well as many others.
Every time we have planted a new congregation it has been my custom to attend the first service, present the new congregation with a communion set and with a gift as a love offering from the people of Wesley Mission. We have had about 3,000 regular attenders at Wesley Mission leave our central congregations as part of planted congregations over the past 20 years.
The Pacific Islanders ministry of Wesley Mission represents one of the fastest growing segments of the Uniting Church in Australia today.
The minister who was the greatest church planter of all was Rev Fa’atoese Auva’a. In 1982 he said: “At the moment there are about 1,500 Tongans alone involved in the services of the Uniting Church and the number is increasing quickly.
“Obviously there is a need for such a ministry as that provided by Wesley Mission. In Sydney there would be about 6,000 Tongans, 2,500 Fijians and 1,500 Samoans, with Rotumans numbering about 300.
“I am the only minister. But we have a team of lay preachers and we work all through Sydney.
“But this is a team ministry in the sense that the Superintendent of our Mission, Rev Dr. Gordon Moyes, and the former Deputy Superintendent Rev Peter Davis, and I share the ministry in making decisions.
“Most of our congregations are around the city area. Wollongong is the only area away from our greatest area of ministry. There are ten congregations: Mascot, Newtown, Burwood, Cronulla, Auburn, Ashfield, Annandale, Fairfield and Ryde. Services are also held at the Wesley Mission Chapel, city.
Rev Fa’atoese Auva’a was affable and strong but open personality. He proved himself to be major force in the closer cooperation of the Mission’s Australian and Pacific Islander congregations.
Fa’atoese, from Western Samoa, spent his early days of education in Methodist ministry schools. He said: “It was always in my thinking that I would become a farmer. But it did not work out that way.
“Instead, I went to New Zealand for further education and work and while there became heavily involved in the Wellington Central Mission.
“Just as I was about to return home to become a farmer, the European circuit encouraged me to go to theological college.
“This I did from 1964 to 1966 in Auckland at Trinity Theological College. I was not accepted as a minister in New Zealand. They pointed out to me that it would be good if I returned to Samoa.
“In 1967 I returned and became a teacher in the Piula Theological College. Then I went back to teaching staff at the Methodist high school in Apia. From there I went to the Pacific Theological College in Fiji.
“From there, I was appointed by the Methodist Church in Samoa to the new work of Pacific Islander ministers ministering to Australian congregations. I was the first candidate in the Pacific for this work, in 1972. That same year I went to the Wesley Mission in Perth where I stayed until 1974. The same program now has 22 ministers from the Pacific area ministering to Uniting Church parishes in Australia.”
Fa’atoese said the decision to come to Australia was a very difficult one: “There were three things which concerned me—I had never ministered to a European community before, Australia is a rich nation and well educated. I wondered how I would fit in. I also wondered how the Australians would respond to a Samoan minister, considering the Gospel was brought to Samoa from Australia.
“I wondered what I could offer. But after three months of praying and being given the support of two churches, I made the decision. I accepted the challenge and decided that I, my wife Sunema, and our daughter Markerita, would offer ourselves in the Christian community just the way we are. We thought just to share Christian experience and what we are as Polynesians, to co-operate but to compare two cultures, would be of value.”
I have spoken to you at some length about my friend Rev Fa’atoese Auva’a because news came through recently that he had suddenly died. We were all deeply moved. Fa’atoese had been the most successful planter of new congregations the Uniting Church has ever did.
After leaving Wesley Mission he returned to Samoa where he became the General Secretary of the Methodist Church in Samoa as was at the time of his death President of the Methodist Church in Samoa.
Fa’atoese was a great Christian, an outstanding church man, a good husband and father, and the most effective cross-cultural missionary I have ever met.
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.