The rainbow never sets

taken a long time to get all ACC churches to agree to such innovations. Meanwhile, John Brown pressed for a first meeting in June 1975 with at least two members from the Uniting churches, Jill Perkins and myself. John wrote in a letter to me:

Our reasons for asking you to participate are as follows:
a) You have lived in both Indonesia and Australia and understand both countries.
c) You participated in the initial consultation here in Sydney three weeks ago and therefore have some understanding of what has already taken place.
d) You are a sensitive person who express your own views confidently but at the same time are very sensitive to what other participants are saying and also to what they are not saying, but what is implied or lies hidden behind the words they say.
e) You are from a congregation which has participated in a programme where an Indonesian has been brought to Australia to work with an Australian group.

I was pleased about John's comments, but not too happy to go, if he was not going to be one of the delegates. I said so to him, as I felt that he had the vision for this new relationship and we needed him there. He did come with us to Bali from 18 to 20 June 1975, and our meeting endorsed the concept of a joint decision making about resources of people and funds.

Then we fell into the trap of the old pattern again when a list of programme priorities was established. None of us realised at the time that by drawing up such a list we maintained the old relationship of mission flowing from affluent Australia to the needy Indonesia. We had wanted to get away from this and establish mutual programmes, where both the DGI and the ACC would be involved. John wrote to us that he was disappointed with the result. There were, however, some programmes mentioned, although not included in the list, which contained aspects of mutual mission. These were: the establishment of a Cultural Communication Centre at Salatiga for Australian language students or missionaries going to Bali or Irian Jaya, and Indonesian missionaries coming to serve Aboriginal communities in Australia. Also, the Indonesian Student Christian Movement (ISCM) had some good Leadership Training programmes implemented, from which many present church and secular leaders had graduated. It was suggested that the Australian SCM could learn from the ISCM and run a similar programme for future Australian leaders.

A second meeting was proposed for 1976 in Darwin, but it never came to it. Events on an international level forced a change of plans. Indonesia

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