Ministry in Australia

to pay rent for the church building in which they held their afternoon services. The Indonesians were outraged. They wouldn't mind to help with the cleaning, with working bees, paying for part of the electricity bill, but paying rent went against their theological and cultural grain. The building had been dedicated to God, they said, and didn't belong to the congregation. I felt this was a timely reminder for our building programme, and I shared this insight with the congregation.

A stewardship programme was conducted towards the end of 1987. Meanwhile, all groups in the church were consulted about their anticipated use of a church complex and an architect's brief was compiled. A building site of 1.1 ha. was chosen opposite the Melba High School, next to the Melba Health Centre. It was large enough for future development. As a small but strong group opposed the building programme, on theological and on financial grounds, we arrived at a compromise. Ten percent of funds collected over and above our normal budget requirements would go into an Outreach fund, to be distributed annually. In this way everybody was able to pull together, even for fundraising activities, as 90% would go to the building fund and 10% to the Outreach fund. It was also decided to build a multi-purpose building, to be used for all church activities during the week.

The actual work on the building began in 1989, and it was opened on 17 June 1990, two weeks before my retirement.

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In February 1989 I raised with the Parish Council the timing for a change of ministers in the Parish. It was then anticipated that the new building would be finished early in 1990. I anticipated that this would bring a growth in members at Melba, and I thought it best if the Parish could look for a new minister to start in January 1990. I gave notice to this effect to the Parish Council.

As I was concerned that during this last year before my retirement I might become stale or 'retire' prematurely, I started a new programme to help the parish prepare for growth. In the Winter edition of LINK 1989, I wrote:

"As a church we need to be in the forefront of change, where people hurt, where they work, where they need to make decisions that will affect their family, or the nation. To bring a message from God into such a situation, is also our task, the task of every one in the church. God has something to say about how we bring up our children, how we earn our money, how we invest it, and he is intimately interested in every aspect of our working place, our decisions there, and how we treat others."

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