DAY TEN: TUESDAY MARCH 28TH PERTH TO DARWIN

In the taxi going to the airport the driver, a Scottish man, began to talk about the Commonwealth Games coverage on the Nine Network in Australia. I wouldn’t have rated him as an inveterate winger, but he was very annoyed with what he saw as an extremely “ethnocentric” bias in the coverage. They wanted to see events that featured gold medal performances of other Commonwealth nations besides Australia, but were seriously and consistently disappointed. I tend to agree. I don’t think it has as much to do with overt narcissism as it has to do with advertising dollars and therefore ratings. When an industry is totally built on advertising revenue and when advertising revenue depends on ratings the formula is quite logical. It think it might have been Nola who suggested the coverage should have been given to SBS.

The flight from Perth to Darwin takes just under four hours. There was some cyclonic activity in the north west but it had not come anywhere near Darwin. It is the wet season here, or nearing the end of it, so there were plenty of rain filled clouds around and rain coming in waves for most of the day. They have had a decent wet season this year. The first for a while. The four hour flight was good for me. I have been trying to make the Old Testament books of Ezekiel and Jeremiah good friends instead of casual acquaintances and I was able to listen to most of Jeremiah during the time of the flight.

When we landed in Darwin the other three guys caught a taxi to their motel while I stayed on to wait for Paula (my daughter who lives in Darwin) to finish her shift as an RN at the RDH (Royal Darwin Hospital). It gave me time to catch up on emails and write a bit of stuff that has been sitting in the “in tray” for far too long. I was also able to make a few phone calls and round up a few people I knew for the meeting tomorrow.

Our commitment today was an area meeting of Christian guys gathered in Humpty Doo by Stuart McMillan. Stuart is the pastor of Living Waters Uniting Church in Humpty Doo. Humpty Doo is a town centre about forty minutes slightly east of south from Darwin. It is the gateway to the Kakadu National Park. Stuart told us that there were about 20,000 people in the area and only five churches. That means a church for 4,000 people. If you think of the Canberra region there are about 350,000 people and about 220 congregations. That represents a church for about 1600 people.

The meeting gathered people from the immediate region, but mainly from Humpty Doo and Palmerston (satellite city just south of Darwin with about 30,000 people). There were two guys there from Kunnanurra in WA. You might have seen one of them. His name is Peter and he is the flying Vet from that region. I think the ABC did a series of television shows following him around and seeing the things he did. He is a terrific Christian bloke from Toowoomba. I actually met his son last Sunday week when I was there. Ian officiated at his marriage some years ago.

It was a day of meeting old acquaintances for Ian yesterday. When we got to the airport he ran into a family who were working on a mission station about twelve hours south and slightly west who came from his church. Then there was Peter and even more amazingly, he met an Indian guy from Fiji who came know the Lord in a meeting in a tin shed in Lautoka thirty years ago. Just amazing.

The church we gathered in was a great building. It had a large raked rook with no walls. With rain falling around us and a slight breeze blowing through it was wonderful. A bit like churches in the South Pacific island nations. The meeting consisted of input from Ian Shelton and myself. Ian talked about the need for Christian men to once again take responsibility for building the communities of our nation. He spoke powerfully and talked about the time in Toowoomba when the Christian men gathered outside the city hall to protest at the proposal to introduce brothels and all kinds of sexually explicit entertainment to the town. They called it, “Silent No Longer.” They public repented to the women of the town who had been abused by the sexuality associated with such activities; they repented for remaining silent while the dignity and honour of women was attacked through the years that have seen a consistent rise of sexual explicitness and they even repented to the City Council for not making known their views before this point. What made it a great story was the fact that the idea was knocked on the head by the Council.

The two guys from Kunnanurra shared their story. The Vet was one and an Anglican minister had come with him. There are 4,000 people in Kunnanurra and 8 churches. The total church going population is less than 150. Just think what that says about the 8 churches and think of what statements it makes in the community. Add to that the fact that when the wet season comes a lot of people leave town because they can’t do whatever it is that they do. So the churches have come together. It is a new season and there is much more of a sense that this is the way it should be permanently. What is it that gives such a notion of sovereignty to some little group who think that if they can just maintain their nominal identity the kingdom of God is somehow advanced. Its almost delusional (to use a word quoted to us about some church’s ideas of their own importance to the overall task). It was a great story and one that encouraged everyone.
I hitched a ride back to Paula’s place with these two guys and found out that the Anglican bloke had been part of Bernard Gook’s church in Darlinghurst in the seventies. Bernard was a hero pastor in Sydney for two reasons. One was as rector of St. Barnabas’ Broadway where they established this flourishing kids ministry to Glebe kids and secondly as the Anglican vicar who rode around Kings Cross with his suit and dog collar on a beat up motor scooter. In Darlinghurst they established houses where people who were broken up could live and be restored. I knew him well when I was at Moore College and doing youth ministry in Clovelly.

Even though the day was shortened by an hour and a half with the journey from Perth, bed was welcome when I returned to Paula's place.