Having outlined a variety of approaches to prayer, in the previous chapter, I will, in this chapter, share with you my personal pilgrimage. While everyone's experience is different, I am hopeful that what I share will be informative and that it may confirm the validity of ways of praying with which you are comfortable, but which may appear strange to others.

Sunday School

I attended a Church of Christ Sunday school from the time I was lured to the kindergarten department with the offer of a tasty rusk until I was fifteen. I was also educated at a Catholic college. However, it was not until I was almost eighteen that I committed my life to Christ.

Transformation

Not surprisingly, this experience, at a critical juncture in my development, deeply influenced me. It altered the direction of my life.

At the time, I was studying law and was working as an articled clerk with a firm of solicitors in Sydney. I was hoping to become a barrister. At the point at which I responded to the call of God upon my life, I was challenged by the realisation that I had but one life to live, and, therefore, one life to give. In my youthful ardour, I offered this life to God. This was tantamount to offering myself for full-time Christian ministry.

This transformation brought me an acute sense of the presence of God. Prayer became spontaneous. It was as natural as breathing.

The Work-Room

My father, who was a dentist, had mastered dental mechanics before studying dentistry and did most of his own denture work. He had built a work-room at the rear of our home where he worked most evenings from seven to midnight. In the first two years, after becoming a Christian, I would wait until my father had finished for the evening. I would then make my way to his work-room, where I would pray for several hours.

I would begin by standing several feet from a wall that was lined with books and plaster casts that grinned back at me. I would pray audibly, in my natural voice, visualizing the presence of Christ several feet away. It would usually be half an hour before I became aware of a presence, which was so palpable that I felt I could reach out and touch it. As the night wore on, the flow of words became less compulsive. I would often be in the process of formulating words, when I would be silenced by recognizing the selfishness of the petition. I would often end up kneeling on the floor, tears gently [93] streaming down my cheeks, enjoying the presence of God in an atmosphere heavy with love.

College

Several years after my conversion, I entered the Churches of Christ Bible College at Woolwich, on Sydney Harbour, to train for the ministry. In the interim, I completed a period of National Service in the Army and worked at Garden Island Dockyard, to earn sufficient to cover the cost of the first two years at college. The stipend for an articled clerk, in those days, was minuscule, though it was an advance on the previous system that required those seeking articles to pay solicitors for the practical training they received.

During my four years at Bible College, I continued a disciplined prayer life. In addition to a regular quiet time, I was stimulated and challenged by reading the diaries of ministers of previous eras. I remember reading Andrew Bonar's diary in bed one evening before dropping off to sleep. I was so moved by one of the entries that I called my room-mate over and read it to him. We were both brought to tears. A presence filled the room. It was during these years that Christian biography became a significant source of nurture.

Kedron

After four years, I graduated from College and I accepted responsibility for a church at Kedron, a northern suburb of Brisbane. I was on my own for nine months, before returning to New South Wales to be married. I spent almost five years at Kedron, years that were marked by two significant incidents that impacted upon my experience of God and of prayer.

Breakdown

The first was a physical breakdown that I suffered early in my ministry. I was studying for an Arts degree while working full-time. To cope, I would often work until two in the morning. Because my ministry was a primary concern, I would often rise at six to pray. While I enjoyed preaching, I was convinced that it was not great preaching that God blessed, but great likeness to Jesus. To maintain both my ministry, and my study, I burnt the candle at both ends.

The breakdown coincided with a visit my parents paid to my wife and I. They had been unhappy with my forsaking law for the ministry, though they had been personally supportive of me. My achievements, or lack thereof, had been unflatteringly compared with those of my younger brothers. I desperately needed to prove myself to my parents and was hoping that they would attend the morning service. They didn't. [94]

When I stood up to preach, that morning, I broke down. I sunk into the chair behind the pulpit and then stood to try again. I was no more successful the second time. The elders, observing what was happening, took over. One concluded the service, while the other escorted me home. They sent my wife and I to Caloundra, a holiday location on the coast, seventy miles north of Brisbane. In the company of my wife, and my parents, who hired a nearby unit, I gradually recovered.

This experience yielded several valuable insights.

I realized that much of my praying was motivated by my need to succeed in ministry and thereby prove myself to my mother. It also changed the way I prayed. Prior to this experience, I would, before visiting, list those I intended calling on and pray that God would be with me when I visited them. Reflecting on the breakdown helped me appreciate that I didn't need to badger God into accompanying me on these visits. He was always with me and was working in the lives of those I was visiting, prior to my involvement with them. I began to pray in a spirit of gratitude, thanking God for his work in those I was to visit and for his presence in us both. I asked that he would help me discern what he was doing in their lives, so that I could co-operate with him in it.

Loss of Faith

The second critical incident was a total loss of belief. I had been challenged by what I had been studying at University, but without being able to resolve many of the issues. Time for reflection was scarce, and I didn't always have the resources to adequately deal with the issues. The many questions that I had secreted away in my mind for future resolution white-anted my faith. I remember one day sitting down at the kitchen table and saying to my wife, "I have lost my faith. I no longer believe in God." As I was ministering, at the time, to a local congregation, this experience was not easily accommodated.

Looking back on this experience, I can see that this crisis was inevitable. College had merely re-inforced a Sunday School faith, the building blocks of which needed to be taken apart and restructured. The initial phase of the experience lasted for about six months, during which time I continued preaching.

What was more important, however, was that I began laying the foundations for a new belief system. Working through the crisis on my own, I continued to build on this foundation. The preference for working by myself through my own issues has given a uniquely personal perspective to my theology. This has sometimes led to puzzlement on the part of others, particularly those who have never ventured beyond conventional paradigms.

There were two critical factors evident in this faith-crisis, a developed relational connectedness with the dimension of divinity that sustained me [95] through the period and a fierce and almost innate commitment to intellectual integrity, a commitment that would not allow me to shrink from the task, by regressing to comfortable, but no longer satisfying, explanations.

Decision to Leave Kedron

While I was invited to remain as minister of the Kedron Church indefinitely, I decided to leave in the October of the fifth year. Part of my reason for doing this was that, while I enjoyed the support and friendship of the elders, the board members and the congregation, and while my ministry had been successful in terms of numbers, having doubled during the period I was there, my enthusiasm was undercut by the fact that I did not see significant personal development in the lives of those who made up the congregation. I was not critical of the people, but of myself. While I had given all I had to offer, I didn't appear to have been able to assist with their inner healing.

Hurstville

I left Kedron in 1967 to take up the ministry of the Church at Hurstville, a southern suburb of Sydney, several miles from Bexley North, where I had grown up. This ministry was brief and unfulfilling.

I followed a minister who had been immensely popular and whose ministry coincided with the coming of age of the youth group. He left to take up Army chaplaincy and, as a consequence, his photo, on a prayer calendar, was prominently displayed in most of the homes I visited.

The fact that the manse was not ready for occupation until three months after we arrived, meant that I lived apart from my wife and daughter during that period. I lived with my parents at Bexley North and my wife and daughter lived with my wife's parents at Wollongong, a city on the eastern seaboard some fifty miles south of Sydney.

The beginning of my ministry was further complicated by the fact that, shortly after I commenced, the college at Woolwich, where I had trained, approached me to invite me to join the faculty the following year. However, I felt that it would be unfair of me to accept a full-time appointment after only one year at the new church, particularly as the congregation had shifted me interstate. I suggested a part-time appointment, until I had been at the church for at least three years. The college was agreeable, but the church was unhappy with this arrangement. In the end I recommitted myself to the initial three year engagement with the church and indicated to the college board that I would be prepared to join the faculty at the end of that period. The fact that both minister and church knew that my time at Hurstville would be brief aborted the possibilities this ministry afforded. [96]

The 1960's

More significant than any of these developments, however, was the fact that my ministry at Hurstville, in the late 1960's, coincided with a period of affluence, in which established societal values were being questioned and when the church appeared to be becoming increasingly irrelevant.

Australia's involvement in the war in Vietnam was being challenged on the streets and radical students were holding university administrators to ransom, occupying their suites and demanding changes. In America there were riots over civil rights, over military involvement in Indo-China and over the orientation, values and bureaucratization of university administrations. It was also during this time that many theologians were proclaiming the death of God, or, as evaluated in retrospect, the demise of traditional models of God.

This was a difficult time to be ministering. The church felt under siege and wondered about its future. Numbers were dropping and churches and ministers were locked into an orgy of mutual recrimination. Many ministers left the ministry, while others thought seriously about joining the exodus. I came close to leaving myself. I felt that I could better serve God as a competent, compassionate lawyer, than as a minister.

Camp Farthest Out

What stopped me was a camp I attended. My mother-in-law suggested that my wife and I would benefit from attending Camp Farthest Out and offered to mind our children. Camp Farthest Out had been begun by Glen Clark, a professor of English concerned with prayer and the spiritual life. Rowland Brown, a Northern Baptist minister from the USA, along with his wife Marcia, led the camp.

Camp Farthest Out changed my way of praying yet again. The camp experience focused on prayer, love, and, to a lesser degree, healing.

On arrival we were asked to write what we wanted to ask of God during the camp on a slip of paper. I had been reading V. Raymond Edman's They Found the Secret, which detailed the experiences of prominent Christian leaders who had come to the end of themselves, confessing to their failure to live or minister as they felt they should. While their ministries were outwardly successful, they were conscious of their own shallowness and fragility. What they discovered, as a consequence of reaching the end of themselves, was that they were energized and their ministries transformed by a grace that carried them forward. They were put in touch with a healing love, with which they learned to flow. They no longer needed to generate motivation or energy for ministry. They discovered what it was like to have Christ live through them. What had been metaphor, became reality. I asked for a taste of this experience.¹ [97]

I was answered. I saw the experience mirrored in Rowland Brown, who taught us an approach to Christian living, and a way of praying, that introduced us to the phenomenon. This involved taking time to recognize the presence of God, relaxing into that presence, opening ourselves to be bathed in the love of God and conduiting that love to others by channelling it through our beings.

This way of praying, involving receptivity, anticipation and a simple trusting of myself to the grace of God, revolutionised my ministry, removing so much of the strain. I returned to ministry with renewed enthusiasm. This type of praying was consistent with the way I had come to view God.

Senior Lecturer

I was thirty when I commenced as senior lecturer at the college at Woolwich. I thoroughly enjoyed the five years I spent teaching there. I continued my own study and was stimulated by the students I taught. I learned much through my reading, which was now central to my ministry, rather than peripheral. I was particularly fortunate in attending introductory leadership sessions on small groups run by John Mallison, who later became a close friend. My initial interest developed as a consequence of my wife's enthusiasm.

Dawson Street Ballarat

At the end of the five years, I was ready to return to parish ministry. I had learned much and developed additional skills during the five years I had lectured. I was keen to road-test them. I accepted a ministry with the church at Dawson St., Ballarat, in Victoria. I once again shifted my, now enlarged, family interstate. I commenced a ministry with Dawson Street at the beginning of 1976 and remained eight years.

Small Groups

One of the first things we did was to introduce a programme of small groups. We had intended to begin with a few groups of interested individuals. However, it soon became apparent that diverse groups within the church needed to experience a greater sense of togetherness. This led to our training forty leaders and organizing a system of growth groups as the basis of the church's pastoral care. In the first year, 150, out of a roll membership of 220, were actively involved in the programme. In later years, we ran leadership sessions on small groups for churches in Victoria, Queensland and Tasmania. In the early years, my wife was responsible for evaluation, co-ordination and the on-going training of leaders.

These small groups transformed the church and changed those who participated in them. In one sense, this was none of my doing. People came alive and demanded the reality in other aspects of the church's life that they [98] were experiencing in the groups. They became more confident, they grew in self esteem and were more outward-looking. One lady, who had previously been so shy that it was difficult to look her in the eye, came out of herself and began to welcome newcomers warmly at the door. I realized that it was this potential for change that was missing in previous ministries. Furthermore, it was not something I was generating or orchestrating. The groups, which were relational, affirming, supportive and caring, were facilitating the changes. It was a living illustration of grace working through love.

While there were many novel and encouraging facets of this eight-year ministry, the two that stand out were personal and painful.

Expectations

The first was a conclusion I was driven to through increasing self-reflection. I had always recognized that I was introverted. Being with people drained me. While extroverts can be exhausted by people, and need time out, they are generally stimulated by company. It had always been an effort for me to be present to people, particularly when I was socialising in crowds where I felt that, as minister, I needed to speak to everybody. I had always had to push through layers of inhibition and was often exhausted by the effort.

During the Ballarat ministry, I came to feel that, being introverted, I was unsuited to ministry. I sought an interview with the principal of Ballarat and Clarendon College. I told him of the conclusion I had reached and asked if he had a position I could fill. A registered teacher, I was qualified to teach English and History. Nothing was available at the time, and I continued with the ministry at Dawson St.

While I did not pursue this change of direction, my action represented a significant milestone. I had always been captive to other's expectations to some degree, a characteristic I had inherited from my mother. My achievements, at the time, were not inconsiderable and it was anticipated that further leadership opportunities would be offered. This was one of the expectations, sweetened by the nectar of appreciation, that I was living under at the time. The fact that I had taken action to step out of ministry, though this did not occur because of lack of opportunity, represented a significant development. I was further on the way towards becoming my own person.

Marriage Breakdown

The second development was the gradual breakdown of my marriage. There was no single cause. Many factors contributed to its disillusion. It was a process that continued for fifteen years. In the end, my wife and I concluded that the efforts we, and those to whom we were looking for professional [99] help, were making were having the effect of further exacerbating tensions. We appeared to be destroying each other by the heroic efforts we were making to resurrect the relationship.

Early in my ministry in Ballarat, my wife and I were responsible for a small group made up of young adults. One evening, when we were filling out prayer contracts, I asked the group to pray that God would help me to minister more effectively to people. Little did I realize what I was asking.

The pain involved in dealing with an increasingly dysfunctional relationship, and in confronting my shadow side, led me to appreciate that my early praying, as appropriate as it was at the time, was, in some respects, the imposing of a false super-spirituality upon a crippled inner self. I had striven to be holy in order to be accepted by a God who already accepted me.

I have since come to recognize that I am accepted, shadow and all, without qualification. I also realize, now, that the holiness, to which I am called, is a matter of living with integrity who I am. It also involves the gradual integration of the contents of the shadow into the conscious element of the self.

The College of the Bible

Serious fissures had begun to open in our marriage relationship when I accepted an invitation to lecture at the College of the Bible, the federal theological college of Churches of Christ in Australia, which was situated in Melbourne.

Flowing With My Pain

During the later stages of the marriage breakdown I was so pre-occupied with my own pain, and with surviving personally and vocationally, with holding myself together, that there was no time nor energy to devote to devotional exercises. What I felt at the time, and what later reflection endorsed, was that the praying that I was involved in, at this stage, was an active co-operation in the psychological surgery being performed upon me. In a process that was out of my control, I was undergoing a deep, healthful inner transformation, the outcome of which, however, was never certain.

Also, during the final years of the marriage, I ministered to students, unbeknown to many of them, out of my own pain. This was another way of co-operating with divine grace, a process which benefited me, as well as others. [100]

Sherbrooke Forest

During the final years before separation, I could not face attending what had been my local church, in spite of the warmth of the people and stimulating services. The towering gums of Sherbrooke Forest became my cathedral, where I spent hours on Sunday mornings. The sheer act of being, even being in pain, was my prayer.

Catholic Spirituality

During the later stages of the marriage breakup, I was working on a doctorate on spirituality. This led to a growing acquaintance with Catholic spirituality, a spirituality that preserved classic mystical insights. Through this study, I discovered that ways of praying that were natural to me, and those that were familiar because of my experience of Camp Farthest Out, were honoured by a long tradition of Christian spirituality from which the Protestant churches had separated themselves at the time of the Reformation.

As a consequence of these developments, I came to see that God was to be discovered in nature, in journeying into the self, in in-depth relationships, in human loving and in suffering, as well as in the Christ event, in personal disciplines and in Christian worship.

An Inner Presence

Over recent years, I have been fascinated by Rahner's concept of an inner transcendent grace that gifts us with freedom, a freedom to take action in the external world which at the same time commits us to saying yes or no to a flow of grace within. Our decisions contribute to making us who we become. If we train ourselves to be aware of the ever-present, but unthematic presence of God within, then our living becomes praying.

Contemplation

I rarely pray with words now. I prefer just to be with God. To pray is to live my life with integrity, to live who I am and to be in the process, co-operatively with the God who graces it, of constituting an ever-changing, a new me, through discovering and integrating ever deeper levels of the shadow self. It is not that I can't pray verbally. It is tempting to do so, as I have a facility with words. It is so easy, when using words, particularly when we pray in public, for our attention to shift from God to those who are listening to what we are saying so that they, rather than God, become our audience.

I am most at home with contemplative prayer, which is a silent attending to the God who is reality's essence. This involves attending to all aspects of life, to the world around us, to our own inner being and to others. This choice is in part explained by my personality, but it is also the product of my journey. [101]

My praying today is not only wordless, but is far more embodied than it used to be. Eastern meditative practices have brought me more into contact with my body. They have made me more sensitive to its intuitions and more aware of God's presence within my whole being. Accessing God, being in contact with God, through my total being, rather than merely through a disembodied mind, has enriched my prayer and led to more fundamental transformation.

My Gift to You

I don't anticipate that your journey will parallel mine. Each person, and their circumstances, are unique. However, while you are different to me, and while your life's journey is peculiarly your own, I hope that the sharing of my pilgrimage has been of some benefit to you. [102]

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