The work at Milnerton continued to expand rapidly, and though I struggled with the conservative-leaning leadership at Camps Bay, that congregation also grew. The growth there, especially among young adults and couples, tended to send my more rigid critics underground but never completely silenced them. I tried my hand at a more public approach and held services a couple of times in the famous Rotunda. Good crowds turned up and I enjoyed engaging with less ‘churched’ people, some of whom decided to join our regular services. Younger members responded to my more open theology and found it refreshing. Elizabeth and I formed some special friendships among them. With occasional bumps in the road, Camps Bay and Milnerton were pleasant and undisturbed places in which to spend our early marriage and learn how to be young parents ourselves.
Then two things happened to change our lives.
The first was my appointment as part-time chaplain to Robben Island Prison, and the second was the decision by my Circuit to invite a controversial Australian evangelist, Alan Walker, to come and preach to the people of Cape Town.
Robben Island came into my life in 1962. At the weekly staff meeting of ministers in the Cape Town Circuit we were told that a new prison was being established there and the church needed to provide chaplaincy. Were there any volunteers? None of us was looking for extra work, but the sailor in me saw a chance to get on the water again, so I put up my hand. That started the formalities to arrange my security clearance for monthly visits. What none of us knew was that Robben Island was destined to become South Africa’s notorious political prison and one of the ugliest symbols of apartheid’s cruelty. The story of my 30-month chaplaincy to the prisoners there is told in Chapter 9, but the almost obscene contrast between dreamy Camps Bay, modern Milnerton and the conditions I found on the Island evoked a deep disconnect. Like the Kilnerton experience of my schooldays, my visits there took me into a separate world – this time a starkly alienating one. It was a wake-up call reminding me that I was ministering in one of the most unequal and unjust societies in the world.
My first meeting with Australian Dr Alan Walker was in September 1963, when he arrived to lead a controversial preaching mission among us. The ministers in our Circuit had read his book The Whole Gospel for the Whole World41 and we had invited him because he was an evangelist with a difference. We were used to American evangelists preaching a pietist message about personal sin while completely ignoring the besetting social sin of our land – apartheid. Walker was different: he was not so much interested in getting people to heaven as seeing God’s kingdom of love and justice established on earth by transformed people. While all of his packed evening services in Sydney ended with a simple altar call, he was also a resounding voice for social justice in his country, a trenchant opponent of the ‘White Australia’ policy and of militarism world-wide. It was said that the first question Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies asked on a Monday morning was, “What did Walker have to say yesterday?” We felt that this man would shake up not only the Methodist Church, which had gone uncomfortably quiet, but the nation itself, and we were soon proved right.
The Alan Walker Mission of 1963 was nothing if not controversial. Even before he arrived, National Party politicians and media were calling for him to be refused entry. He had criticised apartheid from afar and clashed with apartheid propagandists in Australia. On his arrival at Cape Town airport he strode purposely to one side of the barrier separating white and ‘coloured’ welcomers, reaching out to shake coloured hands first. His press interviews were uncompromisingly anti-apartheid. On the special trains we hired to take people to Goodwood Stadium, people ignored the colour bar and the South African Railways encountered integration for the first time. Evening rallies in the stadium attracted about 8 000 people each night and Walker waded into the issues, never failing to attack racism and segregation. Yet, shot through each sermon was a winsome appeal to consider not only the challenge of Jesus’ social ethic, but the intimate offer of new life through God’s forgiveness and acceptance. For me this personal-social balance was Wesleyan theology at its best. On the closing night I stood next to Bert Pfhul, one of Cape Town’s betterknown conservative Methodist lay preachers. “I can’t believe it,” he said. “This man has just preached a political sermon on apartheid and hundreds of people are walking forward to offer their lives to Jesus.”
Our campaign was a joint venture with Pretoria Methodists, so Walker’s mission addressed the two capitals of the nation. The most provocative moments were lunch hours in the Cape Town City Hall and Pretoria’s Church Square, where Walker’s I Challenge the Minister format consisted of a brief, punchy address, followed by questions from the public. Typical of those encounters was when a man shouted, “Who the hell are you to come lecture us? What do you know about South Africa?” and Walker’s sharp riposte: “I don’t know everything about South Africa, but I do know something about the Kingdom of God and there is no apartheid at the gates of heaven, so you shouldn’t have it here.”
For some months I had been involved with Theo Kotze42 in publicity and communication and, with some prescience perhaps, had been tasked with editing a newspaper to promote the Mission. Knowing little except the Rhodeo experience, but keen to have a go, I asked cub reporter Tony Heard to help me. He was a member of my Camps Bay church and did know something about journalism, rising later to be perhaps the best-known editor of the Cape Times. Together with my friend John Gardener, we put together Christian Impact, a successful, if brief, venture. Its main legacy for me was a ‘feel’ for journalism that opened me to later opportunities.
Meanwhile, a conviction was forming in my mind. As I read and heard about Walker’s home church in Sydney I yearned to experience what seemed to be the most effective city church anywhere in the world. Suburban ministry, serving people who looked alike, lived the same comfortable lives and all seemed to visit the same hairdresser, had never truly grabbed me. I preached and pastored as conscientiously as I could but something was missing. On the other hand, the inner city, with its robust pace, its myriad needs, its polyglot populace, and its grit and grime, always stirred me. We had large city churches, of course, but no specially trained city ministers. Our downtown congregations consisted largely of suburbanites who drove into town to hear the ‘big’ preachers and consequently their programmes offered little genuine engagement with the needs and cries of the city. They were suburban churches in the wrong place. By contrast, in the 1960s Sydney’s Central Methodist Mission (CMM) was deeply immersed in the struggles of big-city life and was pioneering new ways of communicating with, and pastoring, mass society. I so wanted to see Walker’s CMM in action that for the only time in my ministry, I initiated a conversation about my future. Securing an interview with Walker in his hotel room, I haltingly spoke of a growing call to city ministry. Was there any hope of spending perhaps a year with the CMM team, testing that call and learning from them? To my surprise he was wide open to the idea and promised to follow it up when he returned to Australia.
During our time in Camps Bay my probation had ended and I had been ordained. The last lap had not been easy. Before my final exams I had woken one