3.4.11 – Churches in the sun (Perth, Western Australia)

3.4.11 – Churches in the sun  (Perth, Western Australia)

It was hot.as we stepped down from the plane in Perth – like stepping into a warm bath.  The plane had flown over brown, dry land, cut into squares of dry fields, broken where the white of the desert sands had burned through.  Western Australia has had one of its driest, hottest summers ever, unlike South Australia, which has had its coldest and wettest.  The verges of the highways had turned to sand, the grass to straw.  Scarborough beach was long, white and covered in people, surfing, swimming, sitting watching the sun slip red behind the horizon. 

Strange how flying transported us from one reality to another – it seemed a lifetime ago that we walked into St. Andrews Uniting Church in Adelaide, yet it was only this morning.  That was the sixth and last church we’ll attend before our feet turn for home. 

Christchurch Cathedral, 21.2.11

The first was the grey and white solidity of Christchurch Cathedral, where we took communion in a little side chapel.  Little did we dream that twenty four hours later, that imposing, gracious building would be in ruins, an icon for the whole city now facing an uncertain future. 

The next two Sundays, we were in Tahmoor Baptist Church, a small fellowship wrestling with big issues about their future direction. 

On the edge of the Great Ocean Road, we turned into the carpark of the first church we could find – St. Luke’s Uniting Church in Geelong, an airy modern building, and found a fellowship just discovering that their Pastor was leaving them after her years of care had enabled the church to grow into a fellowship with a future focussed on its young people and on the challenges of a multiracial society. 

Bill chatting to the fellowship in Whyalla

In Whyalla, the Church of Christ was the Church Bill remembered as a boy.  An informal group, struggling with falling numbers, they accepted us immediately and unexpectedly asked me to sing for them at the end of the service.  Despite this, they still invited us to a birthday party later in the week.

Hall where Flinders Christian Fellowship meet

Then Hawker, Flinders Christian Fellowship proved to be a tiny group in a little community centre, led by Jeff Morgan, the painter of the Wilpena Panorama – an amazing artwork which has been acclaimed worldwide.  He was a painter and decorator with no background whatever in art until, at a crisis in his life, God promised him that he would become a renowned artist.  Now he has been invited to the USA and in China, they presented him with awards in recognition of his art.

And then today in St. Andrews, a large traditional building, the sun making rainbows through the stained glass windows, as we watched the pastor baptize his tiny grandson Ilario, a smiling little bundle who coped with everything with wide-eyed equanimity. 

All these churches have been in very different buildings, but all following God’s path for them through their differing challenges and all offering an extremely warm welcome to us.  They have been a fascinating thread woven through our adventures ‘down under’.

Jeff Morgan, as painted by a friend