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My call from God to Christian schools (Part 2)
I wasn’t overly deterred by the negative effects of my foray into turning my teaching into a ministry at a Christian school. I admit that I’d had rosy-tinged views of how enjoyable it would be if I could actually use my teaching as a Christian ministry. (I think I had my rose-coloured glasses on at the time!) It didn’t take long to have those very positive views disappear like fog on a sunny day. By the time I’d finished my three years at Benalla Christian School, looking back, it was as if I had entered a spiritual battle-field. It was something I’d read about in various books by missionaries on overseas missions, but never expected to be hit with it in allegedly civilized Australia.
I had been well aware of spiritual warfare before I left for Benalla. In the early 90s at the rural school where I was headteacher, we had some serious demonic opposition. (And for those who claim that demonic attack is not common even for Christians, Paul wrote that it was more or less constant: “As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.” (Romans 8:36) We were holding a sleep-in camp night at the school. Parents brought food supplies and some stayed to assist with the evening. After their evening meal, some older siblings who were attending went off on our church bus to the church youth group meeting, while the school children had various camp-style activities and games, including a large campfire. And then it all began, sudden sickness for some (but no symptoms for the others). Amidst ringing up some parents to come for their children, we also checked what had been eaten, but could find no food that had been eaten by the “sick” group and not by the “not sick” group. Whatever it was also affected some adults but not others. Everyone was either sick or not sick; there was no-one who was just a bit sick! It was all very mysterious indeed. To add to this, the church bus was late and we were wondering why; it had been due around the time the sickness began. (Mobile phones just weren’t around then.) The bus finally turned up maybe an hour late, with the driver saying sorry I’m late but we had to stop on our way home because three of the passengers had suddenly got sick. And at least one of them had not eaten food at, nor attended, our sleep-in evening.
It was weird just how it happened. All of the sickies got sick at the same time. One minute all were healthy; the next minute (or so it seemed) around a third suddenly were violently sick, while the rest showed no symptoms at any time. And they were all miraculously fully healthy the next morning. The meals at the sleep-in were spread out with food being eaten over a period of maybe an hour, bites in between activities. But it was the bus situation that really stood out. All three sickies had got sick at the very same time (the driver said they all started all at once). They were all away from each other, so it couldn’t have been a case of one sickie setting off the others. The driver was visibly shaken by the ordeal. The food at the sleep-in was not responsible for at least one of those on the bus. So, all we could come up with is that it was case of spiritual warfare. This was just one example of some of the weird things that occurred, events that I can only attribute to spiritual warfare. So when I settled in Benalla, I should not have been surprised when spiritual warfare hit hard right from the beginning.
Soon after we arrived in Benalla, and had finally bought an old house that had a sloping floor and old facilities (the recent floods had made housing scarce and what was available was costly), a group moved into the rental property next door. From then on, every Saturday night (for much of the night), plus many other times, very loud rock music disturbed my sleep. I’d wake up most Sunday mornings exhausted from lack of sleep, only to have the Ford dealer behind us pressure-cleaning cars from around 6am for a few hours. I don’t know exactly who our neighbours were, but it was clear that they had an agenda. They played their noise near a window facing us, mostly left open even on colder nights, and the stereo had a goat’s head glued to the plastic cover on it. Witchcraft was rampant in Benalla with at least three significant witch covens operating: the Benalla East coven; the Gaskin St coven, and the Benalla hospital area coven (sometimes referred to as the Calder St coven, where Calder St was the extension of our street. We suspected our neighbours belonged to the Calder St or hospital coven (the hospital was not far south of us).
I couldn’t stop the noise even with ear plugs because the sound could be felt more than heard. And every Saturday from late evening until at least 4am the house literally shook with the blast. On Saturday nights a group of them (maybe a dozen or more, noting that quite a few cars would park out front) would gather for the noise. They’d arrive around 10 or 11pm and the “party” would begin. And the noise ramped up to unbelievable levels! It got to the stage where I was seriously considering moving back home to the farm, with no job and no income, but at least I could have some peace and quiet. One night maybe around August 1994 I’d had enough. I prayed (in my thoughts, not aloud – I wouldn’t have heard myself much anyway!) for an answer. Or else I was out of there as soon as I could pack up.
I prayed for three things: for their party to break up, for them all to clear off from there, and for their music machine to blow up. What happened next sounds unbelievable but it really happened. Immediately they all started shouting at each other (I could hear bits of this above the “noise”). Then they ran and got into cars and drove off, so quickly in fact that as one car pulled away I heard one of them shouting, “Hey, wait for me!” But the noise machine kept on thumping its noise at me. I thought Well, 2 out of 3 isn’t too bad. Then, after maybe 15-30 minutes (I wasn’t counting time that much), the noise abruptly stopped (around midnight). At first I thought that maybe someone had turned it off because their “party” was over, while hoping that it had actually blown up! For the first time in months this Saturday night was quiet. In the morning I told my wife what I had prayed for and what had happened. She was sceptical; maybe it was just a coincidence. Most likely the noise machine had been turned off after their party ended early. But the peaceful evenings went on; even the following Saturday evening was peaceful! However, when she saw that noise machine being delivered to the house by the local electrics store repair van (after 10 days), she decided that what I had said was probably true.
It was clear now that the next-door disruptions were a matter of spiritual warfare, and that these Saturday night meetings were the local coven gathering for mayhem on the Christians in town. From that night on, while the noise machine continued to hammer us on Saturday nights, it was no longer threatening to make me leave Benalla. And then, one day, those neighbours just weren’t there anymore.
The local Baptist church used to hold open air street meetings in the Gaskin St area in East Benalla. And their local coven (the Gaskin St coven) used to attend, not to get saved, but to be as disruptive as they could. The Baptist pastor told me of one meeting they held on a nice sunny Sunday morning in the Gaskin St area. The coven turned up in force. As soon as the church meeting began, the rain poured down, and as soon as the church finished up and packed things away, the rain stopped and it became a nice sunny day again. Things like that used to happen in Benalla!
We were told at the school that the local covens prayed against local Christian ministries on a roster basis; and we used to cop it every 5 or 6 weeks. I remember being at the school one morning and feeling like I was trying to walk through deep water or even quicksand. Moving was a struggle, and thinking was difficult. I was to find out that it was our turn on the coven roster. Benalla seemed such a nice place but underneath it all there was a lot of evil running deep.
However, it wasn’t just the local covens that hit out at the two teachers at the Christian school. In my first two years there the school board chairpersons were reasonable, but in my third year the woman who took over seemed intent on destroying the Christianity of our school. She seemed to take delight in using the school board to create difficulties for the teachers, and was most likely the one who pushed for the staff hours (and wages) to be reduced and to have them both dismissed at the end of the year. It appeared to be a power game with control being her issue here. She had a full-time job in Benalla, but after interfering with our careers, I was informed that she lost her full-time job in Benalla and ended up with a part-time job in Wangaratta which meant less income and greater distances to cover to get to work. She made no effort to assist the teachers in their difficult task and seemed to want to punish the teachers who had given up much to teach at the Christian school.
I used to mostly attend the church she attended but in my third year, after she took over the school board chair, I had to go to the pastor and tell him that I had difficulty in attending with someone who seemed intent upon destroying me. He acknowledged that she was difficult but didn’t accept that she was deliberately opposing me. After that, when I attended other churches in Benalla, a rumour went around that I was no longer attending church; I was even questioned about this by people at the school. (I suspect the rumour may have begun with this woman, too.) Many years later, when talking to her pastor, he told me that she had left because of certain difficulties (unstated). In a way I think it could have been an admission that she might have been a problem when I was at Benalla. I certainly do not believe she was Christian in the way she treated the teaching staff while I was there.
There were many other issues that I would have to describe as spiritual warfare during my three years there. I found it hard to believe that there could be such anti-Christian attitudes in what seemed to be a civilised place like Benalla. By the time I left Benalla, though, I had learned a lot about spiritual warfare, an understanding that has been very useful since then in the discernment of spiritual opposition. I believe that once I decided to move into full-time ministry in schools, satan moved to try to dissuade me from succeeding. I think he would have preferred that I be convinced to move back to the farm, something that I almost ended up doing because of the pressure applied in Benalla. For those considering greater service for God, keep in mind that satan will do his best to oppose you. Christian school ministry was not easier in any way, nor comfortable at all.
I am glad that I made the move into ministry work, but at the time it was not easy to see where I was going with it. But over the years God has led me into different ministry areas. When I first decided in 1993 that I might resign and go into ministry in Christian schooling, I left it up to God to lead. Soon after I had decided to go ahead if something turned up, a call came from a long-time acquaintance (whom I hadn’t heard from for many years). He asked if I would be interested in teaching at the Benalla Christian School; and he had known nothing of my thoughts of resigning! Things like that do not just happen all too often, so I made the assumption that this was a call from God. And while it felt like hell had been set loose on me in Benalla, the enemy trying to oppose me also had to be a spiritual warfare response to what I saw as a calling. I have learned now that any calling from God will attract opposition from satan and his demons. And I have learned somewhat how it works now and that such opposition cannot succeed against any calling from God if God is trusted to be in charge and in control at all times.
My call from God to Christian schools (Part 1)
I started teaching back in 1974 after completing a 3-year tertiary qualification in Education (majoring in Maths and Educational Psychology), followed by a 3-year BA degree at Melbourne University (majoring in both Pure Maths and Statistical Inference, plus Psychology and Music added on as submajors). Much of my teaching began as headteacher of small rural schools, plus some time in larger school classrooms. I was saved in May 1969 after calling upon Christ to save me as per Romans 10:13.
I attended churches near where I lived until I settled in a house on a small farm in western Victoria. We attended a small Baptist church in a nearby town where I took on many tasks such as secretary, occasional preaching, study-group leader, organist etc. In 1993 I was headteacher of a small rural school near our farm. The school was ordered to close at the end of 1993 due to govt spending cutbacks which required that small rural school populations be added to larger provincial town schools, allegedly saving funds. Rather than travelling to a local town school maybe 20km away, I decided to resign and go into Christian school teaching. I was appointed principal of Benalla Christian School, a two-teacher school, at the beginning of 1994.
At first I had thought that it would be nice to be in a school where my Christian values were not belittled (as they had at Cobden school in the mid-80s). But, as I was to find out, allegedly Christian parents were more picky and unreasonably demanding than the more secular parents in a state school. I was expected to be the perfect Christian, accepting of all difficulties, while getting paid around half of what I would have been paid as principal in a state school. It was still a ministry and I sought to be as Christian as I could manage under the circumstances.
One family of two girls in upper primary almost immediately decided to test my authority, especially after I made it clear that I, as their principal and teacher, was in charge. They were disruptive, even more so behind my back where they stirred up other pupils to cause trouble in my classroom. Their previous principal and teacher had had a serious disability, lacking mobility, and had let the older students basically run the school. Now, when I claimed my authority over them, some (especially these two girls) decided that they had to get rid of me. In fact, that’s exactly what the older one (in Year 6) said: “We’re going to get rid of you.” How? “By making so much trouble for you that you’ll leave or maybe get sacked.” Why? “Because we run the school, not you!” This was around the middle of my first term there! However, soon after the beginning of second term, the family decided that they’d send their two girls elsewhere. In spite of losing a family so soon after taking over, I felt that things were looking a bit better from then on.
I soon found out that the school had serious financial problems, possibly due to an inability to budget correctly. Often the school would get a reminder in the mail about unpaid accounts. I handed these over to the treasurer (a registered accountant no less) who simply said he’d deal with them. Yet, almost as often I’d get a phone call soon after asking what was happening to their payments. The school also had almost no text book resources (and no funds to buy any, either), requiring me to make up all my worksheets and fill the chalkboard with daily Maths for Yr 3-6. My day commenced there around 7am and often only ended well after 5pm, with more work required once I arrived home. I also had little or no time for any breaks during the day with constant monitoring of the school as principal.
I had bought a house in Benalla because when I arrived, I found out that there was no long-term rental available due to so many houses being flooded by a swollen river the previous year and still awaiting repairs before being used again. The housing loan interest rates at that time were around 10% and I ended up paying $500 out of a fortnightly pay of $900; this left $400 per fortnight for all other expenses. I had some savings but these depleted rapidly while I was there.
However, our numbers, which at first struggled because of our lack of facilities and equipment, gradually improved. When I first arrived there, the school had a bad reputation educationally; it was perceived by many, it seemed, as a place of last resort for students who struggled elsewhere in Benalla. By the beginning of my third year there (1996) we (the two teachers) had improved the school’s image in town; at our school’s Open Day in Term 2 we had a lot of local interest (and numbers were already now steadily rising, albeit slowly). But storm clouds were appearing on our horizon. The school’s financial difficulties were accumulating, in spite of the low wages being paid to the two teachers.
We had a Registered Schools’ Board (RSB) assessment in 1995 which approved our teaching and school facilities in general (largely due to the efforts of the teachers), but the wages issue arose. While the school could get away with paying me less than award rates (being a principal on an agreement), the other teacher had to be paid award rates; this significantly increased her wage (to more than my wage!). But the extra drain on the school’s finances led to urgent meetings where the school was forced (so they said) to reduce wages rather than increase them. They then put us to work for 4 days each per week, with each teacher taking the whole school (all 7 levels from Prep to Yr 6) together one day per week with parent assistance as teacher aides. The parent assistance was a nightmare with some parents demanding (as parents) to have some measure of authority over the teachers. Legally this was not permitted, but some parents still tried to bully the teachers. One parent had a young son running screaming around the other teacher’s classroom while the teacher tried to keep control of her class. In the end she told the parent to control her son or else the both of them to get out. (The teacher does have this right due to the teacher being legally responsible for discipline in the classroom.) The parent came to me and complained about the other teacher. I told her that the other teacher was within her rights to do so and that I supported the teacher’s action here. The parent was not very happy at all!
During the 2nd half of 1996 there was a bad feeling in the school parent body. I was told by one family that they had been forbidden to talk to the teachers or else there’s be trouble. The school board did its best to isolate the teachers from contact with the parent body, probably fearing losing families if they learned what was really going on. Rumors abounded; when mud is thrown sometimes it sticks! The teachers copped a lot of gossip behind our backs. One rumor said the two teachers were having an affair; then when it seemed that this rumor wasn’t believable, a rumor a couple of weeks later said the two teachers weren’t able to work together without hostility. These rumors did seem to originate in Wangaratta where one of the board members was working; we did suspect a connection.
From then on the school board looked for a way to take increased control over what it apparently saw as the rebellion of the teachers. In term 3, after the two teachers had been reinstated to full-time duties, the school board had another meeting at which they decided to dismiss both teachers at the end of that year (1996) and in 1997 appoint just one teacher in place of the previous two, with parent assistance as teacher aides in the classroom. Because the other teacher was a local and had been at the school much longer than I had, I decided to resign and apply for a position elsewhere. But when the school board found out that they were left with the other teacher, they told her they wouldn’t employ her and that they’d advertise for a replacement teacher for 1997. Obviously they had some sort of vendetta against the other teacher. She was a good teacher, and, with the previous principal being somewhat disabled, had done much of the principal’s duties in the years before I arrived. I assured the school board that she was well able to take on the principal position, but they refused to listen. So by the end of 1996 both teachers were effectively dismissed (without any dismissal payment arrangements or anything. In fact, while I was there they hadn’t paid much of my legally-required super payments; all in all, it was probably best for me to leave if I wanted to earn a reasonable wage again. By now I was “broke”. And the school board appointed a woman from interstate as principal for 1997. The school board chairwoman announced that God had given her Bible verses to demonstrate that the replacement teacher had been chosen by God for the principal position.
I was employed by a Christian school in Werribee as a Yr 6 classroom teacher (not principal but now earning 50% more than I had earned in Benalla. I bought a house in Hoppers Crossing near the school (and near most of our combined families, too) and paid for it by selling most of my farm which I still owned in the west of Victoria. We kept the farmhouse and 2.5 ha land but were never to go back to live permanently again, finally selling the rest of the farm at the start of 2002. I had kept some communications with some parents in Benalla and, while visiting them in 1997, was told that the teacher who had been chosen by God to replace me at the Christian school was now facing dismissal at the end of her 1st term there. I was told that the teacher would like to see me if possible. I then visited that teacher; she said that Yes, she had been told that she was God’s choice to be principal, but they’d had so many problems with parents in the classroom trying to run the school for her that she’d found the task impossible. And thus, now she had been told that God had changed his mind and didn’t want her there anymore!
One of the school parents (who was a trained and registered teacher) took on the principal position, but left allegedly after a nervous breakdown in the middle of the 3rd term, taking her children from the school to homeschool them. Another teacher was found and appointed for the rest of 1997 but allegedly left at the end of 1997, with another teacher appointed for 1998. And, by the end of 1997, one year after I left there, I was told they had only 8 students enrolled. How the mighty are fallen! And later on I was told that for many years they struggled to get into double figures and then dropped again, and eventually, after those many years of struggles, sold the school to another school body. I just so often wonder what they could have done if they had just tried to better support the two teachers instead of trying to make the teachers pay for all their financial mismanagement. They were so eager to cut our wages but those who could afford to increase their fees continued to see the teachers as people who would work for less because it was our “ministry”! Far too often this seems to be the case, that “ministry” people often can be talked into working for less than others simply because it’s their ministry!