My call from God to Christian schools (Part 6)/0 Comments/in /by

My call from God to Christian schools (Part 6)
The govt VRQA were so opposed to anything biblical that it was hard to see how River City Christian School (RCCC), Echuca, was going to get out of the no-creation dilemma. One thing is clear: if the previous principal had been still running the school, it would never have remained open by the start of 2009. I had set up all relevant policies, and had avoided a legal disaster over the underhand funding set in place when I had arrived as principal at RCCC. The requirements listed by the Registered Schools Board a few years before (and never implemented) were now largely dealt with. But the creation issue remained a big headache. The VRQA were certain that they would shut us down on this issue alone. In fact, in March 2009 they gave us an ultimatum: remove the creation component of your science curriculum and we may consider permitting your continuing registration as a school.

In November 2008 the school board chair and I had attended a meeting with the VRQA in Melbourne. There was a lot of disagreement between them and us over the one single issue: creation content in our science course. So I asked the VRQA chair: If, then, you do not accept our science curriculum, which school’s curriculum would you accept? She said: The science curriculum of Waverley Christian College. So when I returned to RCCC the next day, I made contact with Waverley Christian College to ask them if they would make their science curriculum available for us to look at. They agreed. We also arranged for our science teacher to go to Waverley for a week in February 2009 to see how it worked in practice. It looked workable, and it did happen to accept some creation content. (I wondered if the VRQA actually knew this?) Plans were made to implement the Waverley curriculum as soon as possible in 2009. Meanwhile, before we could set up the Waverley science curriculum, the VRQA sent us an ultimatum: to drop creation from our curriculum or be closed down in 30 days. We told them that we were still in the process of implementing an alternative curriculum. They then came to re-assess us in Term 2 and, upon noting that we still had a creation component in our science curriculum, informed us that they would refuse our re-registration to operate as a school in Victoria. I then informed them that the science curriculum we were now using was the Waverley College curriculum as recommended by the VRQA Chair in November 2008. That actually stopped them in their tracks and they said that they would check this out and get back to me. When they did get back, we had passed the assessment and had been granted provisional registration to operate. It was clear that we had won this round.

That necessary certificate that gave the school legal right to operate as a school was missing when I started at RCCC. No-one seemed to know what it was, and no-one recalled seeing such a document. Then (in maybe late 2008) one of the board members said he’d been given (by the previous principal) a box of papers to be burnt or otherwise disposed of. He’d stored this cardboard box under his house. He now brought it in to see if there were any documents there that we might need. And that necessary certificate permitting our operation as a school was in that box. Fortunately, in spite of the previous principal’s efforts to get rid of it, we were able to frame it and hang it on the office wall. We were now legally permitted to operate a school on that site! In fact, it is clear that if the previous principal had stayed on longer, the school most likely would not have survived. He apparently didn’t have much idea of running a school properly and should never have been appointed principal in the first place. (I suppose they were desperate for someone to employ!) I had the experience of many school reviews in previous schools and knew a lot about what was required to pass an assessment. I had set about doing what was needed from the time I started at RCCC and in my three years managed to bring the school back from disaster. But it came at a cost to my health; I needed a break to recover from my stress-related health problems. And the school enrolment numbers did not slide any further while I was there, in spite of no longer being able to count Yr 11&12 students in the figures.

While there we had the opportunity to have a new science building built using a govt grant for such buildings. Some on the school board wanted a local builder to build it, rather than accepting the builder the govt had chosen for the task. A school meeting was held and by a narrow margin it was decided that the govt-approved builder should do it. However, I was constantly harassed and pestered by the board chairman, even in my own time, including a holiday break. I would get phone calls over and over to get me to change my mind. Then the board chairman started harassing the woman who had made the application in the first place. It was never expected that her application would get us something but when it did the school board wanted to control it (even though the school board had rejected putting in the application in the first place). The board chairman harassment was so intense that, due to my stress problems, I was not able to withstand, and I signed the request to use a local builder. The project was delayed for a few weeks while this was considered, and then we were told that by then the last half dozen building grants had been cancelled due to funds running out. We missed out because of that harassment! I often think what the school could have had if only the board chair hadn’t bullied me into submission. Still, he has to wear that, not me!

I was desperately wanting a break to recuperate and in the last few months of 2009 I took a few afternoons off due to my stress levels. I notified the board that I would resign at the end of 2009. I would have liked to have stayed longer but needed some time off to regain my health. I think if they’d wanted me to continue, then perhaps a paid sabbatical might have worked, or at least my house rent paid. I couldn’t afford to pay money on rental when not working, so I’d have to move away from Echuca.

In June 2011 the RCCC council chairman contacted me requesting that I consider taking a secondary teaching position for 2012. I refused on the basis that (a) I would need rental once again, (b) my wife would have to stay home this time, and (c) they should have kept me on while I was still living there. I didn’t need the funds anyway. Once I left Echuca, I was never coming back!

If only the school board had recognised my stress levels and had acted to offer support while I was working so hard tov save their school from closure. I remember going to a school board meeting in early 2009 and telling them that I had assessed my effectiveness as principal and was not performing as well as I should be now because of my stress levels. Unbelievably the general mood seemed to be that if I thought I need to improve, then I should try harder. I don’t think they understood at all!

This was the last teaching job I’d take on. God didn’t open any more doors after that, and I had ample funds to permit me to just stay at home, and consider that my retirement began for me at the age of 60. We have made many acquaintances over the years at Benalla, Alice Springs and Echuca, and keep some communications going even now. God has been good to us; we lack for nothing in spite of no longer having our farm which was the price we had to pay for my teaching ministry. There’s always a cost in ministry. If there is no cost, then there’s probably no victory either. I am satisfied that every cost involved with all my travels has been worth it. I have followed where God has called and do not regret my teaching ministry in spite of leaving much comfort and financial ease behind.

Finally, it was an “all or nothing” desire that led me to go into ministry. I reasoned that if God couldn’t have all of me, then I would always be compromising in having to choose those things of the world I would accept rather than condemn. I didn’t want one foot in the world and the other in ministry. It had to be all or nothing!

 

My call from God to Christian schools (Part 5)/0 Comments/in /by

My call from God to Christian schools (Part 5)
In 2006 we spent 6 months travelling around the outback of Australia, including a risky trip across remote desert areas from 80 Mile Beach to Alice Springs, around 1600km of extremely remote tracks where a breakdown could mean disaster, especially on your own as I was, and towing a camper trailer as well! We carried fuel, water and all food supplies with us. When still only halfway, we had a rear wheel bearing start to fragment; the solid hammer-like “thump” in the rear, followed by the sound on metal rubbing on metal. Disaster! I had a better chance if I dropped the trailer off, but we were still over 800km and a few days 4WD track travel from Alice Springs (the first place we’d reach to get any repairs). The noise indicated a roller had come loose from the roller bearing on the RH rear axle. Experience told me that it wouldn’t be long before the whole bearing disintegrated, and that would mean not going any further without replacing that bearing. Even on smooth good condition roads my chances weren’t good and we were on a rough track, heavily corrugated in many places, with washouts and other obstacles needing a vehicle in good condition to get through. It would take a miracle to even get to the WA-NT border yet 260km ahead. Once we crossed that border we had a chance of getting a recovery vehicle from Alice Springs to pick us up; it would take us all day to get to that border.

And, not only did we reach the NT border, we even made it to Alice Springs, although the last stretch on sealed roads was so noisy and so slow because of that bearing screeching so loudly. I had kept on saying that if we were meant to get to Alice, then we’d get there, but I wasn’t too hopeful. I was expecting the car rear axle to seize up at any time all the way. It took 3 days for us to get to Alice and get it repaired. The garage said the bearing had disintegrated but there was no damage to the axle itself, a miracle in itself! And we had towed that camper trailer all the way as well. (I reasoned that if we had left the trailer behind, we wouldn’t have seen it again, and if we did break down, it would be handy to have it to sleep in while we waited for repairs.) Outback travelling can be risky and now I look back on it all and wonder why I did so much remote travel on my own. But it was enjoyable and the peace and quiet of the outback without anyone else around is very relaxing.

When we arrived home in Melbourne, I started to look around for a teaching job. My spare funds were running low and I needed to top them up a bit. I enquired about a principal position south of Perth, WA, but when I was told there were some Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) parents involved at the school, I had my doubts. However the principal there talked me into going there for an interview, so I went. I found out that there was a significant SDA population at the school, enough to have to be careful about mentioning topics such as hell and Saturday worship. (SDAs believe that worshipping on a day other than Saturday is enough to lose you your salvation unless you repent. Their “prophetess” Mary Eddy even taught that worshipping on Sunday was the equivalent of taking the mark of the beast!) I knew that I’d have problems there, so I withdrew my application when I got home from that interview.

By early of December I was still out of a job and wondering if I’d get one for 2007. Then I saw an advert for a principal at River City Christian College (RCCC) in Echuca. It caught my eye because it was well past its closing date. So I contacted them to tell them that their advert was still there past its end date. They said they still had no-one for the principal’s position and could I at least put in an application. I knew some people in Echuca; one was my father’s cousin, a Christian who might give me some idea of what the school was like. When I rang, he said he’d been asked to contact me to ask about the position. I went for the interview, and accepted the position when offered to me.

Once again we rented a house (while still keeping our house in Hoppers Crossing, Melbourne). Our house was next to the Campaspe River which flowed into the Murray River just downstream from us. The school was a 10-minute or less drive away; most days I would get there soon after 7am and finish around 5pm. At first the school seemed to be running well enough, but records showed that it had been losing students regularly for the past few years. It had reached over 100 students and they’d had visions of it growing further again. They allegedly set the school up with room and facilities for many more students, believing that God would bless this move of “faith”. However, the numbers went into steady decline after this “act of faith”; it seems that God did not see it the same as they did! When I arrived at the start of 2007, the numbers were down to less than half they’d had previously, and even then a few of those were not legally enrolled according to the Registered Schools Board. RCCC was a Prep-10 school, yet we appeared to have students doing Yr 11&12 studies.

The previous principal had left a message saying that the Registered Schools Board (RSB) were due to assess RCCC that year (2007) for registration. So I contacted the RSB to follow up what their plans might be. I’d had good contacts with the RSB in the past and now got someone I knew. He said that the state govt had now replaced the RSB with another body with further-reaching powers and consequences, the VRQA, and that the assessment wouldn’t be in 2007 but most likely in 2008, the changeover requiring a year to accomplish. And, he added, RCCC’s funding was under investigation because they considered we were getting more funding than we should have been getting. It seemed that we were claiming funding for Yr 11&12 students but were only registered for up to Yr 10. This was news to me, so I said I’d follow it up immediately.

And I did follow it up. I asked one of the school board why we would be under investigation regarding funding. I was told that Yes, there were students doing Yr 11&12 studies but were being listed as Yr 10 because they still had Yr 10 subjects to complete. The trick was, I was told, to keep them from completing Yr 10 until after they had completed Yr 11&12, and thus could be funded as Yr 10 students. I found it hard to believe they were doing such fiddling of the books, but Yes, they were indeed, and I told this board member so. RCCC was doing the ACE curriculum that used standardized subject booklets at each level, much like a home-schooling system might do. They could mix and match so that they might be doing yr 10 in one subject, but perhaps Yr 8 in another. The individualized method permitted each student to work at his/her own pace regardless of what the others were doing. But it still should never have been manipulated to permit the extra funding. So we did have an enrolment issue and serious funding issues as well. I took this to the school board and had the system changed so that these Yr 11&12 students were actually enrolled externally but could attend the school for their studies. It meant a reduction in govt funding though and therefore less money in the RCCC bank!

The previous principal (and possibly the one before him as well) had been given RSB recommendations back about 5 or 6 years before I arrived. These included a lack of policies for just about everything to do with the school, and some serious health and safety issues such as and asbestos assessment, exit doors opening inwards, and toilet locks that could end up locking someone in and not being able to get out (this did happen one evening!). We also didn’t have available our official certificate (effectively our licence to operate as a school) that had to be on show in the school office. It was missing; in fact no-one knew what it was or even if we’d ever had one! This school was in a proper mess and may not even had a legal right to operate as a school.

The VRQA came visiting early 2008. Almost their first words (after announcing a school review) to the staff gathered in the staffroom were “We intend removing some or all of your school registrations.” That is, we were registered primary P-6 and secondary 7-10. Most likely they meant that they would remove at least our secondary registration and probably also our primary registration. We found out later that the VRQA had a particular vendetta against Christian schools and had selected around six schools to start with to begin their planned destruction. They said they had already shut one school down before they visited us; we never did find out which school that was. We were given terms of assessment to consider including the total removal of anything in our curriculum that referred to biblical creation; creation teaching, they said, belonged in our myths and legends time, not our official curriculum; evolution was science and creation was not, so end of story!

We also needed to produce around 70-80 policies on every aspect of school activities. But their main focus (really an obsession!) was on removing all refences to God and the Bible from all our official statements and curriculum documents. On their first official assessment review later on, their report said that I was a fundamentalist teacher, something that in their context was intended to strongly suggest that I was a religious extremist of some sort, implying something maybe akin to being a terrorist. I spent long hours reviewing our curriculum documents which were in general very concise and not detailed enough because our curriculum was actually built into the ACE workbooks the students used. All the ACE curriculum had to be collated, letters written to obtain information. And we only had six policies, none of which actually dealt with RCCC. They had been copied from policies of another ACE school and mostly just had names and labels changed, but the wording remained largely applicable to the other school. They were useless! I spent long hours researching and writing policies for all sorts of areas. I ended up with 72 policies covering every possible aspect of school management including Emergency Management Plan, Bus policy, Occupational Health & Safety, etc. At first I would present what I had written to the school board for ratification, but this process was too slow so I finally put all the completed policies in a folder and presented them to the board, telling them to check them and if there were no stated issues, then consider them ratified! We were learning to cut corners due to the time constraints placed on us by the VRQA. And by the end of my second year there (2008) I was getting exhausted due to long hours being put in, including most weekends and holidays.

On their second visit the VRQA had a list of complaints, mostly due to their religious hatred of our biblical standards. They noted that on our website we declared God to be the ruler of the universe. They ordered me to remove it because it was an anti-government statement. I told them they were being ridiculous. And our statement of beliefs on our website was also under fire; they ordered me to remove that also. I told them it was none of their business what we put on our website; the website was not their official document to dictate terms about it. I don’t know what their hangup was but they certainly had a serious hatred for anything Christian. They continued to make it clear that they would shut us down if we couldn’t remove everything Christian from our school, website, everything. We were going to be completely sanitised or closed down!

At the end of 2008 I was suffering much stress-related health problems. I had a medical checkup and was found to have oesophageal ulcers. I was advised to back off my workload for a while or else things would get worse; the worst case scenario was that I could end up with cancer, or require major surgery for my stomach issues. I had been working 80 hour weeks consistently for a long time but would have to cut this back in 2009. The school board didn’t seem to understand my needs here and, effectively, without some support for my workload, it looked like I’d have to resign my position at the end of 2009. And with the VRQA still trying hard to shut us down, it didn’t look like I’d be backing off the workload enough yet.

 

My call from God to Christian schools (Part 4)/0 Comments/in /by

My call from God to Christian schools (Part 4)
I almost lasted a full three years teaching a difficult class at Yirara College, Alice Springs. We were able to do a lot of outback travel while there, being already in the outback to start with. Alice Springs had 1-week school holidays after 1st and 3rd terms, and a 4-week holiday in the middle of the year (winter). Winter was the best time to travel outback because of its milder weather, and drier too – the wet season up north was mostly during summer and early autumn. In 2001 we did the bottom half of the Canning Stock Route (the top half was flooded that year), and in 2002 and 2003 we did other areas of Western Australia (WA) (these being harder to reach when travelling from Victoria). We did tent camping because it allowed us to travel light and get to more offroad 4WD places.

In September 2003 we travelled south, returning to live in our house in Melbourne. This time I had a principal position at Moonee Vale Christian School (MVCS), a small school just north of central Melbourne. I started in 4th Term 2003 with three teachers plus other staff. Our site was very small though, and we were on the lookout for a larger block to shift to. When I took over leadership of the school, the school was told they would have to relocate. It had originally been set up by the Uniting Church, but were now told by that same church that we would have to agree to a multi-faith doctrine or else part company with that church. The multi-faith option was unacceptable from a biblical point of view so we therefore needed to find a new location. I went through the legal procedures of separating the school from the ownership of the Uniting Church, establishing ourselves in our own right. We also researched where we might relocate to, including a large block which used to be Kangan TAFE. All our options involved moneys way beyond our current capabilities; I felt we should step out in faith and make a move, believing that God would provide. Many on the school council felt that we needed to persuade the Uniting Church to permit us extra time on the current site in Moonee Ponds so we could have time to better research our options. However, the Uniting Church had made it clear that we were to move off the site by the end of 2004.

Later in 2004 the school council realised that we would have to move by the end of 2004 with no option for negotiations. By now though it was getting too late to have anything set up for 2005 and we needed to obtain a place to exist on and to find it in a hurry. We looked again at the Kangan TAFE site but the 2 million price tag was too much for most on the school council to accept. We investigated sharing with a couple of state schools in the area that had empty classrooms due to lower numbers attending. One of these did seem promising, until the then state minister for education Lynne Kosky made a ruling that no private school would share facilities with a state school. This effectively shut the door on us. It is interesting that at that time, there was a shared facility school in the Caroline Springs area with 3 separate schools on the one site: a state college (Brookside College), an independent college (Mowbray College) and a church college (Christ the Priest catholic primary school). “The Brookside campus was located at the Brookside Learning Centre, which hosted common facilities (such as administration facilities, library, gymnasium, arts rooms, and science rooms) shared by Mowbray, the Brookside campus of Caroline Springs College and Christ the Priest Catholic Primary School.” (Wikipedia)

I put this to the Victorian state education ministry to consider, but it did appear as if the minister for education was determined to block any attempt by MVCS to be able to share facilities (paying fees and costs) with a state school. Lynne Kosky was not an effective leader of any ministry areas she took on, being moved into a new ministry regularly when her current one failed apparently due to her incompetence. The decision she made regarding the sharing of our school with a state school was not based upon logic, and was not consistent with other decisions made at that time regarding similar projects. It is my belief that she was anti-Christian, using her position as minister for education to single us out for opposition based on our Christian beliefs which she did not seem to like. Nevertheless, we still had to find a place for 2005 or close down.

Nearing the end of 2004 we were able to come to an agreement with another Christian school in Thomastown for 2005. This meant effectively combining the student bodies and staff of both schools. It also meant a bus had to be hired every morning and afternoon to transport the MVCS students to the Thomastown site every day. This lasted for just 2005 with the church owners of the Thomastown Christian school not extending the arrangement into 2006.

We had been considering the Kangan TAFE site during this time, but it wasn’t available for rental and the purchase cost was considered more than the school could afford. (Rental was out of the question anyway because buildings had to be established on the site.) The school council still couldn’t bear to consider trusting that much to God in faith. Into 2006 we looked at other options but there was nothing available. We were told by the Registered Schools Board that we had to have the school up and running before the school term commenced. I was able to persuade the authorities to extend this to sometime in February, but the deadline came and went and we were still without a site. We officially closed in February 2006.

I decided to take that year off. It was too late to look at teaching elsewhere after the school year had already started. I had some funds set aside, enough to go camping outback as long as I was careful with my spending. I had purchased an offroad camper trailer in 2004 and would live in that for maybe 6 months. It was very basic: no fridge, no basic lighting, a canvas cover that unfolded when it was opened up, basically a bed on wheels. But it could be towed just about everywhere my 4WD Rodeo could go. My time at MVCS had been very stressful and I needed a break. I’d look for a job after I came back. I believed that God would call as He had done so in the past. And it would be no different this time. I would apply for a job at River City Christian College (RCCC) in Echuca for 2007. God would confirm it with someone we knew asking if I could consider it because they were having trouble finding a replacement for a principal who had suddenly resigned.

When I told my older sister that I was resigning from the state education department at the end of 1993, she told me I was making a big mistake. If I stayed at my state school job I could retire at 55 on 5/8 of my retiring wage indexed for life. I had 11 more years to go and then be on easy living. Certainly giving up a secure job with good retirement benefits did look bad, but I was convinced that there was more to life than just a comfortable retirement at just 55. I went ahead with my Christian schools ministry and found that every time I’d looked for a job, one had come my way. The pay was never anywhere near as good as my pay with state schools but I have always had sufficient for all my needs since then. The Echuca school principal position would end in January 2010 due to stress-related health issues; it would be my last job with a wage. But now, 26 years later, I still have more than my basic needs requirements. It is clear that God has always provided for my needs throughout my Christian schools’ ministry.

Do I regret leaving my farm, though? (We had sold the remainder of the property at the start of 2003 while living at Alice Springs.) The answer is that I do miss the wide open spaces, especially when I have to put up with Melbourne traffic and crowds. I once said many years ago that I’d never live in a place like Melbourne, and yet, here I am, in the very place I never wanted to be in. Sometimes we have a choice between living according to our desires and accepting the consequences of a ministry. Is my Christian priority to enjoy this life, or instead to maybe be able to assist others to have the life that I know is yet in my future? This current life is merely the preparation for the life to come. Do I want the best life can offer me in this life or in the next life for eternity? What we do in this life will determine how and where we spend eternity. Always keep in mind that this life is a mere blink of the eye compared with future eternity.

My call from God to Christian schools (Part 3)/0 Comments/in /by

My call from God to Christian schools (Part 3)
After leaving Benalla Christian School, I taught Yr 6 at Heathdale Christian College (Werribee). At first I received a lot of necessary support from a caring administration after being effectively sacked from the previous school, sacked (along with the other teacher) because I (with the other teacher) wouldn’t let the Benalla school parents control the classroom for their own benefits. The actions of the Benalla Christian School board destroyed their school; they should have kept on the teachers God had called to teach there, instead of getting rid of them. The then Heathdale principal was very understanding of what had happened in Benalla; this was necessary as it took much of that 1997 year to regain my composure after the battles I had faced in Benalla. Then, in the following years (1998-2000) I carried out my duties well, also running a successful orienteering program for primary school students. But after a new principal was appointed (after the previous one resigned probably due to some unstated pressures from the school), the ethos changed and the school leaned very strongly toward a more calvinistic outlook on teaching. And I strongly felt like I was stagnating, not being used properly. I had this feeling that there was more to my calling than this. Then in 2000 I felt a strong desire (a “gut-feeling” as I termed it) to go into the outback to work with aboriginal education; I had learned to pay attention to gut feelings in the past and therefore chose to follow up on this one.

I looked at remote community schools such as Warburton on the Great Central Rd in central Western Australia (WA). I obtained a WA education department remote schools application form, filled it in and sent it. I also sent a similar application for remote community schools in South Australia (SA). I never received a reply to the SA application, and was told by someone that SA had a policy of giving jobs to SA teachers ahead of any interstate ones regardless of qualifications. But I did receive from WA education a request to interview me via phone linkup for a position at Warburton, WA. However, when the interview time came, nothing happened. I was told that somehow it had been cancelled without telling me. (Politics again?)

I then saw a position advertised for principal of a Christian school in Alice Springs. I applied and was interviewed by phone linkup. It seemed that I was favoured to get the position but one question got in the way. What would I do with a problem situation? But with no detail or explanation I could only give generalities. I asked what the problem was and they said they couldn’t tell me but how would I deal with it? They ended up giving the job to a local who taught at Yirara College, a boarding school for aboriginal students from remote communities. (And after a couple of years the Christian school was trying to offload him, it seems, probably due to not being able to deal with the problem that they wouldn’t tell me about in my interview.) I applied to Yirara College in Alice Springs, and ended up taking the position that the one chosen for the Christian school had vacated. It wasn’t exactly what I had anticipated but it turned out to be excellent for our contacts with aboriginal people, some of whom we continue to have contact with today. I resigned from Heathdale College and prepared to head for Alice Springs. I arranged to hire a truck (I have a truck licence) to take our main furniture items to Alice Springs, then planning to return to then drive up to Alice with my wife. I’d tow a trailer behind my Rodeo 4WD while she drove the small VW 1978 Golf.

In January 2001 I collected the rental truck and we stacked as much as we could into it. I would take my Engel freezer with supplies in it (this was mid-January summer) and hopefully would take six days to do the round trip to Alice. The Engel ran on 12V while the truck ran a 24V system; however I had been given a 24V to 12V step-down transformer to run my Engel. The problem was that once I got going, I found the step-down unit would only deliver around 10.5V at best. The Engel wasn’t going to work, and it was too late to get something to replace the step-down unit. My freezer was filled with cold stuff that would have to be eaten quickly or else go off. I headed off in the evening and then ate most of the food the next day. It was a hot day, around 45OC and driving north into the sun was even hotter. I had rented a truck without aircon because it was cheaper to rent and used less fuel (it was 4600km return trip); I now regretted this decision! I reached Alice the next morning after driving most of the night while it was cooler. The furniture was unloaded into a storage facility and I headed south again. Around Coober Pedy I had to stop for a while with kangaroos clustered on the road so thickly that it was hard to avoid them all. Warm moonlit nights tend to bring them to the roads where grass grows on the verges but little elsewhere.

Arriving home after being on the road for only 4 days there and back, I returned the truck and loaded up the cars and my trailer. My wife had little luggage; the animals took up the back seat and their feed and water took up much of the boot. The VW had roof bars with some bits and pieces but it was only a small car and couldn’t be loaded up with much. My Rodeo and trailer carried a lot including fuel and water.

We left early morning and drove. My wife was not used to long-distance driving so we had frequent breaks, including for the needs of the cat and dog. The first day hit 48OC as we passed through Renmark on the Murray River at sunset. We stopped briefly there but had to keep moving at night while it was cooler. After a stop near Burra SA we drove on into what would be over 50OC. It was too hot to stop even in the shade, so we just kept on driving. (The VW overheated most of this day but we couldn’t stop for long so just had to put up with the damage it did to the small engine.) At Pimba Roadhouse we stopped for cold drinks and bags of ice to scatter all around the VW especially with the cat and dog. The next day was just as hot, and we were relieved when it was only 45OC when we reached Alice the 3rd morning. We never experienced such heat again even while living in Alice. It could often get into high 40s on the road south from Alice in summer, but not like the 51 or 52 we had when first driving there. When we were about halfway there my wife said we should never have come; it was too hot; but it was too late to turn back by then!

Alice Springs is a fairly green place where our rental required that we keep the lawns watered with water from deep wells just south of the town. We rented a house with an aboriginal family on one side and another 2 houses away on the other side. We were to get to know them very well, and even today we still keep in regular contact with some of them. Their children would come into our yard to play under my wife’s supervision. She would also take our neighbours shopping and to hospital emergency when required (which did happen at times), and to church on many Sundays. I was given a class at Yirara College with teenage students from remote communities around the outback. My class was the lowest level, with very few having attended school before they came into my room. Violence was a daily affair, especially among the males, and my class was probably the most violent. Some teachers called it the feral class! Many were petrol sniffers or on other substance abuse. Every term I’d start off with mostly a new group of students; most never made it past a single term. I’d have maybe 25 to start each term, but by the end of term this would halve with many running away as soon as they became bored with learning. I had a teacher-aide for the mornings but the afternoons (when they were more likely to misbehave) I had them on my own.

I had to take the class to a local dentist in my first term there. I was supposed to have an aide to assist but she wasn’t able to make it this day, so I had to watch 25 wild students on my own in the waiting room. They were impossible! The cold-water dispenser soon ran out as they emptied it onto the floor, and the receptionist was in despair while they messed around the place. I vowed never to take them to the dentist again without extra help! Many of them spoke little or even no English, and I spoke none of their languages (there were around 5 or more local languages in Alice alone). Every term I had a mostly new lot of unschooled teenagers to break in! I lasted almost three years before deciding I had to have a break from this to regain my sanity. Because I was renting a house, it was hard to take a break and keep on paying the rent. So near the end of my 3rd year I resigned and took up a position as principal at a Christian school in Moonee Ponds, Melbourne. But that’s another part of my story.

The aboriginal families we lived next to mostly came from the Warlpiri tribal people of the Tanami Desert area. We got to know them well, helping them with all sorts of things including medical needs, shopping needs, transport needs, looking after their children, assisting with legal problems (family violence, especially alcohol-fueled violence, was a way of life for many of them), helping them with the social and welfare personnel, in fact, just being alongside them when they needed help. Aboriginal people have some difficulty fitting in with our type of society and what they often need is simply someone alongside them to help them. Aboriginal society is different in some ways. They find it difficult to say no to family (where family can be any one of dozens of relations where relations are defined by their societal code, with “skin names” referring to their position in their society). So anyone who claims to be “family” can come and take what they want from another who isn’t using it at that time. If one has food in the fridge, another can come and take it as their right. The same with a car; your car is only yours if you need it now, otherwise someone else who is “family” can take it and use it. If one gets a job, and therefore gets wages, then others will come and demand it be shared with “family”. If one tries to get off the grog (alcohol), they often get hooked on grog again because “family” comes in and uses their house for drinking. It’s so hard to say no to family. If “family” drink in your house and start a fight, it’s hard to tell them to go away because they are “family”.

Because of our involvement with aboriginal people, we have been accepted into their society; we are family to some of them. Their society says there is no relationship outside kin, so we must be made kin in order to be accepted as helpers. We have been given aboriginal “skin names” to connect us to them as “family”. We have aboriginal people calling us mum and dad, and so on. We have a “daughter” in Adelaide whom we regularly help with advice on legal, dietary and financial issues. She used to be an alcoholic but is now (as far as we know) no longer addicted. She eats well, looks after herself much better than she did in Alice, and her children (who were taken off her a few times in the past due to drunken violence) have mostly returned to her. Unfortunately this still leads to conflict which we do try to sort out.

So what did we gain by going to Alice Springs? It’s a long and difficult process to help the people there but that was our ministry which we are still involved with today. It was more than just education ministry, more of a missionary ministry. What they need is not more money thrown at them, nor land nor possessions; what they need is mostly people to get alongside them to help them better understand our society. Their tribal rules might work in remote areas, but so many in urban situations need help in living away from their remote communities with such different societal roles.
We did do a lot of travelling while living in Central Australia, including down to Victoria and return four times a year. We would travel south to keep in touch with family, doing the return trip in a week, around 35-40 hours each way, travelling day and night. Watching for wildlife at night, especially kangaroos, did slow us down a bit though, and good driving lights on the car were essential.

 

 

 

 

My call from God to Christian schools (Part 2)/0 Comments/in /by

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)/0 Comments/in /by

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!