**This interview is a part of a series to commemorate 175 years of St. Mark’s Anglican Church.**
When did you start attending church at St. Mark’s, and what are some of your early memories of the church?
I started coming to St. Mark’s in about 1966. My mother and father, who lived in Redbank, in Upper Picton, got a housing commission down on Menangle Street. We moved from the Methodist church in Redbank to start attending St. Mark’s. I don’t have many memories of St. Mark’s at that stage because of being so young, but as time went on I went to Sunday School. There were no actual rooms for Sunday School: in one part of the church you’d have the first class, in another part you’d have the second class, in another part you’d have kindergarten…right up to the sixth class and high school. The members of the congregation in the morning would go outside and sit on stools and they would listen to the Rector give a sermon, while the children would have their Sunday Schools classes in the church building. In the mid-eighties there was a cottage set up (outside the church building). A friend of mine, Barry, and his wife, Denise, became the youth pastors, and they ran and based an outreach in the cottage, with their young family. The cottage is gone now but from that, about 10 or more young people became strong Christians and went off into ministry, as missionaries overseas with YWAM, and some also attended bible college. The best thing was, everybody that came to St. Mark’s was accepted for who they were. There was no groups of friends and such. Everybody was accepted, everybody was loved. What attracts people to church is, I believe, a strong group of Christians who are open to sharing and caring and accepting people.
What are some ways that the church engaged with the congregation and community during this time?
St. Mark’s in that time used to have missionary conventions. These were held in Victoria Park on Menangle Street, in the agricultural hall. It would run for one week, starting on a Saturday and finishing the following Saturday. Basically, every night they would have movies or a speaker from a different mission from around the world who would come and talk about a variety of things. Many people were saved because the Rector (of St. Marks) would give altar calls, where people could come and receive Jesus. The convention went on for about 20 years, from around 1956 to about 1976. There were thousands of people visiting over the twenty years and many peoples’ lives were changed.
In the early seventies, the Rector, JB Schofield, bought a double decker bus, which the church paid for and looked after. That bus was used from about 1972, right up until JB retired in 2000. It was used for many different things: we went on Outback safaris to Coopers Creek and Cameron’s Corner; we went to South Australia and the Flinders Ranges and to Coonabarabran and the Warrenbungles. St. Mark’s was always a place that was exciting – there was always something happening. We were always doing something adventurous. The bus would collect kids from the high school, from year 7 to year 9. They would come down for 2 hours first thing in the morning to have a seminar in the church, where they would black the windows out to make it look like a picture theatre. The children weren’t “churched” at all, so, there was one time, I remember, when the lights came on, and one of the ushers – we had to have ushers to make sure the kids were under control – found a young couple having a pash! The church would be packed. Upstairs, downstairs… the Rector would sometimes show a movie and the kids loved it – it was getting out of school, it was something different, it was an excursion. That was held once a month on a Thursday. The bus and the fellowship and the friendship of people is what made St. Mark’s what it was, along with good bible teaching, prayer and leadership. Church has changed and people change; at the moment it is a different demographic, but who knows what’s going to happen in the next 10 years? It could all change again.
It’s amazing where St. Mark’s is today. Who knows what the next adventure is.
Interviewed by Rachel Winn.
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