Crossing the ditch, Reconditioning time

Age 40-45

In 1996 aged 39 and fit as a fiddle, I was reliably informed by my good friend, running buddy and erstwhile GP Gregor, that my slight breathlessness running hard up hills was not just because I was trying to keep up with him (Yeah, right!) but that it could well be related to a slight murmur which he had detected with his trusty stethoscope.  Well, it turned out that he was a good diagnostician and after a series of tests I was informed that I had inherited my Dad's bi-cuspid aortic valve condition.  After inquiring of the medical fraternity as to what that meant, I was told (and I quote): "It shouldn't preclude you from any physical activity..."  

So, I continued to run, swim and cycle etc. with carefree abandon... but not for long!

Late one night in 1996 I received what sounded like one of those crank calls, with a hollow sounding foreign-accented voice seeking answers to some strange sounding questions.  So I promptly hung up, only to have the Chair of a pastoral search committee in Melbourne, Australia, promptly ring back to reassure me that this was a genuine call!

Six months later after a visit across the ditch and with much agonizing and soul-searching, we loaded a shipping container, sold the cars, and packed our bags in response to an invitation from Mitcham Baptist Church to take up the role of Senior Pastor in the eastern-suburban 'Bible-belt" of Melbourne.

We arrived to a warm welcome... 42 C and bushfires blazing in the Dandenong ranges and around Blackburn lake - not far from where we would be living!  Coming out of a temperate Auckland city, the temperature  change was discombobulating and the prospect of incineration disconcerting to say the least.  I'm not sure I've ever got used to the extreme temperatures in Melbourne summers... once it gets over 35 there is no relief to be found until the inevitable and welcome cool change blows in from the south.  We've had Christmas days of 39 C and 12C in consecutive years!  The weather is  never dull here in Victoria!!!




Looking back I hardly recognise the young 40 yr old who was once famously mistaken for his teenage daughter's older brother (I have continued to dine out on that one to this day!)







Cathy and Jonathan were a little younger too!





After a few years it became obvious that the Church needed to do something about its ageing and inadequate facilities and, after much soul-searching and with a huge step of faith, we sold the original site and bought a run-down old factory 400m up the road...  4000 m2 of brick and glass walled, asbestos roofed SPACE!

The dream was to transition from being a fairly traditional Baptist church to a much more mission-focused and outward looking gathering of people serving their local area with a softer interface between church and local community, providing meeting spaces and facilities which could be used by a broad cross section of people in the whole Mitcham precinct and beyond...

So it was that one Sunday morning, we closed the old doors, picked up our cross and walked into a new adventure...  Little did we know that it would be three years of hard slog and endless weekends of working bees before finally we would officially open 'The Factory' as the new Church and community centre

The renovated structure would eventually contain several large meeting rooms seating 150+ with a main meeting space that could seat over 700, a commercial kitchen, an indoor soccer court and half-court basketball plus office space for future staff... and still with 1500m2 left over to lease out for rental income... but for a long time there were temporary walls, dust, dirt and stuff everywhere!

Somewhere in there my heart- valve finally 'went west' and after a complicated Ross procedure and post-surgical complications in the form of acute Compartment Syndrome and a fasciotomy I ended up flat on my back for three months... having nearly lost my leg in the process I had no idea whether I'd ever be able to walk let alone ever run again...