RELIGION

United we stand

The Uniting Church's Reverend Lee Perkins
talks to Gemma Buxton

How long have you been in Tennant Creek?
2 years and a month pretty well.

When did you become interested in religion or turn to religion?
I suppose in some ways I was always interested in religion but from the other side. I was an antagonist, I suppose, of anyone who was religious all through my school years.
When I was 18 a number of things happened that convinced me that God was a reality. Until then I suppose I was an atheist, not just an agnostic but actually an atheist. I was certain there was no God but a number of things happened during that 18th year that convinced me that God was real and that Christian faith was real and Jesus Christ was real.
So I became a Christian. Mostly it was the change in people's lives. I had some good friends and we went from Ohio up to Lake Saranac in New York State and there were four of us on the bus who weren't Christians. There was myself and a fella called Mike, who was a 16 year old heroin addict and Rocky and Laurie who were 16 also. I think I was the oldest at 17. And they were both prostitutes.
Mike was going to Upper New York State to get away, the police were getting pretty hot on his trail, he had a $600 a day heroin habit and coming from a middle class family found it pretty hard to get that sort of money and so got into quite a lot of crime. The police were getting closer and closer. I think at that stage something like 95% of crime in New York City was unsolved and he thought that sounded pretty good for a fellow who needed lots of money urgently!
I was going on this bus ride because it was an opportunity to see a part of America I hadn't seen before. And I'm not sure why Laurie and Rocky went actually, they just heard that you had a good time at these camps and thought they'd made enough money during the year to be able to spend a bit of it.
We were sort of the scourge of the bus all the way up, annoying everybody but the other three had their lives changed during the ten days we were up there. And Mike's really was a very miraculous story, he just gave up heroin overnight and that hadn't happened in our area in Ohio; it was the drug centre for the mid-west of the United States and drugs were very common.
You'd see people getting off drugs and they went through hell with the convulsions and the vomiting and the screaming and everything else. We had one guy at the camp that had been trying to get off heroin for months and people just used to come and sit on him and hold him down. Yet Mike just stopped and I'm sure that it was a miracle because I never saw that happen in normal circumstances.
Rocky and Laurie just changed completely too. The three of them went back to Canton, back to school, and were sort of model citizens after that! And that had a fair effect on me, to see those changes.
My own conversion though came later that year. I guess I took a bit more convincing; I'd also been a bit of a cynic. But God didn't give up and eventually convinced me. The call to the ministry came many years after that, around 1970 I think.
It took me three years to answer it because I really didn't want to go into the ministry. I thought I'd make a good racing car driver actually! That was one you couldn't do, be a minister of a church and be a racing driver because races were always Sundays! No good getting pole position on the grid on Saturday and not being able to turn up on Sunday!

What made you decide to follow the Uniting Church?
Someone handed me a copy of the Basis of Union - that would have been about the mid seventies. I was so taken with what I saw this church to be and the possibilities for it as an Australian grass-roots church. It was a church that wasn't ruled by a hierarchy.
It was a church where ordinary people got to have a say and I actually found within a short time of joining the Uniting Church as a young person that I was on Youth Councils and people were listening. There four of us who joined at the same time; all in our early twenties and you didn't sort of have to wait till you were sixty to be able to have a say or go to a meeting. We were quite welcome at any of the meetings and people listened to what we had to say and some of the suggestions we made were implemented.
That impressed me It was a church where ministry wasn't what the minister did but what everybody does and also it was a church that said we can make mistakes, that we are a pilgrim people on a way to a promised end. That the Uniting Church will stop and review laws and regulations along the way and make changes where necessary.
So the church wasn't sort of set in concrete and ruled by patriarchs and it also wasn't a church that was governed from overseas, it was an Australian church. I've always sort of felt very much for Australia, I wouldn't say I'm nationalistic but I've always thought Australia was a pretty good place to be and we should have our own identity and our own self determination.

Do you feel for your counterparts in say, the Anglican Church, who have to fight so hard for ordination?
Yes, I think the Anglican church has been a difficult road for women. I think they are being ordained now but in some areas it's still a battle, such as in Sydney Diocese it would be very difficult and there are a couple of other places where it is a real battleground for women still. I think women in the Presbyterian church probably have it worse. Currently there are women already ordained in Presbyterian churches who find that their church no longer believes in the ordination of women and I think that's very difficult for women there. I think those churches are going backwards!
I found the Uniting Church to be very open to me as a woman. Certainly there were a lot of women who went into ministry ahead of me, I think by the end of the year that I was ordained, there were about 50 women in NSW alone and there women ordained in the Uniting Church at the time of union. So the road had very much been travelled.

Who pays for the Patrol Ministry?
Frontier Services pay for the Patrol Ministry which comes under the Uniting Church Assembly. Frontier Services used to be the old Australian Inland Mission that John Flynn founded. In fact this building is the old Australian Inland Mission Welfare building.
After union, when other churches came in as well as the Presbyterian church that ran the Australian Inland Mission, the name really needed to changed because the Methodists had, I guess, a little bit of a ministry in the Outback and so to did the Congregationalists. I don't think any worked to the extent of the AIM at that time.
So they looked for a name change and it became Frontier Services. This organisation now run about 18 or 19 patrols through various areas, I think we cover something like 80% of the Australian mainland between us, so that's quite an area for about 18 people to cover. We also cover organisations such as the Nursing Home. Pulka Pulka Kari here is run by Frontier Services. Also, what used to be the Welfare service here, now Tennant Barkly Community Support Service, is also run by Frontier Services.
We run a number of things including Student Group Homes, The Remote Area Family Services Teams which go around running playgroups on stations, drought counsellors and migrant services, HACC services and Nursing Homes, all kinds of community programs, but always in remote areas. They never go into the cities and they challenge an area where something has already been done well. They finance 50% of the ministry, they pay half of the stipend and provide the vehicle and the parish pays for the rest of the stipend and provides the house.

How much time do you spend travelling to remote areas?
It is a lot of time actually, I'd probably live out of the back of the four wheel drive five months of the year roughly. I'd cover about 50,000 kilometres a year. The area I cover is about 350,00 to 400,00 square kilometres, so it's a fairly sizeable area.

Who looks after the church while you're away?
The elders primarily with assistance from others within the congregation. They have a worship team which organises services when I'm away and the elders take care of pastoral needs. The parish council keep the practical side of things up and running. It's a fair job, 2 weeks every month and 2 services every month.
When I first came here I think everybody thought it was fairly daunting, but I think they've settled in and they don't seem to have the fears about how they were going to do it that they had when I first came. In fact the report from Frontier Services last September said that the Tennant/ Barkly Parish Patrol was actually the most successful start to any Parish Patrol ever, anywhere in the country.
I think that has got a lot to do with the people of the church here and the way that they see the Patrol as an outreach of their own congregation and their willingness to come in and be a part of a ministry team that takes care of the church when I'm away.
I've certainly put work into it as well, it's been a goal of mine to encourage and nurture people in that way because I believe that I'm only here to help the church be the church, I'm not the church in Tennant Creek. The people here are the church, and I'm just passing through to assist them on their journey and they're doing that I think very well. It's only a small congregation, but everyone in it has taken on some responsibilities and I think that's exciting. Because usually, no matter how big your congregation is, only a small percentage take on responsibility. That's the way the church should be, it shouldn't be an association where people come and sit down and are entertained, it's a group of people who serve God and that's exactly what happens here. And I think it's an exciting future for the Uniting Church here.

When are your services?
We have one service each week at 9:30 on a Sunday morning and then the worship team leads evening services from time to time and then any other special services such as Christmas and Easter, weddings, funerals, baptisms are all special services. Baptisms are always part of Sunday worship with the congregation.

United we stand The Uniting Church's Reverend Lee Perkins talks to Gemma Buxton How long have you been in Tennant Creek? 2 years and a month pretty well. When did you become interested in religion or turn to religion? I suppose in some ways I was always interested in religion but from the other side. I was an antagonist, I suppose, of anyone who was religious all through my school years. When I was 18 a number of things happened that convinced me that God was a reality. Until then I suppose I was an atheist, not just an agnostic but actually an atheist. I was certain there was no God but a number of things happened during that 18th year that convinced me that God was real and that Christian faith was real and Jesus Christ was real. So I became a Christian. Mostly it was the change in people's lives. I had some good friends and we went from Ohio up to Lake Saranac in New York State and there were four of us on the bus who weren't Christians. There was myself and a fella called Mike, who was a 16 year old heroin addict and Rocky and Laurie who were 16 also. I think I was the oldest at 17. And they were both prostitutes. Mike was going to Upper New York State to get away, the police were getting pretty hot on his trail, he had a $600 a day heroin habit and coming from a middle class family found it pretty hard to get that sort of money and so got into quite a lot of crime. The police were getting closer and closer. I think at that stage something like 95% of crime in New York City was unsolved and he thought that sounded pretty good for a fellow who needed lots of money urgently! I was going on this bus ride because it was an opportunity to see a part of America I hadn't seen before. And I'm not sure why Laurie and Rocky went actually, they just heard that you had a good time at these camps and thought they'd made enough money during the year to be able to spend a bit of it. We were sort of the scourge of the bus all the way up, annoying everybody but the other three had their lives changed during the ten days we were up there. And Mike's really was a very miraculous story, he just gave up heroin overnight and that hadn't happened in our area in Ohio; it was the drug centre for the mid-west of the United States and drugs were very common. You'd see people getting off drugs and they went through hell with the convulsions and the vomiting and the screaming and everything else. We had one guy at the camp that had been trying to get off heroin for months and people just used to come and sit on him and hold him down. Yet Mike just stopped and I'm sure that it was a miracle because I never saw that happen in normal circumstances. Rocky and Laurie just changed completely too. The three of them went back to Canton, back to school, and were sort of model citizens after that! And that had a fair effect on me, to see those changes. My own conversion though came later that year. I guess I took a bit more convincing; I'd also been a bit of a cynic. But God didn't give up and eventually convinced me. The call to the ministry came many years after that, around 1970 I think. It took me three years to answer it because I really didn't want to go into the ministry. I thought I'd make a good racing car driver actually! That was one you couldn't do, be a minister of a church and be a racing driver because races were always Sundays! No good getting pole position on the grid on Saturday and not being able to turn up on Sunday! What made you decide to follow the Uniting Church? Someone handed me a copy of the Basis of Union - that would have been about the mid seventies. I was so taken with what I saw this church to be and the possibilities for it as an Australian grass-roots church. It was a church that wasn't ruled by a hierarchy. It was a church where ordinary people got to have a say and I actually found within a short time of joining the Uniting Church as a young person that I was on Youth Councils and people were listening. There four of us who joined at the same time; all in our early twenties and you didn't sort of have to wait till you were sixty to be able to have a say or go to a meeting. We were quite welcome at any of the meetings and people listened to what we had to say and some of the suggestions we made were implemented. That impressed me It was a church where ministry wasn't what the minister did but what everybody does and also it was a church that said we can make mistakes, that we are a pilgrim people on a way to a promised end. That the Uniting Church will stop and review laws and regulations along the way and make changes where necessary. So the church wasn't sort of set in concrete and ruled by patriarchs and it also wasn't a church that was governed from overseas, it was an Australian church. I've always sort of felt very much for Australia, I wouldn't say I'm nationalistic but I've always thought Australia was a pretty good place to be and we should have our own identity and our own self determination. Do you feel for your counterparts in say, the Anglican Church, who have to fight so hard for ordination? Yes, I think the Anglican church has been a difficult road for women. I think they are being ordained now but in some areas it's still a battle, such as in Sydney Diocese it would be very difficult and there are a couple of other places where it is a real battleground for women still. I think women in the Presbyterian church probably have it worse. Currently there are women already ordained in Presbyterian churches who find that their church no longer believes in the ordination of women and I think that's very difficult for women there. I think those churches are going backwards! I found the Uniting Church to be very open to me as a woman. Certainly there were a lot of women who went into ministry ahead of me, I think by the end of the year that I was ordained, there were about 50 women in NSW alone and there women ordained in the Uniting Church at the time of union. So the road had very much been travelled. Who pays for the Patrol Ministry? Frontier Services pay for the Patrol Ministry which comes under the Uniting Church Assembly. Frontier Services used to be the old Australian Inland Mission that John Flynn founded. In fact this building is the old Australian Inland Mission Welfare building. After union, when other churches came in as well as the Presbyterian church that ran the Australian Inland Mission, the name really needed to changed because the Methodists had, I guess, a little bit of a ministry in the Outback and so to did the Congregationalists. I don't think any worked to the extent of the AIM at that time. So they looked for a name change and it became Frontier Services. This organisation now run about 18 or 19 patrols through various areas, I think we cover something like 80% of the Australian mainland between us, so that's quite an area for about 18 people to cover. We also cover organisations such as the Nursing Home. Pulka Pulka Kari here is run by Frontier Services. Also, what used to be the Welfare service here, now Tennant Barkly Community Support Service, is also run by Frontier Services. We run a number of things including Student Group Homes, The Remote Area Family Services Teams which go around running playgroups on stations, drought counsellors and migrant services, HACC services and Nursing Homes, all kinds of community programs, but always in remote areas. They never go into the cities and they challenge an area where something has already been done well. They finance 50% of the ministry, they pay half of the stipend and provide the vehicle and the parish pays for the rest of the stipend and provides the house. How much time do you spend travelling to remote areas? It is a lot of time actually, I'd probably live out of the back of the four wheel drive five months of the year roughly. I'd cover about 50,000 kilometres a year. The area I cover is about 350,00 to 400,00 square kilometres, so it's a fairly sizeable area. Who looks after the church while you're away? The elders primarily with assistance from others within the congregation. They have a worship team which organises services when I'm away and the elders take care of pastoral needs. The parish council keep the practical side of things up and running. It's a fair job, 2 weeks every month and 2 services every month. When I first came here I think everybody thought it was fairly daunting, but I think they've settled in and they don't seem to have the fears about how they were going to do it that they had when I first came. In fact the report from Frontier Services last September said that the Tennant/ Barkly Parish Patrol was actually the most successful start to any Parish Patrol ever, anywhere in the country. I think that has got a lot to do with the people of the church here and the way that they see the Patrol as an outreach of their own congregation and their willingness to come in and be a part of a ministry team that takes care of the church when I'm away. I've certainly put work into it as well, it's been a goal of mine to encourage and nurture people in that way because I believe that I'm only here to help the church be the church, I'm not the church in Tennant Creek. The people here are the church, and I'm just passing through to assist them on their journey and they're doing that I think very well. It's only a small congregation, but everyone in it has taken on some responsibilities and I think that's exciting. Because usually, no matter how big your congregation is, only a small percentage take on responsibility. That's the way the church should be, it shouldn't be an association where people come and sit down and are entertained, it's a group of people who serve God and that's exactly what happens here. And I think it's an exciting future for the Uniting Church here. When are your services? We have one service each week at 9:30 on a Sunday morning and then the worship team leads evening services from time to time and then any other special services such as Christmas and Easter, weddings, funerals, baptisms are all special services. Baptisms are always part of Sunday worship with the congregation.