My Story - Rev. David Smith
60's
February 17th, 1962, I was born to Bruce and Joan Smith at KGV hospital in Newtown, only about 4kms from where I now live - the same place my youngest daughter was born.
My parents were both academics of sorts. My father was (and is) an ordained Anglican priest, but never a senior parish minister. His career has been largely split between lecturing in theological colleges and teaching 'classics' to high school students. He also moves regularly between churches and conferences, teaching, preaching and reading his poetry, which is his other gift. My mother was also qualified as a teacher, though spent most of her married life looking after me and my two younger brothers.
I don't remember a great deal of my childhood, apart from watching the moon landing, and constant bickering with my brothers. The other distinct memory of my youth was feeling left out at school, largely because I was the only kid who didn't head off to 'Greek School' each weekday afternoon. I yearned to join my friends at Greek School, and wonder now why I was never allowed to attend. Couple this with the shame of having a father who worked for the church, when my friends had fathers who ran Milk Bars and Fish & Chip shops, and one who even worked in the Scanlens Bubble Gum factory!
The 70's
My awareness of the tension in the family home grew as I grew. Indeed, my mother started 'sharing' her problems with me while I was still far too young to understand what she was talking about. It was 1973 when my mother decided that it was time for her to leave my father and strike out on her own. She took off with us quietly while my father was away on a conference.
My mother's actions caused a fair degree of distress, not only to my father, but across the Sydney diocese. My father was expelled from his job lecturing at the theological college. His reputation was greatly damaged. Indeed, some have never spoken to him since. My mother was lauded, I think, by a small number, who saw her as representative of assertive feminist action. Many more though despised her, and at least a few let her know it. Within a year of her leaving, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
By age twelve I was seeing my first counsellor/psychiatrist, as I was displaying suicidal tendencies. I continued to see a counsellor for some years. Meanwhile my mother died slowly - a death by inches. Shortly after her masectomy she was raped by our land-lord. I remember her telling me about this. I was all of fourteen and didn't have a clue what to do.
My mother found comfort in her dying days in the arms of another man who was, rather bizarrely, another Anglican minister. Unfortunately he was already married, and the relationship was bound to end unhappily. I remember resenting his presence in our lives at the time, but I can only think fondly of him now. The diocese quietly shipped him out of harm's way when they found out. He was not in attendance at my mother's funeral.
My mother died while I was still 16. It was the same day that I bought my first leather jacket. By this stage I'd developed a rather passionate attraction to the 'Sex Pistols' and to the nihilism of the British Punk scene. With my leather jacket and metal studs though I modelled my persona more on Dee Dee Ramone of the American punk group 'The Ramones'.
By this stage I had gone from being the 'top of the class' type goodie goodie to being more of a chain-smoking drop-out. I got a job working at Woolworths on a casual basis, and thus funded my drinking binges and my smoking. I look back now and realise how lucky I was in those days, in that the drugs that circulate so freely today were just not available to me then. I'm sure I would have gladly taken a handful of whatever was going at the time.
By age 17 I had purchased my own motor-bike and the image was complete. I had a girl. I had a bike. I had the leather jacket. I carried a knife and looked tough, even though I was more show than go. I remember being angry and abusive so much of the time, even to those I cared about. I was the lead singer of a punk band by this stage, and was linking in with a punk gang that hung around our area. I enjoyed the feelings of power that I got when I was with the group.
The only missing element, it seemed for me at that stage, was that I didn't really know how to fight, and the small number of scrapes I had had up to that stage confirmed this. With the prospect of increasing violence ahead, I started looking into the Martial Arts scene in earnest in 1979. Within a short time of beginning training in Hapkido I was convinced that my hands had become lethal weapons!
The 80's
I do not know how long I would have lived, had I continued down that path I had set myself upon in the 70's. 1980 was my last year at school. It was also the year of my Christian conversion.
I have only had a handful of mystical-type 'religious experiences' in my life thus far. The first, and most significant one for me was in February of 1980. As far as my life was going, I think I had just about hit rock-bottom. I prayed. God came. I asked God to take over and see if He could do a better job of my life. He did.
Some things changed slowly for me after that night, but some things changed rather rapidly. I found that most of my anger started to dissipate. Gradually the studs came off and the knife eventually returned to its drawer. I started loosing a lot of my old friends too, as I wouldn't stop preaching at them. On the other hand, I gave a lot more attention to my studies. By the end of that year I had scraped together enough marks to do an Arts degree at Sydney University.
University life was a joy to me. My main love was now Philosophy, though I also plunged into psychology, sociology and Biblical studies with equal gusto. All my study was related to my thinking through my new-found faith, and I lapped it up. I also had a new girlfriend, who was Malaysian Chinese. As my intention was to marry her, I also studied a year of Chinese, so as to be able to converse with her family.
1983 was a big year for me, as I turned 21 at the beginning of the year, and got married at the end of the year. 1984 was, in many ways, an even bigger year, as I completed my honours degree with a rather oversized thesis on the Christian existentialism of Kierkegaard. I was besotted with Kierkegaard, no doubt at the expense somewhat of my new wife. I don't think that I ever made up the ground I lost in that first year of marriage.
Despite the fact that my academic pursuits seemed all consuming, I also managed to devote an enormous amount of time to the church. The 'Chinese Presbyterian Church' (CPC) of Surry Hills was the first church I had ever been to on my own initiative. I had gone along initially because the girlfriend of my teenage years had been half Chinese, and for some reason I thought she might find the environment alluring. I was wrong about her, but got hooked myself.
These young middle-class Chinese teenagers were beautifully clean and naive. They were also intensely spiritual, and provided me with a longed-for sense of family. Within a year of praying hard and 'fellowshiping' I was leading up a small group of English-speaking Chinese teenagers in Bible study. This small group quickly became a larger group, and we soon were doing, not only Sunday Bible studies together, but were running a kids club during the week, working together in the local Sydney City Mission alcoholic men's home on the weekends, and organising fund-raising activities and outreaches to the local community.
I think that the high-point of my five years at CPC was an Easter outreach event we held, where our youth group extended a dinner invitation to all the homeless persons in the area. Since so many of our kids had parents who owned Chinese resteraunts, we were able to put on an extensive smorgasboard in the church hall, and the Sydney City Mission decided to bus up most of the residents from their surrounding homes. I'd also managed to procure a 16mm movie projector and a copy of 'Chariots of Fire'. It was a terrific night - 20 or so middle-class Chinese teenagers enjoying dinner and a movie with 50 to 60 aging alcoholic men and women.
For some months after that, we'd see a number of these men and women trudge up the hill to join us for church on a Sunday morning, much to the horror of the elders of the church, who quickly banned us from ever putting on an event like this again. Their justification was that apparently one of our young girls had been propositioned by one of the less ancient men. I'm sorry that they weren't able to see things in better perspective.
By1985 I had completed the 'Arts' half of an 'Arts/Social Work' degree, and decided it was time to go into seminary to follow my true calling - full-time Christian ministry. Moore Theological College was the enviroment where I had grown up. It was also the institution that had ousted my father from his lecturing position because of his shortcomings. Returning to the college was like 'coming home' in one sense, but it was to a home that had been responsible for much violence towards both my parents. I found the four years at college to be more gruelling and spiritually barren than I ever would have imagined.
The most redeeming feature of my college years was the two-year sojourn I enjoyed as a catechist (ie. 'apprentice priest) at St.John's Kings Cross. The two clergy there became my models in community-based ministry. They were men of great initiative and compassion. In the two years I was there they started up a hostel for persons dying from AIDS, a coffee-shop aimed at reaching out to transvestites, and a variety of other creative community-based ministries. Unfortunately, these great men were also men who had real weaknesses, and within a short time of my moving on, both their marriages fell apart, and the diocese had them both ousted.
After four years of arduous study, and now with three degrees behind my name, I was ordained an Anglican priest in 1989 - feeling, by this stage, almost completely spiritually depleted. Unfortunately, the diocese chose at this time to broaden my education by placing me in an upper middle-class parish in Sydney's Southern Bible-belt. I suspected from the beginning that I did not have the spiritual resources necessary to make the cross-cultural transformation. By the end of two years at Miranda, my sanity was sorely strained and my marriage was in tatters.
Two bright lights though emerged from those unhappy years - my friendship with Angela Mezzino, whom I would one day marry, and the birth of my daughter Veronica, who is still my 'happy thought' when all else seems dark.
The 90's
In December of 1990 they shifted me to the parish of Dulwich Hill because they had no where else to put me. I had received permission from the bishop to return to university to complete my Social Work degree part-time, with a view to using this qualification to leave Sydney altogether, and serve as a missionary in the slums of Bangkok. I needed part-time work in order to stay afloat financially.
Dulwich Hill needed a part-time appointment, as they couldn't afford anybody full-time. The once-mighty church of the Holy Trinity was, by 1990, a small Anglo community of some 40 or so worshippers in a very non-Anglo area. Only 3, if I remember, of these 40 or so worshippers was under the age of 70. I realised later that I was actually placed in Dulwich Hill in order to oversee its closure.
Dulwich Hill was my first opportunity since the early days at CPC to take some creative initiatives in community ministry, and I embraced the opportunity with great enthusiasm. Unfortunately though, returning to University study proved a lot harder than I had anticipated and the pressures mounted. Within six months of our arrival at Dulwich Hill, my wife decided she had had enough. She left, taking my daughter with her.
Much of that time is a haze to me now. I remember collapsing on the stairs one night, and then realising that there was no one at home to help me. I remember sitting up at nights drinking with a gay Christian friend who helped me through the early weeks and months. I remember making a couple of quite serious suicide attempts, and I remember my then bishop telling me not to 'trade off' the ambiguity of my situation (ie. 'don't get too comfortable'). It seemed to me that I, like my father and mother before me, was about to join the list of diocesan casualties.
It was at this time that I met Steve - a Scottish Pentecostal boxer - who would rekindle my passion for the pugilistic arts. Mind you, I had returned to active training in Hapkido while I had still been in seminary, and was only one grading short of my black belt by the time I met Steve. It was Steve though who taught me that my 'lethal weapons' were not nearly as lethal as I thought they were - knocking me to the ground 3 times in the first round we ever boxed together - and so introducing me to the world of real fighting.
I have said many times since that a good fighter needs to have two things: Firstly, a lot of energy to expend, and secondly, a lack of concern for his own health. By late 1990, I was an ideal candidate. I quickly found that by training every spare morning and evening, I could avoid potential alcoholism, get fit, and retain my mental and emotional equilibrium at the same time. Over the years 1990 to 1994 I threw myself into training in boxing, kickboxing, Thai Boxing, Judo, wrestling, Aikido, Tae Kwon Do and Hapkido with such gusto that by the end of that period I had two black belts, was running a successful martial arts gym in the church hall, and had had my first real kickboxing fight - a points win over Glen Henry in April '94. I was 32 years old at the time of my first fight.
At the same time, my other great growth experience involved coming to terms with being a single father. Veronica was less than two years old when she left, and I had not developed a proper relationship with her as a father. Ironically, it was the separation that forced me to come to grips with my role as her father, and so helped us to forge the very close relationship we enjoy today.
The other unexpected irony was that I found that the experience of separation and divorce actually deepened my ability to minister effectively in the parish. Through dealing with my own pain, I became increasingly aware of the pain that others around about me were suffering. My eyes had been opened so much more fully to the depth of suffering people go through in broken relationships, and parishioners increasingly came forward to me to share their stories. Elderly women shared with me about violent marriages and about losing sons to AIDS, knowing that I 'would understand now', and of course men came forward, out of the parish and out of the community - sharing with me their pain of losing their children through relationship breakdown.
The other group I became increasingly involved with in the parish was with teenagers - particularly rough young lads in whom I could see something of my former self - angry, violent, trying to deal with problems at home and struggling for significance. 1994 was the year we opened up the church hall to the public and renamed it 'Trinity's Youth Fitness Centre'. I had used the money I had earned from taking martial arts classes to outfit the church hall with its own weights room, set of punching bags and gloves, and, in 1995, with it's own boxing ring. In September of that same year I had the privelage to marry Ange, who then dropped back to part-time paid work in order to be of more assistance to me in the ministry.
The crisis for the Youth Centre came late in 1996, when I realised that we just didn't have enough money to make it through to the end of the year. I still remember the Archdeacon sitting in my office, asking me how I was going to come up with the money to pay our (already lowly paid) Youth Worker. We were exactly short, and I was being told that I had to close the Centre down. Providentially, my trainer Kon chose that moment to arrive at the door. I had been offered a pro fight. Would I take it? I had already fulfilled my fighitng ambitions by that stage, as I had fought for the NSW Kickboxing title in August of that year, and had not planned to fight again. 'How much would the fight be worth?' I asked. for taking the fight, I was told, plus they were going to hold a raffle for the Youth Centre, which should net a good - all up guaranteed. I took the fight, came away with a draw, and ended up raising about ,000 by the time all the donations from the public came in.
In 1997 my second daughter Imogen was born. This was also the year that I received the council's 'Citizen of the Year' award. The success of the youth work must also be credited with keeping me in good standing with the Archbishop, who had still not got around to removing me from my post (for which I was thankful). The parish seemed to be growing and, I hoped, was moving towards a point of solid financial stability. Then, in January of 1998, while on holidays in Queensland, my pay cheque bounced for some unknown reason. I called our church treasurer, and he assured me that it was just a mistake on the part of the bank. The next day the same treasurer attempted suicide, and we discovered that all the accounts were overdrawn.
It turned out that the money had not so much been stolen, but just mismanaged. Either way, we had serious debts that we were not able to meet, and this had been hidden from the Parish Council through a second set of books. This left me with three serious problems: 1. I had debtors (literally) banging on my door day and night, and I did not know how to handle them. 2. Since the treasurer had also been employed full-time by the parish as 'church administrator', his sudden disappearance also left me with all his work to deal with on top of my own. 3. I had a major pastoral crisis on my hands. Many of our young 'professional' parishioners just 'jumped ship' (as Ange and myself were tempted to do many times). The rest of the parish at least wanted some answers as to what had happened to our much-loved administrator, and what had been done with their offertory?!
Of course, the demands coming my way from the Youth Centre did not stop because of a crisis in the parish finances. On the contrary, over the last few years in the 90's, I spent countless hours moving between the Police Station, the courts, and the Juvenille Detention Centres. Indeed, it seemed that never would a week go by when I didn't spend at least one night down at the lock-up with one of 'our boys'. In all cases, the crimes our boys were engaged in were drug related. We ourselves were robbed by these kids on numerous occasions, and our house was broken into twice by persons we were providing accomodation for.
Over 98-99 I learnt to survive quite adequately on 4 to 6 hours sleep per night. Thankfully, I no longer had any serious ring-fighting to do, though I did have the privelage, in May 1999, of training one of my female students to win an Australian Kickboxing title! By late 1999 though, the church seemed to be being reborn from the ashes, as it were. Numbers had started to increase again, and we celebrated Christmas '99 full of hope for the future of our church, our suburb, and our family.
2000 and Beyond
What now, I ask myself. Is it time to move on? Does the Lord have something more for me to do in this life?
I love the work here of course, but sometimes I think it's killing me, or (worse still) my family.
We run a 'Work for the Dole Scheme' now that can cater for up to 60 people per day. The Youth Centre is now in it's 6th year of operation as a community drop-in, and is heavily utilized by our local teenagers. We are pouring more resources this year into our 'Get off the Gear and into the Ring' programme - encouraging persons with drug problems to take up boxing or martial arts as a part of their rehab.
We live in the middle of all this, in the rectory. It's like Central station here sometimes - all the comings and goings. And it's all valuable stuff of course, as is the normal pastoral work of the church, and as are the kickboxing, wrestling and Pankration classes that I run each week, etc., etc. But how long can I keep it all up, I ask myself.
The hardest part of course is knowing that none of ths work is at a stage where I can walk away from it and expect it to keep going. The church, the Youth Centre, the club - they are all strapped for cash, and none of them will make it through 2001 without a lot of work.
Maybe all this just is the Christian life - one enormous ring fight that goes on and on, round after round and doesn't end till you go down for the final count? Every time a battle ends you think things are going to get easier, but then the bell rings again and you're back into the fray! Sometimes you seem to be winning. Other times you're clinging to the ropes in order to keep yourself off the canvas. Either way you do your best to get back on your feet, to regain your focus, not to let your guard down ....
I love my family. I love my parish. And I love my community. I thank my God for the privelage of serving Him in this way, but it doesn't mean that I don't get dog tired too. Even so, I think I've still got a few rounds left in me!
