About David

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How are you going to play the last quarter?

My Story

I still think the most important moment in my life was when I sat on my bed in the student house at Armidale University and surrendered my life to God. It was not a happy moment, but took me through a doorway into a new life which, fifty years later, I would sum up as “joy unspeakable”.

My mother’s first child died a few days after birth. She was not going to risk her second in the same hospital, so I was born at Crown St Women’s Hospital in Sydney, then taken back to Wollongong where my Dad worked as a metallurgist in a huge steel works. Two years later, following the death of his father, he answered his brother’s plea for help and we went to live in Coff’s Harbour on the north coast of NSW. Most of my growing up memories were pleasant, though I think not everyone’s memories of me.

After school I went inland to study Science at the University of New England. Chemistry was my passion. Maths and Physics were also fun. It was Easter of my second year that God pressed in on my life and I made the big surrender – with no idea what it meant or where it would lead. I completed my degree to honours level, but by then was so excited about the Christian message that I decided to do some focused Bible training.

After a year at the same steel works where my father had worked, ending with a serious car accident, I entered Moore Theological College in Sydney and spent a marvelous four years delving into the foundations of Christianity. It was so much bigger and stronger than I had thought.

After my home bishop’s refusal to have me in his diocese (Bible people were not popular), I explored around and was welcomed by Archbishop Geoffrey Sambell of Perth. At that stage I was hesitant about ministry in what seemed a very traditional and restrictive denomination, but those first experiences opened my eyes to the enormous opportunities for an Anglican minister in an Australia that was losing touch with God.

In Perth I spent a year in the Archbishop’s deacons’ intern course and then went to a curacy at Christ Church Claremont. The Rector was a senior cleric who on his own testimony had just discovered the Bible; his sermons were drawing hearers from all over.

In my Armidale days I came to see the potential of a faithful theological college. When opportunity came to further my education I took up PhD studies at Cambridge University. My subject was “Possessions and the Poor in Luke-Acts”. I was supervised and helped by Professor C.F.D. Moule and Mr John Sweet. Graduation was in 1978, and my dissertation was published in an Austrian New Testament journal monograph series.

I was welcomed back to Perth by Archbishop Sambell, did a few months of ministry in a blue-collar area and then, in 1979, took over as Rector of St Matthew’s Shenton Park near the University of Western Australia. Leading that church was the adventure of a lifetime.

I married Lorraine in ’82 and four children were born in our time at that church. Bringing up our children with the help of a supportive church community sold me on the value of the local church.

In 1986 the church gave me a sabbatical. We spent a term teaching at Union Biblical Seminary in India, and the rest of the year researching at the University of Tübingen (West Germany) as the guest of Professor Martin Hengel. It was there I wrote The King of God’s Kingdom. We returned via Israel to St Matt’s.

During the years at St Matts I saw the value of a Bible-believing and practicing church, so when in 1993 I was asked to take over the leadership of the training college of the Church of England in Southern Africa, I was drawn to the prospect of training pastor-leaders, especially for the new South Africa.

Twenty years in South Africa was the third adventure. We had our baptism of fire in the first year when I was present at the St James Massacre, where 11 members of the congregation were killed by gunmen. Initially, I feared George Whitefield College might struggle to find a place in the new South Africa, but the opposite proved to be the case. We saw the college grow from a student body of 25, mostly white males, to 100 black and white, male and female. We went from a faculty of two to ten covering most of the disciplines, and from 3 houses to a campus in Muizenberg. The greatest joy was seeing the multiplication of strong ministries of the Word of God, especially among black South Africans.

I left GWC with a big building project looming: a student centre to accommodate 60, plus a dining hall for the whole college, and various facilities. As Roving Ambassador I took on the task to raise R30 million ($3,000,000) and the Itumeleng Motlhope Student Centre (the Hope Centre) was completed in 2018.

I teach when needed in Cape Town or wherever, and do whatever else comes my way. Since stepping down at GWC I have done fill-in ministries at 5 Anglican churches in Perth. The remainder of my time is spent reading and writing. I am working on a book on Luke and Acts.