How Katoomba shaped a generation of Sydney Evangelicals

For a generation of Sydney evangelicals, the Katoomba Christian Conventions weren’t just events in the calendar - they shaped church programs across the city.

In the 80s, 90s and early 2000s, thousands gathered under the circus tent and then later in packed auditoriums to hear the Bible taught, sing with conviction and be raised up for ministry.

But how did Katoomba become such an influence in Sydney evangelicalism? What decisions shaped its extraordinary impact? And what lessons are there for today. 

We start a new occasional oral history series on the Pastor’s Heart, with former Katoomba Chairs Philip Jensen, David Cook and Al Stewart, reflecting on Katoomba’s phenomenal influence, the priority of expository preaching, the importance of guarding the platform and why “we teach the Bible” became a defining conviction.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:08

The Katoomba Christian Convention and its phenomenal impact on Sydney evangelicalism. Philip Jensen, David Cook, and Al Stewart with us. It is The Pastor's Heart. It's Dominic Steele, and today we start a new occasional series, a little oral history, lessons from the past. In the 80s, the 90s, and the early 2000s, as an evangelical minister in Sydney, when you planned your church calendar, you started by writing in the dates that had been set by Katoomba. So dominant then was the Katoomba Christian

Katoomba’s Outsized Impact In Sydney

SPEAKER_02 0:38

Convention on Sydney's evangelical scene. There was the youth convention for young adults, 6,000 in the circus tent on the oval. There was Kickstart, which became kick for high schoolers and thousands attending that. Three or four men's conventions, uh, two women's conventions, the family convention at Easter, and a convention on the October-long weekend aimed at the over 50s. And then the extraordinary impact of the youth leadership conferences run over successive weekends in January, with hundreds of Sydney youth leaders trained. Really, Katoomba was the heartbeat, the center of the evangelical ecosystem in Sydney. How did it all come about? What were the decisions made that led to Sydney's evangelical ministry revolving around that platform? How were churches helped? And what lessons from back then might be relevant for today? We're joined by Philip Jensen, who started with Katoomba in 1974 and was chair of the convention through the 80s. David Cook was chair from 1991, and Al Stewart from 2004. Philip, if I could start with you and your pastor's heart, there actually must be so much that you praise God for in that season.

SPEAKER_03 1:54

Oh, it was it was a great time. It was just it was a great time to

The Early Youth Convention Years

SPEAKER_03 1:59

see lives changed when the world was heading away from Christianity. So the 70s, the 60s and 70s, our churches really were under terrific pressure to, and especially young people, to walk away from Christ. And here, in the middle of this kind of cultural move to turn away from Christianity and from Christ from church, etc., was a growing ministry of really keen Christian people growing in Christ, and young people growing in Christ in more and more numbers and wanting more. And so it was so against the time that uh you've got to thank God because it was it was not natural. It was supernatural at that level. It was God at work.

SPEAKER_02 2:48

Now you pioneered started the youth convention on the Australia Day Long weekend. We've got a photo here of the circus tent, but you didn't start in a circus tent.

SPEAKER_03 3:00

1974, I think we had about 300 people at it, and uh it was in the old auditorium, uh which held a thousand. And uh that's where we started the first year, uh, with uh Dick Lucas coming out from England speaking that year, and Stuart Barton Babbage and uh Bruce Smith, they were the three speakers we had. Um very, very different men. David Cook, first memories of that era?

SPEAKER_01 3:29

Uh uh going up to Katoomba and uh I I basically went at Easter. But I think the first time I went was to speak with Philip at the youth convention in 84, I think, when we preached on the Holy Spirit, because that was very current at the time with the charismatic movement, that sort of thing. Uh just I'd never preached uh to, I think there were 2,000 and they were sitting along the bank of the auditorium, outside the auditorium, looking in. It was just a just a great time. And uh God was actually working through his word. Philip preached on the uh the doctrine of the Holy Spirit from the Bible. I think I preached on John 14, 15, 16. It's just a wonderful time. It was a wonderful privilege to stand back and see what was what God was doing there. Al Stewart, your first memories.

SPEAKER_00 4:18

My first convention was um early 80s. I've been a believer about two years, I think. And I remember we camped and uh it rained nonstop. We ended up rolling the tent into a giant ball that looked like a beach ball and stuffing it in the boot of the car and driving home soaking wet. I'm sure the Bible's taught really well as well, but that's my memory of why I ever went back, I'm not sure. But I did 28 years. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:48

So well, my first memory was um 1986, and I'd been going to church for six months, and uh, and then my friend Russell Powell had invited me up to the Katoomba convention. And uh and it was in this big, I mean, where the car park is now, there was this big circus tent. So we must have been a year, two years before that you moved into the circus tent. I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 5:10

Well, we tried different things. When the auditorium got filled with a thousand and we had two thousand, yeah. Um uh we put a tent on the car park up there, and uh we actually ran a three-ring circus once where we had uh three different conventions happening at the same time, and you you went to different the speakers got rotated between the different tents and auditory. And then we decided, well, let's get the tent. Hiya, the biggest circus tent in Australia. Hire's biggest tent it was. It came in three parts or something like it, and took them a week to put it up.

SPEAKER_02 5:47

And well, my memory was sitting in that crowd of six thousand um young adults, and uh John Chapman speaking on the uh John Woodhouse's amazing talks on Leviticus went completely over my head. Um but John Chapman that night on Hebrews 12, and since we're surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, now I know I now know exegetically that's the people in chapter 11, but it felt like it was the 6,000 people in the tent. Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles and run with perseverance, the race marked out for us. And um, and there were things in my life that were sins that entangled and things in my life that hindered, and driving, leaving the convention the next day and driving to my non-Christian girlfriend's place and saying, We've got to break up, you know, um, and putting into practice what I'd heard the night before about things that entangled and sins that hindered, and and it was a pivotal weekend in my life.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

Um wonderful, all the things that we'd been learning in theological college, uh, J.I. Pack as God has spoken, the authority and the inspiration of the Bible, seeing it all work out in practice. The Bible was preached, expository Bible preaching from the pulpit. And it was just wonderful to see, to see that in effect, that God was doing his work through his word and lives were being transformed.

SPEAKER_02 7:11

Now I want to push forward a couple of years to 1988, and uh, we've got the inside cover of the program here, and David Cook is uh is giving Bible talks there, and Philip Jensen's giving Bible talks, John Chapman's giving Bible talks, and Al Stewart's making his debut as the platform chair. I can see I remember. I can see you with hair there. Yeah, that didn't last long. And then Ian Powell and Rod McCready, young up and comers. Tell us about the principles in choosing speakers, Philip.

SPEAKER_03 7:41

That was the key, because David's point's the key. It was a no-frills convention. That is, we really we sang a few hymns, we prayed a little, and then the the program was teaching the Bible, and it was expository preaching,

Choosing Speakers Who Teach Scripture

SPEAKER_03 7:59

which um I still think is the way to hear God speak today, and that is the way in which we did. So we chose speakers who would be good expositors. Now previously I mean the convention had been running since the beginning of uh the twentieth century, but the pattern always was to get overseas great names. And it was hit and miss what they were like. You know, some of them were really great names for good reasons, some of them great names, and you wonder why. But you you couldn't tell, and it was variable. What we did was we settled on some standard uh expository preachers like John Chapman. We had Chapo almost every second year, intentionally, because people had confidence in him to teach the Bible, so you had confidence to bring your friends to hear John Chapman teach the Bible. And then we intentionally brought in uh new young speakers alongside Chapo so as to introduce David as a young speaker, you know, Al as a young speaker, John Woodhouse, um uh our friend John Michael. Uh we brought on men who were committing themselves to a ministry of it and starting out in that ministry to pair with him. Then we'd the overseas speaker in, we'd have a senior Australian, so that if the over speaker was a dud, we still had a good preacher that was there. And some of the overseas speakers were good, some of them were brilliant, some of them were great. Yeah, Don Carson, we'd have him each time. But Don, you see, was a Canadian, not an American, and he was a missionary kid. So he knew and he he taught the Bible rather than togging American culture. And that commitment, and Dick Lucas, Dick never contextualized himself in the middle of summer. Did he wear a suit? Well, no, he'd but he'd wear a a a cardigan, uh cardigan. There was no attempt to kind of be a faux Australian. But as soon as he started teaching the Bible, the whole place was electric, electric. You could just hear people hanging on every word. Um because it was no frills Bible exposition, but the quality of the speakers was the absolute key. The quality of them as expositors of the scriptures, not as humorous fun men crowd pleasers. They were never that. And that relieved us enormously, whereas other conventions around Australia I d didn't follow that pattern and I think suffered as a result. You make short-term gains by getting big name speakers, but you don't make long-term progress because next year you've got to get a bigger name. And people have come for the speaker rather than come because they've trusted that they're they haven't trusted the word and it you know it didn't matter. It was a platform where youth leaders would always bring their youth group because they knew what we'd be saying would be reinforcing their ministry for the year. They'd never have to apologize for a bad speaker.

SPEAKER_02 11:24

Let's push into this 1988 conference, because this was in the big circus tent, and um uh in Australia at the time, a couple of days later, it was the big bicentennial, 200 years, tall ships. I remember the crowd figure on Sydney Harbour was 1.5 million for that. And but at Kotumba, three days before, uh, colony of convicts, true citizenship was the theme, 6,000 people in the tent. And the Saturday night

The Storm Sermon And The Tent

SPEAKER_02 11:54

talk, I want to hear about that Saturday night talk from each of your perspectives. Um, why don't you tell it first, Al?

SPEAKER_00 12:00

I'm sitting on the platforms, first time I've been chairman. Philip's preaching, and one of the big illustrations he had was of the first fleet. And then the storm starts rolling in, and I could hear the flap of the canvas, and I'm thinking the sails of the first fleet and the tent is beginning to wobble, and I'm thinking, I wonder what it'll actually take to get Philip to pull up in the middle of a sermon. Stop the talk. It's obviously not a giant circus tent, a storm and six. That's not enough. So I'm it was a let's just say it was like the blind javelin thrower. He may not have set any records, but he sure kept the crowd's attention.

SPEAKER_01 12:39

Very well. We'd sung number four, which was always the crowd favourite in the songbook, and can it be that I should gain 6,000 people singing that. That was really something. And then I'm sitting in the body of the uh the the uh marquee, and next to me is the main wooden pillar, a huge wooden pillar. And there was such wind and storm that night that I saw the the pillar lift off the ground. It lift off the ground. The main post, is it? The main post holding up the marquee. Just put the big tent photo up on the screen again. The main post right in the middle, and it came up off the ground and it went thump into the ground. And I thought, man, 6,000 people. This is incredible. But Philip kept going.

SPEAKER_02 13:22

Philip, I've never asked you this, but I've wondered forever. Um what was going through your mind as you're trying to concentrate on Ephesians 2, and you're the big boss of the convention, and should you stop the send everyone home or keep preaching? What was going on?

SPEAKER_03 13:40

Uh no, it's more you see, you never teach the Bible, you always teach the Bible to people. And so what was there was well, what are the people doing? How are we going here? Um I I you know the Ephesians too, that was prepared, that was in my notes. The concentration is the crowd. Um, but I started to tell jokes a little bit more, uh to because I I You can see us getting distracted. Yeah, you had to draw the crowd all the time. So the jokes, but I it reached the stage where I was explaining my jokes. And you you know, you know, you really have lost it when you're explaining your jokes. Um, and so it actually was a longer talk than expected. Rather than being shorter, it was longer because I extemporized more to try and keep the crowd's concentration on what we were doing. Um, and it was yeah, it was a hard night, hard night's work.

SPEAKER_02 14:37

But but were you having a conversation in your head about should I stop? Should I send everyone home? No.

SPEAKER_03 14:42

Right. That wasn't my responsibility, it was his responsibility. If you know if the tent was coming down, he had to get the sheep out, not me. I mean, my job was to do what I was doing, so I just kept going.

SPEAKER_02 14:54

You told me just before that you spent uh a day, a couple of days later with John Chapman on the golf course where he spent 18 holes telling you what you did wrong in that tour.

SPEAKER_03 15:03

Yes, but I I purposely, which wasn't very hard with my golf, sliced and kept myself into different fairways, because between the green and the next tea, I got another sermon from John as to what I'd done wrong and what I'd done wrong. And it was uh some weeks later I heard of several people's conversion and uh movement into full-time ministry and things like that. And whenever I heard them, I rang up John and told him that he was another one. It was uh yeah, it was a great night. But that was the night we decided to give up the tent. Right. Too many. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:40

And too scary. Well, I think after that we moved to double the size of the auditorium. Yeah. So I went to two, two and a half thousand by the time we had people just sitting outside.

SPEAKER_03 15:49

Uh you see, this is the no-frills view. I'd prefer a smaller crowd that could actually concentrate on the word of God than a large crowd that couldn't. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:59

But we went to two conventions one weekend and then the following weekend, and in the middle we introduced the leadership training week, which was a great week.

SPEAKER_02 16:08

Massive success. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:10

Um, I mean, apart from the quality of teaching. See, it's better to have a week conference with four or five hundred people who really are going to spend a week studying the Bible properly than say, let's forget Katoomba and move down to Sydney and have a a big meeting. Big meetings

Smaller Crowds And Leadership Training

SPEAKER_03 16:29

in themselves are of no value, changed hearts, changed minds.

SPEAKER_00 16:34

That's what they did. I think I can say this I wasn't leading it, but the Katoomba Youth Leadership Conference uh changed a generation of youth leaders across uh Sydney and beyond into other cities as well. And that's that's flown through. That that was very strategic. God really used that conference for a couple of decades or more, and it really changed hundreds of youth leaders. I do feel like it's a tragedy that that's not still going. Uh I just let that one go through the key bucket.

SPEAKER_01 17:08

Well the key the key thing in all of those was that uh when we started the men's convention, Dudley Ford's leadership, the women's convention, Jeanette Kuzwadi's leadership, I think the kickstart, I think it was Al's leadership, and then for the Katoomba youth leadership, we had uh Neil Chambers. Neil Chambers writing the curriculum with Archie Poulos, and it was a brilliant curriculum. And I we there are people in our church now in their late 40s and 50s who I met at those leadership weeks. They were great weeks. What addresses particularly stand out in your minds?

SPEAKER_03 17:45

Uh you've mentioned it, so I will mention it. Uh John Woodhouse explained Leviticus was extraordinary. Yeah. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 17:55

Um, I've since gone back and listened and benefited several times. It was a qu it was a great thing. But to make it Leviticus accessible to a generation was amazing.

SPEAKER_01 18:07

It was amazing. Yeah, our students came back to college talking about that. And um, it had a real impact on them. Other speakers, you see, too, you've got to keep in mind after the after the talk you'd go down the front and people would come up. And I I never saw people respond as well to anyone as people responded to Frank Ratif. Yes. Flooded up to talk to him. Uh it was his visits were remarkable.

unknown 18:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:34

But Chapo on true citizenship at that 1988 convention. That's that's memorable. Thankfully, we've still got access to those talks, wonderful talks.

SPEAKER_00 18:43

And Don Carson on the Kingdom of God, his uh I dream of the Kingdom of God. I remember how he finished that talk. That was in the Big Ten. I can't tell exactly what year, but I remember. I think like I'd like to preach like that when I grow up. That's what I was thinking.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

Another thing to stress, I think, is that we all had excellent councils behind us. The Katoomba Convention Council were great blokes. And you had an interaction one time with Graeme Conway, didn't you?

SPEAKER_02 19:12

Oh, I'll tell that story, yeah. I um I'd had an idea of there was some social issue going on and I was concerned about it. And I said, why don't we get everybody at Katoomba, because it was the Katoomba Convention that weekend, to sign a petition. And uh and

Bible Talks People Still Remember

SPEAKER_02 19:28

so I um I went to Graeme Conway and said, wouldn't it be great? You could pass this petition around and everybody could sign it. And uh and he said, Dominic, we teach the Bible. What we do is teach the Bible. That's what we do. We teach the Bible. That's it. And I just remember thinking um that that single-mindedness about bringing the word of God to people and not getting distracted by sponsorships pushing other products or whatever it was, was or this particular issue. I can't remember what my issue was, but I remember learning from that comment uh a very helpful lesson. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:13

And we're very strong in that. And with our executive officers, Steve Williams, John Hooton, Ross Knight, um John Dyke, Mike, Mike, Michael Lynn. They were all very good men.

SPEAKER_02 20:24

Now what about regrets?

SPEAKER_03 20:28

Um I mean what have you passed the conference on to David and then he passed it on to Al.

SPEAKER_02 20:37

So we have no regrets. I mean, I the Rabia Zachariah scandal, um, the the um uh uh Roy Clements um speaking one year and six months later, leaving his wife, and um that they were kind of gulp moments, really.

“We Teach The Bible” Focus

SPEAKER_02 20:59

David, what's your take there?

SPEAKER_01 21:00

Uh yeah, that that was a a shock to all of us when we invited Ravi. Um it was it was with some hesitation in the council because um we he we we we knew that he wasn't an expositor, and yet there was a real move to have him come because of what he could do with men as an apologist. Uh and he brought and so this was well before um he stepped down from ministry. Um but we're with regard to Roy Clements, we'd heard him, we'd read him, we'd had confidence in him, and it wasn't clear at all what was going on with him when we invited him to come and when he came. But when he came, he was obviously not himself. And it that was uh a fairly devastating visit. I think he came for men's convention. Yeah. And um and then the so that obviously, and it was after the clip Bill Clinton issue that was going on, and uh he was, I think he Said something.

SPEAKER_02 22:00

It's a peculiar talk. He was kind of almost defending Clinton somehow.

SPEAKER_00 22:05

Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, David, you the council, you have to make a decision at the time. And Roy Clement's book, When God's Patience Runs Out, on Amos, there's some of the best stuff I've ever read. He's written as Roy's sermons. And Don Carson rated him as the best preacher in the English speaking world at the time. Well, you can only make your decisions at at the time.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

We brought him out and shared him with friends in Malaysia as well. And up there it was even more devastating than it was down here.

SPEAKER_00 22:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:33

So it's obviously, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:35

And hindsight's always 20-20.

SPEAKER_03 22:38

Philip? I'm a great believer in uh knowing your Australian preachers. I mean, I'm sure there are Australian preachers who will let us down and have uh uh you know that sin is universal. But uh to actually know overseas speakers well enough to have the confidence that we put in them, it's it's only overseas speakers that have actually created problems in the history of Katoomba. You know, there was a great fight in the 1930s about one of the Australian speakers. He'd been invited and then he'd come to a view of British Israelitism, and uh we knew it because he was a local. Whereas very hard to know that on the other side of the world as to what's happening. And you know I heard Roy Clements preach in Cambridge, um and as a piece of uh preaching uh I can understand what Don said. It was one of the most uh impressive pieces of expository preaching in 1 Corinthians I had ever heard. It was incredible. But then I heard him later when I was on another trip to England, and he started teaching on the Old Testament, and I realized there's a deep problem here in in how now I wasn't involved by the time he came out to Australia I was no longer in Katoomba Convention. But you've got to actually be you've got to know a person fairly well to trust them with the platform. And the pressure to have overseas speakers is um is a problem.

SPEAKER_02 24:29

Um David, you took David, we've talked about the relationship between Katoomba and the theological colleges and if you like, the mutual involvement and the mutual blessing between Moore College and Sydney Missionary and Bible College. Can you just push into that?

SPEAKER_01 24:44

Look at the enrollment figures. They tell you a story. I experienced them. Uh in 1968, the input to the uh enrollment of men to SNBC was seven. In 1969, I went in as a first-year student. There were 33

Regrets And Platform Risk

SPEAKER_01 24:59

men. And what had happened is that Billy Graham had come in 1968. Now you look at each of the Graham conventions, 59, 68, 79, was it, uh, and look at the enrollments that come into the college, both those colleges a result of that. But you could also see it with Katoomba. The youth convention was having a tremendous uh input. And uh go go and look at the more college enrollments, look at the uh look at SNBC enrollments, and you could see there were people there. I know I used to interview them when they applied to our college who were coming because of the Ministry of Youth Convention mainly. Um, but then that spread. Youth, you see, youth convention spread to Easter Convention, and then they that that started to grow as well, the family convention. But I think there's a direct relationship between biblical expository preaching, fine preaching, and enrollments in our theological colleges. Now, I've said this to those principals of both those colleges, that uh if you go along, a young man goes along to a church and he hears a dull expository preaching that is dull. This week we come to 1 Peter 2, last week we're in 1 Peter 1. Uh he goes away thinking, oh, what am I going to do with my life? Well, not that. Uh, but he if he comes and hears an engaging expository sermon from the pulpit, that's what I want to do with my life. And I think there's a direct relationship between pulpits on fire, whether at Katoomba or in the local setting, and enrollments at our theological colleges. Uh, I think historically that that's verifiable.

SPEAKER_02 26:36

So let me just push into where are the temptations to go wrong, you know, um, in in the in in a ministry like this? You know, you you talked about um not guarding the platform, um there's also just not getting the Bible guy.

SPEAKER_03 26:54

Um what is it? Putting the emphasis on the frills rather than on the absolute substance. I mean, the music is fantastic. You've got six thousand young people standing in a

Conventions Feeding Theological Colleges

SPEAKER_03 27:06

like the music uh really does it does itself. You don't need a big band. You know, a piano will do actually. When you've got six thousand Christians in a big hall, but now two and a half thousand in a tin shed. You really don't need much music to make the music work. I've got no problem with the music. I mean, I noticed one of the things I hated most about the lockdown of COVID was missing music. I'm missing singing, corporate singing. I love it. And so I'm happy we do it well. But it's not hard for that to become the center of what the whole thing is about. In fact, you can run a whole convention just on music and don't bother with the speaker. But the long-term, the short-term gains are always long-term declines. And this so lower the standard of the quality of preaching, you'll get more people in. But you won't see people saved and churches changed and the world changed.

SPEAKER_01 28:11

The the platform, you've just got to watch your platform all the time. I know that's that's the key. Um yeah. We preach the Bible. That's what happens. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:24

Well, you you rang me up the other day over um the Men Meeting the Challenge conference, and you said, How is the platform guarded? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:32

Yeah, they guard. Yeah, and and therefore the the the makeup of your council is essential. You've got to be of one mind there. So, what Graham Conway said to you was typical of what the council was saying. We do one thing, this is what we do.

SPEAKER_00 28:46

Well, I think that's what they said. Uh there were I do remember a time there where we had the real opportunity to take up publishing and publishing kind of a youth thing, etc. And I remember Graham Conway and the others saying, No, we don't publish stuff, we teach the Bible. And so it was that yeah, that focus. So I think being distracted, um, having the music take over is a is another possibility.

SPEAKER_03 29:13

Um Tumba rather than the Katoomba people.

SPEAKER_00 29:20

I oh yes, like we have so many good friends who wanted to piggyback on us and get publicity, and the number of people that I had to say no to as either platform chairman or convention chairman. Um, yeah, everyone wants to go through the revolving door on your push. That's the so or or you use that platform.

SPEAKER_01 29:41

And remember at the this at this time there was a visit by a guy called Bill Heibels, who's no longer in ministry, I don't think, but he was pressing his model of the uh Seeker service. Seeker seeker sensitive services. And I remember going into Darling Harbour, I sat next to Chapo that day and we watched him preach and all his drama and all that, and all the frills were there. But uh, and that's that's the that's the anti-model of what we were seeking to do at Katoomba. And but it was quite influential because the place was full. And I think yeah, so there's always the alternative, and you've just got to get onto the word. But the other thing, too, is just on music, uh, I think we spend a lot of time talking about music at Katoomba. But I remember the first time we had our first men's convention, and a bloke uh sent a message to his wife saying, I'm in an auditorium and for the first time I'm singing over a thousand tongues with a thousand tongues, and it's terrific, it's wonderful. And we found that with men, if you give them a military-style hymn, a great song, and can it be thou my vision, they'll lift the roof. It was terrific. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:50

But the other people using you was one of the long-term difficulties that Katoomba had, because when it sought to include and in involve everybody, when I joined the council, I had 35 or so members, all of whom wore other hats. They were chairmen of this missionary society or that thing. And so every kind of evangelical organization had a say in Katoomba, but hardly anybody

Guarding Against Frills And Hijacks

SPEAKER_03 31:20

were Katoomba people. And so I don't mean living in the town of Katoomba, I mean to the Bible and the platform. They were committed to running the convention. And so everybody was trying to get their speaker on the platform so as to promote their missionary society, which is a good missionary society, but it was or their leaflets for their organization on deceits or the other. And we had to get rid of all that and say, we just teach the Bible. That's what we do. We teach people the Bible and get the X in it.

SPEAKER_00 31:53

There are other major issues you had to deal with. I remember we had a complaint that there were a number of older women sitting near the front row and knitting during the session, and the click of the knitting needles was distracting everyone. And so it was my job to stand up and tell these elderly ladies to stop knitting. There are major issues that you have to deal with. Anyway, we You think I'm joking about major issues anyway.

SPEAKER_03 32:20

In winter in Katoomba, you need knitting.

SPEAKER_00 32:24

Click, click, click.

SPEAKER_02 32:25

Anyway. On that note, thank you very much for coming. My guests on the Pastor's Heart, Al Stewart, David Cook, and Philip Jensen. And Philip has this new book out written on our hearts, the Ten Commandments, and the Radical Life of Grace. My name's Dominic Steele. We'll look forward to your company next Tuesday afternoon.