OBITUARY William Lawrence “Laurie” MacIntosh (1937-2024) dairyman, pastor and leader of the Cornerstone Community, a christian training insitute which he dounded at Pera Bore 20km west of Bourke.
For 30 years Laurie Macintosh led the Cornerstone community, which planted self sustaining training centres in eight communities semding teams of young people into fifty country towns to perform a year of practical community service.
But his Christian journey started when the young boy who grew up in Yackandandah in Victorian dairy country had become a civil engineer designing sewers for the Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works.
“One day, while looking for his footy boots on top of the wardrobe of the house where he was lodging, he discovered a book that changed his outlook on life forever,” MacIntoshes eulogy recounts. “It was a New Testament that had been given as a Sunday School prize to one of the McLellan children. Laurie didn’t know what a New Testament was. He was not raised to attend church on Sundays. He milked cows instead. As he opened the little book he noticed the small numbers along the side of the text. At first glance he thought that each number was a rule that Christians had to observe like no smoking and no drinking. To his surprise, he found himself reading instead the narrative of the absorbing story of a young Jewish man called Jesus – and the adventures of the band of fearless disciples that he forged during the 33 short years of his life.
“One day, as he lit his pipe during a morning-tea break at the office where he worked, Laurie casually asked his boss, Senior Engineer Basil King: ‘What’s wrong with smoking and drinking?’ Basil, a quiet man responded with words that set Laurie on a journey of knowledge and discovery.
“’There are a lot of things in life more important than drinking or smoking,’ Basil said.
“’Like what?’ Laurie asked.
“’Like finding out the plan that Creator God had for planet Earth, when he first made it,’ Basil said.
“’Plan?’ Laurie asked.
“’Yes,’ Basil said, ‘This world is not a random place. God created it for a reason. It is a good plan but mankind turned its back of him and mucked it up.’
“Laurie’s first response was to categorically disagree: “Which God are you talking about? Which creation story do you mean?’ Laurie asked.
“He had already considered many religions, each claiming to be the one to follow. ‘How is a man to know which is the true religion? Or are they all one and the same? And, what makes the Bible any different to other “sacred books”?’
“Basil answered each challenge as best he could. That is how a Socratic type of question and answer dialogue began where Laurie would read the New Testament as Basil urged him to do and encouraged him to jot down questions he would bring to the office almost daily. These discussions went on for a couple of months until one day Basil asked Laurie for dinner at his home in Essendon, where he met Joy, Basil’s wife.
“That night, Basil brought out a huge canvas scroll which he unfurled on the floor of the living room. With excitement, Laurie saw – at one glance – the total history of planet Earth. Beginning with the creation story and culminating on the promised Heaven, each major event of God’s intervention in the affairs of mankind was carefully and meticulously hand-drawn, and explained in coloured inks. Basil was thus able to walk Laurie through the large picture of God’s plan for the world. Laurie was thrilled.
“Basil then posed the question that cemented once and for all the faith that was to sustain Laurie for the rest of his life: ‘Laurie, I have answered your questions to the best of my ability. Are you prepared to allow Jesus to make you part of his story?’
“’How do I do that?’ Laurie asked. Every time that Laurie told this part of his story, he would say something like – ‘That rascal Basil made me kneel down and told me to talk to God as if he were in the living room’. Laurie did.
“He didn’t know what praying was, but he talked to Jesus that night: ‘Jesus,’ he said, ‘I don’t know you but I really want to know you. Please help me to understand your intentions for this world, and help me to follow you to fit in with your plans.’ Following Jesus became his life ambition.
“He admitted that as he got on his feet after saying this prayer, he was perspiring as if he’d just played a hard game of Australian Rules football. He was exhilarated, he said, but he didn’t see any mystical visions. He said that he simply experienced a total peace in his mind and body – a peace that he couldn’t possibly explain. He eventually understood that Christ lives in the personality of the man who believes in him. Basil helped Laurie to see that life is not a matter of keeping lots of rules, but of being transformed from the inside by Truth, which is another name for Jesus.
“From then on, Laurie embarked on a quest to learn how to trust, follow and obey all that he was learning from the pages of the New Testament. He felt that Jesus had asked his disciples to do something very simple. Jesus said to “Go and make disciples of all the nations”. Those two words: ‘Go’ and ‘make’ remained the mainstay of Laurie’s life. He didn’t wait for people to come to hear the gospel of Jesus. He went to where the people were. Trains, buses, airplanes, university campuses, shops, neighbours – and his family – became his mission field.”
Following Jesus led Macintosh to Wheaton College, and he served with Campus Crusade for Christ in the UK evangelising students and hippies. By 1971 he was back in Australia with ideas for Cornerstone forming while he and some Sydney University friends founded a community called The Jesus Christ World Liberation Front. “They gathered a substantial group of university students who wanted to take their faith in Jesus seriously.”
Paul Roe, one of the Liberation front crew told the next bit of the story in the local Bourke paper. In Mexico MacIntosh had been challenged by Marxist radical “the Truth is urgent!” Roe said he brought that challenge back to Australia “when he and his wife Elvira joined the MacIntosh family in Bourke to help build the Lodebar dairy on the Cunnamulla Road and run a sunday school for Aboriginal kids from town.
“As a result he was probably better known in Bourke who did a bit of preaching! However, through the 1970s, he commuted regularly to other states to speak, impacting increasing numbers of young Australians with his vigorous and thoughtful approach to faith.”
MacIntosh decided Christian training away from the cities would challenge the young. “The idea of offering an apprenticeship in Christian living for university students began to grow and Cornerstone Community was started in 1978,” his eulogy noted. “The first eight students arrived at Pera Bore, the large cotton farm owned by the Boone and Buster families at the back of Bourke. Laurie became its first National Director and lecturer. The Cornerstone years were a great adventure with some incredible people lending their strength to provide context for people of all ages, backgrounds and cultures to wrestle with what they believed and why they believed it. What started as a small ragtag bunch of people off the radar at the Back of Bourke, over time saw hundreds of people’s lives enriched and inspired to be all they were created to be. These last few months, Laurie and Elvira have appreciated reading the hundreds of emails and messages from people impacted by their love and life.”
Paul Roe summed it up this way “The hard, red country at Pera Bore had produced an export crop that keeps on growing.”