Doug Clements knew no Christians. None. But he had a Bible and when he became desperate enough he read it. That’s how he was saved. Later a pastor, he proved to be a radical. And still is. He told this story to The Other Cheek.
“I came from a family that were basic pagans. I had nothing to do with any church or religious values or Christian values or anything.’
Five children in a tiny house. “It was a crowded space. And, values didn’t seem to count. Survival was more the point, if you know what I mean. My father was a farmer share farmer. And I was born at Patterson near Maitland, in a place that is now Tocal Agricultural College.”
He tells me about his ancestry, which at first seems irrelevant. But he’s got a point to make. A pattern is emerging. This is a story about how God intervenes.
“My great great great grandfather came here as a 12-year-old convict, stealing a silk hank chief from the solicitors clerk on the streets of London, and was sent to Australia never to return. He became a respectable citizen in the society at Patterson after building the historic Tocal House, and so that’s my inheritance.
“He’s a guy who had started bad, but through his faith, he had faith. Because look, when I went to London, once I looked up the court hearing for him and found that he was arrested on his way to chapel. Now, not far from the main courthouse there [the Old Bailey] But where was the chapel? I searched for it, and I realised he was on his way to John Wesley’s Chapel, which is nearby.
“Somehow there’s a spiritual stream that I wasn’t part of. I found that out much later.”
But like that lonely convict boy, Doug was alone.
“When I left home and started work as a metallurgist in Newcastle, in the steel works, doing an applied science degree, I was desperately lonely. I had no purpose, no direction. My father was an alcoholic. By then their marriage had broken up when I was doing the leaving certificate and it was just traumatic, you know, He left then. Yep. That year. And then I took up alcohol myself for about three years. And I became an alcohol like my father was. But I avoided the hotels near him.”
“So when I went to Newcastle eventually when I left home, I bought a Bible for some reason. I bought a saucepan and radio, that sort of thing. And a Bible in a bookshop, a secular bookshop.
“And I didn’t use it. But then in that desperation, I started reading the Bible for the first time while I was doing full-time uni. I was supposed to be studying right in September. I started reading and discovered this man, Jesus. I never knew much about him at all, but I was very attracted to the power and knowledge, wisdom that he had. And I used to go for walk at nighttime, crying, calling out into the sky, talking to myself.
“I knew no God, you know, But after reading about this man, seeing that he had a relationship with God, I called out one night in Merewether, in Yule Road?? Merewether under a tree to the stars. And I called out, “if there’s a God, I want to be like this man. Jesus.” And immediately something happened. I felt a deep peace, a deep sense of purpose, and a deep sense of power. Three Ps: peace, purpose and power in my life.
“I didn’t know what it was. I thought this: ‘something’s happened to me. What is it?’ I knew no Christians. I didn’t know who to ask. I went back, and reading the Bible again discovered that if you put your trust in Jesus and follow him, he will give you the Holy Spirit. And I worked out, I have received the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God. So then I was radicalised.”
“I was radicalised by the Holy Spirit, and I was set free from alcohol. I was set free from swearing, set free from stealing. And I was a new person. So that’s my destiny. Me. John, that’s a start.”
Doug went to a “traditional Liberal presbyterian church in Mayfield, a close-by suburb, of Newcastle. “When I told the people in the church what had happened to me, they all shook their heads. Right. Every one of them. There was no one who had that experience.”
But at uni, Doug found the Evangelical Union which gave him fellowship, and relationships that Doug remembers fondly. Later while he was serving still in the then quite liberal Presbyterian church, a mate in Canberra, Hugh Cox (now an Anglican minister) suggests he try Moore college, the Anglican seminary in Sydney. “This was at the time that the Uniting Church was coming into being and they were not happy.”
“And I was really blessed by the way Moore accepted me. Don Robinson, deputy principal came out to the airport to get me, drove me into town, put me up at his house overnight, went through the interview process. I was amazed. And you know that he eventually became the Archbishop of Sydney. That was blessing. And they gave me a house to live in and, uh, very, very cheap rent in little Queen Street. We called it Blood Alley.” When a child came along, Moore moved him round the Corner to a better house in Carillion Avenue.
After a tussle, the Uniting Church accepted him back and posted him to Mascot, a keen evangelist. With John a Greek member of the congregation “we formed a bit of a team together, and I established a table outside Woolworths in the main street handing out literature of all the nations of the suburb. Woolworths didn’t seem to mind that and though they probably wouldn’t have tolerated it now. John had become a disciple of Jesus. He became a role model to me in radicality. He painted the whole of his house, the whole weatherboard house with the scripture of John 3:16. Wow. That’s amazing, isn’t it? Yeah. The whole of that house. And he used to go to the theatre there, which was a Greek theatre in Mascot and evangelised people as they came out of the pictures. I had that as a role model.”
While a story of evangelicals leaving the Uniting Church to remain Presbyterian is common, Doug has a reverse angle, telling the story of another local church.
“I was at Belmont in Lake Macquarie. I went there as Presbyterian minister. And unfortunately, the Uniting Church came to be at that time. I was forced by the Presbyterians to make a decision. They said, What are you, are you Uniting? Or are you Presbyterian?”
Doug wanted an Aussie church not a Scottish one. And “I, maybe I was naive, but I said, I couldn’t stand all the Scottish stuff any longer. I said, ‘I’m Uniting.’ So, the Presbytery (area committee)said, “Now, you get out. You leave now hand over your keys to the church now. Which was very endorsing, I thought.”
He laughs as he remembers that meeting which was held in Dungog, the other end of the Hunter region. He had to beg for a lift to get home. I think he means that not only did they demand the keys to the church but likely a car as well
“You have to trust,” Clements says. “I trusted God all a lot getting out situations. You have to laugh. But it’s is a, a heavy thing, John.”
“Faith is something you live by. Believing that Jesus through the Spirit will guide me into every situation I face and provide wisdom for every problem. That’s what faith is. Faith is an active activity, being active for the kingdom of God. Now, I don’t think some churches get that. They think you have to come to faith and that’s it. The evangelical churches tend to be like that. Yeah. Pentecostal churches are more along the lines I’m talking.”
But, he adds, “I did not know any Pentecostal churches at that time.”
He tells another story of being new wine in an old wineskin. And of being kicked out of a church again.
“So I was kicked out of the Presbyterian church and they negotiated with the Uniting Church and allowed me to stay in the manse for a period of time until I was then shifted to the other end of the parish at, caves Beach Swansea. They had just erected a new building and I took over that building.
“First thing I did was to invite a friend of mine Greg Brown. He was a part of the Christian surfers’ movement and lived in Cave Beach. And he and I formed an evangelistic team to evangelise surfers. And we had a revival there. All these young guys, young mostly guys, some girls, got converted. Praise God. The Uniting Church there was transformed in this new building. The first activity that happened in the building was I found a pinball table and projector to project surfing films in there. So we had crowds and crowds of people come and watch Christian surfing films. And there was always a strong Christian surfing film in it. So that’s what we did on a Friday night.
We had a huge, huge crowd of people, and people were making decisions for Jesus. And I baptized them in the Swansea Channel, mostly. Tried to always make sure it was on an incoming tide. <laugh>, if you know enough Yeah. Know what you mean. But let me tell you radical thing that happened. I’m sorry, I’m going on a bit. No, that’s fine. I’m loving it. here I was as a United Church minister, baptizing people by immersion in the channel.First he got baptised himself “then I baptized all these other people, young guys. It was a challenging situation to disciple them because the church there was not sympathetic to them coming with their surfboard stacked up on the wall outside in the new building And with their songs and sand all over the carpet and all this modern music. Eventually I wore it my welcome there, but God spoke to me. Yes.
And the verse of scripture kept coming back to me. “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all the things that you need shall be given to you.”
He git offered three jobs. And took the one with boo salary , something he had not realised did not come with the job. Doug is an accidental living by faith minister. A church offered him a jb, and the WA Scripture Union wanted him as State directior:
“I received invitation from Tahiee Gospel Service Mission at Table. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Used to be called the Ancient Order of Gospel Fishermen Godfrey, the World who was a children’s of, Right. Yep. They invited me to be, to join them, uh, and based in Maitland wanted to do ministry, evangelist ministry, in the whole region. I didn’t realise they didn’t have any salaries. Seven years evangelising across the hunter region, and then the next thing came up.
At the local ministers fraternal, the local anglican Minister said “I’d like you to go and conduct Bible study in Maitland jail” A maximum security prison for rapists, murderers and other dangerous prisoners.
“I hesitated at first. But I’ve learned to say yes and yes is a good word. Because when God speaks, we should always say yes. I remember how Peter said, Lord forbid, Lord forbid, when the sheet [full of forbidden food] came down said, “God forbid Lord forbid that I should eat such meat” Right? And I’ve learned to say ‘yes,’ not ‘Lord forbid.’
During that same year, Prison Fellowship invited Clements to become their state seminar director which meant all the jails across New South Wales. “Once, you know, I contacted every prison superintendent in New South Wales, and none of them ever said no. Every one of them said yes. I was pretty used to the word ‘Yes.’”
I was invited by the superintendent to go to the AIDS unit at Long Bay. They used to call it the submarine because they all, all underground. They were, they had all these AIDS Prisoners who had, were drug users and infected with AIDS were housed in this area. There were about 15 prisoners inside. So I did a seminar there for three days with them.
“And at the first time at lunch time, they invited me to come downstairs further, to have lunch with them, which they cooked themselves and prepared themselvesSo I said, ‘Okay.’ I was pretty scared because AIDS was pretty new and infectiousat that time. No one knew about any solutions. So by faith, I went downstairs with them, after the meal, I said, ‘Why did you invite me to come here?’ And theysaid, ‘Well, cause you wanted a contest to see whether you were a genuine,; what sort of Christian were you? Were you genuine or not? Because we, we find ourselves rejected by the churches all the time.”
“I think I learned more than they did.,” Clements adds. “Don’t reject anything that God provides. Yeah. But if God has opened the door, walk through it.”
So, where’s Doug now? Part two coming soon, and it has a twist.