Preaching In Australia
Preaching the gospel in Australia in some ways differs from preaching in the United States, especially for one who is from the southern states. It is true, of course, that basically people are the same wherever we find them, yet different geographical locations have always presented their own peculiar problems.
In Australia I found by house to house survey that about ninety-nine percent of the people tell you they are church members. But just what might that mean? It means about ninety percent of them go to the church building for three events of their life — to be christened, to have the marriage ceremony said, and for their funeral service. As one put it, they are "carried, married, and buried." Thus, in actuality, there is a small degree of interest in religion throughout Australia.
Also, the common man does not respect preachers too highly. This is rather due to the "parsons" in the Church of England who admittedly having lost touch with the common people are looked upon as men with soft jobs and fat salaries. This is another of the barriers that gospel preachers must overcome.
Another difficulty presents itself in that a gospel preacher is from America. Australians think very well of Americans as a whole and accept them readily. However, among the small percentage of religious people, there is a feeling of suspicion toward American preachers. They have seen some of America's specimens of religion such as the "five year old evangelist" and the "cowboy evangelist" sort. So anything new or different to them in religion is rather looked upon as something of a crackpot nature. To overcome this, we used tracts and literature from the "old country" as often as possible. The week-end sports of various types of ball games with horse and dog racing are prominent in the average Australian life. With religious people, "Sunday sport" is a live issue, but they have gradually lost the battle to prevent it. Along with the racing has gone much legalized gambling. Gambling is another common practice of the Australian. There are many lotteries with even the state governments conducting some of the largest ones.
It is in this type of soil that the gospel must be placed in Australia. But regardless of difficulties, we can know that the gospel still remains the power that can save the soul of man. We must remember that it is ours to preach the gospel to them that are in Australia also.