THE REV TED NOFFS -- CLERGYMAN WITH A VISION
By JULIAN HANCOCK
It is now a number of years since the Reverend Ted Noffs, best known for his tireless campaign to save young people from the scourge of illicit drugs, passed away after a long period of almost vegetable-like existence following a severe stroke early in 1987. But the work he started 40 years ago at the Wayside Chapel in Kings Cross, Sydney, continues to grow, and his unique interpretation of practical Christianity has touched the lives of countless thousands of people.
The best known project originating from the Wayside Chapel is the Life Education Centre, a distinctive approach to the drug problem through preventive education. This program, conceived and developed by Ted Noffs, is now established and spreading throughout Australia, and in several overseas countries.
Less well known, but by no means less significant, are the many other contributions Mr Noffs has made in the field of practical spirituality. I have been personally involved with the Wayside Chapel since its inception in 1964, and thus can give a first-hand account of the impact this great Australian has made both on individuals and on society.
It would be quite reasonable to say that the Reverend Ted Noffs fought a one man battle against the conservatism of the Christian Church in Australia. He took on the collective forces of orthodoxy, and won a substantial victory. Over the years he has been accused of heresy, of harbouring drug addicts and criminals, of being a non-Christian, and has quietly suffered many other slanderous insinuations. But in the long term his accusers have retreated into a humbled silence in the face of the very obvious and outstanding humanitarian work he had achieved.
Ted Noffs was always an innovator. Space prohibits me from listing all the “firsts” for which he has been responsible, but I will mention a few:
1963: Established, and first president of, Foundation for Aboriginal Affairs.
1964: Opened the Wayside Chapel with its drop-in coffee shop, where all were welcomed, regardless of beliefs, political affiliations, age, social status, etc.
1966: Led Protests in Sydney against French nuclear testing on Mururoa Atoll.
1967: Established Australia’s first Drug Referral Centre, where persons with drug problems could seek help, with immunity from prosecution.
1968: Introduced concept of the Family of Man (now known as the Family of Humanity) as a way of transcending religious differences.
1969: Opened Australia’s first 24-hour Crisis Centre, where people could call in personally, rather than just receive telephone counselling.
1970: Initiated Breakfast Program, with mobile unit, for Aboriginal children in Redfern, Sydney.
1976: Instituted the Naming Celebration, as an alternative to the traditional Christening.
1979: Opened the first Life Education Centre.
Whilst always emphasising his preference for practical Christianity rather than theology, Mr Noffs nevertheless evolved a profound spiritual philosophy of his own.
The most visible manifestation of this is seen in the Naming Celebration, which he introduced as an alternative to the traditional Christening. Appalled by the proportion of major and bloody conflicts around the world which are based on differences of religion, Mr Noffs developed the idea of the Family of Humanity. He reasoned that each time a small child is Christened into a particular denomination or faith, that child is marked for life as “different” from those of other faiths. So he began “naming” children into the Family of Humanity, according to the following creed:
I am a Catholic, I am a Protestant,
I am a Jew, I am a Muslim,
I am a Sikh, I am a Buddhist,
I am a Hindu, because
I am a human being and nothing in the world can be alien to me.
Questions to which parents are asked to respond at the Naming Celebration include: “Will you give your child access to the teachings of all religions and philosophies, so that your child may come to an understanding of the meaning and importance of people like Jesus who gave hope to the world?” “Will you see to it that no obstacles be placed in the way of fulfilment of your child’s potentiality?”
The validity of the Naming Celebration as a Christian sacrament was challenged by the Uniting Church, but Ted presented a paper to the synod and won yet another victory. Ironically, this maverick clergyman has “named” (or baptised) many thousands of children, while a typical parson would baptise only a handful or so in a year.
I have had a long, albeit intermittent association with the Christian Church in many of its cloaks:—Methodist, Presbyterian, Anglican, Catholic, Pentecostal, etc. It has been, and remains, somewhat of a love/hate relationship. I love the sound of the organ and the singing of hymns, and I recognise and respect the basic decency of most church-going Christians. But almost invariably have I squirmed throughout the inevitable 20—30 minute sermon. When it hasn’t been just plain boring and repetitive, it has been full of dogmas and assumptions which I feel are a travesty of the real message and meaning of Jesus the Christ.
My quandary was resolved when I began attending services at the Wayside Chapel. There was the organ music, the familiar hymns, the sincere people, the atmosphere of reverence. Refreshingly absent, however, was the long, boring, theologically irritating sermon. Ted’s sermons, usually based on a reading from the New Testament, were always concise, inspiring, and quite free of those annoying (to me) orthodox dogmas.
Week after week he exhorted the members of the congregation to recognise their own innate Christ-nature, and said that through this alone could we deal with our problems and realise our dreams. Both Ted Noffs and his wife Margaret have believed for many years in familiar “esoteric” concepts such as reincarnation and karma. Although Ted occasionally hinted at these beliefs during a church service, he did not actively preach anything more than practical Christian love, and the fact, so clearly stated in the New Testament, that we are all sons and daughters of God.
Almost invariably I found that those who accused him of being a heretic or non-Christian, had never attended a church service to hear what he ACTUALLY preached, but were relying on distorted here-say. But enough of MY interpretation of his beliefs. I will let the man speak for himself through some of his writings.
“Many years ago at the Wayside Chapel I had my first encounter with the Sikh community, with the Jewish community, with the Baha’i community, with the Theosophical Society, with the Catholic Church, and, eventually, Muslims, Buddhists, Hare Krishnas, all found their way to my door. The astonishing thing that I observed was this: as long as we stayed away from discussing fine theological points, we were in complete unity. As we directed programs together, our people intermingled and shared with one another to achieve common objectives. Projects aimed at feeding the hungry Aboriginal children of the inner-city Sydney suburb of Redfern brought people of diverse faiths together for one purpose: to alleviate human suffering.”(1)
“More than ever before we have to make our peace, not with some human enemy, but with nature herself. Often in the name of Christianity we declared war upon nature. Harmony with nature must be one of our watchwords now, for the continuation of life depends upon it. Yet it is only at this midnight hour in human history that we are beginning to see that the proliferation of positive simple acts, growing out of a sensitive harmony between one another, is essential if mankind is to survive. Salvation for Jesus meant, among other things, the survival of life on the planet earth: unless there was enough harmony in the world to act as a lubricant between millions of human beings in a continual state of interaction, then the whole human family would grind to a catastrophic end.”(2)
“When parents, when boys and girls celebrate the fact that they belong to one family, is not that the beginning of a new wisdom that the world has never known?
“Therefore let us celebrate the goodness to be found in all religions, and bring it to the treasurehouse of the Family of Humanity.
“We share in the richness of the heritage of all faiths. Saint Francis of Assisi, Wesley, Mohammed, General Booth, the Guru Nanak, Albert Schweitzer, Confucius, Martin Luther King, Socrates and Ghandi are the common heroes of every child.”(3)
“. . . all of you fundamentally and spiritually are God's. That’s the fundamental aspect. I wish everybody could believe most of all in themselves. When I express this thought, people say, ‘Oh, you’re being humanistic,’ and they think that I am all kinds of things. They say that I’m being atheistic, because I am putting God aside. No, I am not. God is within you. God is part of your life. We could spend a great deal of time on this, but let me urge you to believe this concept more than anything else in the world. God is the healing power, the witnessing power, within every human life.”(4)
Theodore Delwin Noffs was born at Mudgee, NSW, on August 14, 1926, of German pioneering stock. He was married in 1951 to deaconess Margaret Tipping, and has three sons, Wesley, David and Theodore. After first training to be an engineer, he was drawn to the Methodist Church through the youth movement and was ordained as a Methodist minister on March 6, 1952.
His first parish was 65,000 square miles of the Australian outback, centred on Wilcannia, NSW. The insight gained into Aboriginal people through this appointment led Mr Noffs later to work among them in Sydney and to establish, with Charles Perkins, the Foundation for Aboriginal Affairs in 1963.
Between 1957 and 1959, Mr Noffs studied at Garrett Theological Seminary, Chicago, and was at the same time pastor of Wesley Church in the slum area of Chicago. He returned to Australia to work as associate pastor to the Rev Alan Walker, at Sydney’s Central Methodist Mission, where he co-founded Life Line. From there he moved his ministry to Kings Cross, and the Wayside Chapel was opened in Hughes Street on April 12, 1964.
I can now take up the story again from my own first-hand experience.
Then working as a journalist with the Sydney Morning Herald, I eagerly awaited Thursday evenings, when the Wayside Chapel coffee shop opened from 8 pm to midnight. For four nights of each week, Thursday through Sunday, I lived in a different world.
In the heyday of the hippie era, anyone who was seeking a new philosophy, a new life-style, or simply rebelling against the “establishment,” passed, at some time in their search, through Kings Cross; and the Wayside Chapel seemed to be the focal meeting point. In a melting pot of humanity, high-school students, hippies, bikies, middle-aged ladies, clergymen, prostitutes and drug addicts all rubbed shoulders and interacted.
There was always someone playing the guitar or piano, with others singing along, and every evening at the Wayside Chapel coffee shop was like an outstanding party. But it was far from being just a social venue. By mixing freely among these diverse elements of society, Ted Noffs developed programs to meet the specific needs of the local people. I have referred earlier in this article to some of these “firsts”. Many programs and ideas were tried. Some stood the test of time, while others were dropped and new directions sought.
One of the most enduring and popular activities of the Wayside Chapel was the Sunday night Question Time. Started in 1965, this was held almost continuously for more than 20 years. Prominent guest speakers were a regular feature, and included such diverse personalities as Malcolm Fraser, Margaret Mead, Don Chipp, the Maharishi, Allen Ginsburg, Peter Clyne, Charles Birch, and of course the entertaining and provocative John Webster. It was a no-holds-barred dialogue which threw into open debate many issues which in the sixties were still taboo: drugs, abortion, homosexuality, radical politics, Eastern religions, the occult, ecology, corruption etc. No stone was left unturned until every conceivable social, political and philosophical issue was thoroughly aired. Much of the direction of the Wayside’s work was born from this sometimes rowdy, always challenging forum.
But of all the programs, the one into which Ted’s energy ultimately was concentrated was the Life Education Centre. After conducting funeral services for more than 150 young people who had died from drug overdoses, Mr Noffs realised that law enforcement alone was not a sufficient deterrent to drug abuse. Thus, in 1974, he came up with the idea of attacking the drug problem through preventive education. After five years of planning and research, the first Life Education Centre, also known as “Classroom of the 21st Century,” was opened at the Wayside Chapel in 1979.
The program is unique. Rather than warning children of the dangers associated with drug-taking, which might tempt them to experiment, emphasis is placed on gaining an understanding of how the human body works, development of self-esteem and decision making, and how to identify and resist peer-group and advertising pressures.
The Rev Ted Noffs—once a figure surrounded by controversy—is now widely recognised as a great social innovator, humanitarian, and a true Christian. For many years at loggerheads with the Church he so dearly loved, he succeeded in doing what perhaps no other clergyman in this country has done. He rejected the restrictions of Christian dogmatism, yet remained a serving and respected minister of the Uniting Church (an amalgamation of all Methodist, Congregational and about half of all Presbyterian churches in Australia).
As I watched at close hand for almost a quarter of a century while Ted struggled to manifest his vision for a more caring world, it struck me that if he had one predominant “weakness,” it was that he loved too much. He had an amazing capacity to remember people’s names and personal details, and to show a genuine concern for their well-being and progress in life. If at times some people felt he rejected them in some way, I believe it was because he continually over-committed himself, and had to withdraw from time to time for his own survival.
It was perhaps inevitable that fate eventually stepped in to slow him down from his self-imposed seven-days-a-week workload, which included overseas flights and long intrastate driving trips to promote and establish new Life Education Centres.
Although he is no longer with us, Ted Noffs will nevertheless be long remembered by the 11,500 children who have been Christened or Named through the Wayside Chapel, and their countless friends, relatives and godparents. Then there are the 15,500 couples representing 140 different nationalities, who have been married at the Wayside Chapel over a 25 years period, and their friends and relatives. An estimated 550,000 infants and primary school children throughout Australia will pass through the Life Education program in 1989 alone. There are now more than 40 mobile teaching units (fully equipped caravans) operating in Australia, as well as five permanent locations, with centres established also in New Zealand, Thailand, the United Kingdom and the United States.[NOTE: these statistics are as of 1991, and will have increased significantly since that time under the pastors who succeeded Mr Noffs. The current paster is Rev Ray Richmond].
During Ted’s convalescence, the administration of the Life Education Centres was taken over by his wife, Margaret, and sons, Wesley and David.
The ongoing social and spiritual work of the Wayside Chapel was overseered by the Reverend Clyde Dominish, then Moderator of the Uniting Church in New South Wales, until a permanent minister, Rev Ray Richmond was appointed.
(1) “The Mark of God” by Ted Noffs, Dove Communications, 1984;
(2) “By What Authority” by Ted Noffs, Methuen of Australia Pty Ltd, 1979;
(3) “Child Naming Book” by Ted Noffs, The Wayside Foundation, 1981;
(4) “The Summit of Daring” by Ted Noffs, Cassell Australia Ltd, 1981.
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