Peter King's Story
I worked for the South Australian Department of Agriculture and travelled across the state consulting with farmers about research projects I was conducting. I first met Gordon Fry in 1966 when he was the minister at Orroroo and Jamestown Baptist Churches. I preached across the Mid North in Baptist and Uniting churches as well as speaking at men’s fellowships and youth groups.
I found out about the Jesus Centre in 1973 through John Potter when it met at 114 Cheltenham St, Malvern. My wife and I went there for a few weeks before the group relocated to North Adelaide early 1974.
I married Elizabeth (Liz) Secombe on the 1st June 1974 in the Glenunga Uniting Church in front of all the youth I had been working with as well as many farmers, family and friends. About a week later we were off to Europe-Russia-USA on our honeymoon and a work tour. We visited Taize and L’abri communities and worked in Moscow during that 4 months. We crossed southern USA visiting research centres associated with soil science and visited the Church of the Redeemer in Houston Texas.
We returned from our travel and continued to worship with the Jesus Centre folk. We wanted to belong to an active fellowship that sought to follow God on a daily level. We liked early morning walks and ended up joining a group of young people in Melbourne St, North Adelaide who held morning prayers. The Jesus Centre young people were also running the One Way Drop Inn to make contact with the locals.
I was very keen to buy a property in the Adelaide hills where we could raise a little family. I set aside a week of my annual holidays to purchase a property at Basket Range, but as the day got closer Liz grew more reticent to buy there. Somehow God was telling me I was required elsewhere and to take my focus off providing for our family and to cooperate with God as He was building His Kingdom.
I decided to go away for a week and pray further. The first morning after we arrived Port Neill on Eyre Peninsula, I asked God for a sign to confirm that it was not His will for us to buy in the hills. I decided to take my fishing gear to the shore and asked God to give me a big fish on the first cast out to confirm this decision. As I walked across the beach to the water I felt the Spirit of God saying something like “I have already shown you what to do” and “I don’t need your big rod to help show you what to do” and I had the thoughts of Elizabeth and the scriptures shown to me from Haggai 1:4,9.
So I put the rod down on the beach and walked to the water’s edge, listening for more instruction. As I stood there I sensed that there was movement in the water about 200 metres out. The movement began to come towards me so I waded out into the water to about knee deep. I realised that there was a fish swimming towards me. It swam right up to me and stopped in front of my knees. I had a fish knife in my back pocket and swished it through the water and lifted the fish out on it. My spirit jumped as I contemplated the implication of the ‘miraculous’ circumstances. I gave thanks to God and went for a walk to the jetty nearby where a few people were fishing. I asked them what the fish was and they said a snapper. They also told me that the fish lived in deeper water and could not be caught like my story had unfolded. Needless to say I returned to Liz in an ecstatic mind. She simply said “I told you so”.
The hills project was finally put to rest. The verses from Haggai were a signal to me that God didn’t want me just pleasing myself but to look to him for direction in our lives - building His house which was the next step in our journey.
Within the Jesus Centre group was the belief that God was leading some members to form a Christian community, living near one another and sharing resources and helping one another to mature as Believers. This idea appealed to me as we would be heavily involved and would want it to be a God-dependent, ministry-oriented group.
Then things accelerated at a great rate when the 59 and 61 Sydenham Road, Norwood properties came up for sale mid 1976. They were owned by Kent Town Homes Church Trust (Uniting Church). The Melbourne Street group believed that this was the right direction for some of them to go. Liz and I felt we could be involved. The owners were very happy to sell to Christians who would keep the use that they had envisioned.
We were able to provide bridging finance for Trevor and Maureen Harris while they sold their house in Montrose Avenue, a few streets away. We sought God for a sign if He wanted us to purchase No 59, asking Him to provide the money required between what we could raise from our own resources and the purchase price by the next morning. He answered swiftly with a friend offering us the complete amount required. The Harris’s shifted to No. 61 on the 16th September and we relocated to the No. 59 house from our flat in Marden in November.
During the first year at 59 Sydenham Rd we settled in, removed the fence between 59 and 61 and did a lot of yard cleaning and repair work. I was challenged to reclad the shed at the rear of our block and to fit windows into it. However, I felt hings were proceeding very slowly, using up a lot of my time outside of work hours.
One day I was installing a new window sill when suddenly I heard a whirring noise overhead and behold a white dove-like bird appeared and landed beside me on the sill. It had no fear of me and my heart leapt inside me, as I recalled the time when a dove appeared and hovered over Jesus as he was being baptised. This sign was an indication of the arrival of the Holy Spirit in Jesus day and this event was not wasted on me. One of the persons staying with us at the time, Jim Burrow, built a bird box for the feathered visitor and it promptly moved in. The white dove stayed with us for over 3 months.
People began showing an interest in the concept of community and so we grew to about 17 households by the mid 1980’s with a mixture of families and singles.
We didn’t want to be too insular and decided to stop hold meetings on Sunday. We encouraged people to belong to other churches as well. Many from the group connected with St Bartholomew’s Anglican Church on Beulah Rd, about half a kilometre from our home. This arrangement produced many good experiences both to St Bart’s and the community. In 1980, the community settled on the name “Jireh” to replace “Jesus Centre”. “Jehovah Jireh” from Genesis 22:14 means that “the Lord is provider”.
The group sought to advance various ministries with the blessing of the Norwood Ministers Fraternal. This included involving local churches in the Norwood Christmas Pageant and Christian ministry in Government Primary Schools. With help from St. Bart’s and other churches we were also able to support refugees getting settled into the Aussie way of life.
Liz and I were able to accommodate people coming to the community during the late 1970’s and 1980s. Peter Leafe was our first resident. He came and went numerous times after we made contact with him on a Beach Mission in Robe. He came to faith after emerging from a ‘troubled’ background.
Jim Burrow was medical student when he first came to live with us. He tolerated the shabby condition of the rear of our house and stayed there through a couple years of his course. He was a selfless person and often contributed to projects. After graduating, Jim married and went to Darwin to work as a physician. Jim’s mum and dad lived in Tumby Bay and for several years we exchanged houses over summer giving us a break and them catching up with Jim and his brother David.
After our house was renovated, Helen Gainer lived with us from late 1985 until she was married in 1989. Helen was a Flinders University post graduate researcher investigating tumour promotion. She came from central England (Thrapston) where she had related to a Christian Community. She sought for a similar relationship here and soon found us. She, like Jim contributed to our household and to the ministry. Helen and her friend Julie were good musicians and they busked in the Norwood Mall presenting gospel music.
Helen had a vision for her life to marry a Thai National. Her vision went forward at a great rate after she met Withaya Boondekhun (Wit) an Engineering graduate in Adelaide who became a believer and took up training to become a pastor. For many years now they have served as missionaries in Thailand working in churches in Bangkok and Nakhorn Sri Thammarat (Southern Thailand) and Wang Daeng (north of Bangkok).
For ten or so years after Jireh Community ended in 1988, we went on to host many young Asian ladies who were students at our Adelaide universities and colleges. They came from Malaysia, Japan, Vietnam and China. They led us to many interesting encounters both at home and abroad. We were able to share our Christian faith with them. As I was away working in my agricultural business for weeks at a time, we only hosted girls as they were great company for Liz and the children.