Sydney’s Mobile Chapel A “Vital Experiment”

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31681, 17 May 1968, Page 2

Sydney’s Mobile Chapel A “Vital Experiment”

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MERLE NOWLAND)

SYDNEY. Sydney’s Pied Piper is my nickname for Deaconess Kay Edwards. When she appears with her mobile chapel in the city’s Woolloomooloo district, children come from everywhere.

They run by the dozen behind the long, white caravan trying to clatnber aboard the towing jeep, their young voices in chorus screaming: “Miss Kay, Miss Kay.” Kay Edwards is in charge of the Methodist mobile Wayside Chapel, in effect an extension of the world-famous Wayside Chapel of the Cross. The roving deaconess drives the chapel round suburbs surrounding King’s Cross, and although the chapel is a minitature church and Sunday school, no ordinary services are held within.

In Woolloomooloo the mobile unit serves as the centre for an afternoon crafts club for the wives of Italian fishermen. Small children come to watch cartoons and to try their hand at cooking, older ones enjoy the facilities of the chapel for a very popular teen-age youth club. The fishermen know that the roving chapel is one of the few places they can enjoy films on their home country in their own language. Long Sessions

A Sunday school is held on Sunday afternoons, but the programme is far removed from the traditional, and includes cooking and art lessons. It also goes on for three hours or more—because it is what the clients want. Miss Edwards said that

when she introduced the Sunday school and tried to wind up proceedings after one hour, the children complained, saying that their parents did not want them to go home till much later.

The mobile chapel has been on the road for only a few weeks, but Miss Edwards has worked with the Italian fishing community for 18 months, providing a link between the closely-knit Italian families and the Australians amongst whom they live. Many of the Italians do not feel at home, and hardly anyone has tried to help them understand the Australian way of life they are expected to adopt, Miss Edwards said. Social Service

Her approach could be a valuable guide to anyone wanting to help Immigrants. She got to know the people of the community by visiting and listening to them, then discovered their needs. Her work is a social service, and there is no attempt to convert anyone. A tall, slim woman, who dresses in bright, modern clothes and resolutely refuses to bow to her church's rule about wearing the drab official deaconess uniform, Miss Edwards has little time for tradition-bound ideas on church activities. These, she says, have resulted in the average Australian rejecting the Christian Church as “useless and dead." She sees her Mobile Wayside Chapel as a vital experiment in taking the Church to the community to learn and serve. The chapel causes great interest wherever it goes. In the suburbs of Darlinghurst and Paddington it is becoming known as a place where one can go with any kind of problem and be met by the friendly ears of a trained counsellor, and also as a club

house for children after school. It parks for half a day each week near one of the city's “red light” areas, and it has had several visits from prostitutes working there. Miss Edwards told me of the visit of a man known to be in charge of a number of brothels in the district. After a long chat to a male member of the team working in the chapel, he jokingly warned one of his girls: “Now don’t get reformed.” The chapel parks in this

area to serve as a meeting point for Miss Edwards and the deserted mothers she is working with, but she hopes to develop contact with “the girls.” The Mobile Wayside Chapel is very new, and its programme unorthodox, but for the many Church leaders, including those outside the Methodist Church, who are watching, it is showing the way to more meaningful contacts between the Christian Church and the community it is pledged to serve.