These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

James Watson, Christian pioneer

James Watson was an outstanding pioneer Methodist missionary. He began his ministry in 1891 as a member of William Bromilow and George Brown’s huge Australasian missionary venture to the island of Dobu in the British-administered territory of Papua.  Watson almost died because of repeated bouts of malaria and was obliged to return home after two years’ service. From then on he served in circuits at Narrabri (1896–1898), Inverell (1899–1901), Broken Hill (1902–1906), Wallaroo (1907–1910) and Kempsey (1911–1913). His interest in missions however never waned. In 1914 he was appointed Foreign Missionary Secretary with the Methodist Church of Australasia and in 1916, was selected by the Methodist Overseas Mission Board to establish and lead the Methodist Aborigines’ Mission on South Goulburn Island (Warruwi) in Western Arnhem Land.

Watson was a man of untiring energy and zeal. He was an expert horseman, sailor, builder–immensely practical both in the bush and on the sea. He was a gifted raconteur, competent photographer and throughout his long life, a powerful spokesman for Methodist missions.

At a time when there was a widespread belief that Aboriginal people were a “dying race”, Watson played a prominent role in challenging Methodist attitudes towards Aboriginal people. On his first excursion into Arnhem Land in 1915 to find a suitable site for a mission station, his first-hand experience led him to the conclusion that they were a “remarkable people” to be greatly admired for their physical strength, athletic prowess, intelligence, poise, patience, humour and imagination. He expressed nothing but appreciation of “this most fascinatingly interesting race”. Watson represented the beginnings of a new wave of thinking in Methodism, one of making reparation or doing atonement for the diseases and destruction inflicted on Indigenous societies by European civilization. In public lectures and short articles in the Missionary Review, he often pointed out that it was not the wish of missionaries to try to radically change the way Aboriginal people lived but by “means of friendship and the Gospel to gradually improve the living conditions of the people who had undisputed right of title to these lands”. For Watson there was both a standing with Aboriginal people and a standing between them and injustices of white society. During World War I he boldly compared the treatment of Aboriginal people with “the atrocities of the Huns”—a foreshadowing of recent arguments about Aboriginal genocide.

Watson had a practical faith and was a man of his era.  His obituary in the Methodist states that he was “no great lover or student of books” but had a great capacity to get alongside people and to learn from them. His simple, practical faith is probably best illustrated by a sermon he delivered in Bendigo in 1903 on the subject ‘true religion”: “true religion consisted in being good and doing good”. It was also reported that when Watson died, his last words were: “I have fought a good fight; I have finished my course; I have kept the faith.” It is testimony to a man who was “a brave and devoted soldier of Christ”.

William Emilsen

These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

John Thomas, Christian pioneer

 The Rev. John Thomas (1797 – 1881) and his wife Sarah were sent by the Methodist Missionary Society in Great Britain to serve in Tonga.  They were there from 1826 until 1850 and from 1856 until 1859.  Even though John Thomas was not the first missionary to arrive in Tonga he is regarded by the Free Wesleyan Church of Tonga as the Father of the Church.

John Thomas, the son of a blacksmith and a blacksmith himself, was very aware of his academic limitations.  He wrote of himself in his personal journal,

my own rough and knotty mind . . . what a raw, weak and uncultivated wretch was I when I left our England.

This self-deprecation appears quite frequently in his personal writing.  Limited education he may have had, but he was an outstanding observer of life.  He may not have had a sparkling personality but he had great plodding persistence.  Those qualities enabled him to write an amazing chronicle of the history of Tonga which covers a period prior to the arrival of European influences.  He also records the establishment and growth of the Church.

He provides the genealogies of significant people, records the arrivals and departures of ships and geographical information about the Island group.  It is evident that John Thomas had the confidence of the people for they shared their stories and beliefs with him.

While John and Sarah Thomas were in Sydney preparing to go to Tonga there was a lot of pressure put on him to remain in Sydney, to serve in one of the circuits there.  He was, however, very clear in his own mind that the Mission Committee had appointed him to Tonga and to Tonga he would go. John and Sarah Thomas had tragedy in their lives when Mrs Thomas had a number of miscarriages.  At last a son was born and named John.  Nine years later tragedy struck again when the child died.  Later when they returned to England, Mrs Thomas also died.  When John remarried his new wife had a son but sadly that child too died when he was nine years of age.  John Thomas lamented there was no one to pass his written material to.  He thought he might destroy it.  Fortunately, he did not and his History of Tonga is a goldmine of information for Tongan people and for students of Tongan history.

John Thomas was a very spiritual man and a number of stories have grown up around his life.  A Tongan preacher told the story of John Thomas landing on an island to share the gospel of Jesus.  He knelt on the beach to pray.  Even though the water lapped around him his trousers were not wet.

Some people would be critical of John Thomas because he was pivotal in many people forsaking their traditional gods and becoming followers of Jesus Christ.  The value of that was indicated by a story written by John Thomas.  A King was gravely ill and one of his sons was strangled to appease the gods and to facilitate his father’s recovery.  Even though John Thomas worked relentlessly to bring change in Tonga and to have the people follow a new way, the way of Jesus, no one did more to record the beliefs and history and genealogy of the Tongan people.  He believed that there would come a time when people would want to know their history and about their culture.  When they did, John Thomas has recorded it for them.

He was truly the Father of the Free Wesleyan Church of Tonga.

by Rev John Mavor