With thanksgiving for Tony Lamb

Posted on April 15, 2015 
Filed under Sydney Diocese

The Rev Tony LambFormer ACL President, Dr. Bruce Ballantine-Jones, has written this tribute to his friend, The Rev. Tony Lamb, who departed this earthly life on Friday 10th April 2015.

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Many who knew Tony Lamb will be saddened to hear that he has died, sad, not for him, of course, as he is at home with the Lord, but for the loss of a good friend and an outstanding servant of the gospel.

I served as Tony’s curate from 1971 to 1975. After that, we served together on numerous committees and other ventures. He nominated me for membership of the ACL and to its council, back in 1970. We were good friends and I admired him for his integrity, fierce loyalty to the scriptures and the evangelical cause.

Those four years working closely with Tony at St Philip’s Caringbah gave me a special opportunity to get to know him, to learn from him, and to try to imitate many of his qualities. What I admired most was his devotion to teaching the scriptures, both from the pulpit and in the weekly bible study. The commitment to thorough preparation and the passion to see that life should be lived under its authority shone through everything he did as a pastor/teacher.

He always seemed to me to be what a rector should be when it comes to training his curates. He was accessible, interested in what one was doing and helpful in pointing out good and bad points. Meeting every Tuesday, as we did for review of the weekend just past, for planning the week ahead and for prayer was a very precious time for me.

In the 40 years that have passed, we continued firm friends and close allies in diocesan affairs. Speaking of that, I would like to put on the record what I believe to be his greatest contribution to the Diocese.

In 1966, just after becoming Archbishop, Marcus Loane proposed the sub-division of the Diocese into three, starting with Wollongong and then Parramatta. He said that Wollongong had experienced significant growth through industrialisation and immigration, the Roman Catholics had established a separate diocese there, and local Anglicans felt ‘a certain degree of isolation from the rest of the Diocese’. There were 41 parishes in the area (including Sutherland Deanery), a number of schools and branches of various diocesan organisations. He said that he was ‘generally sympathetic to the aspirations of the Wollongong people’. He did not doubt that such a large diocese [as Sydney] would undergo fresh divisions eventually, and that such a new diocese would ultimately be in the best interests of all.

The Synod voted in-principle support of an investigation which he then established and which duly reported back in 1968, supporting sub-division. Loane then officially proposed that there be a separate diocese based on Wollongong. The Synod again gave in-principle support. The next step was to appoint a resident bishop in Wollongong and designate St Michael’s Wollongong as the Provisional Cathedral. These occurred in 1969 with the appointment of Archdeacon Graham Delbridge as Bishop. In 1968, an ordinance for the elections of the Wollongong Diocesan Committee and the Wollongong Zone Council was passed. The Diocesan Committee was to examine constitutional matters related to the formation of a new diocese, the Zone Council to handle delegated administrative matters. An endowment fund was established for the proposed new diocese.

Opposition centred on the Sutherland Shire and was led by Tony Lamb. It was generally recognised that a Wollongong Diocese without the nine Sutherland parishes would not be viable, but the ‘Shire’ was part of the Sydney metropolitan area and had no community of interest with Wollongong.

In March 1970, Tony published a detailed critique of the sub-division proposal which argued that the ‘best interests of the gospel should determine the case, and, only after alternatives were properly considered’. He said the Wollongong [and Parramatta] proposals did not pass the viability test when measured against overseas experience and the record of other Australian dioceses. He warned that the new dioceses would go the way of all the other sub-divisions from Sydney, namely that the inherited evangelical traditions would give way to Anglo-Catholic and liberal dominance. He called for a re-examination of the case for the large diocese model, but with more decentralisation, such as ‘regional bishoprics, increased power in the archdeaconries and rural deaneries’. He said this would give ‘a degree of local autonomy and retain the present advantages that are almost unique in Sydney’.

Having analysed why he thought that one time evangelical dioceses had moved away from their roots, he offered his reasons why Sydney had held firm. First, was the foundation of the early evangelical chaplains, second, the influence of Bishop Barker, third, the ACL, fourth the influence of Archbishop Mowll, sixth, MTC and finally, the nature of the Synod with its mix of theological, constitutional and legal leadership, combined with its evangelical persuasion.

Tony’s paper is also of interest as an early exposition of the Knox doctrine of church and denomination. He said that on historical and biblical grounds the congregation remains the unit of the church. The manifestation of the church is ‘congregational and local, not diocesan’. The Diocese he said is a collective unit for ‘administrative purposes and a federation of local congregations for mutual aid’. He said the Diocese ‘must remain the servant and handmaid of the parishes’ and must never take precedence over the parish, organisationally or financially. He said its [the Diocese] activities, and the loyalty it expects, should be limited to those areas and undertakings to which its parishes had specifically agreed. ‘Ultimately the Church will stand or fall through the strength of its parishes not its central diocesan structures’. Such a clear and early exposition of the Knox view gave a rational and theologically defensible basis for opposing sub-division.

Some might argue that he was an unlikely champion for this cause, being of somewhat reserved disposition. But he was highly respected as a rector of a large and successful parish. He served well on senior committees, had played a full role in the ACL and had the courage, when he thought it was necessary, to stand up to diocesan leadership on matters of principle.

As the process continued, it was plain that it was not possible to fulfil the original criteria for sub-division as set out in the 1968 commission report. The Wollongong Anglican Regional Council asked that the question of a new diocese be deferred for another ten years. They reported the results of a survey of clergy in the area indicating that 86.6% were for regionalisation without sub-division, and only 11.4% in favour of a new diocese.

The opposition led by Tony Lamb, supplemented by similar views in the west, had overcome what seemed at the beginning of Loane’s administration to be a proposal with irresistible momentum.

In my view, time has shown that Tony was correct. Whatever the problems relating to size might be, the parishes of the Diocese are much better off as part of a unified diocese than they would be as three smaller struggling dioceses. Tony Lamb, more than any other, was responsible for this outcome.

Tony turned 90 this year. He was always supported and upheld by his wife Jan and his children Cathy and David. As a member of St Philip’s Caringbah since my retirement, I know how long lasting was his influence and how much he was loved by the folks there. I know also that many others of our diocesan family have appreciated his ministry and witness. For myself it was a pleasure and a privilege to have worked with him and to have been his friend.

– by Bruce Ballantine-Jones, 14th April 2015.

Photo courtesy of Tony’s family.

There will be a Thanksgiving Service for Tony at St. Stephen’s Normanhurst, 2 Kenley Street, Normanhurst at 2:00pm on Friday 17th April 2015.