As the BCA National Council met this week, they remembered  Life Member and Vice President Emeritus Tom Morgan, who passed away in March.

It became quite clear to Tom Morgan that God was calling him to serve with BCA after a visit to his church by then Organising Missioner Tom Jones.

“I was working at the Railways at the time,” Tom recalled. “I didn’t have much education, but I talked to a Bishop about what I felt. He suggested I attend night school and get my Leaving Certificate. I was then accepted as a candidate for BCA in 1949 after being interviewed by Canon Wensel and the Victorian Committee. My fees were paid for on the condition that I would give them five years of service after graduation.”

Tom entered Ridley College in 1950, was ordained as a deacon in 1953, and worked as the Curate in Coburg from 1953–1955. After being ordained into the priesthood, BCA sent Tom, Doreen, and their three-month old baby to Beech Forest, in Victoria’s southwestern district. For the next six and a half years he manoeuvred his F J Holden “over every type of conceivable road. I used
to carry an axe, a rope and a spade,” Tom said in an interview with New Life Magazine in 1981. He recounted that many a time in the small hours of the morning, with drizzling rain adding to his discomfort, he would chop up fallen trees that blocked the road and haul them out of the way so that he could get home to his family.

“My time with BCA really opened my eyes to the scattered nature of our population. I was always accepted without exception when I visited sheep and cattle properties. They would offer me hospitality and I would talk to them about Christian things. Out of that came baptisms and marriages. It really was a privilege to serve, and it taught me the value of reaching individuals, Indigenous people, and farming families.”

Following his time in Beech Forest, Tom worked in the Melbourne Diocese and also with the Australian Military Forces (AMF), but he never lost his heart for BCA. He served on the Victorian Committee and National Council, and together with Doreen ran a monthly BCA prayer meeting. Until his passing, Tom was Vice President Emeritus & the only Life Member of the Society.

“Tom & Doreen’s ministry with BCA was chiefly to dairy and potato farmers and loggers scattered across many isolated camps and centres joined by winding, hilly and slippery mud tracks over beautifully fertile soil,” says Victorian Regional Officer, Adrian Lane. “Only a month ago, on a deputation at Colac, I kept meeting people who remembered with great affection Tom’s commitment to preaching Christ to all and any, wherever, using every opportunity. He certainly ‘went the distance’.”