The Prayer for a Missionary College
Benson Barnett served as a missionary in China with the China Inland Mission (now OMF), returning in 1907 to Australia because of his wife Elizabeth’s deteriorating health. He served in various local ministries, including a temporary principal at a Bible college in Adelaide in 1915.
His cross-cultural missionary zeal was frustrated as he observed a lack of adequate missionary training in Australia.
“His cross-cultural missionary zeal was frustrated as he observed a lack of adequate missionary training in Australia.”
The Barnetts fell to earnest prayer and became increasingly convicted that the Lord was leading them to Sydney – even though they knew virtually nobody there and had no financial resources. So it was that the family of four arrived in Sydney in January 1916: strangers in an unfamiliar city; in the miserable depths of a world war; with no permanent accommodation and no promised support; but waiting on God with obedient faith.
A Vision for a Bible and Missionary College
Barnett’s vision and intention for the College, and for what it would be and teach, were unmistakable. This was to be fundamentally, and at heart, a Bible college, standing on the Bible as God’s infallible word, guided by his Spirit, and helping students to know their Saviour, not only to know about him.
But also, and inseparably from that, it was to be a missionary training college to prepare people to know and tell the gospel, whether in far regions or the homeland. The choice of the word ‘home’ to describe the new college set it squarely and intentionally in the tradition of its ‘missionary training home’ predecessors: it aimed to produce well-prepared, practically capable, cross-culturally adept, missionary-minded Christians by nurturing them in a devotional family environment.
“to provide a place… where they may gain such experiential knowledge of God, that they shall… truly know Him, and go out and be strong and do exploits, as a result of that knowledge…In the training, the one thing stressed is the Word of God itself.”
The College was “to provide a place where they may find a congenial spiritual atmosphere, where they may gain such experiential knowledge of God, that they shall… truly know Him, and go out and be strong and do exploits, as a result of that knowledge…In the training, the one thing stressed is the Word of God itself. We aim to drill into those who come here, a knowledge of what the Book says… not so much opinions or thoughts about it, which may or may not be after His mind, but the Word itself.” – C. Benson Barnett, Annual Report, 1916
The Home Where the College Started
Barnett drew around him a small and intentionally denominationally diverse group of supporters, who became the college’s board of reference and allowed their names to stand as guarantors for his bold faith venture.
After looking for a house to establish his college, he discovered ‘Ooma’, a deceased estate in Badminton Road, Croydon. The asking price was £160 per annum, but the agent surprisingly reduced the price to £132. ‘Ooma’ became the home of Sydney Missionary and Bible College: rented for the first ten years, and eventually purchased in 1926.
Founding SMBC in Wartime
In 1916, during the Great War, it hardly seemed a sensible, auspicious or even realistic time to start a new Christian training initiative. Many would have labelled the idea as irresponsible, perhaps even unpatriotic. Barnett saw things entirely differently:
“Was not the war draining the country of men and means? In a time like this ought not such a work as this to wait? God’s work wait! It seemed like blasphemy. God’s work wait! While the Devil’s went on unabated with the most diabolical fury, and while Christians supply fuel for the fire he has started. No! No! Never! if we could help it. We were caused to remember that the great institutions as the British and Foreign Bible Society, the Work begun by Carey, The Church Missionary Society, The London Missionary Society, and others, were begun when Europe was convulsed by the wars of Napoleon, when England was in almost hourly dread of invasion; and we thanked God and took courage in Himself.”
“God’s work wait! It seemed like blasphemy. God’s work wait! While the Devil’s went on unabated with the most diabolical fury. No! No! Never! if we could help it… and we thanked God and took courage in Himself.”
Barnett did indeed take courage – thankful to God, ever prayerful, and absolutely dependent on his provision. The principal opened his new college on 6th April 1916 with two students enrolled, from New Zealand and South Australia.
While residential facilities only allowed for men, Benson also taught by correspondence. The fifth correspondence student was a woman, starting in May 1916.
In September he was asked to look after Leichhardt Congregational Church for nine months. As its ‘interim’ pastor and preacher, he pastored the church until 1937!
Faithful Dependence on God
Benson Barnett’s prayer diary for 1916 bears witness to the needs and requests made in faithful dependence on God: in particular, and always, financial provision; and secondly, for student enrolments.
Life was lived in faithful dependence on the sovereign God. As had been the case in their difficult and sometimes anxious China years, persistent, undoubting prayer characterised the principal and Mrs Barnett just as it did the college as a whole. “We must recognise that while God still supplies all our needs, He is supreme, and must do His work as He will and not according to the dictates of any.”
The Privilege of Prayer
The principal’s annual reports were printed and distributed to supporters and friends of the college. In 1916, the first annual report was entitled ‘Memories of God’s Great Goodness’.
“The Privilege of Prayer: Those who know what prayer is, know that it is a labour, and at times a travail. It is believing when the blackness of night hangs over one. It is going forward when one cannot go any further. It is trusting God when there does not seem to be any God to trust. It is spending the last penny when you can not see where more is to come from, and many such experiences as these did we have in the early years of our existence, and we know quite well that such times will come, but we shall still pray. Looking back, principal and students alike thank God for every time we have been driven into a corner, for there we have proved God to be a God of Deliverances.” – C. Benson Barnett, 1916.
“Those who know what prayer is, know that it is a labour, and at times a travail… It is going forward when one cannot go any further. It is trusting God when there does not seem to be any God to trust.”
First Graduates and Growing Mission
By November 1917, the first students were ready to graduate from their two year course. Barnett reported with delight the intended missionary destinations of the graduating full-time students: one to the Solomon Islands, three to Aboriginal missions, one to China and one to Baptist Home Missions. Ben Corlett, the first student enrolled, had started ministry with the NSW Bush Mission.
Three correspondence students, all ladies, were heading to Aboriginal mission work at Bomaderry, Karuah and Terry Hie Hie (near Moree). Very excitingly, one of these had started her correspondence studies after coming to Christ through students of the college witnessing at one of the open air meetings the previous year.
The 1917 annual principal’s report was entitled, appropriately, ‘The Loving Kindness of the Lord’.
A Passion for the Centrality of Scripture
In 1918, in the face of increased theological liberalism, Barnett was encouraged to publish a booklet putting the case for the Bible’s inspiration and inerrancy: Authority or Anarchy – Which? It was not adversarial or exclusivist in style, but unbending in its insistence on evangelical orthodoxy.
He agreed that God is entirely able to reveal himself in various ways, but that Scripture alone is God’s authoritative revelation. Therefore, the Bible must be preached: “There is nothing a Christian minister can better do than communicate the Scriptures to men, knowing that the entrance of God’s Word giveth light, and that when in faith it is received, Christ is received, and when Christ is received all things become new, and old things pass away.”
“There is nothing a Christian minister can better do than communicate the Scriptures to men… when Christ is received all things become new, and old things pass away.”
Church historian Stuart Piggin notes that at a time when many Australian denominational colleges were doctrinally weak, and intimidated by surging liberalism, the interdenominational Bible colleges were, and still are, “remarkable for the continuity they have achieved in evangelical doctrine.”
Trials Through War, Pandemic, and the Depression
Barnett continued to steer the college through the challenges of the 1919 global Spanish influenza pandemic and the recession of the early 1920s, followed by the Great Depression of 1929. His personal prayer diary entries in these difficult years make moving and sobering reading. They are testaments to a man of remarkable commitment to prayer along with trusting dependence, but also anguished cries to God.
The Barnetts’ faith was tested almost to breaking point during 1920. He wrote, for example:
“26 March – Lord, I am tonight at the end of myself and all my ways. I must cease unless Thou sendest us the necessary funds. Expenses go on every day. Lord, help. I dare not go further incurring liability. Send £100, dear Lord, for Thou art faithful.
17 April – Gracious Lord, after such favour I though enriched am still a beggar. I would now make proof of Thy willingness to help us further. There are needs every day, and my private monies are all used. Hear me, for sufficient to meet everything coming.”
Although money was in short supply, students were not, which reflected the trend in Bible colleges across several continents at the time. A number of men – some wounded – returned from active service with Australian or New Zealand forces and enrolled in the early 1920s.
Student numbers quickly outgrew the original house, with some even sleeping on verandas converted into bedrooms. A residential women’s house (Carlyon House) was acquired through a bequest and a generous donation, and the first residential female students started in 1927.
By 1935 the lecture hall at Croydon was filled to almost beyond capacity, with student numbers the largest the college had experienced. Postal correspondence enrolments also thrived, with over 200 students now having enrolled in total. Barnett faithfully maintained his teaching, and his watchful mentoring eye over the young students in his charge.
“By 1935 the lecture hall at Croydon was filled to almost beyond capacity, with student numbers the largest the college had experienced.”
One of the highlights of the period between the World Wars was the growth of evangelical overseas missionary work. In particular, many faithful and motivated Christian women were increasingly accepted by missionary societies. In 1928 the College’s Women’s Department opened, with generously donated money, housing and furniture.
Final Years and Legacy
By the latter years of the 1930s, Barnett’s years of pioneering mission work in China, serving in several pastorates, frequent speaking engagements and travel, and over twenty fruitful but anxious years at the helm of the college began to take their toll, as his health deteriorated.
Aside from exhaustion, he developed Parkinson’s disease and found physical movement, speaking and teaching increasingly burdensome. His last few months were spent in a nursing home in Petersham, where he died aged 71. Charles Benson Barnett served as the principal of SMBC for over 25 years, until his death in March 1941. His wife Elizabeth died later that same year.
