We’re honoured to recognise Rev Dr Malcolm McArthur for 60 years of Ministry within the Methodist and Uniting Church.

Malcolm McArthur was ordained on November 5, 1960.  He had trained initially as a teacher in Adelaide and Sydney and began teaching at Urrbrae.  A short stint in Theological College was followed by three years in the Methodist Young Peoples Department, working with C.T. Symons who married him to Gloria before, after a short ministry at Largs Bay, they had six years ministering to a rural Indiana congregation.  Those years produced a new church and parsonage, two children and three degrees.  They were followed by over five years at Nunyara Conference Centre, where Malcolm was Assistant Director, then Director of the Methodist Department of Christian Education.  They were also years of the Nunyara Chapel congregation acting as a laboratory for new patterns of worship, and the welcoming of a third child.  All those years are seen as Golden years.

An unexpected turning saw him appointed as Deputy Principal at Goroka Teachers’ College, training centre for all of that emerging country’s teachers.  On return he was initially Acting Deputy at Marion High and Consultant for the trialling of new Religion courses in State Schools.  Subsequently he was Superintendent of curriculum development in areas of Social Education for over a decade.  The next decade saw him as Executive Officer for the S.A. Council of Churches and promoter of aid projects through Christmas Bowl.  The McArthurs’ final very satisfying years before retirement saw them in a Methodist circuit in Cambridgeshire.

Malcolm has one word for those sixty years – GRATITUDE!

Chris Bray