Review of Ed. F. Dickinson, One Man's Story... of the Newmarket Baptist Church, self-published, 1998.

Here's a book that won't make your bestseller lists but a little part of me says it should. It's a quite amazing story of one man in (and through many years the only man in the non-clerical leadership of) a small Baptist Church in Melbourne, Australia.

It wasn't always small: and that's part of the sad story of the Newmarket Baptist Church. So much promise, so many disasters (all of human origin). The church was privileged to have some of the most talented pastors, and yet... and yet...

I couldn't put it down: so much faithfulness, so many triumphs, and frailties and sadnesses. It's a good commentary on how a church can be one of the largest and later one of the smallest in a Western denomination. (One reason is migration: when I was pastor at Blackburn Baptist Church on the other side of Melbourne we had one or two families move across town to us). The New Marketeers tried hard, and (the practical theologian in me says) made a lot of elementary mistakes. But they did their best for God: and in the end what more matters?

Ed. Dickinson is a familiar name in Victorian Baptist circles: he's been involved in the Baptist Men's Society, and the Baptist Preacher's Society, and makes a living teaching others how to talk better and o read faster.

As he says in the title, it's one man's story. Ed. however doesn't blow his own trumpet, but simply recounts what happened, irenically, sometimes sadly, always interestingly.

Rowland Croucher

(Contact Ed at 2/15 Renown Street, Burwood, Australia 3125 and send him $15 for an interesting read - includes postage).