Gordon Preece
Sunday, 5 October 2025
It is with great sorrow but overshadowing solace that I let our readers know that perhaps our most regular author, John Kidson, died last Sunday September 28, in his early 80s. John’s inimitable Christian reflection and sense of humour was the mature fruit of a Christian life well-lived and well-loved. When I first met him in 1976 he was the pioneer and later doyen of the fledgling practice of Christian, especially Anglican, youth-work at a time of great challenge for churches in an age of sex, drugs and rock and roll. Beach-side suburbs like Sydney’s Cronulla – Sutherland where I came from and French’s Forest near the Northern Beaches, or Insular Peninsular as it was affectionally but accurately nicknamed, made church look pretty pedestrian.
John had invited me to speak at the evening youth service of about 100. The dress-code was thongs, board-shorts, singlets, basic-beach wear for both sexes, wearing their hair, like mine, largely blonde and long. There was no difference for the young service leaders. It was casual, vibrant and spontaneous, with abundant lay participation. What John had largely created lifted my vision for what could be done to release the gifts of young Christians and seekers.
Little did I know that speaking at the service was an audition for how I’d go as John’s replacement, having just found that my first full-time job, at the age of 21, was likely to be finishing up at Gladesville parish. The visionary Gladesville Rector Bill Lawton who’d hired and trained me was leaving to teach at Moore College and could no longer protect me from the very precarious plight youth-workers were inevitably in. But it wasn’t going to be the end of my albeit short youth work career. Providential people were put in my path. Assistant Minister and John’s friend Rod Harding thoughtfully let John know I might be available.
After raucus fellowship and food from that first church service, John and I stayed up till 2 a.m. sharing passions about youth work. He effectively offered me his job, with the princely pay-packet of $80. At 21 it didn’t worry me, working out about $1 an hour, but it wasn’t much for someone of John’s experience and reputation. John assured me that the replacement for the departing visionary Rev’d Alan Patrick, would be a youth-sympathetic minister. He wasn’t, but that wasn’t John’s fault.
My plight wasn’t unique. It was one John would, in his new diocesan role, seek to address by providing professional training and standards for youth workers, the first five of whom followed John from French’s Forest, and several went on to highly successful youth ministries. Others were soon attracted. But first they were graduates of John’s weekly discipling group for young men, full of testosterone, entitled The Elephant Club, helping them in a wise fatherly way to deal with the joys and challenges of 1970s sexuality.
John himself had been a long-term bachelor but eventually met his match in the wise young woman Chris(tine) Fisher, forming a formidable partnership. Apparently on the night of a small wedding group dinner celebration of their engagement, John played a practical joke. He seemingly didn’t turn up, but instead, having shaved his very full-facial beard off for the first time in decades, turned up as John’s American cousin with some reason for John’s delay. The night progressed till near the end, with no-one able to recognise him, not even Chris. Maybe this is how he got the nickname Kiddo.
John also took small groups away camping. On one occasion they didn’t return on time. From memory they’d eaten unawares some ‘magic’ mushrooms with hallucinogenic effects (fortunately they weren’t the now globally infamous Death Cap mushrooms that killed three Baptist family members recently). Thankfully John and co. eventually found their way back to civilisation.
Toward the end of my year in John’s $100 dollar house as it was jokingly called, the fibro house’s roof had fallen through doing a church warden inspection. It wasn’t much compared to the relatively salubrious houses of next-door Belrose. The mosquito-infested house with an old dunny out the back was soon demolished to make way for a new branch church. Half the demolition was done on November 10, 1976, the night of the youth group’s bucks-party for me, interrupted by police and one young man breaking his hand by Karate-chopping a door. The other half awaited my wedding day to Susan three days later, when Rod led, and John preached – surprising everyone with his supremely ockerish rendition of C. J. Dennis’ Doreen, on her wedding day. Life was always eventful around John.
Let me conclude with an email I sent John after hearing of his illness late last year and in response to his moving and last Engage mail article.
Thanks so much for your Transfiguration article which was challenging and hilarious in a dark and occasionally toilet humour way. But seriously I was sorry to hear about your serious health setback and will be praying for you.
I always felt honoured to be asked by you to step into your big footsteps at French’s Forest. You personally backed me up when things turned bad with the new, culturally ill-adept English minister. I’ll never forget the kind card you sent when he sacked me. ‘Don’t let the bastards get you down’, you wrote in pseudo-Spanish paraphrasing, like the fatherly Paul to his son Timothy (1 Timothy 4:12) – ‘let no one despise your youth’. And Isaiah 40: 29-31 ‘[God] does not fear or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary; and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.’
You kept me going through a tough time, aged 22. for sticking up for your brother-in-law and youth group newsletter editor, and later esteemed journalist, George Fisher, blamed for some ‘ungodly’ toilet humour. Many will never forget the searing sermon you preached at George’s funeral 30 years later, in the mid-2000s, wrestling with God through tears, at the terrible cancer that so afflicted him, that you and Chris, and George’s wife saw close up, and bore much of the heavy burden of. Your honesty and tearful vulnerability about the plight of your brother-in-law and in the Lord, touched everyone there.
Hang in there as the transfigured Jesus hung in with his dopey disciples, through the Cross, to the Resurrection the glorious Transfiguration anticipated.
Rest in Peace and Glory John.
From one of many you mentored John,
Gordon
Gordon Preece is the Director of Ethos: EA Centre for Christianity and Society.
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