Arthur John Dain

Dain, Arthur John ‘Jack’ (13 October 1912, born in Wolverhampton, England – 3 March, 2003, Haywards Heath, England), military officer, missionary statesman, Anglican Assistant Bishop of Sydney (Australia), interdenominational evangelical leader.

Born into a ‘god fearing’ home, and educated at Wolverhampton Grammar School, Dain joined the Merchant Navy as a cadet officer (1927-1934). In 1930 his family faith was deepened when he was converted to Christ in Calcutta; in a meeting of the CIM in Liverpool Town Hall, he came to understand himself as having a missionary vocation. Attending missionary college in England, in 1937 he went to India with the Regions Beyond Missionary Union. He planned to go to Nepal but the country was closed to outside influence and he settled instead in Siwan Bihar. It was there at the language school that he met his first wife, missionary Edith Jane Stewart, daughter of Free Church of Scotland minister (St. Columba's Church, Edinburgh), Rev. Dr. Alexander Stewart. They fell in love ‘while they were watching fireworks celebrating the coronation of King George VI’, and married at Lakhnadon in 1938. When war broke out, the former Merchant seaman was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the 10th Gurkha Rifles (serving in Iraq – at the occupation of Basra - Syria and Iran as Adjutant). At the entry of Japan into the War, he was transfered to the Royal Indian Navy (1942, stationed in Bombay and Karachi), and finally as part of an officer selection panel for the three armed forces. He then returned to London to serve as the Naval Liaison Officer between the Royal Navy and the Royal Indian Navy, reaching the rank of Lieutenant Commander when demobilised in 1946. After the war he settled in London with Edith and their four daughters - Sheila, Maureen, Alison and Janet – but the ‘sense of command’ he gained in the navy and armed service remained with him in his service to the Church.

As his wife’s health prevented a return to India, Dain fulfilled a series of roles in interdenominational and Church missions. At demobilisation, over lunch at the Athenaeum Club, ‘he was recruited by the ecumenical pioneer Dr. J. W. Oldham, for a year-long position with the Christian Frontier Council.’ From 1947, he was general secretary of Zenana Bible and Medical Mission (Chairman of the International Council, 1960-1977, international President from 1977), overseeing the transition of the mission from its 19th century form to the Bible and Medical Missionary Fellowship (BMMF, 1957; from 1987 Interserve), growing its staff from 45 women to (by 2002) nearly 600 personnel serving on the Indian subcontinent, Middle East and Asia. His ‘outstanding administrative skills’ and financial acumen, his warm non-sectarian piety, and ability to connect to people to form lasting relationships, and his passion for missions were strengths that saw him continuously in demand. Other involvements included Scripture Union, Scripture Gift Mission, Keswick Convention, OMF, Billy Graham Organization, the Evangelical Alliance (of which he was Mission Secretary), and in particular Interserve. Dain participated in the formation of the World Evangelical Fellowship at Woudschoten, Holland, in 1951, and was sitting next to John Stott when Stott ‘opened his Bible to Philippians and read out Paul's words that were to become the watchwords of WEF: the furtherance, the defense, and the fellowship of the gospel.’ (Ford) Dain became Honorary Overseas Secretary of the Evangelical Alliance, and John Stott the Honorary Co-Secretary of the WEF. He participated in the organisation of the Harringay Graham Crusade (1954) and would remain active in the BGEA for the rest of his life, particularly as a link person assisting the communication between British and American worlds. He planned Graham's visit to India, chaired the Sydney Crusade of 1959, and was closely associated with his worldwide ministry and was executive chairman of the Sydney Crusade in 1979. Dain visited Australia to represent the Evangelical Alliance and BMMF in 1958. From 1959-1964 he was General Secretary of the Australian Church Missionary Society, which was ‘in poor shape’ through interstate rivalries (Reid) and needed ‘a radical restructure,’ (Loane). Dain brought about unity, returned the agency to effectiveness, established St Andrew's Hall (Melbourne) for training missionaries, opened new fields of work in Nepal and Peru, and contributed to CMS’s international reformation particularly of the CMS’s work in South America. His work was recognised by his appointment as an honorary Canon of the Cathedral in 1963. With David Claydon, he worked on the reformation of the Evangelical Alliance in Australia.

In 1958 he entered Ridley Hall, Cambridge, to train for the ministry. Deaconed and priested in 1959, Archibishop Hugh Gough (who had also been involved in the BGEA Harringay crusade) promoted Dain as replacement for Clive Kerle as Assistant Bishop of Sydney: he was consecrated on April 20, 1965 in St. Andrews Cathedral Sydney. Dain’s humility bought him acceptance, despite the fact that (in an era of rising nationalism) he was not Australian, and (as Sydney moved towards a harder-line form of Reformed evangelicalism) he was a ‘quiet supporter’ of the ordination of women, and provided fatherly counsel to charismatics. Marcus Loane, the first Australian-born Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, was to call him ‘my closest colleague and confidante’. He longed ‘for the church to be biblically based, to be concerned for the wider good and not for narrow groupings.’ (Ford) It was an irony that the 1959 Crusade -- which he chaired and which succeeded largely because of his irenic interdenominationalism – also produced much of the energy for the Reformed Evangelical reappropriation of the T.C. Hammond legacy, filling Moore College and converting or influencing many of Sydney Dioceses’ future leaders under the flag of Graham’s byword, ‘The Bible Says’. It was later reported that Dain produced ‘a follow-up scheme so effective that a year later eighty per cent of the Anglicans who went forward were involved in their local churches.’ Energetic and pragmatic, Dain took on large workloads (for instance, visiting all 107 pastoral homes in his diocese at least once per year), and never let a barrier get in the way of achieving the objective. He would, for instance, readily minister in both the evangelical and Anglo-Catholic parishes of the diocese, and worked hard on church extension into Sydney’s burgeoning suburbs. While Bishop, he assisted three archbishops, contributed significantly to the building of St Andrew’s House and the organisation of the Diocesan Secretariat, was active in Missions to Seaman and, for a time, Chaplain to the Police Force. John Reid recounts the story that:

on a memorable occasion he went on a Sunday night to conduct a Confirmation Service at St Andrew's Church, Roseville. He arrived with a few minutes to spare and the churchwardens were waiting to greet him and escort him to the vestry. He jumped out greeted the wardens and then as he went to the boot of the car to get his episcopal robes, he discovered that he had locked the car with keys in the ignition. He sprinted into the rectory garden and returned with a brick which he threw at the side window and retrieved the keys. (Reid, Memorial Service, Chester Square, London)

He was remembered as a clear and forceful preacher, always well organised and prepared for the job at hand. Regardless of where he was, he mentored leaders, and by correspondence and later telephone remained in touch with a large number of missionaries and clergy throughout the world. Leighton Ford was to remember him as ‘a man of global influence and understanding, who might have been a UN diplomat, or a high-ranking military officer, [but whose] . . . greatest joy was to be a pastor to clergy.’ In 1979, he was awarded an OBE in recognition of his contributions to church life. From 1972 he acted as honorary executive chairman of the International Congress on World Evangelization, Lausanne, 1974, organising the Congress with John Stott and Leighton Ford (who later recalled being almost adopted by Dain, and whom Dain would visit on an annual basis in retirement), introducing the delegates at the opening of the Congress (in which he emphasized the global nature of its inspiration and development), acting as informing overseer of the continuation conferences, and touring the world promoting the Lausanne message. Graham provided the vision, organizational base and funding, while Dain's personal reputation as a missionary and huge international network of contacts helped to make the Congress a reality. With John Stott, Dain’s English meliorism could be seen in the Lausanne Congress’s commitment to a broader gospel: “Lausanne” he noted, “is a Congress on evangelization, not a Congress on evangelism.” This extended to the inclusion of a social justice thrust to the Congress’s work– a radical departure for conservative evangelicals at the time. He also supported the ‘younger generation’ of leaders in their insistence on including themes such as ‘the Holy Spirit and world evangelism’. With Stott as with Graham, Dain was an important mediator: he was active (with Donald Cameron, and Graham and Wendy Toulmin), in establishing the Langham Trust Australia (1980-1).

Dain remained in ministry in Sydney until his 70th birthday in 1982, when (after presiding at the election of Donald Robinson as Archbishop in 1982) he retired. Edith died in 1985 and later he married Hester Quirk, an Interserve missionary who had served as a missionary in both India and Pakistan. Towards the end of his time in Sydney, his daughter Alison also passed away. They made their home in Haywards Heath and later in Lindfield in West Sussex. He died in London on March 3, 2003. Various Thanksgiving Services for his life were held around the world, including at St. Michael's Chester Square, London.

Sources:

Dain, A. J., and A. E. Norrish (eds), This Present Hour. Challenge from the United Conference, London: Bible & Medical Missionary Fellowship, 1958.

Dain, A. J., Mission Fields today. A brief world survey. London: Inter-Varsity Fellowship, 1956.

Dain, A. J., Missionary Candidates ... Thoughts on their selection and qualifications, London: Crusade, 1959.

Ford, Leighton, Recollections, Billy Graham Centre, Wheaton, IL, USA.

Howard, David M. Tribute, Billy Graham Centre, Wheaton, IL, USA.

Loane, Marcus, Men to Remember, Kambah, A.C.T.: Acorn Press, 1987

Osei-Mensah, Gottfried, Recollections, Billy Graham Centre, Wheaton, IL, USA.

Reid, John, Comments at the Thanksgiving Service, St Michael’s Chester Square, London, Billy Graham Centre, Wheaton, IL, USA.

Reid, John, Obituary, Billy Graham Centre, Wheaton, IL, USA.

Reid, J. R., Marcus L. Loane: a biography, Melbourne: Acorn Press, 2004.

‘The Right Reverend Jack Dain’ (Obituary), Telegraph, 18 Mar 2003