Leslie Jotham GOMM

GOMM, LESLIE JOTHAM (b. Isle of Wight, England, 10 Sept 1901; d. Adelaide, SA, 2 Oct 1979). Baptist minister, Christian Endeavour leader.

Leslie Gomm's parents, of Brethren background, migrated to Katanning in Western Australia and he became a member of the CE at age eight. The family later moved to Perth and at Claremont Baptist Church Leslie met and married Irene Kennedy, the daughter of the Baptist minister who pioneered the Katanning region twenty years before, and the subject of his book in 1935.

He was accepted tor training by the Baptist Union and in 1923 became involved in the central committee of the state's moribund CE, as well as being student pastor of the Mount Hawthorn Baptist Church. In 1913 the CE Union of WA had been absorbed by the Metropolitan Union to become the Metropolitan CE Union in WA. At 22 and in concert with Pastor T Haggar and Miss J M Hill, the state Union was refloated in 1924 and by 1928 the WA CE Union was healthy enough to host the National CE Convention.

In 1927 he was ordained, subsequently he was called to the Pingelly Church and then to the Newcastle Tabernacle (NSW), Kew (Vic) and Flinders Street (SA) churches. From 1933 to 1938, through the time when CE in Australia peaked at almost 100 000 members, he was National Superintendent of Young People's Society of Christian Endeavour.

During World War Two he served as a chaplain to the AIF in New Guinea and his only son was killed in action in the Pacific. At the close of the war his ministry to the Occupation Forces in Japan for a year was highly esteemed. Again in 1949 he became CE National president. He continued to be a very popular speaker at CE meetings but gradually confined his contribution to writing for the national CE magazine.

SELECT WRITINGS: Blazing The Western Trail (Sydney, 1935)

P GODMAN