William George TAYLOR

TAYLOR, WILLIAM GEORGE (b. Knayton, Yorkshire, England, 18 Jan 1845; d. Lindfield, NSW, 24 Sept 1934). Methodist minister.

The son of John and Mary Taylor, he was educated at the Stokesly Grammar School and from 1859 worked for Gilkes, Wilson, Pease and Co, local 'iron kings' as an apprentice accountant. Taylor was converted at twelve in the intensely emotional atmosphere of a Wesleyan Class Meeting and began his own preaching career in 1861, winning his first convert in July of that year. He was received as a candidate for the Wesleyan ministry in 1868 and trained at Richmond College. He volunteered to join the Australian Conference in 1870 and reached Sydney on 17 January 1871. He was ordained in 1874, and m. Ann Robey on 25 Feb that year. Of the many young English ministers brought to Australia about this time, none proved more adaptable or a truer 'Australian' than did Taylor.

Like many newcomers, he preached his first Australian sermon in 'Old York Street', the mother church of Wesleyan Methodism in the colony then worked briefly at Walker St, North Sydney, before going to his first regular appointment as assistant minister at Albert St, Brisbane. There and in his subsequent circuits at Warwick, Toowoomba, Manning River (Taree), the Glebe, revival followed him closely as he raised the tone of church life, built new churches and won numerous converts who themselves, in many cases become prominent workers in the church.

In 1884, in the course of a successful ministry at The Glebe, Taylor was transfered, much against his will, to the failing inner city cause in York Street. The removal of middle class churchgoers to the outer suburbs as the York Street area became more and more dominated by boarding houses and commercial buildings had led to the decline of the once great church which was now near empty. It was hoped that this successful evangelist could bring revival and an end to embarrassment of having a near empty church in the heart of the colony's capital. To raise a congregation, Taylor adopted an unorthodox approach, preaching in the streets, using a brass band to attract attention and by using whatever means were available to him for advertising his services, including visitation of ships and boarding houses. He made imaginative use of choral and solo music in his services and after-meetings and greatly emphasised the place of prayer, holding half- and whole-day or night prayer meetings and, on one occasion, a ten-day prayer meeting. He remained at York Street or, as it became known under him, the Central Methodist Mission, until his retirement in 1913 apart from one year as a supernumerary, two on special assignment, one at William St (Sydney) and three at Bathurst. Whilst at Bathurst, he was president of the Wesleyan Conference in 1896.

In response to need, and following the example of his great English contemporaries, Charles Garrett of Liverpool and Hugh Price Hughes of West London, Taylor gradually introduced a variety of 'service organisations' around his church: a mission to seamen, a training college for evangelists, general philanthropic assistance, a boys' brigade, shelter for homeless men, a shelter for 'fallen' women, a children's home. Again following Hughes, he established the 'sisters of the people' movement, essentially the forerunner of the Methodist deaconess movement in Australia. These young middle class women contributed greatly to the effectiveness of the CMM's outreach into the slums and among fallen women. The work of the Sydney CMM was quickly imitated in inner suburbs like Balmain, in Newcastle, and in the capitals of sister colonies.

A product of the fervent emotional Methodism characteristic of Yorkshire and North England generally, Taylor was primarily an evangelist of the nineteenth century fundamentalist school and regarded any preaching that did not aim at winning converts as the waste of a great opportunity. As with all evangelists of that type, he was limited in his vision to the notion of personal evangelism and in all his great work at the CMM never felt a need to seek the reform of society except in the strictly limited sense of attacks upon liquor and gambling. He was 'eloquent, passionate, original, vigorous and picturesque' as a preacher and always put Christ at the centre. Taylor had a rich voice with 'a singularly vibrant and sympathetic quality'. Taylor was certainly one of Australia's two outstanding evangelists prior to World War One. He conducted evangelistic missions across England and the United States on two occasions. Taylor's other passion was 'scriptural holiness' and he was a founder of the United Methodist Holiness Association in New South Wales and an occasional contributor to its paper, Glad Tidings.

Though Taylor's considerable executive and administrative ability, and his capacity to win the commitment of those around him to his ideals so that they became willing co-operators in his schemes, was important in the implementation of his vision, the real secret of his success lay in his ability to hold together the traditional spiritual life of the church with a newer Christian humanitarianism so that the latter was seen to be the logical outworking of the former. Taylor was one of the outstanding figures of Methodism in Australia and was unusually widely known on the world scene for an Australian. His autobiography, The Life Story of an Australian Evangelist (London, 1920) is a lively and useful account of Methodism in Australia in its period of greatest expansion and creativity. After his retirement in 1913, Taylor continued to take a vital interest in the work of the church and was a frequent contributor to the Methodist until his death in 1934. He was survived by his widow, three sons and five daughters.

J E Carruthers, Lights in the Southern Sky (London, 1924); Methodist Church of Australasia, NSW Conference, Minutes, 1935; Methodist, 29 March, 12 April 1913, 29 Sept 1934; Sun, 25 Sept 1934; Don Wright, Mantle of Christ (St Lucia, 1984); Don Wright, 'W,G. Taylor and the Foundation of the Central Methodist Mission', Church Heritage, 3/3 (March 1984)

DON WRIGHT