​The scene is a small house set between the sea and the Australian bush. Picture a lone man wrestling in prayer between tall, white gumtrees in the moonlight. It’s 1953 and the country is just beginning to recover from the battering of war. The forty-two-year-old Methodist minister’s name is Alan Walker and he’s full of fear at setting out on a nation-wide mission. His convict ancestor had arrived in Botany Bay in 1810 and 20 years later, through the preaching of a travelling Methodist, his alcoholic son John decided to follow Jesus and began preaching in the Windsor district with powerful effect.
 
And now his great-great grandson Alan - the thirteenth evangelist from that line – is praying for strength. A sudden rustling of the gum leaves in the night-wind made his spirit soar. A vivid image of Jesus challenging Rabbi Nicodemus to allow the wind of the Holy Spirit to flow through his life, gave the shrinking preacher the courage he needed to undertake the preaching ministry to his native country, half a world away from Israel.
 
His preaching had a powerful effect – just as his great-great grandfather John Walker’s  had in Windsor 150 years previously.  Decades later, Labor parliamentarian Bill Hayden dubbed Alan Walker, ‘The Conscience of the Nation.’ Others called him ‘Mr Methodist.’ What did that mean?

On the bookshelf in front of me I can see several rare books I hunted down in VINNIES shops as I travelled around the bush. The thrill of chasing a bargain blinded me to a richer story hidden in those humble stores. Behind those kindly, ageing volunteers who serve you, stand two gifted young men who challenged poverty across the world with robust Christian faith.
 
Europe was torn by revolution, war and crippled by disease in the early decades of the 19th century. The streets of Paris had flowed with blood as the ruling aristocracy were guillotined in the name of Liberty, Equality and Brotherhood. When a brilliant young student named Frederic Ozanam arrived at University in that city, he found religion on the decline and atheism increasing.
 
He had struggled through doubt himself and was confronted by sceptics who demanded more than the intellectual proofs for the Christian faith he presented. The challenge jolted Frederic and a group of friends to start providing food and firewood for starving people flooding in from the country, even as a cholera epidemic swept through the slums. They saw themselves following the example of a priest named Vincent de Paul who had left his mark on France two and a half centuries earlier.