Father Dave is a man who is as unconventional as he is remarkable.  He is the only Australian in Holy Orders to have ever boxed professionally to help raise money to keep his ministry going.  He is Sydney’s ‘Fighting Father’, who combines his regular work as a Parish Priest with a ministry to streets kids, heroin addicts and other undesirables from the underside of Australian society.

‘Sex, the Ring and the Eucharist’ is a series of snapshots from Father Dave’s life.  The book, like the author is hard-hitting and straight talking.  The language will shock some.  Others will be put off by Dave’s criticism of the established church and the legal system that is, at points, quite savage.  And yet there is a pervading sense of faith and hope running through this book that is inescapable and infectious. 

‘Sex, the Ring and the Eucharist’ is an intimate insight into one man’s life that has the potential to change the lives of its readers.

Father Dave is an unusual man.  With three university degrees and a total of eight black belts in the Martial Arts to his name, he is the only Australian in holy orders either to have fought for a kickboxing title or to have boxed professionally. 

Dave has been the Anglican Parish Priest of Dulwich Hill, in Sydney’s inner-West, for nearly 13 years now, where he also runs ‘Father Dave’s Fight Club’ three nights per week.  He has received numerous community awards and constant media attention for his work among disadvantaged young people.  In 1996 the media dubbed him ‘the Fighting Father’.

Dave is married to Ange.  They have three children: Veronica, Imogen and Soren Lee.

Jesus answered them, “My Father is still working, and I also am working.”  (John 5:17)

During periods of deep pain everything slows down for me.  Each day seems to last for a week, and each week for about a year. 

My father is in hospital.  He may only have days to live.  I’m also dealing with a court case that the Anglican Diocese of Sydney (my church and my employer) is bringing against my wife.  It may bankrupt us.  I’m not sleeping for more than a few hours each night.  I’m breaking out in pimples on my face like a teenager, and life crawls along, brimming with emotion.

It’s Friday morning, and I’m also coming to the end of a long, hard working week.  I’ve planned a relatively light day, including a relaxing time at the shopping mall with my daughter Veronica in the afternoon.  I’m hoping to deal with all the intense and difficult people in the morning.

There’s that rather grubby and overweight woman who wandered in to our Youth Centre on Wednesday afternoon, wanting to tell me about how all people in her flats were trying to attack her.  I rescheduled her for this morning.

Then there was that young couple I had met the same day who had stumbled in on us very much ‘on the nods’ after a hit.  It had taken me about ten minutes to get their story.  They had been stopped by police earlier that day and searched for drugs.  None were found, so they were released.  Then DOCS (the Department of Community Services) had turned up at their flat and had taken away their four-month-old baby.  They were devastated of course, so they did what any junkie couple would do in such a situation.  They got hold of some hammer and had a good hit.

‘Do you want to get into detox?’  I had asked.  Within about five minutes I had drawn up for them a plan for detox, rehab, and had thrown in a free wedding as a sweetener!   I was feeling like a real pro at the moment, having organised a fairy-tale future for these two in five minutes flat while minding a Youth Centre full of kids at the same time.  Of course, chances were that I’d never see them again, but we had scheduled in a time to meet for the Friday morning and I was quietly hopeful.

The couple doesn’t show up but, to my surprise, the woman from the flats does, albeit an hour early.  I am just getting into the car to take the girls to school.  Thankfully she’s willing to wait until I return.  By the time I get back though she is one of three people waiting for me.

The other thing I’d had planned for the morning was zipping down to Veronica’s school to see her receive her prefect’s badge.  This would require spending an awkward hour with my former wife and her new husband, but it would be worth it.  I finish with my visitors, make it to the school on time, see the award and get it on video, and still return home in time for my lunch appointment with Jared.  I’m going full tilt, but handling it well!

Jared was one of those guys who would pop up at Trinitys every year or two, and would then disappear again as quickly as he came.  He had reappeared only yesterday, and had waited for me through a whole wrestling class just to get the opportunity to talk.  We had set aside Friday lunch to have a serious chat.

My most vivid memory of Jared involved sneaking him and his mates out of a shopping mall about three years earlier.  Jared had been hanging around the mall with a handful of his mates on the same day I was there doing the shopping.  They were each about 15 years old at the time.  They were a rowdy bunch, but good hearted.

‘We need your help Father Dave’ he’d pleaded.  ‘There’s a gang of guys waiting for us at the entrance.  They are going to smash us’.  I had my daughter with me, and did certainly not want to get into any fight.  ‘No, no’ says Jared, ‘we’d never make it out through the front entrance even if you were with us.  We need you to drive us out.’  So sure enough, with my Veronica alongside me in the front seat, and a back seat crowded with cowering youths trying to stay out of sight, we quietly exited the car park.

‘You each owe me one Sunday in church and a week’s fight training’ I had said to the boys.  They had all readily agreed.  No one showed up for church, but Jared did turn up for one session at the fight club.  He had potential, but no discipline.

Now I am lunching with the boy, or should I be thinking of him as a man now?  ‘I’ve got 200 hours community service’ he tells me’.  That’s a lot of hours of community service!  This guy has been doing some pretty serious stuff.

We talk about his issues with drugs and violence and about his baby daughter who he can’t get any access to.  ‘And I've been trying to read my Bible’ he tells me, ‘but it’s real hard to understand some times.  I could do with some help.’

It’s amazing.  Most of us priests are struggling to make ourselves relevant to this generation.  We just don’t expect anyone in our culture (apart from Ned Flanders) to start turning to the Bible for answers when they’re in trouble.  And here’s this young man, struggling with a whole range of ugly problems, turning to the Bible for inspiration and strength! 

After my time with Jared, there’s just enough time to finish the church bulletin, make a few calls, and then it’s off to the school again, this time to pick up Veronica, and to take her to the shopping mall for that relaxing coffee and chips. 

We are just starting to relax when a young boy calls out ‘Help me!’ and I turn around to see a middle-aged man moving menacingly after a young lad, who could be no more than 11 or 12 years old.  The man is swearing at the top of his voice and trying to get hold of the lad.  Surely the man is the boy’s father?  No.  These guys aren’t mucking around.  I spring up and move between the man and the boy. 

The man turns his attention to me, points his index finger into my face and starts swearing at the top of his voice, threatening me, and spraying saliva across my face.  He is dirty and disheveled and he is full of rage.  I’m looking him straight in the eye, but I’m also trying to see what he’s doing with his hands.  Is he reaching towards his pockets?  Does he have a weapon ready to hand?  His fingers and his fists are clenching and unclenching as if convulsing, but there’s no sign of a weapon.  He is breathing fiercely.  He’s staring back, still screaming at me.  I stare back at him intently but say nothing, mainly because I can’t think of anything to say.  My silence must appear intimidating though, as he starts to back away slowly.

I don’t have a clue what to do, so I follow him, still staring at him.  He takes his eyes off me for a moment to swear at a passing mother with a shopping trolley and to give her a rough shove.  He regains my stare, back peddling quite fast now.  He turns briefly to see where he’s going and takes the opportunity to grab an old man by the hair and swear at him.  I’m still wondering what I should do, but I’m now assuming that this is going to end violently. 

He’s now all but running for the exit door.  I’m following at the same pace. He gets to the door, turns and stops.  I stop too.  He pauses.  Then he comes back to face me.  He is flexing his arms and starting to pant faster as he approaches me.  I brace myself, knowing that things are about to get bloody-- 

Then he notices the crosses on my lapels, which I’d assumed he’d noticed from the beginning. ‘You’re a priest’, he says, and it’s clear that this realisation has interrupted his train of thought.  Suddenly he drops his hands by his side and drops his gaze from my face.  ‘I am a priest’ I say ‘and you’ve got serious problems.  You need help.’

If I had been a more spiritual man, I think I would have said, ‘Come out of him’ or something like that.  Perhaps a great miracle would have then taken place – the man falling on the ground and convulsing while he rid himself of the unclean spirit, and some group of pigs would appear from somewhere and run out onto the main road and suicide.  It didn’t happen.  At that moment it didn’t occur to me to say anything particularly spiritual to him, and I didn’t get any miraculous response.

He regained his composure and stared back at me again, still seething with rage: ‘I don’t have any problems’ he said through gritted teeth ‘except for all the meat around here!’  He then made a hasty exit from the mall.

My head is full of questions.  What do I do now?  Should I follow him?  Where is my daughter?  Why are there no security guards in this place?  What meat? 

I choose not to follow him.  I find my daughter.  I don’t find any security people.  I try to report the incident to the centre management, but once I tell them that this guy is no longer on the premises, they lose interest entirely.

It’s now time to leave.  Indeed, we’re now running late, and there’s been no relaxing coffee or chips.  I get back to the church to find that the kids at our Youth Centre have just been harassed by two carloads of guys armed with crowbars and machetes.   This is going to take some sorting out.

It’s now four thirty in the Friday afternoon.  I have to get Veronica back to her mum’s house by five and I’m supposed to pick up a parcel for my dad from the Post Office before then.  I also need to make a stop at the computer shop, and I’m running out of time to organise that quote for the rewiring of the church alarm, which I had promised to do before Sunday.  I have people coming over for Bible study at 7pm.  After that’s all over, I’ll need to at least make a start on Sunday’s sermon before going to bed.

This day has lasted for a week already.  Now I can see the evening rolling out in front of me like some long road heading towards some distant horizon.  Tomorrow is my birthday.  I will be thirty-nine.  I feel a thousand years old. 

We used to joke around when I was at Seminary about our the tendency to become workaholics: ‘Yeah, that’s the way it is with us Anglicans-- our Father in heaven is working-- and we’re working too.’  It was meant to sound pretentious.  Of course it was.  It was meant to be a joke.