LAWTON, John Thomas, Rev , M.A. (1878-1944)
Assembly memorial minute, 1945
John Thomas Lawton was born on his father’s farm at Digby, Victoria, on March 13th, 1878. His early years were spent on the farm, and he developed there a bodily frame that was an asset to him through his life. In early manhood he was a notable and successful athlete. For a time he accepted positions as a student teacher. His minister, the' Rev. Griffith Roberts Jones, recognizing his latent powers and their possibilities, influenced him towards the Ministry, and helped him materially towards his entry and subsequent career at the University. Among his classmates in the School of Philosophy were the present Bishop of Bathurst and the present Professor of Psychology in the University of Adelaide: with each of these—and each was his friend—he shared the honours of the class lists. He graduated Master of Arts in 1908 with First Class Honours. From 1907 to 1909 he took the Theological Course at Ormond College, where he maintained the high academic level which marked his career at the University, and won the special commendation of his examiners.
During his early student days he was chosen and appointed as Travelling Secretary of the Australian Student Christian Movement. For two and a half years he visited many Universities, and mixed with many men like John R. Mott, who were the honoured leaders of the Youth Movement.
He was ordained in September, 1910, and inducted into Sunshine. After three years there, he was called to be the Foreign Missions Secretary of the Church in New South Wales (1913-1915). His next Charge was that of South Yarra, where he was inducted on May 27th, 1915. While minister of South Yarra he went abroad as Chaplain to the Forces. Opportunity was given to Australian students in London to enter post-graduate classes at the University. He therefore, during the delays of demobilisation, entered enthusiastically into research work in the psychology of education. Returning to Victoria, he resigned from South Yarra on December 31st, 1920, and for eleven years he conducted an important experiment in modern methods of education in St. Andrew’s College, Kew.
The crowning work of his life began when he accepted the call to become minister of the growing parish of Hartwell. For twelve. full years he gave outstanding service and leadership to his own community and to the Church at large. One monument to his memory is in that Charge, if one will only look around. The communion roll was trebled, a new School Hall was erected, and the interest of the children is. indicated by a unique young people’s choir of over fifty voices. The loving attachment of his people to their minister and leader can only be understood and appreciated by application to him of Chaucer’s words—probably about John Wiclif: “Christes lore and His Apostles twelve he taught, but first he followed it himselve.”
Beyond and beside his parish work the Reverend J.T. Lawton was known as a University Extension Lecturer in Psychology and Sociology: as a welcome leader of thought in discussion groups in every branch of the Christian Church: as a writer of text-books: as Clerk of the Presbytery of Melbourne North: as Secretary of the Camberwell Brotherhood of Ministers: as the Convener and leader of important Church Committees: and, finally, but by no means completing the list of his activities, this busy man was sought after by many people suffering from nervous disorders—brought on by over-work, or under-work; in the words of the Moderator-General: “If some people owe to him their very souls, at least as many owe their very sanity to the healing ministry of John Lawton.”
His enthusiasm and vitality were boundless in every task which he undertook, whether in structural alterations to his church, in the establishment of a fellowship within it, or, above all, in the preaching of his special message to his day and generation. Anyone who listened to his prayers will know that to him the central experience of the Christian religion was a personal fellowship with God through the redemptive work of Jesus. This has been the unchanging message of the Church from apostolic days until now: and it was Mr. Lawton’s view. What gave him a distinction among preachers was his powerful insistence on the Scriptural teaching that this personal fellowship with God must have transforming issues in the various relationships of life. His labour was to make Jesus Christ so well known and so truly known that His ways might become the ways of men in all their relationships—personal, domestic, commercial, national, and international. To that he gave himself unreservedly, for that he spent himself to the limit. Like St. Paul of old, he worked unceasingly in his Master’s service as preacher, prophet, comforter, friend, guide, and counsellor. Those who knew him well know that he did far more than the work, of one man. As regards his thought about the present, and his outlook for the future, some go so far as to say that, like John Ruskin—with whom in many respects he might be compared—he was fifty years ahead of his day. Be that as it may, none would dream of doubting his consuming passion for social righteousness. He loved his fellow-men of every class and race, he delighted to converse with them, and to the end he showed a valiant gaiety of spirit which had its roots in God. He died in St. Andrew’s Hospital on Christmas Eve, 1944.
To Mrs. Lawton, whose gracious personality made her the true helpmate and whose faithful and efficient service went with her husband and upheld him in all his high endeavours, we offer our love and sympathy. Our prayer is that she and her family will long live to see the fruits of his labours, and the inheritance he has left them in our love and esteem.
Gender
- Male