On the Beach

It was a bright Sunday morning, and the beach was thronged with sun-roasters, surf-coasters, bikini-oglers and juvenile sand-throwers. Suddenly a wild-looking man garbed like an Old Testament prophet loped across the sand and hurled himself into the waves. Loungers looked up, transistor-radio earplugs popped out of ears. Again and again the man plunged into the sea, and a crowd began to gather. Before people knew what had happened, they were listening to the dripping prophet tell the story of Naaman the leper, who threw himself seven times into the River Jordan and was miraculously healed.

Something like this scene is enacted every Sunday on Sydney's 27 beaches. Only an estimated one in ten of the city's 2,000,000 people goes to church on a summer Sunday, and Australia's Open Air Campaigners have grown adept at stalking the remainder in the sun and sand.

The Pitch: Adventure. Sometimes the Campaigners enact David and Goliath, with Biblical costumes and hurtling stone; sometimes a red Indian wriggles across the sand to abduct the settler's daughter, leading up to the punch line: "Jesus always pays our ransom." The first step before each production is snaring the children. The pitch is announced as Adventure Time, and what is in effect a Sunday-school session is tricked out with puppets, magicians, quick-sketch artists and ventriloquists. The moppets' roars of approval bring the adults and teen-agers swarming around in a crowd that averages 500. After about 45 minutes the three-man team piles into its motor van and speeds off to another beach.

Founding father of the Open Air Campaigners was a 19th century remittance man named Ned Field, exiled from England for unspecified wrongdoing, who felt that he had been cured of cancer in answer to prayer. The group's present director, Reginald E. Werry, 42, was a thief, a drunk and a professional gambler, prospecting for gold in his native Australia when World War II broke out. He decided to join up to get a free trip somewhere, drove to the recruiting station in a stolen car. During four years as a war prisoner in Germany, his light-fingered ways earned him the post of chief smuggler of escape equipment for his fellow prisoners. Back in Australia after the war, Werry was so moved by U.S. Evangelist Hyman Appelman that he volunteered for the O.A.C., became director in 1958.

Next: Asia & Air. Today, after 60 years in business, the Open Air Campaigners have 20 paid workers ($45 a week), 200 volunteers and 14 mobile pulpits in Australia. Since World War II, branches have opened in Queensland, Tasmania and New Zealand, as well as in Toronto and Chicago, and the Campaigners hope to tackle Asia next. The O.A.C. is designed as a task force to hit all evangelical targets-factories, parks, lunch counters and busy streets. This year the group will tie up with Aerial Missions, an offshoot of the U.S. Missionary Aviation Fellowship, to reach the big cattle and sheep stations in Central Australia. Says Director Werry: "The men who preach in the churches really need us who preach under the sky."

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