Fateful words in the changing room: (Gordon Wise and MRA).

It was the visit to the grave of a school friend killed in training during World War II that set Gordon Wise thinking about the fragile train of events which led him to his life's calling.

Last year, during a visit to his home town of Perth, Australia, Wise was reminded of his friend Alan Rutherford. `We were together at Perth Modern School,' Wise recalls. `Six of our year volunteered for service in the Royal Australian Airforce (RAAF). Three were killed as pilots. Alan was 20 when his Blenheim bomber trainer hit a tree on take-off in August 1942.' Remembering this, Wise resolved that, once back in Britain where he now lives, he would try to find the grave.

He discovered that Rutherford had been buried at Duns, near Melrose on the Scottish Borders. He says that his pilgrimage to find the grave had a special significance for him. `In a sense Alan was God's messenger to me.'

Wise explains that they used to play together on Saturdays for the school grass hockey team. `One day in the changing room Alan said to me out of the blue, "I am seeing Jean on Monday." This immediately got my attention as Jean was my girlfriend. Did Alan have designs on her? "Oh, where?" I asked, trying to sound nonchalant. "At an MRA conference," he said.'

Although he was not at all sure that he liked the sound of what his friend described as `Moral Re-Armament', Wise decided he'd drop in. He was curious why Jean had not mentioned the event. `And maybe I was wondering whether she had something going with Alan,' he concedes.

He found other school friends present. The speaker was a well-known Anglican priest. `His subject--"Making an absolute surrender to God"--was somewhat over my head at that time. Jean did not seem particularly pleased to see me and, even more galling, went off afterwards with two other girls and a chap from school whom I cordially detested--and he me.' Wise remembers telling somebody, `If I can ever tolerate him, there's something to this MRA.'

Alan Rutherford walked with him and told him how his new-found faith in God had affected his parents who had been planning to divorce. Although Wise didn't admit it, this made quite an impression on him. He decided to go to the next day's meeting--`in case anyone suspected that I'd really gone to see Jean. Then I went to another. By the end of the week I decided to "have a go". I did a really honest stocktaking of my life, had a talk with the leader of the conference and, in an unemotional decision, gave over all of myself to all I understood God to be. It was really an unwritten contract.'

The person Wise had detested became his closest friend and they enlisted together in the RAAF serving in an Australian Flying Boat Squadron with RAF Coastal Command in Britain. Rutherford enlisted at the same time.

Returning to Australia after the war, several choices faced Wise--a job in the State Treasury which had been reserved for him, entering politics or `taking up the challenge of the unfinished business of World War II, building the peace'. He felt that the people committed to MRA he had met during the war, and during three months in America on his way home, `had demonstrated to me that the seeds of war and the secret of making peace both lay in the human heart. My experiences of seeking and following God's plan for myself led me to believe that it could also work for nations.' After considerable turmoil he decided to resign from his secure and promising job, feeling he had a clear call to a wider work.

`I have devoted the last 54 years to constructive programmes of building industrial teamwork and to seeking conflict resolution between nations that had formerly been enemies,' he says. `I've had the opportunity to work alongside those in and out of leadership, encouraging and counselling them in shaping creative programmes to match our modern opportunities and challenges. It's taken me to 46 countries and every continent, including ten years in Asia.'

Wise says it has turned out to be a life's calling beyond his wildest imaginings in those last months at school in Perth. `And to think that it all flowed from those six words of Rutherford in the changing room!'