Boreham: Writer and Preacher by Gordon Powell

An article written for the Church & Nation newspaper, published on 21 February 1990 (p29) in a series entitled ‘Australian Church Pioneers’.

One night during the 1936 assembly of the Church of Scotland the Moderator, Professor Daniel Lamont introduced the special speaker, Dr F W Boreham, as the Australian preacher “whose name is on all our lips, whose books are on all our shelves and whose illustrations are in all our sermons.”

I was present that night and as an Australian I was afraid Boreham might not do well in front of 3500 ministers, elders and others – a fearsome audience.

I need not have worried. Within three sentences he held that vast audience in the hollow of his hand and speaking without notes for an hour, gave one of the greatest orations I have heard anywhere.

He spoke on evangelism and said, “Two stories always grip the imagination: love stories and stories of conversion.” When he sat down he received one of the greatest ovations in the long history of the Scottish assembly.

Frank Boreham’s parents were Anglicans when he was born in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, but in his ‘teens Frank became a Baptist.

He was minister of Baptist congregations in New Zealand, Hobart, and Armadale, Melbourne. Thereafter he devoted himself to writing and freelance preaching in all the mainstream churches. For example, he supplied Wesley Church, Melbourne for seven months and Pitt Street Congregational Church, Sydney for six months.

In 1936 he accepted an invitation to preach at the Wednesday lunch-hour services in Scots Church, Melbourne.

Because of indifferent health, he said he would do it for one month, but the month stretched to eighteen years! F W Boreham wrote weekly editorials in the Hobart Mercury for 47 years and the ‘Saturday Reflection’ in The Age for 14 years.