Society works on outreach
as school leavers go on the binge

Thousands of 17-year-olds flock to Australia’s Gold Coast each November for Schoolies Week, which marks the end of their school days. Australia. Photo: Hotel Chaplaincy (AUS03DJ-5.JPG)

BRISBANE, Australia — Australia’s annual phenomenon known as ‘Schoolies Week’ has been causing concern among responsible sections of society for some time. But the Bible Society in Australia (BSA) is among the Christians making a serious effort, in the words of the Sydney Morning Herald, to “tame the event”.

Schoolies is the secondary school graduates’ celebration of the end of their final year, a ‘rite of passage’ in which thousands of 17-year-olds saturate themselves in a week-long binge of sex, drugs and alcohol.

It takes place over two weeks in mid-November in some 15 coastal resorts. One is the Gold Coast, a 40 kms (25 miles) stretch of beach providing an overabundance of bars, nightclubs and theme parks. The first week is for Queenslanders, and the second for graduates from New South Wales and other states. On the Gold Coast alone, the revellers number around 70-80,000 each year.

Shady characters

“We’re very well received, ” says Mr Gourley. “They can’t believe that people would give up their time to just be there for them. We really provide a strong network of security protecting them against the ‘vulture culture’.”

Steve Davies (left), a Field Ministries Representative with the Bible Society in Australia, hands out sweets to young people attending Schoolies Week to mark the end of their school days. Australia. Photo: Hotel Chaplaincy (AUS03DJ-6.JPG)

Steve Davies, 37, a ‘Field Ministries Representative’ (in effect, a youth worker) with the BSA in Queensland, is part of the Schoolies chaplaincy team. His early life, a sad story of poor family relationships and indulgence in sex, drink and heroin, gives him plenty of credibility with dissolute young people. But his later experience – he gave his life to Christ 16 years ago after a Christian hotel cleaner gave him a Bible – allows him to share his Christian testimony, too. The fact that he used to play rugby for the Crusaders, a team in the Brisbane Second Division, also goes down well with many of the young people.

He says the responses to the Gospels that he and his colleagues distribute are overwhelmingly positive.

“We were handing out Gospels of Mark (with testimonies from Christian sports personalities),” he recalls, “and there was one boy who was really drunk. He said he went to a church-run school and already got this stuff during the week, but I encouraged him to take it anyway. Two days later I’m handing out Gospels to a different group and he comes up to me and says he read it and thought it was really cool. He couldn’t believe it was the same message his school was trying to get across to him.”

“Most kids hate church and hate religion – but they don’t hate God,” says Mr Gourley. “So we’ve been able to hand out 10,000-12,000 Scriptures provided by the Bible Society and will often find kids sitting in their room drinking a beer and reading the Bible. They usually want to ask a lot of questions.”

Steve Davies and his Bible Society colleagues in Queensland often work with a band called Sons of Korah. Last year they played for Schoolies in the Gold Coast resort of Surfers Paradise.

Mechanical bull