This year more Sydney parishes took groups to Men’s Convention, and many first-timers were among them.

The past year has been a time dramatic change for Jeff Carswell. After coming to church for the first time in years on Good Friday 2002, Jeff became a Christian last year, and was married on March 29 this year – a year to the day after first going back to church.

For Jeff, last month’s Men’s Katoomba Convention (MKC), the first large-scale Christian convention he has ever attended, was another significant time in an amazing twelve months.

With the annual MKC having just completed its seventh year, thousands of men from all over Australia have become regulars at the event. But Jeff, a member of All Souls’, Leichhardt, was among the many first-timers at this year’s convention.

“All the teachings that I remember from my childhood were directed to me as a child,” he says. “I felt the need, as an adult, to look for answers, and this is just going further to find those answers from an adult point of view.”

Jeff, now 44, attended Sunday school as a child at St Andrew’s, Bondi and grew up retaining much of that early teaching. “I still came to the conclusion that I didn’t need God and I could do it all on my own.

“I then came to a stage in my life where everything was great. I had a good job, I had a roof over my head and my health was good – but there was something else missing.”

Jeff says his decision to go back to church came through his 11-year-old son, Lane, who came home from school Scripture asking to go to church. Jeff told him to find out which church his Scripture teacher attended.

“Just before Easter last year, Lane came home with a note from the teacher with the Easter service times for All Souls’. So I thought Good Friday was as good a time as any,” he says.

“It was a bit slow to start with. I’d drop him off in the mornings and go to play my social tennis. After a couple of weeks, I decided to hang around and give it a go. I hadn’t heard an adult sermon in my life apart from weddings and funerals, so it was very eye-opening.”

After a series of meetings with All Souls’ rector, the Rev Tim Foster, Jeff decided to become a Christian.

Since then he has seen enormous changes in his family life. “I met the most fantastic person I could ever find [his new wife, Lea], even though I wasn’t looking, and my son is deciding whether he wants to be a pilot or a missionary. He loves it. We take turns in reading the Bible with each other every night.”

Another first-timer at this year’s MKC was James Sloman, a member of St Stephen’s, Newtown. At 56, James had been keen to attend a Christian convention since starting at St Stephen’s three years ago.

“I was impressed with the very broad spread of age groups and ethnicities in attendance. It was a very good cross-section of men in our society,” he said. “I was very surprised and encouraged to see that there are this many more people out there who are Christians.”

This year’s MKC was again held on three separate weekends in February and March. Speakers David Cook, Alan Stewart and Rico Tice spoke on ‘the Last Days’, a topic that James Sloman said is vital to daily life.

Mr Stewart, former chairman of the MKC organising committee, agrees that the subject of the last days is a crucial one for Christians to understand.

“Our aim this year was much the same as Peter’s aim as he writes his last letter – to remind men about the return of Jesus and the need to live in the light of eternity,” he said. “We can get so consumed with day to day busyness, with good things and good intentions, that we can forget the matters of eternity.”