Welcome to our new Senior Chaplain

Reverend Canon Peter Treloar, Assistant Chaplain, in conversation with our new School Chaplain, Reverend Dr Timothy Gaden.

PDT: Welcome to the Grammar family. Perhaps I should say, welcome back. This is not your first time in the School, is it?

TJG: Thanks. No, I was here as the Head of Religion, Philosophy and Ethics in 2012 before heading up into the bush to be the Anglican priest in Ararat in 2013. My wife and I came back to St Peter’s across the Lake in 2017, and I actually taught VCE Philosophy here last year, an experience which reminded me how good a school community it is. When the opportunity came up late last year to be considered for the role of Senior Chaplain at the School, I naturally jumped at it. It’s the best job an ordained priest can have in this Diocese.

PDT: In the short time that you have been in this role, what changes have you noticed from being a priest in a parish?

TJG: In a parish you stand in the centre of a worshipping community that mostly comes to you for pastoral care. In a school (or at Trinity College where I was a Chaplain earlier in my career) you are much more of an evangelist, a salesperson if you like, for the Gospel and for the Anglican ethos of the School’s foundation and traditions. That’s a big change. Plus, more people come to the Chapel of St Mark here at the School each week than in the rest of the Diocese put together. That’s something different, too!

PDT: Tell us some more about the Anglican ethos of the School’s foundation. What have you found to be some of the foundations of the School?

TJG: I spent some of last summer prepping for my new job by reading the three published histories of the School: Winds of Influence, Mainly About Girls and Met by Wendouree. There I learned that Bishop Green, the second Bishop of Ballarat, and the other founders of the Boys’ School were determined that the education it offered should be “high-minded and broad-minded”. By high-minded they meant, of course, students with eyes on heaven, or as we might say today, students alive to the spiritual dimension of the human experience, to spirituality or, perhaps, “mindfulness”. They also meant students who would aim high, who would excel.

By broad-minded, they meant expansive, progressive, open-minded. They wanted a school open to all sources of knowledge, secular and religious, a school where people with a variety of opinions and with a variety of faith convictions or none at all would still find a place to belong. But the founders also meant something else by “broad-minded”. They meant an education that embraces the whole person, that is “broad” because it embraces sporting achievement, music, the arts, community service, all of them finding a place alongside pure academic excellence as hallmarks of a well-rounded individual. Similarly, when Mrs Matilda Dixie, an outstanding educator, established her new school, Queen’s College, in January, 1876, breadth of education was of fundamental importance. These are the strong foundations of the School’s beginnings, and they serve the School equally well today.

Chair of the Board, Dr Shantini Deutscher, School Chaplain, Reverend Dr Timothy Gaden, Bishop of Ballarat, The Right Reverend Garry Weatherill, Assistant Chaplain, Reverend Canon Peter Treloar, and Headmaster, Mr Adam Heath