Remembering Ray Hawkins

Ray Hawkins, who planted The Point Baptist Church at Beauty Point, was farewelled at his funeral on Tuesday. As one of our 29 churches, The Point is part of the continuing fruit of a life spent following Jesus, loving people and helping churches take root.

Ray’s call to ministry developed after attending the Billy Graham Crusade in Sydney in 1959. He began Bible college the following year, setting out on a path that would take him and his wife, Mary, into church planting and pastoral ministry across several states, and later to England.

Together, Ray and Mary served through the ordinary pressures of raising a family, making ends meet and caring for people. At one stage, Ray supplemented his minister’s stipend by selling vacuum cleaners while Mary worked as a nurse and sold encyclopaedias. They kept seeking God’s direction and responding to the opportunities before them.

When they moved to Tasmania to be near family, they were approaching retirement. Ray soon became involved in the communities around Beauty Point and Beaconsfield, and helped establish the church we now know as The Point Baptist Church. There were still people to meet, relationships to build and good news to share.

Ray loved cricket, a cup of tea and an op-shop bargain. He was friendly, patient and cheeky, with a habit of finding uses for things other people were throwing away. He also liked rearranging furniture, sometimes extending his enthusiasm to spaces where others would have preferred things left where they were.

That same willingness to get involved continued through his final years at the Beaconsfield District Health Service. Ray started a church service for residents, helped organise activities and found ways to encourage people through poems, drawings and conversation. As his physical abilities became increasingly limited, his interest in people remained.

Even when confined to bed and unable to move, he compiled another devotional book. Shortly before his death, he learnt that it had been sent to the printer. His response was simple: “That is so good.”

On the mirror in Ray’s room were the words, “We love because God first loved us.”¹ Those words help explain his life. Ray knew his own imperfections, but he also knew he was loved by God. He wanted the people around him to know that love too.

For our family of churches, Ray’s life is an invitation to keep paying attention to the people God has placed before us. Our circumstances and abilities change. There are seasons of starting something new, seasons of sustaining it, and seasons when our contribution looks very different from what it once did. Ray continued finding ways to love and serve through each of them.

We give thanks for Ray, for his partnership with Mary, and for the churches and people shaped by their ministry. We remember his family and The Point community in their grief, sharing the living hope that sustained him through a lifetime of service: the resurrection of Jesus Christ.²

¹ 1 John 4:19
² 1 Peter 1:3