Unexpected Kindness and The Long Journey: Gerald’s Story
Gerald shares his journey from Penang to Ryde, and what it means to be on a lifelong faith journey with Jesus
"How did you become a Christian?"
It's the question we ask every guest on Chip Lunch. Most people have a clear moment—a prayer, a decision, a turning point. But Gerald's answer was different.
"I'd like to say I'm on this journey still. I grew up in a Christian family. But being a Christian is about relationship with God. And with relationships, you need time. So if you ask me, 'Am I a Christian?' I would say yes. But how do I know? Only God really knows."
From Penang to Sydney
Gerald's grandfather was an Anglican priest in China before settling in Penang, a small island off the western coast of Malaysia. The family attended St. Paul's Church faithfully—youth fellowship, Christmas celebrations, weddings, baptisms, funerals.
They lived as what Gerald calls a Christian family. It was just the way of life rather than a religion. Church on Sundays and Sunday school. His father was a GP who worked a couple hours Sunday mornings.
At 18, Gerald's father sent him to Sydney to finish high school and attend university. Thanks to the Colombo Plan—an Australian government program that funded education for students from the region—Gerald's tuition was covered by Australian taxpayers. Gerald says it was and has been a privilege to live in Australia and expresses his gratitude at every opportunity he gets.
Gerald completed his final year of high school at Holy Cross, a Catholic school in Ryde before heading to UNSW to study accounting. He wasn't particularly good with numbers, but his father had looked at his results and said maybe one of his other kids would be a doctor instead. (Spoiler: Michelle, Gerald’s daughter, became a doctor.)
Three Moments That Stayed
Three specific moments from those early years in Sydney shaped how Gerald understood kindness, care, and ultimately, God's character:
The Spilled Drink
After university, Gerald would take the bus from Central station to visit his aunt in Ryde, stopping at Town Hall McDonald's on the way back. One night, he spilled his Coke on the floor. Within 30 seconds, a young worker showed up with a new cup and put it on his tray. Gerald had never experienced anything like it. He regretted never really thanking the guy because he was so shocked.
The Bikies
Years later, Gerald and daughter Grace were returning from a black belt karate grading in Melbourne. Grace was battered, blistered, and limping after ten gruelling fights. At a travel stop on the drive home, two tough-looking bikers stopped her to ask if she was okay. Gerald was touched that strangers would show that kind of concern. It had never happened in all his life.
The Police Visit
One night, Gerald accidentally butt-dialed emergency services and quickly called back to apologise. At 11:00 pm, two police officers knocked on his door. They asked to see his wife to make sure she was safe. They could have just checked the box and left, but they took the trouble.
Gerald recounts these experiences because they were few and far between in his life. The young McDonald's worker could have just mopped up and walked away. The bikers could have ignored Grace and kept eating. The police could have driven off. But they stepped outside their comfort zones to care for a stranger.
The Accidental Salesman
After finishing university in Australia, Gerald returned to Malaysia, then moved to Singapore for better opportunities. He ended up in IT project management, but one day, driving past a German company called Nixdorf, he picked up the phone and called. After multiple interviews, they offered him a job: Sales Executive with a $1 million quota and 40% of his pay dependent on hitting targets.
He loved it. Most people don't like sales because they find salespeople insincere or untruthful. But you can be different. You can choose. You engage with lots of different people, and you always have good stories. You get to learn, discover, and share.
He hit his quota. The reward? A trip to Germany where the sales team built rafts and floated down the Rhine River, drinking beer and eating pork knuckles.
Coming Home to Ryde
Despite success in Singapore, Gerald felt pulled back to Australia. Every night, Peter Allen's song would play on TV: I Still Call Australia Home. It sounds funny, but it had an effect. Even when you fly home on Qantas, you're like, oh yeah, I'm going home.
He and the family settled back in Ryde—the same area where Gerald had finished high school decades earlier. Looking back, Gerald says, you can only say that God must have been in their lives. They just packed their bags and came. They didn't even have a lot of stuff to move.
They found a house—the same that Gerald still lives in today—and started looking for schools. Seven minutes' walk from their house, past Meadowbank Public School, they discovered containers and demountables: a German international school. Everything was taught in German except English. They thought they'd park the kids there for a couple of years while they scouted around for another school. Grace and Michelle stayed there for the entirety of high school and completed the International Baccalaureate in Year 12.
The downside? When they'd have dinner together and the girls would have discussions, they'd switch to German so their parents didn’t know what they were talking about.
Life Comes at You Fast
At 45, Gerald went through what he calls an episode. He'd left a great job in Singapore because he missed Sydney. But something triggered when he got back. Had he gone to see a doctor or psychologist, they would have said he maybe had some depression.
His wife suggested he take the girls to karate. He would send them there, sit with them for an hour and a half, and go home. Then his wife said, why don't you join the class? Joining as a newbie meant something. Regardless of how old you are, what perceived status you might be, if you join the class as a newbie, you get sent to the back of the line. You are a nobody in a karate class. You earn your badge, your stripes.
Gerald wasn't living a healthy life—smoking, drinking, eating bad food, the excuse of job stress the reason of why he lived that way. But in karate, you had to work hard. The sensei would let you learn first, earn your way through. One day, after a couple of months, the sensei came over and corrected Gerald's punching stance just a fraction.
This was motivating for Gerald. He was catching up with rest of the class. He was feeling good and thought he’d do even better if he didn't smoke, drank less, and ate better. He learned a lot about life, engaging with people and being disciplined. It was an important part of his life that got him back on track. That and to have a community around you can make all the difference.
Learning from Daughters
Gerald saw his daughters, Grace and Michelle, both chose hard paths for themselves. When they decided to do things with the church, Gerald felt that this was a decision they made with God.
But when they graduated, Gerald told both of them he wanted something back…
You have to put something back into this country. What it is, only you will know. But you have to have this in your mind—to put something back. People shouldn't just be taking things out.
After graduating as a lawyer from university, Grace worked for the coroners’ office for four and a half years. When Michelle went through medical training alone in country hospitals at night, she also went through some tough times.
Being a father through their journeys hasn't been easy. Gerald's wife taught him something crucial about parenting: sometimes they only want you to listen. Gerald has learnt the hard way that the best thing is to let them talk to you without trying to guide them or influence or manipulate them in the way you think is right. Sometimes you just have to let them talk and listen. Ask why do you feel this way? Without being judgmental, because they go through a lot of challenges growing up.
Gerald also shares his sadnesses as a parent. Eventually they grow up even though you don’t want them to. They don't jump on you anymore and sit on your shoulders. Looking back, Gerald says, he regrets some of the times where he was less patient with the girls.
I think sometimes it's easier to be forgiven than to forgive yourself sometimes. Hold them close because the time will come when they grow up and move away. You want them to look after themselves, but you will miss this. And if you take a step back, perhaps your parents miss this too.
The Fourth Quarter of Life
At 60-plus, Gerald describes himself as being in Q4—the fourth quarter of life. The Bible promises 70 years, or 80 if you're healthy. Gerald eventually retired fully, though it wasn't easy. For him retirement wasn't about stopping work, it was about being present for his aging parents who gave him the opportunity to come out to Australia.
Gerald doesn't mince words: aging sucks. It's a very difficult process. He's always mindful when talking about all ages and all stages—how do we look after our community, the people undergoing such changes?
He's thought deeply about mortality. He never thought about dying until he was 50. At 50, he started to think—not in a morbid way—because he felt it's important to learn about the process for himself. If you don't look after yourself, you cannot look after the people around you. The only people who will hurt if you don't look after yourself are the people who love you most first.
This reality hits home for Gerald as he watches his parents age. For the past 10-15 years, he's visited them frequently in Malaysia—his father now 96, his mother 98. Because of this, he has a lot of advice to give on the best fares and budget airlines. He and his wife worked out that they don't always go back together because besides the fact that she also has her church and her community.
But the experience has taught Gerald some hard lessons. Watching his parents age has caused him to take it very seriously. What can he learn from this? What are the challenges?
Finding Soul Revival in Ryde
For years, Gerald and Michelle attended church together. Then Grace started working at City Bible Forum and eventually told her father she was joining a church in the Sutherland Shire. She showed him a picture of Stu—with the hair and the rock band clothes. But Gerald liked that because he felt his his kids should step out of their comfort zone in a positive way.
Gerald started attending a Bible study in Grace and Michelle's rented apartment with five other people from the core team at Ryde—Ian, Louisa, Shamara, Charlie, and Iris. But it wasn’t an obligation. He'd been to Bible study groups before that were always quite boring. But this group had young people with interesting views of their faith. Ian always had icebreaker questions to start. It allowed them to express what they feel, what they think. What came out of this was the most important thing which carried forward to this day at Ryde: a sense of community.
Gerald had never experienced anything like what Soul Revival was building. Christianity is still a journey for him, but when he came to what's now the Ryde gathering, he witnessed something he'd never seen in decades of church: hundreds of people going away together for Week Away each year. Intergenerational friendships. Hours spent together beyond Sunday services.
The Power of Time Together
What struck Gerald most about Soul Revival wasn't just the hours spent together now—it was the long-term investment being made. He explained that when young people grow up with these friendships and still have them 20 years later, they have two decades of shared history backing up those relationships. That's nearly impossible to replicate if you try starting at 30, 40, or 50. Time is the irreplaceable ingredient in deep friendship, both in the church community and beyond.
Gerald sees this at Soul Revival: Ryde. Many come to church because they have issues in their life and are looking for answers, and they start to feel better. Then he sees the same people investing back into the community, paying it forward. They're not just there because they feel better, they're there to help others. They're serving, contributing and sharing things that helped them.
But Gerald also hasn't forgotten Soul Revival on other side of the city. They haven’t forgotten how special the relationships with the other gatherings are. He loves it when others travel over to visit and knows it supports the growth of Ryde and the faith of those who belong to that community.
Gerald compares it to the gym. If you go to the gym and there's nobody there, you take out your phone. But if someone is running like crazy on the treadmill next to you, you can’t slack off. It's mutually encouraging.
The Bible and the Journey
During the conversation on Chip Lunch, Gerald posed a question: if you had a crystal ball, could you derive good benefits from it?
Tim felt that part of faith is learning to trust without knowing the outcome. Part of learning to be in relationship means to trust even when we don't know the outcome. Sometimes we don't know what is going on a particular time. We don't know why our child is going through something. We don't know how long it will last. We don't have all the answers, yet because we are assured of God's fatherly goodness, we can—which is what builds the relationship. He feels that it's necessary for life and also necessary for out faith to not always know.
Gerald agreed, but then made a point about what we do have: the Bible. You can read the Bible from various perspectives, listen to sermons, and learn new things about God. We could do that for a couple of thousand years and we would still be learn new things about.
Why? Gerald thinks it's because of the lessons that God teaches you at that time in your life. Many of the feelings and challenges we go through in life are documented in the Bible.
Gerald admits he only recently started reading the Old Testament more seriously as a result of this. When he was growing up, they looked at the New Testament a lot because it gives people the hope that if we mess up, there is God’s grace. But he has realised that there is also a lot of teaching in the Old Testament about how people live their life as a community and how people support one another.
When Gerald was very young, he asked his father for a Bible. He got him the King James Version. It took him close to 20 years to read it from cover to cover because he wanted to read it as he would read a book. Going through who begat who and who begat what was difficult. But then he saw it as a record, like you a family birth or marriage register—which you wouldn't was so boring. You'd say how interesting it was because you can see how it connects with you.
What He'd Tell His Younger Self
At the end of Chip Lunch, we always ask our guest what they’d tell their younger Christian self if they could go back in time.
Gerald chose his words carefully:
“to be more aware of the community”
Inspired by what he sees in at Soul Revival, whether it be at Ryde or in the Sutherland Shire, he regrets not being part of such a community sooner. He voices concern and regret that a lot of time has passed before he had such a realisation. But this also helps him to appreciate the community a lot more.
He also voices concern about burnout, and people pushing themselves too far. He sees some Christians compelled to give 100% all the time and take care of lots of people.
His advice? Two things: one is to be more careful about not pushing too much and diluting the quality of what you can do. And the second is, if you need it, get help. Maybe you can't cover ten, you can cover five. Maybe you need to ask someone to help you. Which, again, he feels, it is the job of the community to step up and support each other when we need it.
Still on the Journey
As he says throughout the two part podcast, Gerald is still on a journey. After decades of walking with Jesus, he's comfortable saying he doesn't have all the answers. He only knows that God knows. And that the community around him, the people at Soul Revival Ryde and the wider Soul Revival Church make the journey possible.
He's learned from strangers who showed unexpected kindness. From his daughters who chose hard paths. From karate and sales and aging parents. From the Bible and intergenerational friendships that span decades.
And he's learned that faith isn't a destination or a checkbox or a single moment of decision, though those moments matter. It's relationship. And relationships take time.
Time to witness kindness that reveals God's character. Time to build community that can support you through every stage of life. Time to wrestle with hard questions about aging, mortality, and what matters most. Time spent together—hanging out, having dinner, going away for a week, running on treadmills next to each other.
Looking for a church in Ryde? Find out when Soul Revival gathers and come hang out with us.