Charge at the Dark: Unleashing Courage That Lasts a Lifetime

By David Schaeffer

The difference between mediocrity and greatness can be measured by the intensity of a person’s charge. In Charge at the Dark, David Schaeffer taps into our deep desire to do something special with our life, to go beyond a herd mentality and throw off the shackles that would hold us back. This is not a book for the exceptional or super-gifted. Neither is it a book for the faint-hearted. It is an every-person book that will inspire the reader to ‘get their charge on’.

As David shares the highs and lows of his charge, you will laugh and cry your way to the place where you will be inspired to make the most of yours

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Apr 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781922542755

David Schaeffer

David Schaeffer is the director of High Endeavours; a lead coach with ‘Design a Decade’, author of the popular book Grieve Upwards and his new book Stress Less Live More. He has carried various leadership roles at local, state and national levels and specialises in the key areas of relationships, leadership development, grief recovery and stress minimisation. David is married to Tuula and between them they have four children, seven grandchildren and an extended family as dear to them as their blood relatives.David conducts workshops and seminars related to his specialist skill areas, and also encourages readers to investigate the benefits of a coaching relationship. Life can be tough enough without going it alone!

Book preview

Eastern Australia

New South Wales

PRELUDE

With sunset approaching, it was about 4:10pm on October 31, 1917. Southern Palestine had seen its tribes and nomads wander the Negev Desert for thousands of years, but on this day, it had some strangers resting pensively between sand hills waiting for the signal to mount their Australian-bred Walers. Trooper Chook Fowler and his mates, Alfred Healey and Thomas O’Leary received their orders to saddle up and move into attack formation for the final and most important offensive of the day. They were three of the horsemen within three, 128-man regiments of the Australian Light Horse, camped six and a half kilometres outside Beersheba, and a long way from home.

Each regiment would advance about 400 metres apart, allowing them to spread out once the charge began. By the end of the day, their victory would signal the beginning of the end of the Ottoman Empire. At approximately 4.30pm, horses that had not been watered after a 30-mile night march, were mounted and moved forwards at a gentle walk. After five minutes, the pace lifted to a trot with each horseman now four metres from his fellow trooper. Under fire now, and only two kilometres from the Ottoman front line, the two advanced regiments broke into a gallop. The pace and charge intensified until horses reached their target, leaping over the trenches of stunned enemy soldiers. Troopers jumped off their raging horses and engaged the enemy in fierce hand-to-hand combat amidst the screams and shouts of attackers and defenders.

Beersheba would be taken by nightfall. Captured German and Turkish officers later confessed they never dreamed that mounted troops would be mad men enough to attempt rushing on infantry that were protected by machine guns and artillery. They Described the charge as ‘a thousand hooves of stuttering thunder coming at a rate that frightened a man. Knee to knee and horse to horse the dying sun glinting on their bayonet points, they were an awe-inspiring sight galloping through the red haze.’

This charge continues to inspire courage in anyone who proudly identifies with their ANZAC forebears. It reminds us of who we are and what kind of people we should always aspire to be; a breed of courageous, risk-taking, adventurous, enemy-destroying, nation-loving, peace-making sons and daughters of God.

In the 40 years after World War II, God Almighty had been preparing His army for a world-wide offensive on the kingdom of darkness. From the 1940s to 1960s, Billy Graham was not only known as a great harvester, but also as a great sower. He was a true evangelist and he knew it. Furthermore, he was highly instrumental in the setting up of the next phase of God’s great global invasion set to occur in the 1970s and 1980s. The seeds of life he sowed in human hearts in turn reaped an immediate harvest. His army of changed lives immediately began sharing the good news with friends, family, business colleagues and anyone else who would listen.

With Billy leading the charge, multiplied thousands of people from all walks of life began being transformed by the power of God. As the Holy Spirit began baptising believers in power, the Evangelical movement gave introduction to the Charismatic movement — a fresh version of Pentecostalism. It erupted, giving birth to the phenomena of the Jesus movement, which spread in influence across North America, South America and Europe. And, don’t forget - Australia.

That is the backdrop against which this book is written. Many lives that had been transformed in the 1950s and 1960s now became eager to know what it was they were called to do in their generation. Moving forward, the 1980s saw the emergence of new Church movements led by people who were in the process of discovering their own individual purpose. In the mid 1970s, Clark and Anne Taylor, a rugged stockman and his wife from Northern Australia, pioneered Christian Outreach Centre in Brisbane (now known as the International Network of Churches). Alongside a beanpole ‘worship-cum-youth-leader’ named Geoff Woodward and his wife, Rhonda, this groundbreaking team had many people eagerly expectant that revival would sweep Australia through their passion and outreach.

Emerging from the hippy scene in New Zealand, Phil and Chris Pringle pioneered Christian City Church (now C3 Church) on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. Additionally, arriving from New Zealand with both his parents and wife Bobbie, Brian Houston started Christian Life Centre in North West Sydney, a branch of the Assemblies of God (now Australian Christian Churches). This emergence saw them pioneer Hillsong Church, which is now considered Australia’s second most internationally recognised brand name behind Qantas. The Australian State of Victoria saw Russell and Sam Evans pioneer Planet Shakers, while great men like Andrew Evans and Danny Guglielmucci led the charge from South Australia.

Initially, these Churches led by their young generals met in school halls, condemned buildings and funeral chapels. They rented commercial facilities, surf clubs and disused Church buildings as their attendees grew. New Church leaders were raised up post haste to cater for the burgeoning growth and rented television spaces were also acquired to extend their reach. Bible Colleges and training facilities for new leaders were not yet in existence and rather than go back to traditional places of learning, the majority of the early leadership training offered was ‘on the job’.

Passion is contagious and this river of life was running fast and deep.

New Churches began springing up everywhere. Some would fall by the wayside, while others would go on to bigger and greater things. Amazing youth leaders, like Jürgen Matthesius, began their tear-away apprenticeships for the amazing Churches they are now leading and multiplying.

Life after life began being plucked out of the grip of the kingdom of darkness. Those who were set free had an excitement that was palpable and unconfined. I was one of those who experienced its power. As part of the Holy Spirit’s charge across the earth, we watched with excitement as these movements quickly spilled over national borders and began planting new Churches with this same revival spirit in many other countries. In the 1980s, when Ashley and Ruth Schmierer took the ‘Christian Outreach Centre revival’ to England, stories came back of people collapsing under the power of God twenty meters away from the front door of the Church meeting they were headed for. Extraordinary miracles occurred. Known today as one of England’s noted watercolour artists, David Holden attended one of Ashley’s revival meetings. It was here that he encountered Ian McCormack, a man raised from the dead after being stung by box jellyfish. Ian prayed for him and within four months, David had produced forty works of art — all from a standing start. He had never painted anything before in his life!

During that time, Marilyn and I went to England, which was as much for our benefit as it was for theirs. We were there to train people for ministry and church pioneering, but it was a most unusual time. Holy Spirit would descend on those training sessions in such a way that the casual observer would conclude everyone had been consuming some beverage with a high percentage of alcohol. Sometimes we didn’t come out of our ‘godaholic’ haze until two o’clock in the afternoon. An outpouring of the Holy Spirit is mind boggling, but it only has one ultimate aim. People. Reconciling them to their Saviour and Creator.

Here is the point. To use an American saying, ‘God is fixing to do it again!’ It won’t be the same way. The new wine will always be better and there are many of us that are waiting, watching and praying. How will our mighty God pour Himself out over new generations of people and send them with a thundering charge, full tilt at the dark? What will it look like this time? None of us are completely sure. However, one thing is certain. It will be a new thing and those of us from previous generations who say, The old wine is better, say it at our peril.

Some, like myself, are called to ‘charge’ as Church leaders, but everyone is called to charge at something. If what we choose to do with our life doesn’t inspire charging at a worthy goal, we merely have a job. I visited a physiotherapist recently, and he asked what I did for a job. When I told him I was an author and that my latest book was titled ‘Charge at the Dark?’ he asked, What is it about?

Sean, I replied, why are you alive? What is your great purpose on the earth during your lifetime? Are you meant to blend in or stand out?

What do you mean? he asked.

Everyone is meant to find their purpose for being alive on God’s earth, I replied. When you do, you are meant to charge at your giants and conquer them, so that others can find God and discover their purpose too.

I’m pretty sure Sean had never heard anything like that before in his young life and our conversation was followed by a thoughtful silence.

Meet Doctor Geoff

Doctor Geoff Wilson is a shining example of someone who has their charge on. Those who know Geoff end up with one question at the back of their minds. Why? He challenges himself, flirts with his mortality and meticulously measures risk before launching out in ways that defy the imagination of most. He is not a Church pastor and, most probably, has no desire to become one. However, he is a Christian (one of the better ones), and has decided to kick off any resemblance to sickly religiosity and achieve what only a handful of people do.

When I first met this extraordinary man, I was standing casually with a small group of others and felt somewhat unnerved; in a good way. I was just an anonymous face in the crowd, but I valued that brief handshake. I felt it was safer to listen than to speak. Experiencing the feeling of being overshadowed by his courage and achievements, I felt uncomfortably challenged to something bigger just by being in his presence. With some prior research under my belt, my first exposure was not without background information on this man.

Business-wise, Geoff is a veterinarian. His ‘VetLove’ chain of eleven veterinary clinics across Queensland and New South Wales would keep any average person fully occupied. However, his ability in business and veterinary science has always been trumped by a greater passion. Geoff is an extreme adventurer. In 2013, when I first met him and then listened incredulously to his most recent adventure, he had just completed the fastest unsupported crossing of Antarctica under wind power. On that crossing, he travelled an amazing 3,428 km in 53 days and obliterated the previous record by 11 days. He met with one of the fiercest storms that had slammed into an Antarctic summer in fifty years. He lost his nine-metre kite, as well as a large amount of food, when his supply sled flipped and split open. Geoff’s immediate response to this dilemma was to calculate how much of his remaining journey he had food for and to recalibrate the number of kilometres he had to cover each day to reach his destination.

In December 2019, he became the first Australian to reach Antarctica’s Pole of Inaccessibility. When he reached this barren location, the majority of Geoff’s journey still lay ahead of him. His record breaking 23-day trip from Thor’s Hammer to the Pole preceded his next extreme challenge of returning to Russia's Novolazarevskaya Station. 58 days later, Geoff had completed a 5,306 kilometre round trip with nothing more than his own body, a wind kite and a sled full of food. He had beaten the previous record by 206 kilometres!

During this solo odyssey, he became the first human ever to scale Dome Argus, which stands 4,093 metres above sea level and is the coldest naturally occurring place on earth. Temperatures there can plummet to almost minus 100 degrees celsius. If that wasn’t enough, Geoff has also achieved the first and only wind-assisted crossing of the Sahara Desert (42 days), the first to kite-surf across Torres Straight (3 days) and the fastest crossing of Greenland (18 days).

His ‘charge’ at the elements stands as a supreme example that we all have a ‘charge’ in us. And what better enemy to charge at than the spiritual confusion and darkness that envelopes mankind? At the dawn of creation, God said Let there be light! Sometime afterwards, Adam and Eve’s act of disobedience plunged the world back into a spiritual darkness far darker than the previous physical one. Every human being is born into this darkness, and when they are individually born again out of it, they are ‘born’ with an inherent desire to charge at the darkness they now see in and around others. When Jesus the Christ comes to each of us, He personally helps us work out what our unique ‘charge’ looks like. Then He imparts a courage-filled dream and partners with us in pursuit of victory.

Another Generation, Another Charge

No matter how different the characteristics of each generation, pioneering or re-pioneering a start-up will always require at least two non-negotiable things.

A pioneering heart where obstacles look like excitement. Where the thrill of creating something that has never been before, is irresistible. Where it will always be difficult to entertain the notion of drawing back, no matter the size of the obstacle in front of them.

A deep, caring heart for people. Whatever industry a person is in, we are all in the people business. The engineer, the I.T. expert, the Church pastor and the accountant will all rise or fall on their ability to demonstrate that they are people-oriented before they are money-orientated. This caring heart can never be provided by machinery, technology or slick marketing techniques.

With great eagerness, I look forward to watching new generations of valiant chargers. I see them possessing passion, wisdom, resilience, faith, people skills, technological skills, spiritual gifts and leadership. They will have teachable hearts, strength born out of joy, and everything else that God sees they will need for the journey ahead. Nations will be transformed and magnificent Churches will spring up. Multitudes will be given their opportunity to discover who they really are.

And who are human beings really?

It isn’t complicated. John Wesley, the father of the Methodist Church in England in the 1700s had a signature message. He would send his pastors down to the entrance of the mines at 4am, often in the snow, and have them preach this message: You are children of God and you have forgotten who you are! That pretty much answers the question