For Aboriginal evangelist Jack Harradine, the Tour of Hope began with four words: “What’s your vision, Jack?”

One conversation with retired minister Chuck and his wife Mary Shave last year around a fire in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, began a long road trip for both couples.

The Shaves had bought a caravan, intending to minister to the ‘Grey Nomads’ (the nickname for the many couples who reach retirement age, buy caravans or campervans and tour Australia). Instead, Jack told them about his 25-year-old vision of preaching the good news to Aboriginal communities like the one he grew up in.

Chuck and Mary were keen to combine the two visions. So, joining Jack and his wife, Lill, the two couples began the Tour of Hope, a ministry aiming to visit outback communities in Australia with the Gospel.

Jack admits he hasn’t always been optimistic about the prospect: “At first, I thought, ‘I don’t have the caravan, I can’t even pay for the petrol!’”

BBQ in Copley, just one of the many communities visited by the Tour of Hope.

But, says Jack, the group has already been up through Oonoondatta, the Flinders Rangers, Cooper Pedy, and into the Riverlands. When he spoke to Eternity, he was in Tamworth, NSW. By the end of the year, they hope cross Australia and halfway back again.

“I’ll go a thousand miles to see one person come to Jesus. Because that’s how much he values them … I preached [in one community] and every single person in the hall came forward, either to ask for prayer, or to convert to Christ. There was one little girl about nine years old, with a little brother on her hip saying, ‘Pray for my family.’”

Jack has had a vision for this tour for a long time. He kept it through his training with the Church Army, an evangelist training organisation, and then worked in a government job for several years. Now, one year on from seeing his evangelism dream become reality, things have come full circle: the Tour has been sent by the Church Army, while they raise funds themselves.

“We need to take the gospel outside the walls of the traditional church. In many rural communities, there is no Christian ministry. There are no Christians. We want to bring some hope where there is no hope. They’re living as people without hope in darkness.”

When speaking to Jack, it becomes clear that hope is a big theme for him, partly stemming from his own conversion.

“I was one of those people that I’m going to minister to now … I was just ready to die and I wasn’t even 30. When I received Christ as saviour, I had hope. Had those [evangelists] not come to that community, I’d probably be dead and in hell right now.”

There have been difficult parts of their ministry as well. Currently not able to afford a second caravan or 4wd, the couples spend most nights in a tent. And Lill has given up her job, in order to do this ministry. “We don’t have a place to lay our head,” Jack admits.

Their aim doesn’t stop with just evangelism, but to train others to do the same, at events like the Aboriginal Evangelical Fellowship Convention, in Port Augusta.

The website for their ministry is called Going Beyond the Walls, because Jack’s passion is for more people to do just that.

“You really can’t do evangelism by sitting in your own church,” he said. “Jesus said ‘Go’, not ‘Come’. He said ‘Make disciples of all people’, not make more church members. ‘All people’. So we shouldn’t forget about Aboriginal people. We shouldn’t forget about the grey nomads. Because they’re on their last legs, and thinking about where they’re going to end up.”