Almanac (Book) Review: ‘The Hugamug Club’ by Andy Thurlow

 

 

 

The Hugamug Club
by Andy Thurlow
Lamppost Publishing, 2025

 

Reviewed by Ian Hauser

 

Disclaimer: Andy Thurlow and I have been close friends for over 50 years. I’ve known about his Hugamug Club and the Sprocket Rockets cycling group for about as long as they’ve existed but I’m not a part of them. I heard along the grapevine that he was writing a book along these lines but had no involvement in its preparation or publication. An unsolicited copy arrived in the post recently.

 

During my teaching career in the Lutheran schools system, my main teaching area was Scripture/Christian Studies/Christian Education/Religious Studies – whatever you might like to call it. I particularly enjoyed discussing and sharing with senior secondary students as they got to that stage where they began to grapple with what I call ‘the big questions of life’ – Who am I? Where did I come from? Why am I here? What is the meaning of life? Why is there suffering in the world? What happens when I die? A search for meaning and purpose. These are issues of real substance that we all deal with at some stage in our lives.

 

These questions came back to me as I read Andy Thurlow’s latest offering, The Hugamug Club. Centred around five members of the clergy (four males and one female, four retired and the other still working full-time, four Lutherans and one Uniting Church), their individual stories could hardly be more different from each other. All of them have confronted the ‘big questions of life’ in various settings at different stages in their lives, each in their own way. And yet, despite their disparate experiences, they all share a common outcome – a life of service centred on their Christian faith.

 

In his Foreword to the book, Dr Steen Olsen (yet another retired Lutheran pastor) writes, “This is an honest book, sometimes almost too honest”. In fact, at times it borders on ‘raw’ in each subject’s self exposé, in one case almost brutally so. They all have the courage as well as the honesty to tell it like it is, even at their own expense, including their flaws, limitations, peccadillos, struggles and failures. But in spite of these shortcomings, they describe how, as often as not, it was those very problems that gave them the understanding and insight, the experience and the growth that comes through pain to bring both spiritual guidance and practical help to those they served in their diverse settings. This level of honesty is the great strength of this book.

 

Another strength is its accurate portrayal of what it is to be a minister of religion. I fear that too many people have a completely wrong understanding of just who and what ministers of religion are. We’ve all witnessed the changing status of the clergy in society over the decades – from pillars of local life and leaders in society generally to being regarded all too often as out of touch, irrelevant and regressive. Even pariahs in some instances. To be fair, some of the criticisms have been not wholly undeserved, especially with our knowledge now of historical abuse issues. But so much of the criticism heaped on the clergy, lumped together as if they are some totally homogenous group, is inaccurate, unfair and, all too often, just plain wrong! As a life-long church member, I’ve seen and worked up close with many pastors over the years, some better than others. And, yes, some of my long term friends are pastors! The reality is that they are ordinary people like you and me, as flawed as any of us, prone to the same worries, challenges and failures as human beings but also gifted with the same strengths of character, integrity and sensitivity that we look for in each other. The all too common error is to deprive them of their humanity, normality and ordinariness, at the same time demanding from them an impossible level of righteousness and infallibility that we aren’t willing to meet ourselves. The miracle, for those of us who share the faith, is that God’s work has always, is and always will be done through such clay pots.

 

I choose not to go into any detail here about the five individuals for fear of diminishing them through any inadequate representation on my part. Rather, you need to hear what they have to say about themselves and their lives directly from them – the Victorian country boy and champion SA footballer assigned to PNG for his first ministry, the dyslexic American kid who struggled with self-image for a long time, the farmer who went back to secondary school to qualify for entry into the seminary, the one who became a senior church leader only to find it an overwhelming burden, and the girl from Sudan who faced and overcame tremendous odds to become a leader in her South Australian church. It’s quite a cast! None of them were willing subjects for this book but, thankfully, through encouragement and the respectful questioning of Andy Thurlow, each of them came out of themselves to enrich us all with their stories of how what talents they have were, with the help of the God they serve, used for the benefit of so many. Their stories capture you as they encompass such a breadth of backgrounds, defining experiences and fields of service; their capacity to overcome their natural reluctance is an another feature of the book. Importantly, the author does well to include the spouses of the five subjects in his biographies. None of their stories would be complete without the involvement of their significant other. Their stories are central to the total context.

 

Another feature of this book is the ability of the author to blend the written material provided to him by his subjects with the contents of the notes taken from his chats with them to capture the authentic ‘voice’ of each participant and present them just as they are. No mean feat at the best of times, let alone with five such different voices.

 

The Hugamug Club is engrossing – essentially, I read it in two sittings. It is uplifting, moving (but never sentimental), informative, a very useful social and cultural history of the past 70 years, an insight into what it is to be a minister of religion, and a wonderful addition to the resources that will allow future generations to understand the age we have lived through and the way these five individuals took on the challenges of life and its big questions. I thoroughly commend the book to you. I look forward to the next installment – More Mugs to Hug?

 

Recognition and plaudits also to Andy’s two trusty offsiders, Jan Wallent (fastidious editor par excellence, layout specialist and publishing guru) and Andy’s wife Marlene (interviewer, encourager, organiser and all-round supporter). Their contributions to this production should not be underrated.

 

Thank you to Amel, Brian, Len, Robert and Jim for your courage and honesty; and well done, Andy!

 

To purchase your copy, for $20, contact Andy directly by email at [email protected]

 

 

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