In his book The Best Kept Secret of Christian Mission, John Dickson reflects on the power of promoting the Gospel through Christian behavior through the story of Tim Winton, Australia's most celebrated novelist with more than a dozen bestselling books and several literary prizes. Winton was once interviewed on the television show Enough Rope, hosted by Andrew Denton. At one point in the interview, the conversation turned to Winton's well-known Christian faith. Denton said to Winton. "When you were…about five, a stranger came into your family and affected your family quite profoundly. Is that right?" Dickson sums up Winton's response:

Tim Winton went on to tell Denton how his father, a policeman, had been in a terrible accident in the mid-1960's, knocked off his motorcycle by a drunk driver. After weeks in a coma, he was allowed home. [Winton said], "[My father] was like an earlier version of my father, a sort of augmented version of my father. He was sort of recognizable, but not totally my dad. … Everything was busted up and they put him in the chair. … I was terrified."

Winton's father was a big man and Mrs. Winton had a great deal [of trouble] bathing him each day. There was nothing that Tim, five-years-old at the time, could do to help. News of the family's situation got out into the local community and shortly afterward, Winton recalls, his mother got a knock at the door. "Oh, g'day. My name's Len," said the stranger to Mrs. Winton. … "I heard your hubby's [not well]. Anything I can do?" Len Thomas was from the local church, Winton explained. This man had heard about the family's difficulties and wanted to help. "He just showed up," [Winton told Denton in the interview], "and he used to carry my dad from bed and put him in the bath and he used to bathe him—which in the 1960's, in Perth, in the Suburbs, was not the sort of thing you saw every day."

According to Winton, this simple act of kindness from a single Christian had a powerful effect. "It really touched me in that, regardless of theology or anything else, watching a grown man bother, for nothing, to show up and wash a sick man—you know, it really affected me."