THE LUTHERAN June 2019

N A TIO N A L M A G A ZIN E O F THE L U THE RA N C HU RC H O F A U STRA LIA

JUNE 2019

WE LOVE BECAUSE GOD FIRST LOVED US.

VOL 53 NO5

Print Post Approved PP100003514

1 JOHN 4:19

God’s love OUR CARE

LUTHERAN

CHURCH OF AUSTRALIA

EDITORIAL

Co mfo r t i n to ug h t i mes

Editor Lisa McIntosh p 08 8267 7300 m 0409 281 703 e lisa.mcintosh@lca.org.au

Angela Gross, who lives in Edmonton, Canada, reads articles from The Lutheran to her son Aaron during his cancer treatment. ‘It's one of the best church magazines I have read’, she said. Alicia Gross, her daughter, who teaches at Immanuel Lutheran School, at Gawler in South Australia, and who is a member at Immanuel Lutheran Church in North Adelaide, took the photo during a recent visit back to Canada.

Executive Editor Linda Macqueen p 08 8267 7300 e linda.macqueen@lca.org.au

CONNECT WITH US We Love The Lutheran! @welove_TL lutheranchurchaus

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LUTHERAN

CHURCH OF AUSTRALIA The Lutheran informs the members of the LCA about the church’s teaching, life, mission and people, helping them to grow in faith and commitment to Jesus Christ.

The Lutheran also provides a forum for a range of opinions, which do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editor or the policies of the Lutheran Church of Australia.

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Send us a photograph featuring a recent copy of The Lutheran and you might see it here on page 2 of a future issue.

People like YOU bring love to life Jackson Plange St Johns Perth WA Year 9 student Enjoys cross-country, basketball and taekwondo Fav text: Luke 6:38

June Fenwick Grace Redcliffe Qld Retired Enjoys playing organ/keyboard for worship, reading and participating in village activities Fav text: Deuteronomy 33:27

Gordon Wegener St Johns Southgate Vic Pastor Enjoys reading, listening to classical music, walking, watching movies Fav text: Romans 8:38–39

Surprise someone you know

with their photo in The Lutheran. Send us a good-quality photo, their name and details (congregation, occupation, what they enjoy doing, favourite text) and your contact details.

JUNE

Special features EDITOR'S

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Letter

Almost everywhere we look in our church we see examples of community care.

People are providing food and basic necessities to people in need through soup kitchens, community meals and emergency relief centres. Others drop around a casserole or hamper, invite people who are doing it tough over for a meal, or offer a listening ear and kind words to soothe hurting souls.

Refugees are welcomed into a church family and assisted with English lessons and visa applications. People who are immobile due to age, illness or disability receive transport to church or help with shopping.

Church agencies offer relationship and financial counselling, foster care, support for people with addictions, aged-care services, emergency accommodation and community and disability housing, and more.

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I know I’ve been guilty of avoiding eye contact with a person on the footpath who I know will ask for a few dollars for a bus fare.

Jesus was just the opposite. He listened to, ate with, fed, healed and forgave anyone who was in need, no matter who they were or where they were from, whether they were clean or dirty, drunk or sober, believers or unbelievers. He came to seek and to save the lost and lonely and those whom society shunned.

Being ‘good’ Lutherans we know our works won’t save us.

Instead, we are moved to care for others because we are already saved by God’s undeserved sacrificial love for us.

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Called to transform lives

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Highlighting the ability in disability

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Walking with those seeking refuge

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United across nations to work for justice

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Regulars

If we were to share every story of every LCA/NZ member’s care for their neighbours in need, we’d fill every edition of The Lutheran, cover to cover.

But how expansive and inclusive is our care? How often do we go out beyond our comfort zone to those who need physical, financial, mental, emotional or spiritual care? How often are we more like the priest and the Levite from the story of the Good Samaritan who ‘walk by on the other side of the road’ when it’s not convenient, clean or safe to care for someone?

God’s love motivates our care

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Heartland

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Dwelling in God’s word

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Going GREYT!

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Go and Grow

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#youngSAVEDfree

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The inside story

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Reel Life

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Directory

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Your voice

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Notices

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Coffeebreak

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In this edition we learn about inspiring resources developed by the LCA/NZ to guide those who deliver care through our aged care and community services, and which will be helpful to all of us. And we hear about wonderful programs run with people living with disability and explore how we can walk with those who have come to our countries as refugees.

I hope and pray that these stories will encourage us as we endeavour to bring love to life in our communities – and that they will remind us that it’s God’s love that motivates, guides and energises our care.

Lisa

Our cover: istock.com

JES U S I S G OD'S LOVE. HE G IVES U S NE W HE ARTS TO L AY AS IDE O UR OL D WAYS, TO B EL IE VE AND FOL LOW HIM, TO L IVE WI T H HIM E VERY DAY.

heartland

REV JOHN HENDERSON

Bishop Lutheran Church of Australia

THANK G OD FOR DEMOCR ACY By the time you read this column, Australians will have voted for a new federal parliament.

2. It is a chance for us to put the moral and ethical health of our society ahead of economic interests. Political speeches and Voting to decide who will represent us in parliament media commentary make it sound as though is our sacrosanct privilege. We are also free to the economy is the only true indicator of openly criticise candidates and parliamentarians a successful society. Christians can see should we choose to do so, groan about political through that misconception. A healthy and processes, argue about legislation and publicly successful society is not just the result of debate government policies. We pray we will managing money well. It comes about through always keep these freedoms, with every citizen the practice of justice, compassion, integrity playing his or her part in providing and a humble spirit of public service. good government through the That doesn’t mean we force so-called democratic process.

I pray that God Christian values on everyone. Rather, Democracy as we know it took it means that, as responsible citizens, BLESSES you centuries to develop. Christianity we give ourselves in service to others, whenever you vote, counting them as better than ourselves. played a big part in that development, which finally came to fruition under and you do it so 3. It is a God-given chance for us the influence of Christian thinkers, to pray meaningfully for our leaders, that OTHERS rulers and populations. The roots of politicians and parliament. St Paul wrote democracy lie in the gospel principles may be just as to Timothy: ‘First of all, I ask you to of equality, justice, and compassion. blessed as you are. pray for everyone … Pray for kings and Today, as our society increasingly others in power, so that we may live turns away from the gospel, we risk quiet and peaceful lives as we worship losing the very values that make and honour God. This kind of prayer is good, possible the freedoms we currently enjoy. and it pleases God our Saviour. God wants We should all care about that – deeply. everyone to be saved and to know the whole The right we enjoy to vote in elections speaks to our truth ...’ (1 Timothy 2:1–4 CEV). According faith in many ways, of which I list just three: to the New Testament, then, God gives us government so that there can be peace and 1. It is a chance for us to act for the general the gospel can spread! good, and not out of self-interest. Do you choose your candidate because of what they Each of these is a worthy reason to wholeheartedly or their party promise to do for you? Or do participate in our democracy. I pray that God blesses you vote because of what they promise to you whenever you vote, and you do it so that others do for the vulnerable and disadvantaged, may be just as blessed as you are. I pray that he or as Scripture puts it, the ‘Levites, blesses those elected with generosity of spirit, foreigners, orphans, and widows’ among us wisdom, grace and truth. Thank God for democracy (Deuteronomy 26:12)? and the free and peaceful society in which we live.

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In response to a call from its General Synod in 2015, the LCA’s One Loving God project team oversaw work to revise and develop resources for those in the church who deliver care through aged and community services. As part of this task, the study document One Loving God – two hands saving and caring was revisited and further resources regarding Lutheran theology and the practice of care were prepared. Pastor Ian Lutze shares his joy at being part of this project.

GOD’S LOVE

motivates our care

by I A N LUTZE

It was a privilege to be part of the LCA’s One Loving God project team, which worked to update and expand the resources for people in our church who provide care across a wide variety of settings.

which inspires care for the needy, the focus on God’s saving action in Christ being the church’s primary interest, and connections to the gospel through word and sacrament.

One of the results of this practical theological project – the 16-page God’s Love – Our Care booklet – is beautifully produced, with many heartwarming, and sometimes heartwrenching, photos of care in action.

But a practical theological project does not simply repeat the past. It seeks to restate our thinking about God in the light of real life in the world, where tough questions are encountered, and the challenge to proclaim the gospel clearly is always changing.

It can be used for personal study or in groups, with Bible texts and thought-provoking questions to explore.

There is also a ‘Digging Deeper’ section with more questions to ponder, other things to think about, and further reading to consider.

It’s a gem of a document. But does it say anything new? Isn’t caring for people a simple, responsive and intuitive thing for Christians to do? What more is there to talk about?

I work in aged care, an arena of dynamic change.

Aged-care centres are required by law to provide nondiscriminatory care to people according to standards set by the government, albeit with input from the peak bodies from the sector itself. Such standards include accepting, honouring and not trying to change the spirituality of any resident in our care. It is about treating people with due dignity.

The document will indeed sound very familiar to Lutherans reading it, with its references to God’s love

This seems to present a problem, though, for missionminded Lutherans, whose DNA is to proclaim Christ

wherever we go. Many of us have been brought up to regard any spirituality other than Christian spirituality as sinful. We’ve been taught that accepting a nonChristian spirituality risks leaving people in a comfortzone which will put their salvation at risk. So in aged care, we may nurse and feed people, but if the opportunity arises we should not be shy to proclaim Christ to them. That’s been our thinking in the past.

Over against this thinking is our daily experience of living in a multi-cultural and multi-faith world, growing food for ‘the just and the unjust’, and developing our own life-giving connections to people, home, family, creation, art and culture, and to great causes.

Our own ‘spirituality’ is more than our relationship with Christ. We still have a stake in a world we try to make as ‘good’ as it can be.

And more and more we belong to complex families in which our loved ones have a variety of spiritual expressions, too.

God’s Love – Our Care addresses this reality by talking about God having ‘two hands’ – one hand (the left hand) to care for and sustain people in this world, and the other (the right hand) to bring people into the kingdom of God, the new eternal reality created through the gospel.

So, as Christians, it is entirely consistent for us to meet the many needs of any person who comes into our orbit, with grace, love and skill, without devaluing the person because they are not yet a Christian.

The concept of God’s two hands, of course, is, with different language, as old as the Reformation. I love it because it is a way to advance our mission in this world by being honest to God as he really is.

It allows me to get alongside a lady who has never been a Christian, to hear her real needs, and to respond, together with my organisation, according to my specialty.

She comes to church, occasionally, ‘just for you’, as she puts it. Will she ever be a Christian? Who knows?

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Spiritual distress, of course, is very real in aged-care too, and Christians have spiritual distress as they struggle to see God’s promises coming true for them.

But all people sometimes find the things they believed in are not working. Some distress is caused by families who don’t care, by dislocation from life-giving places, by grief and loss, by progressive frailty together with feelings of less worth, and so on.

In this very vulnerable time we can be tempted to offer them a shiny new faith, our faith, which we believe will be more helpful. But would we, should we, do this? Grace means unconditional acceptance, being generous enough to help connect a Hindu to his religious roots rather than place a Christian tract in his hands. Are we able to do this?

It seeks to restate our thinking about God in the light of real life in the world, where TOUGH questions are encountered, and the CHALLENGE to proclaim the gospel clearly is always changing.

The document suggests that God’s two hands work more in harmony with each other than perhaps thought in the past. So everything in the way God created people is ‘very good’, even people’s spirituality, their way of making sense of the world, their place in it and their connections. So we can celebrate a nonChristian’s healthy religious practice, as part of the way God created them, while also hoping and praying that God’s kingdom will come to this person, too – God’s right hand at work. Working with this way of seeing things is the art of spiritual care: we accept, and we hope, at the same time.

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But she is hearing about a God who cares for her very much. Where that goes is God’s business.

Despite being mandated to unconditionally accept people’s faith as it is, to do so also reflects the generous heart of a God with two hands, who will get his work done in the world and will sometimes use us.

I pray that God’s Love – Our Care will confirm the sense in your heart of what good care looks like. May it challenge and nurture your own spirit as you care in God’s name.

Pastor Ian Lutze is Aged-Care Pastor/Chaplain at Tanunda Lutheran Home in South Australia’s Barossa Valley and a member of the LCA's One Loving God project team, which is pictured below.

Interested groups and individuals can download and print from an electronic version of God’s Love – Our Care at www.lca.org.au/care or request a printed copy by emailing the LCA/NZ’s Committee for Ministry with the Ageing at cma@lca.org.au

Called to transform

LIVES

Early in the LCA’s governance review of aged care and community services, it became clear that people overseeing these services view their work as very much a part of the church’s mission and ministry.

However, many who work in and receive our care may have little knowledge of our church, or why it provides such services. So another strong message to come out of the dialogue, which ran from 2016 to 2018, was the need for a statement of the LCA/NZ ethos underpinning these services.

The development of the ethos statement, Called to transformative action, builds on the belief expressed in God’s love – our care that ‘our prayer as Christian carers ... is that we are renewed as vehicles through whom the Holy Spirit can heal and transform people through the gospel’.

by COLLEEN FITZPATRICK

• united by Christ – who invites us to share his unconditional love; • inspired by compassion – as we meet physical, social, emotional and spiritual needs without fear or favour; and • marked by integrity – as we strive to provide excellent services.

Because we are God’s people, we are filled with hope and look for opportunities to share that with those whom we serve and with whom we work.

Our CARING ministries are shaped by the good news of GRACE – a life-changing, transformational gift from God.

Called to transformative action interprets the LCA 2018–2024 directions statement through the lens of providing caring ministries. It is written to be accessible, including for those providing basic services in our facilities for whom English is a second language, as well as for nursing staff, management, board members and those receiving care. It is also a resource for chaplains and spiritual carers working within these ministries.

The document articulates that providing aged care and community services is a natural expression of our faith – and that Jesus’ servant heart and acts underlie our caring ministries. LCA/NZ values underpin this work.

Our caring ministries are: • shaped by the good news of grace – a lifechanging, transformational gift from God; • blessed by relationships – among ourselves, with those we serve and those who provide funding for services;

One of the aims of the project was to have one Lutheran voice speaking for the LCA/NZ. And perhaps, in exploring why the church is engaged in aged care and community services, we will be encouraged to undertake our own diaconal ministry among family and friends and may find we also are called to transformative action.

In this way, we really can become a church where love comes to life.

Colleen Fitzpatrick was the LCA/NZ’s One Loving God Project Officer and developed Called to transformative action, along with God’s love – our care (see pages 5 and 6). She is also chair of the church’s Committee for Ministry with the Ageing, a member of the LCA Commissions and Inquiries Working Group and of LHI Retirement Services Board. She is a Life Member of the South Australian Council of Social Services Board and was Director of the SA-NT District’s Lutheran Community Care for 13 years.

Download and print Called to transformative action from www.lca.org.au/care or request a copy from the Committee for Ministry with the Ageing at cma@lca.org.au

Highlighting the ability in disability

Lutheran Services is one of the longest established community care providers in Queensland. Its origins can be traced back to 1935 with the establishment of Salem Lutheran Rest Home in Toowoomba.

of their kind in Queensland. Today, Lutheran Services provides disability support services at several regional communities throughout south-east Queensland. These include supported accommodation, in-home support, day programs, social support groups, community engagement and skills development programs.

Today, Lutheran Services provides care, support and accommodation for older people, young people and their families, people living with disability or mental illness, and ‘It showcases all families experiencing domestic violence and hardship. The organisation is a major ABILITIES and presence in the many urban, regional and rural communities it serves. develops new

The disability support initiatives are complemented by an array of creative engagement programs – activities and projects that promote personal development, wellbeing, collaboration and community. One such example is a mixed-ability cross-cultural performance project called ‘Confusion Inclusion’ – an innovative and ambitious idea that yielded spectacular results.

As a diaconal ministry of the LCA’s understandings Queensland District, Lutheran Services exists to serve, bringing Christian faith of disabilit y.’ and love to life. As stated on its website, the organisation ‘walks together with The project brought together performers congregations, individuals and communities to tend to from two disability services on opposite sides of the human need in the spirit of Christian love and service’. world – the Lutheran Services Keystone Centre in Logan, and Popeye from Nagoya in Japan. Employing music, Lutheran Services, through its previous incarnations, dance and storytelling, Confusion Inclusion sought to established workshops, accommodation and support ‘build a bridge from confusion to inclusion’. After much services for people living with disability and mental illness in the early 1970s. Many of these initiatives were the first planning and rehearsal, the performers gave a public

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Far left and bottom right: Lutheran Services’ Keystone Crew performs in ‘Confusion Inclusion’ at Butterbox Theatre in Logan, Queensland. Left: The Keystone Crew takes part in ‘Hip Hop Inclusion’ at Logan Youth Festival. Bottom left: Boden Nicholson, left, from Lutheran Services, with Keystone Centre clients, says they are ‘the light of our workplace’.

show at Butterbox Theatre at Logan between Brisbane and the Gold Coast. It lit up the theatre. The audience cheered and sang along as the grinning Keystone Crew ‘busted’ their moves.

The project has inspired the spinoff ‘Hip Hop Inclusion’ – a community dance project bringing together mixedability performers from Lutheran Services’ youth and disability centres, high schools and other community organisations. The project is being developed through workshops with professional hip hop dancers.

These projects have attracted support from far and wide – from local government to Japanese enterprise. Funding is now being sought for the Keystone members to make a reciprocal visit to Japan in 2020.

Keystone’s Boden Nicholson says inclusion is central to the projects: ‘It’s a great community effort in the true spirit of inclusion, where we strive to make the world a more accessible place for all. And what a great experience! For those in the audience, it’s a wonderful show. For those performing, it’s the opportunity of a lifetime.’

Confusion Inclusion provided Keystone participant Matthew the opportunity to try new things, develop new skills and make new connections. ‘It was my first time on stage’, Matthew beams. ‘I loved dancing to the songs.

The Japanese dancers were great and are good friends.

I can’t wait to dance on stage again.’

Natalija Pearn is part of the Lutheran Services creative programs team, which she says is all about engagement: ‘We oversee a wide variety of creative lifestyle activities and projects for our different sites and participants. That can range from performance and dance to music and visual art, for anyone from young people to those in aged care, as well as people living with disability.

‘It sounds like a lot of lighthearted fun, but it’s serious work that delivers tangible benefits. With something like Hip Hop Inclusion … it showcases all abilities and develops new understandings of disability.’

Boden says the disability support programs that community care organisations provide are invaluable.

‘The support we provide for people living with disability and their families makes a very real difference – for many people, in many ways, every day’, he says. ‘We build capabilities. We help families. We strengthen communities. It’s part of the bigger picture of helping those we serve to pursue the lives they hope for, and the communities we are part of to thrive.

‘It’s more than just a job. It’s an opportunity to do meaningful work with likeminded people – the kind of work I’m passionate about. Our clients are the light of our workplace and make every day unique and interesting.’

For more information, go to www.lutheranservices.org.au

WALKING WITH THOSE

SEEKING REFUGE

by HELEN LOCKWOOD There are 65 million people across the world seeking refuge. People who have been forced to flee conflict and oppression and who can’t go home. Some reach the relative safety of a refugee camp, others continue to struggle to find a place of safety and many die.

A very small proportion of those 65 million people come to Australia and New Zealand.

Most of them carry the effects of trauma through war, dislocation and witnessing the deaths of family and friends. But they also come with hope for safety and a new life.

How are these people received by us? What are we doing as members of the Christian community and as part of our Australian and New Zealand societies to welcome the most recent wave of new arrivals?

These questions are challenging for us as individuals and for individual churches. The National Council of Churches of Australia formed the Australian Churches Refugee Taskforce (ACRT) to provide a way of combining the efforts of churches and church agencies in providing advocacy and support for new arrivals.

ACRT bases its work on the understanding that we are all created in the image of God and so lead lives that reflect love of our neighbour. Living out the Christian