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
MARCH 2020
Trust in the Lord and don’t lean on your own understanding.
VOL 54 N02
Print Post Approved PP100003514
P ROVERBS 3: 5
PARENTING
stresses & joys
LUTHERAN
CHURCH OF AUSTRALIA
Where it all began
EDITORIAL
Editor Lisa McIntosh p 08 8267 7300 m 0409 281 703 e lisa.mcintosh@lca.org.au
All Saints’ Church – otherwise known as the Castle Church – in Wittenberg is often on the itinerary of Lutheran visitors to Germany due to its famed door which hosted Martin Luther’s 95 Theses in 1517. Ben Gargett, along with daughters Abbie, Mikayla and Jemma and his wife Amanda, made sure to take a reminder of the Lutheran Church at home with him during a stop at the tourist hotspot on a recent visit to Europe. The family worships at St Paul’s at Box Hill in suburban Melbourne.
Executive Editor Linda Macqueen p 08 8267 7300 e linda.macqueen@lca.org.au
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DESIGN & PRINT Design & Layout Elysia McEwen
People like YOU bring love to life Helen Williams St John’s Tea Tree Gully SA Operations officer Enjoys time with family and friends, being a grandma, and beading Fav text: Proverbs 3:5–6
Printer Openbook Howden
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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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Caleb Hoklas Immanuel Novar Gardens SA Secondary school teacher Enjoys spending time with family, and playing and watching football Fav text: Matthew 7:7–12
Gabbi Bishop Bethlehem Morley WA Student and casual worker at Woolworths Enjoys learning, cooking, baking, training Poppi (pictured), and Dad’s (Pastor Matt Bishop) sermons. Fav text: Isaiah 43:1–3a Surprise someone you know with their photo in The Lutheran. Lutheran. Send us a good-quality photo, their name and details (congregation, occupation, what they enjoy doing, favourite text) and your contact details.
March EDITOR'S
let ter
Special features
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I do know, however, from having been a daughter and granddaughter, how vital the roles of parents and grandparents are in the nurture of young minds and bodies, the development of young personalities and the formation of faith in children. I was incredibly blessed growing up to have wonderful mentors, examples, witnesses and guides. And I know that many people who have not had children, or who have lost children, whether by death, adoption, abortion, or other causes of separation, may carry great sadness. For most parents, theirs is a weighty responsibility and is often not easy. It can be frustrating and end-of-the-tether stuff sometimes. In some families, these occasions can outweigh the situations of joy, even though being a parent is a God-given and biblically honoured vocation. While you can find an operation manual or instructional video on the internet to fix almost any malfunctioning model of any electrical device, there is no book or website that tells you exactly what to do when parenting gets really, really tough.
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Sharing the joys and difficulties
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A grand – but not easy – vocation
As I don’t want to be the proverbial unmarried marriage counsellor, I won’t pretend to know what it’s like to be a parent and write about the stresses and joys of the role. Sure, I have had sole care responsibility of children as aunty, godmother, Sunday school teacher and older cousin, but only for hours, a few days or, at most, a week at a time. I’ve always been able to, as one of our contributors says in this edition, ‘hand them back’. So I’ve seen glimpses of the stresses and joys of parenting, but mostly through the anecdotes of friends and family members who have children.
Parenting – finding the fun
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Regulars Heartland
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Dwelling in God’s word
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#youngSAVEDfree
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Go and Grow
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Going GREYT!
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Reel Life
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The inside story
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Directory
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Your voice
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Notices Prayer calendar
29 & 31 30
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Of course, there are literally thousands of books that purport to offer solutions for weary parents and troubled, disobedient children. But while they may contain tried and tested advice and sound sociological reasoning, there is no one-size-fits-all remedy. Each situation, each family and each child is different. As with many life stages or happenings, our Christian faith does not guarantee us freedom from pain, sadness or stress when it comes to parenting. Instead, Jesus promises us to be with us in the tough times as well as the ecstatic ones. He pleads with us to lay our burdens on him. He counsels us to be still and dwell in his presence.
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In this edition, we are blessed by the words of parents and grandparents who have experienced the stresses and the joys of parenting. The lessons they share from their journeys in caregiving can encourage us any time we have the responsibility to care for children and young people.
Lisa
Our cover: istock.com The Lutheran M A R C H 2 0 2 0
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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
RE V JOHN HENDERSON
Bishop Lutheran Church of Australia
LYRIC S HUMBLY LE AD US TO THE L AMB ‘Just as I am, without one plea but that your blood was shed for me, and that you would my Saviour be, O Lamb of God, I come.’ (Written in 1836 by Charlotte Elliott 1789–1871 Lutheran Hymnal with Supplement 335, Together in Song 584 or find it online at hymnal.net or YouTube) In the early 1800s, Charlotte Elliott led a privileged life among the London social set. Her father was an academic, her brothers were Church of England priests, and her grandfather had been prominent during the Christian revival that swept across England in the 1700s. In the early 1820s, Elliott suffered from an illness which left her with a permanent physical disability. She turned to Christ and devoted her life to writing poetry, editing Christian journals and composing about 150 hymns.
SU CH U N PR ETENTI O US , H U M B LE SU R R EN D ER IS A H A LLM A R K O F CH R ISTI A N S PI R ITUA LIT Y.
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Just as I am is one of her best-known hymns, using the tune composed by A H Brown in 1877. In the mid–1900s Billy Graham used it extensively in his global crusades. It was so popular that in 1973 the LCA included it in the new Lutheran Hymnal. Hymnal. Perhaps we sing it less often today than we used to, but when we do, we still sing it loudly and clearly. It is a true Christian classic which speaks to the heart. It’s one of a small selection from our hymnal that features strong personal piety of a ‘revivalist’ nature. During the Reformation, the reformers introduced hymn singing into worship as a form of teaching the faith. The LCA’s hymnal committee, therefore, generally chose doctrinal or scriptural hymns, often translated from German. Just as I am, am, while faithful to Scripture and church doctrine, also contains a deep sense of personal piety. The word ‘I’, for instance, is constantly repeated, as in the words that end every verse, ‘O Lamb of God, I come’. Lutherans correctly emphasise that God comes to us, rather than the other way around. God became flesh and lived among us, so it is God who finds us, not we who find God. Even so, we know that in our daily lives, through myriad choices, we will do things that either lead us toward faith or away from it – such as deciding to love our neighbour even though we
might not like them or getting up and going to church on Sunday even when we just don’t feel like it. Each verse of Just as I am reveals God’s mercy to us despite our failure to love him. Like all the best Christian songs, it is a prayer: not boasting or arrogant or proud, but humble, gracefilled and Christ-centred. Each line throbs with the genuine heartache and longing of a broken life. It does not wallow in misery, but finds hope in simple surrender, leading to Christ. ‘Now to be yours, and yours alone, O Lamb of God, I come.’ Such unpretentious, humble surrender is a hallmark of Christian spirituality. Our lives are fragile. Our only security is in the life to come, in Jesus Christ. In her hymn, however, Elliott did not use the title ‘Christ’ or the name ‘Jesus’. Instead, she chose the ‘Lamb of God’, a descriptive phrase that emphasises Christ’s humility, servanthood and willing sacrifice for our sins. By choosing this name, Elliott leads us away from indulgent self-pity or any sense of personal spiritual superiority, which are both forms of pride. Instead, she simply teaches us to sing, ‘O Lamb of God, I come’. What better way is there to spend our days on earth and prepare for the world to come, especially as we journey through this Lenten season?
PA R E N T I N G
– finding the fun
BY JULIE HAHN
I’d just closed my eyes when I heard a gentle knock on my hospital room door. I was tempted to roll over and tell the nurse, ‘It’s okay. You look after her. I’ll get some sleep’. With two other little ones at home, sleep was not on my agenda. But a midwife had swaddled my new baby so that all I could see of her were two enormous brown eyes that peeped out, blinked at me and drilled straight to my heart. There was no going back to the nursery for her. I was in love with my new baby girl. But less than two years later, after I’d retrieved her from climbing to the top shelf of the pantry and cleaned up the 400th mess for the morning, I found myself in a fed-up heap on the floor. Sobbing.
As I lay there at the lowest place I’d ever been, a verse of Scripture came wafting into my consciousness. ‘Be still and know that I am God’. In my heart, it was translated as ‘I’ve been waiting for you to let me! You’ve been relying on yourself. You have been fighting so hard to stay in control of everything. No wonder you’re exhausted. Why don’t you let me take over?’ It would make a great story if God sent angels to rescue me and clean the house, do the washing, make meals, drive to the kids’ schools, pick up their dad from work, clean up drips on the floor, read 52 storybooks a day, clean sticky fingers and faces, and answer the threeyear-old’s 300 ‘whys’.
What happened between the moment I fell in love with my child and the moment I found myself on the floor, exhausted, depressed and defeated?
But angels – the heavenly variety with wings – didn’t arrive to take away my work. Something much better happened. God showed me how to rely on his strength – and not my own. On that first day, on the radio, in the book I was reading and in the words of a friend, I heard the words, ‘God is faithful’.
Life and motherhood is what happened. I’d given everything I had, and still, being a mother seemed to require more.
During the next few days, weeks and months, as I made it from one difficult moment to the next, I recited, ‘God is faithful’.
Screaming. ‘GOD! I CAN’T DO THIS ANYMORE!’
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My eyes opened up to the ‘angels’ with skin on: the women at church, my friends, other mums, books about parenting, voices on the radio, my family at the other end of the telephone, and my poor husband who’d been filling in the gaps. Instead of continuing to feel I needed to be the expert, I opened up my stubborn head to the wisdom of others only too willing to offer loving, helpful advice and care. I learnt how to love in new and different ways. The new ways worked. Ours used to be a ‘No’ house. If the children asked for something, the answer was ‘No’. If they reached out to touch something, they were reprimanded with ‘No!’ The children each expressed that life was not as it should be. The five-year-old took control of everything – and everybody. The three-year-old grabbed attention any way he could. The baby became an expert tantrum-thrower. I thought I appeared calm on the outside, but on the inside I was screaming, stressed out and miserable. Devoted and meticulous, my husband attended to all the jobs for which I had neither the energy nor inclination. If anybody had asked him, he may have answered that he could not remember the last time he had laughed with his family.
When preschool ended that day, for the first time ever I squatted down and held my arms out as wide as I could. My children spread out their arms and ran into mine. It restored the smile that had gone missing. From then on, at every possible opportunity, I watched people like that preschool teacher in action, and then I’d go home and practise. We read books and listened to people who had a much gentler and more enjoyable approach to parenting – with better results. Our house gradually became a ‘Yes’ house. Saying ‘Yes’ didn’t mean that we gave up ‘discipline’ but rather, changed the way we disciplined. We had confused discipline with punishment. We learnt that to discipline means to ‘train’; that is to show how. We learnt to show our children how to touch things gently – placing their little fingers in ours and helping them to touch things, such as books, china and baby brothers and sisters … gently. When we responded with a ‘Yes, that’s right. Gentle’, we found we were more likely to see that behaviour repeated.
It’s not surprising that the joy of parenting had gone from our daily lives.
Others helped us see that children whose needs are being met are much more eager to please their parents. When given small, manageable tasks and when they know that the rest of the family ‘team’ relies on them to do them, children tend to rise to the expectation.
One day, our children’s preschool teacher took me aside and asked, ‘Miss Julie, is there a reason I don’t
Nobody starts out as a parent wanting to scream at their child – or at the other parent. But what we find
GO D S H OW ED M E H OW TO R ELY O N H IS strength – A N D N OT MY OW N . 6
hear you saying ‘Yes’ to your children?’ I didn’t have an answer. But that question changed our family’s life path.
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ourselves doing in moments of stress is often exactly what we promised ourselves we would never do. Having worked with our own family and hundreds of others, I’ve learnt that when parents know about other options and practise them, they use them. Their parenting becomes calmer and their family becomes more responsive. We learnt through watching other families and through our own mistakes, that children don’t need perfect parents. They need parents who know about grace – who know how to give without expecting anything in return. Grace in parenting is recognising that simply by being, they are likely to get into trouble – that’s real life. But grace is about picking them up, dusting them off and loving them anyway. Over the past 20 years, I’ve been observing, studying and practising practical ways for parents to be more effective parents. I’ve taught parenting classes and mentored families. I’ve watched families make small changes, which have resulted in big differences. If you’re not sure where to begin, play is a great place. Try turning off the electrical gizmos. Bring out balloons, balls, bubbles or Play-Doh. Take the family outside to look at the sky, listen to magpies, swing on swings, or drive Matchbox cars in the dirt. In most cultures, the recipe for a healthy life is a balance of mental, physical, spiritual and social aspects. The Bible speaks about this and gives Jesus’ life as an example: ‘And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man’ (Luke 2:52). Many parents of young children are physically tired. Some people miss social interaction with other adults. Sometimes illness, depression and circumstances mean ensuring that a home’s atmosphere is not toxic seems impossible. Beyond Blue, Lifeline and other community organisations are great places to start for ideas on finding support. Talk to your GP or your pastor to find local resources, too. Often parents ignore the spiritual aspect of their lives. I found that the changing demands of being a mum sidetracked my own spiritual journey. By joining a craft group of Christian women, I was able to talk through my frustrations. The older women helped me to know that they, too, had struggled. They helped me understand that Jesus is just as loving towards struggling, blearyeyed mums as with anyone else. And during the journey, Jesus will never, ever leave me. Jesus is faithful.
W E LE A R NT TH RO U G H WATCH I N G OTH ER FA M I LI ES A N D TH RO U G H O U R OW N
mistakes, TH AT CH I LD R EN DO N ’ T N EED PER FECT
PA R ENTS . TH EY N EED PA R ENTS W H O K N OW A BO UT
grace.
It’s now more than 20 years since I was in that screaming heap. With new skills and knowledge, and an open heart and mind to the wisdom of others, parenting has been much more bearable – dare I say, enjoyable. We have certainly had our ‘moments’ but, generally, we have a lot of fun together and keep in touch when we’re apart. As our children have grown, we’ve realised what the preschool teacher and others did all those years ago. They taught us how to love. They taught us that to love means to make a positive decision towards another person – no matter what they do, just because they are who they are. And they taught us about grace: that our kids aren’t perfect and neither are we – but God loves us anyway. Every now and then, a little verse comes wafting back into my consciousness, ‘Be still and know that I am God’. And I’m reminded to keep my eyes open for angels with skin on, and that God is and always will be … faithful.
Julie Hahn is a member of The Ark, Salisbury Lutheran Church, mother of four adult children and the wife of a scientist. She spends her time writing, encouraging and finding the perfect cup of coffee. She plans to release her first book ‘I’m too busy being a parent to read a parenting book’ soon. This story is an excerpt from the Lutheran Media booklet Parenting Finding the Fun. Fun. To order a copy, phone 08 8267 7300, email luthmedia@lca.org.au or visit the website at www.lutheranmedia.org.au
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Sharing the joys
A N D D I F F I C U LT I ES B Y N I C K M AT T I S K E
You may have seen the TV ad where a dad makes a cheese and ham sandwich for his son, but the son says, ‘That’s not how Mum makes it’. The dad has to flip the sandwich over so it’s now ham and cheese rather than cheese and ham. The ad gives some idea of the negotiations involved in parenting, though it would be nice if all parenting problems were resolved so easily. Parenting is not just about dealing with children; there’s a lot of head-scratching over work-life balance, sharing housework and dealing with different expectations. My wife stayed home with our son for a year or so after he was born, then we both worked part-time, sharing care. Then changing, unstable work circumstances meant that I ended up doing more of the stay-at-home parenting. This wasn’t, let’s say, carefully planned out – it just happened. And it brings complications, some trivial, such as me changing my son’s sheets right after my wife did because I didn’t realise she had already done it, others less so.
It’s easy to be envious of men with full-time careers, not so much for the income or even the simplicity, but because of the security, although I realise that these days job security is a diminishing entity. While my work, though not particularly high-flying, allows me to be involved in child-raising, the instability and complexity do create some anxiety. This is exacerbated by a lack of grandparents and other family members in close proximity to share the load. Women especially say to me that I won’t regret spending more time with my son, but there is a price to pay. In our society, being a stay-at-home dad is still something of an anomaly. As journalist Annabel Crabb points out in her recent perceptive 2019 Quarterly Essay ‘Men at Work’, women aren’t generally asked why they want to stay home to raise their kids – it’s self-evident. But there is suspicion over why dads would choose kids over a career, perhaps the flipside of suspicion over why women aim to be leaders, and our society has not properly worked out yet how men can juggle work and parenting. (Crabb also points out how – no surprise – northern Europe is way ahead of us. A German friend of mine recently said that this is why in Germany you don’t see the Australian backyard party stereotype of the men standing around drinking beer and the women in the kitchen cooking.)
Photo: Magda Bors
I benefit from living in a not-particularly-salubrious, multicultural suburb where people privilege richness of life over monetary richness, so there is a certain understanding here. Community is important. Nuclear families can be dangerous because bottled up in one household, problems can go … well, nuclear. Because my son is sports-mad, I have been drawn more into sporting clubs and have been pleasantly surprised by the community one finds there. It’s a generalisation that men talk about deeper issues less and perhaps need to be particularly attentive to the threat of isolation, while women tend to get together easier for playdates and the like, but it’s helpful for all parents to find other parents with the same problems or to see other parents with different problems. It’s a way of informally workshopping issues and keeping things in perspective. Parenting is not something easily explained to people without kids. It’s like falling in love or eating very
Left: Nick Mattiske, right, with his wife Kirstie Jenkin and son Gus. Opposite page: Gus with Nick.
PA R ENTI N G IS BOTH Photo: Magda Bors
HARD AND
joyous
A N D MY PERSO N A L
STEEP LE A R N I N G CU RV E H AS B EEN A BO UT LIV I N G W ITH BOTH TH E J OY A N D
hot chillies – description comes a distant second to experiencing it and there’s only so much planning one can do. Much of the time it’s just what we have to do; you can’t box them up and return them in the mail. Parenting is both hard and joyous and my personal steep learning curve has been about living with both the joy and the difficulties and realising that neither me as a father nor my child are perfect or dreadful. Living in a household together and the effort that goes into feeding a child both physically and spiritually results in a degree of tension, though the more time I spend with my son, the more depth of understanding I gain. I also notice his growth in various areas, from recording songs he wrote, to thinking about what goes on in church worship, to seeing the way he looks after his younger cousins. More time with my son also means he can learn from me, even from my mistakes, of which there are plenty. The encouragement of a Christian perspective in my son, instilling notions of right and wrong, encouraging care for others, the cultivation of priorities, the questioning of things, as well as enthusiasm for physical activity, nature and art, becomes interwoven with everyday activities. And, pleasantly, my son’s moral maturing means the instruction goes both ways. I now tend to give more to homeless people and think twice before buying that donut. I must stress that my wife and I share parenting, and although I take the bulk of time, I am not sure overall that the parenting is equally shared. My wife still texts me on her way to work about lunchboxes and permission slips. It’s a common experience that when men and women share paid work and parenting, women often simply increase their overall workload, and there’s always a challenge, as our society is driven
TH E
difficulties
A N D R E A LISI N G TH AT
N EITH ER M E AS A FATH ER N O R MY CH I LD A R E PER FECT O R D R E A D FU L .
further down the road of job instability and both parents needing paid work to make ends meet, to ensure that women aren’t especially burdened and stressed. In the church, we can and do help in various practical ways, especially where, with a mobile population, there are not wider family networks for support. It would also be good not to mistake social convention for divine sanction. And in the church, when we talk about gender roles as we have been recently, it would be helpful if we didn’t then assume that gender automatically predisposes temperament, ambition and skills, and we instead nurture the flowering of individuals. As Annabel Crabb says, aside from giving birth and breastfeeding, men are capable of the jobs parenting requires us to do and being allowed to do so enriches both men’s lives and our society. Even if the women need to check up on us some of the time. Nick Mattiske is a member of St Paul’s Lutheran Church at Box Hill in suburban Melbourne where, among other things, he and his son play in the church band. The Lutheran M A R C H 2 0 2 0
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