APRIL 2013
Print Post Approved PP536155/00031 VOL 47 NO 3
NATIONAL MAGAZINE OF THE LUTHERAN CHURCH OF AUSTRALIA
‘Wake up sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you’ [Eph 5:14] Vol 47 No3 P73
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Pastor Nick and Kirby Mullen encourage their daughter Lilly to love The Lutheran too. The Mullen family live in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA, where Nick is associate pastor at St Matthews Lutheran Church. They have been receiving the magazine for the last five years.
As the magazine of the Lutheran Church of Australia (incorporating the Lutheran Church of New Zealand), 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. The Lutheran is a member of the Australasian Religious Press Association and as such subscribes to its journalistic and editorial codes of conduct.
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CONTACTS Acting Editor Rosie Schefe 197 Archer St, North Adelaide SA 5006 phone 0427 827 441 email rosie.schefe@lca.org.au Executive Editor Linda Macqueen 3 Orvieto St, Bridgewater SA 5155 phone 08 8339 5178 email linda.macqueen@lca.org.au
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Phillip Hohnberg
Laura Mirtschin
Delton Schiller
St Pauls, Broken Hill NSW
Bethlehem, Tabor Vic
Retired
Student
Christ Church, Murray Bridge SA
Enjoys exercising, learning German, piano
Enjoys soccer, swimming, surfing, running, music and farm work
Fav text: Mark 16:16
Fav text: Psalm 27:1
Administrator Enjoys lawn bowls, football, family, eating Fav text: Rev 2:10c
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The Lutheran April 2013
Vol 47 No3 P74
I’m worried. In this time of celebrating 175 years since Lutherans arrived in Australia, who are we unwittingly excluding from our party?
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22 Surgery for the soul
COLUMNS 04 From the President
I may have excluded more I’m not aware of (does Lyall have a Lutheran convict stashed in the Archives, I wonder?).
You know the game: rock up to almost any Lutheran church in Australia or New Zealand and, after you’ve given your name, the next question is almost inevitably, ‘Are you related to …?’ Lutheran Happy Families! Makes me feel at home—all nice, warm and snuggly. But what does it feel like to an outsider? Someone with a different skin-colour, language, someone who’s younger/older/ differently educated, who grew up in the city/country/overseas? I’m not having a go at congregations and the welcomes they offer—most of us are great at welcoming—I’m having a go at the way we automatically begin sorting the ‘US’ from the ‘THEM’. It’s a world mindset: tribalism. When we aren’t dividing along lines of age, race, religion, gender or socio-economic status, we are dividing along lines of footy codes, musical taste, political affiliation, opinions about climate change … It’s human nature to want to know whom to trust—‘US’—and whom to fear—‘THEM’.
05 Getting messy 07 Messy church
You see, I know that even my first paragraph already excludes two groups. I’ve disregarded all indigenous Lutherans (no, I’m not arguing the semantics of that statement here) and also those who arrived at Kangaroo Island in 1837—just a few months too early.
One of the greatest strengths of the Lutheran Church of Australia is the common history that binds so many of us. It is also one of our greatest weaknesses, leaving little room for ‘outsiders’ to squeeze in.
FEATURES
09 Rhythms of Grace 12 Little Church
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13 Inside Story 16 Letters
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18 Stepping Stones 20 Notices/Directory 21 Reel Life 25 Bookmarks 26 Heart and Home 28 World in Brief 30 Coffee Break
And because it’s a world mindset, we do most of this without thinking about it. We make statements or use words that alienate others—sometimes those we are praying hardest to reach or help. Before I get run out of town for being a puppet of the ‘Political Correctness Squad’, a reminder: God is not a tribalist. ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life’ (John 3:16). Not Jews only, not Lutherans only, not white people or those earning more than $100,000 a year. The world! Whoever believes! As a wise friend reminded me recently, ‘When God looks at the world, he sees only us. No them.’ Enjoy this year, with all its reminders of our church’s place in Australian history. But look at those around you—even the ones you’re a bit scared of—and remember: Jesus died and rose for all of us. And enjoy the party—I look forward to seeing you there!
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The real tower is on a lone hill called Calvary, and the tower itself is a cruel cross. The new ‘Valley’ is an open tomb.
‘Silicon Valley’ need not be our new tower of Babel, where we rely on ourselves and on self-sufficient cleverness for our future. Much of our amazing communication and information technology has been developed in one valley in the United States of America. In Old Testament times, in the land of Shinar, a self-reliant people said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves’ (Gen 11:4). It was at that first communication tower, where messages became confused and people scattered, that God showed that anything ‘babelistic’ would come under his judgement. There is only one God. Our ability to tweet, blog and connect with each other across the globe can be the servant of the one God when we use it to announce to the world what he has done in the Risen Christ. God in Christ, sacrificed and raised from death for us, is the hope that can now be spread in every language and to every person on earth.
We’ve updated and improved the LCA eNews system. To subscribe to the LCA President’s Page (or any other eNews list), you no longer send an email to the IT officer. Now it’s much simpler: go to www.enews.lca.org.au, enter your email address and select the list(s) to which you wish to subscribe. All eNews emails have an unsubscribe link as well as a link that allows you to manage
Let our ‘towers’ be communication towers, bringing life to a dying people. Let us not be deluded into thinking that tower-building is all about ‘making a name’ for ourselves. The real tower is on a lone hill called Calvary, and the tower itself is a cruel cross. The new ‘Valley’ is an open tomb. That is the word—the message of God offering forgiveness, mercy and faith for a turning away from ourselves—that can bring hope. ‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life’ (John 6:68).
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How special it would be if that message in cyberspace met the response, ‘He is risen indeed!’, from every nation on earth, separated by language or not.
the LCA President’s Page.
Rev Dr Mike Semmler President Lutheran Church of Australia
God’s language is universal and he has something to say. Through the risen Lord Jesus he says, ‘Follow me!’ (John 21:22). Gifted with faith in the Christ of the resurrection, the disciples went into their world with a mission that seemed hopeless. At a morning fishing venture those men—having caught nothing all night—in the presence of the Risen Lord caught more fish of every kind than would normally have broken their net. A strong message from Jesus: ‘You will not be able to do it by yourselves’. Neither they nor we have use for babelistic self-salvation. Christ is with us always. Crucified, dead, buried—but risen on the third day. Death did not stop him. As we live in him, it will not stop us either. We carry the words of eternal life.
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The Lutheran April 2013
Vol 47 No3 P76
Picture: courtesy Messy Church on Swanport
by Rosie Schefe
Life is messy —but rather than cleaning it up, Lucy Moore believes it is important to celebrate the fact, even in worship. ‘Messy’… as she says it, Lucy Moore’s voice drops to underline the word as a newsreader would. She smiles and it is obvious that she relishes the whole shape, sound and feel of the word.
Looking at declining churches with
Lucy is the public face of Messy Church, arguably the best known outcome of the Fresh Expressions movement that began spreading from the Anglican Church around the turn of the 21st century.
were, rather than try to bring them into
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ageing memberships and concerned at the plight of a whole generation who had become disconnected from the church, Fresh Expressions sought to connect with people where they established congregations. ‘Traditional answers to how to make Christians won’t work anymore’, Lucy says.
Messy Church began in England in 2004, growing out of the suburban Anglican congregation of St Wilfrid’s in Portsmouth. It began as a way of reaching out with the gospel to families, using the church plant of St Wilfrid’s and a core group of volunteers dedicated to creating a community where children and adults of all ages would feel comfortable. ‘Most people attending Messy Church aren’t yet Christians. They have already The Lutheran April 2013
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Picture: Rosie Schefe
They tell us they
come because they have fun and because it is lovely to come along as a family.
‘You can come as you are. You don’t have to pretend to be perfect or be something you are not’: Lucy Moore is a founding member of Messy Church, writing a number of books on multi-age worship and creativity. been disconnected from the faith for a generation’, Lucy said. ‘They tell us they come because they have fun and because it is lovely to come along as a family. ‘You can come as you are. You don’t have to pretend to be perfect or be something you are not. For many Messy Church becomes a community where they can belong and be themselves’, she said. Whatever the location, Messy Churches generally follow the same pattern as the original: described in Lucy Moore’s book Messy Church 2: chill, create, celebrate and chew! Held once a month, they begin with a short time of settling in (chill) before an hour-long session of crafts, games and creative activities related to the theme of the day. Each of these create activities has a volunteer leader, whose job it is to monitor the activity and talk to children and adults about what they are doing and how it relates to the theme. Activities are designed to explore different aspects, to prepare for worship and to engage thinking in unique sensory ways. Following the activities, a worship time (celebrate), lasting about 20 minutes, helps to tie the theme and activities together. It follows a simple format of entry and singing in the worship space, 6
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bringing God’s word (often through storytelling or using resources and ideas from the craft sessions), prayer in response to the word, and a blessing. When worship is over, the whole group sits down together to a meal (chew!), which has usually been prepared by volunteers working during the activity session. The meal, which began almost as an afterthought—‘who wants to go home and cook tea at the end of this?’—has become one of the most important aspects of Messy Church, cementing that sense of welcome and belonging. ‘The early church majored in hospitality’, Lucy says, ‘and even today, the Anglican Church in Baghdad is feeding thousands. Now, with the English recession, we are hearing that in some places Messy Church may be providing the only hot meal some families enjoy in a whole month.’ In the nine years since Messy Church began in Portsmouth, it has spread, with 1686 groups now registered and bringing the gospel to approximately 175,000 people who have no other connection with church. The actual number of groups and individuals may be significantly more than registrations indicate. ‘People have got the concept; it’s worked for them and they’ve passed it on. They have gossiped it to each other’, Lucy said.
From the United Kingdom Messy Church has spread to South Africa, Switzerland, Spain, the United States of America, Republic of Ireland, Germany, Denmark, Australia (largely facilitated through the Uniting Church), New Zealand, Canada, Poland, Norway. ‘And there are rumours of Messy Churches in other places’, Lucy said. It has transcended denominational boundaries, with Messy Churches growing out from all mainstream churches, including Roman Catholic congregations. This has been helped by the essentially organic nature of the concept, with groups encouraged to experiment, to create for themselves, to share with other Messy Churches and reflect their own unique place and community. ‘We need to listen to the community, to serve the community, to be church for them and to value them as church also’, Lucy says, warning that congregations should not expect that a Messy Church program will ever attract people through their doors on Sunday mornings. ‘It is about taking church out to them, where they are, not expecting them to come to us. So one of the big challenges we face is to discern what Messy Church can contribute to the whole church’, she says. Lucy Moore visited Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland in February as a guest of Australian Messy Churches and the Uniting Church. She was a keynote speaker at the Invigor8 Conference in Adelaide on Saturday, 23 February, and also spoke in the Barossa Valley on Sunday, 24 February.
For more information on Messy Church, visit www.messychurch.org.uk Lucy Moore’s Messy Church books are published by the Bible Reading Fellowship and are available in Australia through MediaCom Education Inc: www.mediacom.org.au or www.mediacom.org.au/messy Vol 47 No3 P78
What would a Lutheran Messy Church look like? In Murray Bridge the community is finding out for themselves.
by Rosie Schefe It is noisy, it is energetic, it is active and it is messy—and the families who come along every month love it like this. ‘Messy Church on Swanport’ is probably the first Lutheran Messy Church in Australia, based in the South Australian town of Murray Bridge—which already has two Lutheran churches, a Sudanese Lutheran congregation, a Lutheran college and kindergarten. So why on earth would Murray Bridge need another worshipping group? For sisters Jodie Wegener and Debra Colley and their mother Gloria Pohl, the answer is basic. ‘We’re trying to get our generation back to church—if they wanted what the church was offering on a Sunday morning, they would still be coming’, Jodie said. ‘Families were bringing babies to be baptised, and then we wouldn’t see them again. They would promise to bring their children up in the faith, Vol 47 No3 P79
but for all kinds of reasons that wasn’t happening. ‘Whether it was the style of worship, or whether they felt their parenting skills were being judged when young children were noisy—or whatever the reason— these families were missing out on hearing about Jesus’ love for them. ‘We want to make church fun: to make it interesting and engaging and provide a place where they can all come as family’, she said. Debra and Jodie first heard about the Messy Church movement in February 2012, when they attended Invigor8, the SA/NT District’s annual Child, Youth and Family Ministry conference. The model sounded ideal for what they wanted to do in Murray Bridge. It took a few months of talking, but Gloria, Jodie and Debra gathered a team (totalling about ten volunteers), and with the support of pastors Tim Koch (Christ Church) and Greg Page (Holy Cross), they began spreading the word about Messy Church.
The first Messy Church on Swanport was held in the John Dohler Hall, adjacent to Christ Church, in June, the second in August. Since November it has been held monthly, mostly on the third Sunday. ‘We start at 4pm on Sunday afternoon and get straight into activities which help to tell the theme or story of the day’, Debra said. ‘After an hour of activities (mostly crafts and games) we have a 20-minute celebration time of worship, and then we eat together, finishing around 6pm’, she said. Attendances are generally around 40 people of all ages. Those who are under 16 must be accompanied by an adult, as it is not a child-minding service; it’s church. ‘We decided to take that option because not every adult had a child or grandchild to bring, but they were wanting that intergenerational contact’, Gloria said. Messy Church was promoted through Concordia Kindergarten, through letters to all families who had children baptised The Lutheran April 2013
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Photo: Rosie Schefe
Photo: courtesy Messy Church on Swanport
Left: Some activities are energetic, some engage people’s creative minds —all are focussed on the gospel. Above: Jodie Wegener (left), her sister Debra Colley and mother Gloria Pohl (right) were keen to share their Messy Church experiences with Messy Church founder Lucy Moore (second from left)
After the first one, kids were talking about it themselves. at Holy Cross and Christ Church in the past five years, by encouraging congregation members to invite families along, and through the primary schoolaged kids club, Bridge Kidz, based at Unity College. ‘After the first one kids were talking about it themselves; we barely needed to bring the subject up’, Jodie said. And all three planners point to instances where they have seen the Holy Spirit leading them and answering prayers. ‘For the first Messy Church we asked people to contribute towards our expenses, and the contributions totalled almost exactly the same as the costs’, Jodie said. ‘We (volunteers) have a prayer circle before people arrive, and one of our volunteers was praying that God would help her son to allow his wife and children to come along. ‘It was amazing—they were first to arrive and he was first through our door. The family have been enthusiastic supporters ever since, even apologising to us when they were away and couldn’t be there in January’, she said. 8
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The group have faced challenges to this new ministry, not least because Messy Church is best experienced rather than described. ‘We have a vision, but it’s hard to share with people who haven’t been there’, Debra said. ‘At first our pastor didn’t know what it was; he thought Messy Church could replace one morning service a month (it can’t do that) and that he would be running it as an extra program. ‘But Messy Church is not run by the pastors; we run it, as a team’, said Debra. Volunteers are sometimes hard to come by, and group leaders need to be unaccompanied by their own children so that they can devote time to talking about the theme with all participants. However, the ecumenical nature of Messy Church has opened the possibility of volunteering to people from other denominations. ‘We have also been able to make connections with other Messy Churches through the Uniting Church to find help and support when needed’, Jodie said. ‘It’s been fantastic to be able to spend time with Lucy Moore while she’s been here and meet other people who share our vision.’ Rosie Schefe is acting editor of The Lutheran in 2013 and editor of the SA/NT District’s Together newspaper.
Messy Church depends on a pool of skilled volunteers. The people you really need are those who know how to cook! You need people who are creative. People who can tell stories. People who know something about child development. People who know social work. People who are inspirational in faith themselves. —Lucy Moore Vol 47 No3 P80
Hungry for the feast What kind of group are we when we gather for worship? What does it mean to be God’s assembly, as distinct from any other community group? Lutheran liturgy offers a striking answer: we are a gathering of hungry sinners feasting on God’s forgiveness.
of
grace
Let’s recall what happens when we come together. First, the pastor invites us to confess our sins, with the assurance that none other than our loving God calls us to do so. Traditionally, the liturgy uses the words: ‘Let us draw near to God with a true heart’, echoing the passage in Hebrews where believers are said to ‘have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus’ (Heb 10:19–22). Symbolically, then, we are getting ready to enter God’s sanctuary, God’s holy place, and we dare to do so ‘by the blood of Jesus’.
Speaking in Christ’s name, the pastor forgives unconditionally all who have confessed. What an audacious act! This is no general statement about God’s grace; nor is it simply a prayer for mercy; it is God’s powerful proclamation: ‘I forgive you all your sins’. Indeed, the pastor can dare to utter such words only because Christ himself says: ‘If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven’ (John 20:19–23). Yet in these brief words the entire saving work of Christ embraces us personally: we are cleansed, justified, given peace with God and access to God (Rom 5:1,2; 1 John 1:6–9).
One bite isn’t enough, is it?
In the ebb and flow of liturgy, God is at work, whether we hear him or not.
This is what it means to be God’s assembly! We do not gather as the morally superior or the spiritually advanced, for through confession we die to all the pretensions and distinctions that mark one social group from another. And through absolution God raises a new kind of community, ready to receive God’s blessing and share it with all creation. In fact, coming together like this takes us back to our baptism, where God gathered us into his assembly for the very first time.
Here’s how to get the whole apple. With this merciful invitation, pastor and people pray together an allencompassing, one-size-fits-all prayer of confession, into which all our personal faults can be dumped. Its language is uncompromising, leaving no wiggle room for excuses. Quite bluntly we confess that we have sinned, and that our entire human condition is sinful. In sinning against and neglecting others, we have done no less than assault and abandon our Creator, in whose image all are made. Yet just as boldly we ask for forgiveness, the very purpose of Christ’s ‘holy, innocent sufferings and death’.
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Consider this: Even before the confession and absolution, our service begins with the same words with which we were baptised. And some Lutheran liturgies even replace the confession and absolution with an extended thanksgiving for baptism.
Subscribe online at www.thelutheran.com.au or contact LCA Subscriptions: lutheran.subs@lca.org.au Phone (in Australia) 08 8360 7270 by But confession is only a prelude Phone (outside Australia) +618 8360 7270
Linards Jansons
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to something truly remarkable.
Rev Linards Jansons teaches Liturgy and Worship at Australian Lutheran College. The Lutheran April 2013
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