The Lutheran July 2013

Print Post Approved PP100003514 VOL 47 NO 6

NATIONAL MAGAZINE OF THE LUTHERAN CHURCH OF AUSTRALIA

Vol 47 No6 P218

JULY 2013

The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace [Numbers 6:24-26]

Cover photo: Greg Haar Story: page 10

EDITOR/ADVERTISING phone 0427 827 441 email rosie.schefe@lca.org.au

KEEPING IN TOUCH

SUBSCRIPTIONS phone 08 8360 7270 email lutheran.subs@lca.org.au

www.thelutheran.com.au We Love The Lutheran!

Caleb Nitschke might be only 20 months old, but he already knows good reading when he sees it. Here he enjoys the Bumper Synod Edition on Pindai Beach, New Caledonia.

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.

Caleb’s parents, Simon and Jessica, have been living and working in New Caledonia for the past two years and enjoy receiving The Lutheran each month to help stay in touch with their church family.

Photo: Jessica Nitschke Send us a photograph featuring a recent copy of The Lutheran and you might see it here on page 2.

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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

People like you are salt in your world [ Matt 5:13 ]

National Magazine Committee Greg Hassold, Sarah Hoff-Zweck, Pastor Richard Schwedes, Heidi Smith Design and layout Comissa Fischer Printer Openbook Howden

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The Lutheran July 2013

Vol 47 No6 P219

FEATURES 05 Why bishops?

08 Open letter to the bishops

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22 When love comes to lunch

Change constantly surrounds us—as gradual as the slow stripping of leaves from winter trees, or as sudden as the removal of a prime minister.

Some changes we recognise as good: the birth of a baby, a promotion at work. Other changes we mourn: getting older, dying.

We often fear change, facing the big unknown. Will they like me at my new school? Can I handle the requirements of this job? What will I do if the sky falls in?

But change also brings opportunities: new growth, new skills, new learning and ideas. New ways of doing things.

Even negative changes in our lives and circumstances bring opportunities for growth or learning, testing our strength and ultimately our willingness to fall back on God’s strength.

24 Broken—to serve

COLUMNS

08 10

The psalms are full of reactions to change: prayers calling out for help in trouble, praising God for his blessings and the opportunities he sends. It’s a good place to turn to for inspiration in a time of change.

‘One generation commends your works to another; they tell of your mighty acts. They speak of the glorious splendour of your majesty—and I will meditate on your wonderful works. They tell of the power of your awesome works—and I will proclaim your great deeds. They celebrate your abundant goodness and joyfully sing of your righteousness’ (Psalm 145:4–7).

God is good. He blesses his church with the leaders it needs for the times that we live in. And he gives rest to his faithful followers. Enjoy a long retirement, President Mike!

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04 From the President 12 Reel Life 13 Little Church 14 Inside Story 18 Stepping Stones 20 Notices/Directory

As a church, too, change will come to us, whether we like it or not. A pastor commented to me recently that already, just a month or so after General Convention, he could sense change occurring in the church. Like the sap that will rise back into the branches of the trees when spring returns, new growth will come. But where, how and when—that is what we need to watch out for, and nurture in God’s name.

The farewell for Rev Dr Mike Semmler and the installation of Rev John Henderson as Bishop of the Lutheran Church of Australia are an obvious change-point. Although they share a common faith and confession, these are very different men. So God will use them in different ways. He has blessed the church through Mike Semmler; he will do the same through John Henderson.

10 The Lord bless you and keep you

21 Bookmarks 26 Heart and Home 28 World in Brief 30 Coffee Break

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e m i t t s a l e h t for

It may be a wafer of bread and a sip of wine, but this is a meal in which, according to his word and promise, we eat and drink his actual body and blood.

See you at the Lord’s table!

As my travels around the church will now be much fewer, the next time some of us will meet will be at the Lord’s table in his paradise. That will be on his initiative, by his invitation through grace. He is the Saviour.

Our Lord Jesus Christ has a table also here on earth, where we are invited to come as we are to receive his body and blood. Stripped of our symbols of dissension, our earthly divisions, we come with nothing. And yet we want to bring our personal agendas and false gods and hopes. That shows how unworthy we really are. Still we are taken up in complete fellowship with him.

We eat of the one bread and drink from the one cup in the unity that the Spirit gives, as we pray through our Lord Jesus Christ that all people will worship at his table.

The Lord’s table is no place to make a personal statement or stand on a position. It is a place where there is only one God and where our selfinterests are dealt with. Our bodily posture, whether kneeling or standing, is not as important as our helplessness and our need to be fed. Feeding is not something we can do for ourselves; it requires another to feed us.

At this table the miracle far exceeds that of our Lord catering for the five thousand people, who were so enthralled listening to the Messiah speak that they missed their lunch.

The apostle Paul (1 Corinthians 11:20) names the table we most often call holy communion ‘the Lord’s supper’—a good reminder that it is not ours but the Lord’s. It is his institution and it is centred around his presence. It is Christ who gives himself to us.

For us to be invited to his table is to be in his presence, to receive his offering and his supper.

Rev Dr Mike Semmler President Lutheran Church of Australia

It may be a wafer of bread and a sip of wine, but this is a meal in which, according to his word and promise, we eat and drink his actual body and blood—his life for us, that he now lives in us and we in him.

The bread is Christ himself sustaining us in our faith, placing his life where ours should be, so that we can live in his forgiveness. The wine we drink is his blood shed for us, so that we drink him in his sweet forgiveness.

The divine enters human dimension beyond our understanding. Luther’s Small Catechism gives us a precise summary: ‘Holy communion is the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ given with bread and wine …’

To do the taking, eating and drinking in remembrance of Christ is to participate in his death and life in communion with him. In this holy communion at his table, at his supper, he gives and we receive.

Here is our unity in Christ and with each other.

See you at the Lord’s table, here in time and in heaven in eternity.

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Photo: Andrea Winter

There is nothing new or surprising about calling Lutheran leaders ‘bishops’.

This title best fits the deeply pastoral nature of the office of a leader of the church.

At General Convention of Synod, district bishops Greg Pietsch and Mark Lieschke prepare the Lord’s table.

Why bishops?

The decision to have bishops in the Lutheran Church of Australia has taken many people by surprise, both inside and outside of our church.

Speaking personally, I was both unsurprised and surprised. At the time of the vote at the Convention of Synod, I was sitting next to one—Bishop Giegere Wenge of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Papua New Guinea, a young church that has had bishops ever since the move from mission to indigenous church in 1956.

Most Lutherans around the world are in churches led by bishops, and so Vol 47 No6 P222

are a majority of the world’s 2.2 billion Christians. This should not surprise us because the title bishop goes back to the New Testament and the existence of bishops to the early decades of the church. What has surprised some people in our church is that the change happened with little forewarning, as a constitutional amendment voted on by Synod. Surprising too was the ease with which the change was made, especially when one remembers the strong debate and negative outcome when a proposal for bishops was put to the Canberra General Convention in 1990.

by Rev Dr Dean Zweck Our English word ‘bishop’ is derived from the Greek word episkopos, found in the New Testament. In 1 Peter 2:25 it is applied to Christ: ‘For you were going astray, but now you have returned to the poimen ˉ (shepherd/pastor) and episkopos (overseer/bishop) of your souls’. In other texts the word refers to pastoral leaders in early Christian communities. For example, in 1 Timothy 3:1 we read: ‘The saying is sure: Whoever aspires to the office of bishop desires a noble task. Now a bishop must be above reproach, married only once, temperate, sensible, respectable, The Lutheran July 2013

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Photo: Michael Rudolph

If the bishop acts as a shepherd and servant, that is how the role will be understood.

Proclaiming the word: Rev David Altus, bishop of the SA/NT District, preaches on the first morning of Convention.

hospitable, an apt teacher, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, and not a lover of money’ (NRSV). You would agree that those are exactly the qualities that we would look for in our bishops today. It seems that at the beginning certain titles were used

into the office of bishop. Some bishops were wealthy, worldly, power-hungry landlords, who cared little for the flock and who ferociously opposed the gospel when Martin Luther and other reformers exposed their corruption and preached the truth about Christ. It is

In the complexity of today’s world, a bishop has other important responsibilities, but they all should flow from, and be subservient to, the gospel heart of the office. interchangeably or in different ways, but over time a threefold ordering of the public office of the ministry emerged: bishops, presbyters (pastors, in our language) and deacons.

important to know that Luther and early Lutherans did not reject the office of bishop but wanted to reform it, calling bishops to turn from their worldliness and tyranny to embrace their true work.

In the early church there were many faithful and good bishops, who cared for their people, stood by them in times of persecution, and protected them from false teaching. There were also courageous missionary bishops, like Patrick, apostle to the Irish, and Boniface, apostle to the Germans. However, by the time of the Reformation, much corruption had crept

According to divine right, it is the office of the bishop to preach the gospel, forgive sins, judge doctrine and condemn doctrine that is contrary to the gospel … All this is to be done not by human power but by God’s word alone. On this account parish ministers and churches are bound to be obedient to the bishops according to the saying of Christ in Luke 10:16, ‘Whoever

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The Lutheran July 2013

listens to you listens to me’ (Augsburg Confession 28).

In Luther’s understanding bishops and pastors have the same task—proclaiming the gospel and administering the sacraments, the task of the one ministry of the church. The difference is that, while pastors have spiritual oversight just in their own parishes, the bishop has spiritual oversight over a much bigger region. This means that an important and special role of the bishop is to be a pastor of pastors, visiting and encouraging them and their communities. As Luther explains, ‘For, actually, bishop means supervisor or visitor … to see to it that each parish pastor visits and watches over and supervises his people in regard to teaching and life’.

There is a long and complicated history about what happened in Lutheran churches in regard to bishops. Suffice to say that only in the Nordic countries did Lutherans retain bishops, whereas in Germany the state got involved in the administration of churches, while the chief pastor of an area was known by various titles, one of which was ‘superintendent’ (which in fact is the Latin form of episkopos—one who has oversight). It was only after World War I that German Lutheran churches Vol 47 No6 P223

Photo courtesy LCAQD

Photo: Malcolm Somerville

Above left: Baptising the little children: Rev Mark Whitfield, bishop of the Lutheran Church of New Zealand.

Above right: Rev Matt Wilksch (left) is installed by Rev Noel Noack, Bishop of the Queensland District.

According to divine right, it is the office of the bishop to preach the gospel, forgive sins, judge doctrine and condemn doctrine that is contrary to the gospel. again started to use the title bishop— but since then the use of that title has spread all over the world.

Some people are asking, ‘Does this really matter?’ In one way it doesn’t matter. In evangelical freedom we may call our leaders whatever we want to (and sometimes we do!) On the other hand it does matter. ‘President’ is understood almost entirely as a secular term—president of the USA, president of the bowls club, etc. ‘Bishop’ is unmistakably the title for a church leader. Unfortunately, the title carries some baggage, just as it did in the time Vol 47 No6 P224

of the Reformation. Influenced by an often hostile media, our minds absorb the caricature of autocratic clerics in copes and mitres (tall hats) pontificating about this or that—and sadly there may even be some bishops like that.

But think of how the disarming humility of Francis so quickly changed public perception of the office of the Bishop of Rome. As Pastor Mark Vainikka said at Convention, ‘If the bishop acts as a shepherd and servant, that is how the role will be understood’.

The best reason for changing the title from president to bishop is that this title best fits the deeply pastoral nature of the office. The leaders of our church are not CEOs, not directors of a corporation, but spiritual leaders of God’s people. Their primary task is to proclaim the gospel and administer the sacraments, to oversee the ministry of gospel and sacraments in the church, and to safeguard the pure teaching of the word of God. In the complexity of today’s world, a bishop has other important responsibilities, but they all should flow from, and be subservient to, the gospel heart of the office.

Our bishops work collegially in their oversight of the church to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, and we look to them to set before us a vision and a mission rooted in the

gospel. Our bishops represent us in partnerships with other churches in the Lutheran family, and especially younger sister churches in Papua New Guinea and South-East Asia. Our bishops are our representatives in our relationships with other Christians and people of other faiths, and they are often called upon to be our voice to the world and our face in the media.

The day after Synod’s decision was made, one of our bishops said that, while he was not too fussed either way before the vote, he now sees the title as a great opportunity to share with people what his true pastoral role is. A couple of weeks later the same bishop said that, as he sits in his office addressing various tasks that come across his desk, he keeps asking himself, ‘Is this what I am supposed to be doing as bishop? How am I as bishop to deal with this task?’

O God, be with our bishops. Grant them grace, wisdom, and, above all, your Holy Spirit, as they oversee the pastors and people in their care.

Rev Dr Dean Zweck is a lecturer in church history at Australian Lutheran College. He also serves on the Commission on Theology and Inter-Church Relations and is co-chair of the LutheranCatholic Dialogue.

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Photo: Rosie Schefe

OPEN LETTER TO THE BISHOPS Dear members of the College of Bishops, The Greek word ‘overseer’ is translated as ‘bishop’. But the English language has its quirks. To ‘oversee’ in some circumstances can also mean to ‘overlook’.

You may choose in your pastoral wisdom to ‘overlook’ some non-essentials of little consequence, but your ‘overseeing’ of the Lutheran Church of Australia can only legitimately be that of shepherds caring for and nurturing the flock.

It is right that those whom you are called to pastor pray for you as those who ‘will give an account’ (Hebrews 13:17). It is a reality that you will sometimes spend significant energy on ‘putting out fires’, which will make it difficult for you to gain clean air yourselves to seek the mind of Christ, the Good Shepherd. All the while you are called to care for those pastors who need encouragement in the face of loneliness and clerical weariness—to say nothing of congregations who look to you at various times, particularly in conflict.

As for every pastor, of prime importance for you is the participation in word and sacrament ministry. Also included in the pastoral role of taking care of the church, according to the duties presented in our constitution, is the exercise of accountability and discipline in the church.

The nurturing role will be best served by diligently seeking the mind of Christ in the only possible way—that is in having your minds opened to understand the Scriptures, as Christ did for his disciples prior to his ascension (Luke 24:45f).

Encouraging the people of the church involves more than affirmative action and ‘warm fuzzies’; it requires clarity in teaching and leading by good example. For you it is a daily repentance. It is a humbling of yourselves before Christ to hear his good news and his will in Scripture. Such pastoral leadership will help the church better understand the authority of Scripture, which is the question behind the hermeneutics (interpretation) issue that causes our biblical and theological anxieties in the LCA. Every controversy is one more opportunity to place yourselves at the feet of our Lord and hear him speak in his word.

As you examine yourselves, you will find that you cannot measure up to your job expectations. And that would have been the same for everyone now in heaven. Failing is not counted against you. By the grace of God, and his glory, that is the beauty of the gospel.

The church belongs to Christ. You have been called by the Lord of the church. He will have his say beyond political manipulation and causes, failures and our sinful nature, which tempts us to invent methods to determine outcomes at the expense of truth and the will of God. Begin with knowing who you are, as you look to be good stewards in your office with your gifts and talents as well as your possessions. You each have the right to be called a child of God (John 1:12).

You are ‘in Christ Jesus’ (Romans 8:1) and he in you.

It is God who sent Christ the Saviour to take your sins and the judgement which is on you, to free you for your calling on earth and your journey to heaven with him.

God’s Holy Spirit, working through his word, drawing you to Christ and his bride the church, is not something you can comprehend, or fabricate. It is a divine gift.

It is the prayer of the people of God that those of you in leadership will be given the mind of Christ, the humility to be clay in the hands of your Maker and Redeemer, and that you will well up with the desire that his will be done.

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The Lutheran July 2013

Vol 47 No6 P225

Photo: Michael Rudolph

LCA President Rev Dr Mike Semmler (now Bishop Emeritus), centre, with District Presidents (now District Bishops) at the opening service of the 17th General Convention of Synod held in April. At that convention, delegates voted to change the designation ‘president’ to ‘bishop’.

FOR THE CHURCH—FROM MY VIEW In fear of overusing this saying, ‘Time is short and the world is small’: • Lift up the unique saving message of Christ crucified.

• Reaffirm the authority of Scripture alone as the inspired word of God, the sole, infallible source for our faith, our teaching and living.

• Let our worship be reclaimed as divine service.

• Daily repent and seek the mind of Christ.

• Resource postgraduate training for pastoral leadership in theology.

• Retain the balance of synod over against federation-thinking and congregationalism.

• In structure, reduce bureaucracies and reconsider current administrative divisions, including districts.

• Provide more resources and material for catechising, study and home devotions.

• In discipleship, include revisiting our stewardship of time, money and property.

• In overseas mission, be a catalyst to engage the best of the Lutheran world with our partners in mission, offering a non-threatening place for Lutheran practice to be shaped on the mission field.

• Resource the amazing opportunities of Lutheran Media Ministries.

• Work at consolidating schools as schools of the church.

• Provide all who serve in aged care as a profession with a vocational path, and provide all staff and volunteers with an understanding of why Lutherans care.

• Enable aged-care institutions to support and work for each other.

• Train lay evangelists beyond congregational support roles.

God in Christ is faithful to us, enabling us to be faithful to him.

The Lord be with you.

Rev Dr Mike Semmler Bishop Emeritus, Lutheran Church of Australia Vol 47 No6 P226

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