The Lutheran September 2012 by Lutheran Church of Australia

SEPTEMBER 2012

Print Post Approved PP536155/00031 VOL 46 NO 8

NATIONAL MAGAZINE OF THE LUTHERAN CHURCH OF AUSTRALIA

If someone is caught in any kind of wrongdoing ... set him right ... in a gentle way [ Gal 6:1] The Lutheran September 2012

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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.

Photo: Selwyn Brindley

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CONTACTS Editor Linda Macqueen PO Box 664, Stirling SA 5152, Australia phone (+61) 08 8339 5178 email linda.macqueen@lca.org.au National Magazine Committee Wayne Gehling (chair), Greg Hassold, Sarah Hoff-Zweck, Pastor Richard Schwedes, Heidi Smith

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

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Issued every month except in January Vol 46 No8 P258

In my inbox this week was a story from a friend of mine, a mum of two gorgeous girls. They are no angels, though, and so, like most mums, Chloe has to intervene in child warfare on a daily basis. She has to apply the delicate arts of conflict resolution and peacemaking, usually in the midst of hair-tearing frustration.

FEATURES

05 Making peace 08 Hamilton heals 10 A child will lead them 12 Human and heavenly

23 God in charge

But this week she's had to deal with a peacemaking challenge of her own—harder by far than sorting out conflicts between her daughters.

26 Walls apart

For months her elder daughter had been telling Chloe she was being bullied at school.

04 From the President

‘I had it in my mind that the child bullying my daughter was a queen bee, she was spoilt, her mother was consumed with her looks, and this impertinent little monster was making my innocent child feel like trash. How dare she!’

COLUMNS

14 Little Church 15 Inside Story 19 Letters /Directory

Chloe's mummy-bear instinct was primed and ready to pounce on the offending mother and child. And then the truth started to unravel. It turned out that Chloe's daughter was the culprit. Chloe had been hoodwinked. ‘To add insult to injury, I had been fuelling hatred in [my daughter] over the past months. Once I got the facts straight, shame hit me like a hammer. Ouch! I was the queen bee—and a royal nut job to boot! I’d let my pride and self-righteousness lead me.’

20 Stepping Stones 22 Notices 25 Bookmarks

12 23

While Chloe says that this lesson has been painful, she's grateful for it: ‘I've been reminded that I can serve my kids better when I lead with mercy, confession and forgiveness.’ She says she's going to feel ‘more than a tad sheepish’ for a while, and after that she'll look for the opportunity to admit what she did and ‘give that mother the apology she deserves’. Chloe’s story is just one of hundreds, thousands, of conflicts, great and small, that are part of everyday living. When we deal with them as Christ would, we tell the world what a gracious and loving Lord we follow. There's nothing easy and nothing natural about mercy, confession and forgiveness, though. Which is precisely why our practice of them is perhaps our strongest witness to Christ of all, above anything else we ever do or say.

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28 Reel Life 30 Heart and Home 32 World in Brief 34 Coffee Break

Farmers are called to serve God by serving the earth, so that the earth may serve both them and all who consume the produce. Keep up to date with news, prayer points and call information by visiting http://www.lca.org.au/ presidents-page-archive.html or by subscribing to the president’s electronic newsletter. To receive the newsletter, send an email to itofficer@lca.org.au giving the email address you would like included. LCA pastors and layworkers are automatically included in this list.

Rev Dr Mike Semmler President Lutheran Church of Australia

They talk more about the weather than about the land that provides their living. They certainly do not control the rain or the sunshine, and many do not have freehold ownership of the land which they work. They have bank overdrafts and all manner of financial arrangements. These are farmers, and this is the Year of the Farmer. Farming is more a lifestyle and a calling than a job. Watch a farmer as he looks over the land he works and you sense a union of a human being with the soil from which God created us all. It is with humility that a farmer views his connection to the earth to which we will all return. Weeds and pests threaten crops. Poor returns hang over the farm seemingly more often than unexpected windfalls. Hundreds of thousands of dollars on loan are gone when a crop fails to germinate or grow in the face of a drought. What farmer has not looked out with expectation over a good crop only to see an isolated hailstorm completely wipe it out just before harvest? What did the Creator mean when he gave us ‘dominion’ over creation? Does that mean ownership? Not at all. The earth and its creatures are not ours to exploit or to use for the satisfaction of our selfish desires. We were created in God’s image to nurture his ‘down-to-earth’ world in the same way as he would. Farmers are called to serve God by serving the earth, so that the earth may serve both them and all who consume the produce. Yes, farmers deal in a fallen world in which creation groans in turmoil, but they sense a holiness and a privilege

The Lutheran September 2012

to get their hands dirty in what is owned by God. Christian farmers know it is in trust, and they rely on God’s promise of seedtime and harvest. God nurtures people across the nations from his live earth. A farmer grieves over a failure few of us can understand. We turn to other suppliers. A farmer knows deep satisfaction as various methods (such as non-till techniques) preserve the structure of the earth that is so much part of a farmer’s ‘dominion’. In cities we remember the land on thanksgiving days. We even pray for planting and growing often long after the farmer has done his work. How blessed the farmer is in not having to wait for us to catch up in our prayer life, if we ever do. Harvest depends on rain and sunshine for sowing, growing and reaping, the very same weather that spoils picnics, sporting events and family outdoor activities. But then, the great machinery that is used on farms and in transport is manufactured in suburbia. The offices that market the produce are staffed in cities by those who may never have experienced work on the land. In the Year of the Farmer let’s be reminded that we depend on our Lord—all of us: those who live off the land and those who are machinists, marketers and scientists involved in breeding new strains of cereal and cattle, as well as those of us who enjoy our food each day. Let us give thanks for each other to our creating and preserving Lord of heaven and earth through Jesus Christ. In him God so loved the world.

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Unresolved conflict can tear a congregation apart and scatter its members. Linda Macqueen interviewed Pastor Bruce Zagel, LCA Director of Reconciliation Ministry, who explains why the LCA needs a

reconciliation ministry.

making peace You’re at a barbecue and somebody asks you what you do for a living. What do you say? How do you explain what you do? That’s a great question, because reconciliation ministry is not easy to summarise in five words. But this would be a fairly simple way to explain my job: first, to enhance the ability of the LCA to live a lifestyle of reconciliation; secondly, to provide training, especially in personal peacemaking and conflictcoaching, and thirdly, to provide conflict assistance to individuals and groups. Included in the first step is the charter to provide training and experience for people gifted in this work, so that when my work in Australia is completed, the LCA will be equipped to carry on reconciliation ministry on its own. Is it an established ministry field in other parts of the world, or are we onto something completely new here? Vol 46 No8 P261

As far as we know, the LCA is the first national church body to establish such a position. Some American church bodies have individuals active in biblical peacemaking and have denominational support, but, to the best of our knowledge, no other church body in the world has made the commitment the LCA has made. Why is reconciliation ministry an important part of congregational life? Why are you passionate about it? I am passionate about the forgiveness of sins in Christ. That is the gospel. Reconciliation ministry applies the gospel in an area of life almost everyone experiences in some way every day, namely, conflict. When people experience healing in relationships because of the gospel, there is tremendous joy, excitement and fulfilment. Seeing people reconciled truly demonstrates ‘where love comes to life’, the theme we are

talking about in the LCA. How can you not get passionate about that? Aren’t we sending a negative message to the wider community if we Lutherans have to employ a specialist peacemaker to sort out our arguments? Actually, rather than sending a negative message, having a reconciliation ministry sends a positive message. Instead of ignoring or burying our conflicts, we are choosing to confront them and apply the love of Christ to them and to one another. We are actually trying to live out what we say we believe. When that results in reconciled relationships, others will notice and begin to say, ‘That’s the kind of church I want to be a part of’. What kinds of situations have the potential to tear a congregation apart? What’s the likely damage if these situations are left unreconciled? The Lutheran September 2012

The norm is to address conflict by avoiding it and burying it under the carpet.

Getting the hang of reconciliation means dealing with our conflicts rather than burying them.

The issue really isn’t the type of situation but how we respond to the situation. Conflicts over building programs, pastoral actions or administrative actions, and families at odds with one another can all generate severe conflict if they are not managed well. The key is to understand what Scripture says about our relationships and how to live together in peace under Christ. What’s involved in reconciliation ministry? What do you actually do in a situation of congregational conflict? It’s a four-step process: diagnosis, treatment, after-care, prevention. First, I diagnose the situation to ascertain where the conflict is centred, who are the main players, what is the congregational history that has led to the conflict. Secondly, I teach about biblical concepts that specifically address our conflicts with God and with one another. Thirdly, I prepare people to address their own conflicts 6

The Lutheran September 2012

living a lifestyle of reconciliation brings peace to life that is truly ‘the peace that passes understanding’. And that really brings love to life.

What do you mean by a ‘local reconciliation ministry’? Reconciliation ministry is really about living a lifestyle of reconciliation—living the love of Christ and the forgiveness of sins each day. It’s a lifestyle, not a program. But from time to time every congregation will need extra help to deal with conflict. A local reconciliation ministry is a few people trained in conflict-coaching and mediation who can be resources for the pastor and other spiritual leaders when conflicts arise. They can coach people to prepare them to speak one-on-one with someone with whom they are in conflict, and they can sit down with conflicted parties and help mediate their disputes.

photo Rosie Schefe

But that is hard work. Sometimes we call reconciliation the messy work of the church.

or assist them by mediating specific relationship conflicts. And, fourthly, I help a congregation to be ready to deal with future conflict by preparing them to establish a local reconciliation ministry.

If every LCA congregation got the hang of reconciliation ministry and applied its principles as a congregational lifestyle, how would it be different from the LCA of today? The norm is to address conflict by avoiding it and burying it under the carpet. Getting the hang of reconciliation means dealing with our conflicts rather than burying them. But that is hard work. Sometimes we call reconciliation the messy work of the church. If we actually dealt with our conflicts, the LCA would look quite a bit different from the way it looks today. I am not a naive idealist. After 20 years in this area of church life I know how hard reconciliation can be. But I also know the incredible joy of seeing people whose lives have been nearly shattered by conflict forgive one another and begin a new journey based on what Christ has done for us on the cross. As I said before, reconciliation isn’t a program; it’s a lifestyle. And

Rev Bruce Zagel serves as Director of Reconciliation Ministry for the LCA. He was a Lutheran pastor in America for 19 years before co-founding Ambassadors of Reconciliation, an international ministry helping Lutherans to live, proclaim and cultivate lifestyles of reconciliation. In 2010 Bruce and his wife Kathy came to Australia to serve as Reconciliation Pastor in Hamilton, Victoria. He has been a reconciliation trainer and mentor throughout the United States and Canada, as well as in Australia, Russia, Ukraine, India and Mexico. He and Kathy have two sons, one grandson and a granddaughter on the way.

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forgiving– and living!

by Bruce Zagel

A number of years ago a couple of associates and I were working with a severely conflicted congregation. The church had lost three pastors in the previous seven years due to conflicts.

person being baptised now stands before him totally and completely forgiven. All the sins that person has committed and will ever commit are washed away in the flood of the blood from Jesus’ wounds on the cross.

We had spoken with the members about how their sinful attitudes, actions and words towards one another had poisoned their relationships and had led to bitterness and resentment among the leadership team.

If God sees that baptised person as forgiven, why don’t we? Why do we refrain from speaking the same message that God has already declared through the water connected with the word?

As we were sharing this with the congregation’s leaders, one of the main antagonists got up from his seat and stood towering over his primary opponent. A hush fell across the room.

All too often our reluctance to speak words of forgiveness and to live in forgiveness with one another is due to our own weak understanding of forgiveness for ourselves. As a result of a shallow understanding of forgiveness and the freedom to live a life of reconciliation that forgiveness brings, we instead live with hurt, bitterness, fear, resentment, anger and more.

The words that came out of this man’s mouth stunned us: ‘I realise I have sinned against you and need to ask your forgiveness’. We froze in silence, each of us wondering what would happen next. The woman this man addressed rose from her seat and said, ‘I forgive you’. The two embraced, and the shocked audience rejoiced along with them. The group urged the two now reconciled children of God to announce their reconciliation in the service the following day. Their announcement of reconciliation and their embrace of forgiveness in front of the people in church that day changed the life of the congregation. God has reconciled the world to himself in Christ, not counting our sins against us (2 Cor 5:18,19). But all too often we neglect to live out our reconciliation with God in our relationships with one another. If we are reconciled to God, why can’t we be reconciled to one another? In baptism, God makes a pledge through his solemn word that the Vol 46 No8 P263

In addition to being reluctant to speak words of forgiveness, we are also quite reluctant to confess our own sin to someone else. Living a lifestyle of reconciliation provides frequent opportunities to speak words of both confession and forgiveness. Because of our sinfulness we have multiple opportunities to confess that we have sinned in specific ways. And because of the forgiveness bestowed on us in our baptism we have the awesome privilege of echoing what God has already declared: ‘You are forgiven’.

remembering what God has done for us in Christ and living out our gratitude for his grace. The church where that act of reconciliation took place changed dramatically that day. The new pastor saw only one angry outburst over the seven years he was there. Bible study increased dramatically. Worship attendance increased. People in the community began to see a change.

The lifestyle of

reconciliation is merely living out the forgiveness of sins one person, one relationship, one interaction at a time. And people wanted to be a part of that change. Reconciliation and peace replaced bitterness and strife. The lifestyle of reconciliation is merely living out the forgiveness of sins one person, one relationship, one interaction at a time. Sounds like a pretty good lifestyle to me.

Churches in conflict become places living a lifestyle of reconciliation when individual sin is confessed and forgiveness is shared. Changing to a place where the lifestyle of reconciliation is lived takes hard work and persistence. But that is what living a life of faith is about: daily The Lutheran September 2012

Any congregation can become embroiled in conflict. But rather than disintegrate, as many do, the congregation at Hamilton chose another road.

Hamilton heals Across the world and across the millennia, churches involved in conflict have tended to adopt similar patterns of behaviour. The Bible describes some symptoms of the conflicts the early church faced: unwholesome talk (gossip), bitterness and slander (Eph 4:29-31), Christians taking other Christians to court (1 Cor 6:1), jealousy, arguments, worldly attitudes (1 Cor 3:3), envy and selfish ambition (James 3:16), judging one another (James 4:12), fights and quarrels that come from sinful desires, killing and coveting because people could not have what they wanted (James 4:1,2). Praise God that he also provides clear biblical guidelines and principles to deal with conflict in our church families. At the Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd in Hamilton, Victoria, we experienced a period of serious conflict, which affected many members in different ways. We wrestled with 8

The Lutheran September 2012

many of those same difficulties experienced by the early church. What was wrong? We all said the Lord’s Prayer and communed together; we knew Matthew 18 and Luther’s Small Catechism. We knew about God’s forgiveness through Christ— we’d listened to sermon after sermon about forgiveness! It would be fair to say that as a congregation we have a good knowledge of Lutheran theology. However, despite these blessings, we were stuck in severe conflict. Some members were predicting it would take ten years for our congregation to recover, others predicting a generation, others saying it never would. When Pastor Bruce Zagel from Ambassadors of Reconciliation arrived in Hamilton, he began a deliberate process of training members to respond to conflict biblically and to cultivate lifestyles of reconciliation. The church began to teach its people how to live out the gospel in the conflicts

by Donna Gunn

of daily life—as simple and as difficult as that is—and to cultivate a culture of peace and of growing together to be more like Christ. Through guidance and training by Pastor Zagel, a framework was quickly established to equip members with personal peacemaking skills by moving deeper into the word of God and deeper into the gospel. This began with Bible studies, involved individual conflict coaching, mediation, and modelling of confession and forgiveness by the church leaders. The process concluded with an intensive one-week Church Reconciler Training course. Ah, but we soon discovered that living a lifestyle of reconciliation and living out the love of Christ is not easy; in fact, because of our sinful nature it is impossible. How easily we default back to our old sinful self when conflict arises! We readily identified with Paul in his letter to the Romans: ‘For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do … Vol 46 No8 P264

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The Lutheran September 2012