The Lutheran June-July 2023 Sneak Preview

LUTHERAN CHURCH OF AUSTRALIA

EDITORIAL

Editor Lisa McIntosh

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Executive Editor Linda Macqueen

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Design & Layout Elysia McEwen

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The Lutheran is produced on the traditional lands of the Kaurna and Dharug peoples.

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LUTHERAN CHURCH OF AUSTRALIA

The Lutheran informs the members of the LCANZ 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 and New Zealand.

The Lutheran

Gospel-sharing culture

John Malol (left) and Koang Nhial (second from right), both from Moorabbin Dandenong Lutheran Church, Victoria, and Joshua Mao (right), from Queensland Asian Congregation, took a break during last month’s CrossCultural Ministry Conference in Melbourne to check out some news from around the LCANZ with Local Mission Executive Officer Dr Tania Nelson (second from left). You can read more about the conference in The inside story on page 27.

People like YOU bring love to life

Sharon Ghalayini

Good Shepherd Lutheran Church Ringwood Vic

Manager of Good Shepherd Retirement Village Ringwood Vic

Most treasured Bible text: Numbers 6:24–26

‘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.’

Russell Briese

St Andrew’s Lutheran Church Brisbane Qld

Director Chaplaincy & Ministry development Lutheran Services Qld

Most treasured Bible text: Acts 9:15

‘The Lord said to Ananias (about Paul), “Go! This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel”.’

Rosslyn May

Lobethal Lutheran Church SA

Manager of Valley of Praise Retirement Village Lobethal SA

Most treasured Bible text: Luke 6:31

‘Do to others as you would have them do to you.’

Let the light of someone you know shine through their photo being featured in The Lutheran and LCA Facebook. With their permission, send us a good quality photo, their name and details (congregation, occupation and most treasured text) and your contact details.

Most long-time members of a church probably know what it’s like to be without a pastor to lead and serve alongside them for a time. Large or small, many congregations experience pastoral vacancies, even for short periods.

It can be a testing time, as lay people take on extra volunteer roles in the provision of worship services and pastoral care, and any staff often have extra duties added to their workload.

Church attendances often decline during a vacancy, too, as can the morale of the faith community, so the pool of willing helpers may seem to run dry. It can even be a cause for grief or despair for those congregations whose calls to prospective pastors are declined again and again, and for those whose financial situation means they can’t afford an ordained minister.

And with an ageing pastorate reflecting the demographics of our LCANZ membership, the level of pastoral vacancies in our churches, schools and aged-care services is on the rise.

But, as the stories we are privileged to share in these pages suggest and, as my own experience of times without a pastor has confirmed, this shift in church worker supply levels is no reason to throw in the towel. I believe that, with Jesus as our chief shepherd and guide, we can be a creative and resilient lot. The LCANZ, its districts and parishes are working together to find different and complementary ways of ‘doing’ ministry.

I am often heartened to hear how God’s people are using their gifts to further his kingdom, whether they are lay or ordained. And I’ve witnessed the way some people can blossom in their service once given the encouragement, opportunity and responsibility.

The expressions we carry as we face this changing landscape come back to trusting God’s core promises. As The Living Bible translates Matthew 28:20: ‘“And be sure of this – that I am with you always, even to the end of the world”.’ And in Psalm 34:10b, we’re reminded that ‘those who seek the Lord lack no good thing’.

God will give us what – and who – we need. Assisted by resources, training and support from our wider church family, he will equip us for his co-mission. Then, when we do have the gift of an ordained pastor serving with us, we can avoid the danger of reverting to sitting back and letting him do everything.

Besides our themed content, as always, your churchwide magazine also includes faith-life resources and news of what’s been happening around the church.

And, as a further bonus for our print subscribers, you’ll find inside Australian Lutheran College’s annual Saints Alive publication. Digital subscribers can access the same content on ALC’s website at www.alc.edu.au/connect/publications/saints-alive

Our cover: iStock.com.

Design by Elysia McEwen

May God bless your reading, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that the following pages may contain images of people who have died.

Because we bear your name

God the builder: ‘Jesus said, “I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not prevail”’ (Matthew 16:18b).

We continually ask the Lord to ‘raise workers’ for the harvest. We see more pastors retiring. We see an increasingly short supply of Lutheran people trained to serve as school ministry workers and principals. We see aging congregational communities and the closure of buildings.

God sees people of the church, in work that he has commissioned. It was our Lord Jesus who declared ‘you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth’ (Acts 1:8).

This does not mean that the church ignores matters of concern about church life. We need to be properly preparing women and men for the various ministries of the church. We need to continually work on evangelism as a primary task. We need to encourage one another, including young adults, to offer our gifts in service for the mission that God has given us.

In the ages of the church since the time of the resurrection of our Lord, there have been church bodies that have grown, diminished and concluded. Ephesus is a good example of this. Ephesus received a letter in the New Testament and an historic early church council was held there. You can visit Ephesus today, but it is an archaeological site. We can imagine the grief as the Ephesian Christians faced closure.

The mission of God is much more than the demography of any one church organisation. In New Zealand and Australia, we are seeing church organisations declining in numbers, but this is not the same in other parts of the world. The Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus has more than 10 million members and is increasing in numbers. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in our neighbouring Papua New Guinea also continues to grow and now includes more than 1.8 million members.

What is certain is that our Lord has declared that he will be actively building his church and that the gates of Hades will not prevail against it (Matthew 16). This is a sure promise for our witness and service as people of the worldwide mission of God

BISHOP PAUL’S LETTER

REV PAUL SMITH Bishop, Lutheran Church of Australia and New Zealand

that is at work in the Lutheran Church in New Zealand and Australia.

This does not mean we should refrain from grieving at the closure of a church building or of a ministry in which we have been involved. We human beings know the pain of loss. If you know of a congregation that is closing or has closed in recent times, please pray for those folk and consider how you might reach out to them in their struggle.

Please also regularly pray for the ever-growing mission of God and for our place as Lutherans in the Lord’s promised building of his church.

Our Lutheran church has established a ministry called New and Renewing Churches which is tasked with asking the important questions about evangelism in the church, and then helping communities actively co-operate and practically plan together, in the mission that our God has given to us.

In Australia in particular, we know that people continue to cherish the witness and service of our Lutheran schools and Lutheran care facilities like our aged-care communities. We must ask what this means for us and for our participation in the mission of God.

The College of Bishops has established the Ministry Future project to help us to be better able to identify issues about ministry and to discover good solutions to those issues.

In the song, ‘Reaching out with open arms’, Australian songwriter Robin Mann has taught us to hopefully sing:

‘Take up Jesus’ cup, drink it to the end; love, give, start to live; we are Jesus’ friends. May we care with our actions and our prayers. We’ve been given so much, people, let’s all share! Reaching out, reaching out, reaching out with open arms.’

In Christ,

WHAT IS CERTAIN IS THAT OUR LORD HAS DECLARED THAT HE WILL BE ACTIVELY BUILDING HIS CHURCH … THIS IS A SURE PROMISE FOR OUR WITNESS AND SERVICE AS PEOPLE OF THE WORLDWIDE MISSION OF GOD.