While every Walk My Way event is a special chance to show practical support through Australian Lutheran World Service (ALWS) for children whose lives are impacted by war and poverty, there was another reason this year’s Adelaide event was extra special.
The 3 May event doubled as the public farewell to the North Adelaide site of Australian Lutheran College (ALC), which will relocate to the LCANZ’s new Church House in the Adelaide CBD this year, along with the Churchwide Office.
The site has been home to Lutheran theological education since 1923, when Immanuel College and Immanuel Seminary began operating on the property bounded by Jeffcott and Ward streets, North Adelaide. In subsequent iterations, it has been known as Luther Seminary, Luther Campus (also incorporating Lutheran Teachers College and the Lutheran School of Theology) and, since 2004, ALC.
Along with two walks, a giant ALC garage sale, Lutheran ministry stalls and the launch of Dr Brian Neldner’s memoirs detailing the founding of ALWS, the Adelaide Walk My Way event included tours of the heritage-listed Hebart House, which dates back to the early 1880s and has housed seminary student accommodation and living facilities, lecture theatres, chapel spaces and faculty offices over the past century.
ALC Principal Dr Tim Stringer says it was a fitting way for the Lutheran community to say ‘goodbye’ to a site that has an important place in the history of the church. ‘This event not only supported the work of ALWS but provided an opportunity for those who have been connected with the campus over the past century to visit, reminisce and say their farewells,’ he says.
ALWS Community Action Manager Jonathan Krause says it was ‘a privilege for the LCA’s overseas aid and development agency to bring together so many Lutheran ministries, each of us standing on the shoulders of our shared history but looking forward to what we are called to be in today’s world’.
