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by Helen Beringen
Originally a shy farmer’s daughter from the Wimmera region of Victoria, Jill Schefe has been recognised for her efforts as a vibrant community connector through the Lutheran Church of Australia’s Servant of Christ Award.
Born Jillene Heinrich, the eldest of three children, she grew up on a wheat and sheep property in Kaniva, not far from the South Australian border. After finishing school, drought in the Wimmera led her to spend a year droving sheep.
Despite her grandmother’s belief that girls shouldn’t pursue further education, Jill, now 73, undertook two years of theological studies at Lutheran Teachers College in North Adelaide to become a deaconess. ‘The term “deaconess” comes from the Greek word “Diakonia”, which means servant’, explains Jill. ‘It is a ministry of word and service.’
The modest study cost of $450 included two years of tuition and board. On graduating in 1969, she was assigned to the Metropolitan Missions Committee for the next three years and worked six days a week across various parishes in Adelaide’s northern suburbs, including Tea Tree Gully, Cheltenham, Port Adelaide and Hampstead under four different pastors.
‘Every day was a new challenge, and my work changed all the time’, she says. ‘It helped me overcome my natural shyness. I realised that shyness was pride turned inwards, so reliance on my Lord was my call.’
Jill taught religious education in schools, led confirmation classes and Bible studies, the latter with the youth and women’s fellowships, as well as taking adult instruction in the Christian faith and visiting members or the unchurched and serving in other ways when required.
Her mentor and pastor of one of her first parishes, Clarrie Janetzki, had said at the time, ‘You are the only bible some people are ever going to know’.
‘I felt so enriched by working in different parishes. As they introduced me to different types of ministry, each pastor modelled different ways of ministering’, Jill says. ‘I couldn’t have asked for a better introduction into evangelism and later as a pastor’s wife. You were just all the time engaging with people.’
It was at a birthday party in April 1972 that Jill met her future husband Clarrie Schefe, who was a seminary student. Engaged in July of that same year, Jill completed a six-week course in preparation for her role as a pastor’s wife before they married in Tea Tree Gully in February 1973.
After their marriage, Clarrie was assigned to Ceduna as their first parish in 1974. During their three years on the west coast of South Australia, their first son, Paul, was born. Her husband was called to Biloela in Central Queensland in 1976 to establish a Lutheran nursing home and Lutheran primary school.
The Biloela parish was 250 kilometres long and included four congregations and a preaching place. ‘We spent nearly 11 years in Biloela’, says Jill. The couple had two more children, Warren and Cassandra, while there and now have six grandchildren. Jill continues to stay connected with her grandchildren and even teaches confirmation lessons to her granddaughter Jessica, 14, via video call.
Throughout her journey as a pastor’s wife in various parishes, including Dimboola in Victoria, Jill has found ways to connect with people. ‘In Dimboola I rode my bike for exercise incorporating visiting parishioners as well’, she says. Jill adds that it was ‘easy to chat over the fence’ in their front yards, or perhaps stop in for a cuppa.
She and Clarrie moved to the Glasshouse Mountains in Queensland’s Sunshine Coast hinterland in 2003, before he officially retired in 2010. And while Jill is officially retired, she still receives an honorarium for her care of the parish, including teaching, visiting the sick, aged and the isolated, as well as distributing private communion, hosting Bible studies and affirming folk in their faith.
Whether it be a women’s fellowship or a Bible study group, or organising confirmation classes and parish visits, she strives to keep in contact with members of the parish, even despite COVID restrictions over the past few years.
‘COVID can’t stop you in your spiritual growth, you’ve got to think outside the square’, says Jill. ‘During COVID, the parish has not had a full-time pastor and I started sharing the daily devotions, adding items related to our local parish, and adding hymns and images and sharing them.’
Jill also writes letters and designs cards as a tangible way of making connections. ‘I learnt to use my own resources to keep in contact with everyone when everyone was alienated’, she says. ‘My commission is to be adhesive.’
Jill feels blessed to have so many opportunities to share the gospel. However, she was overwhelmed to receive the Servant of Christ award. ‘I didn’t realise simple acts of kindness would be recognised’, she says. She was nominated by Glasshouse Mountains congregation for her unwavering dedication and service to their congregation and the wider church.
Last month, the whole family came together (minus one ill member) to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Clarrie’s ministry, and an early commemoration of Jill and Clarrie’s 50th wedding anniversary. It was a special moment for the couple, who have spent their lives connecting with and serving their communities.
Jill says Philippians 4:13 reminds her of the source of their strength: ‘I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.’
by Helen Brinkman
Picture a big box of kindness filled with Christmas goodies and pantry staples, a Christmas tree full of gift baubles, and gift catalogues supporting people in developing nations.
This is the spirit of Advent shining from Melbourne’s St Paul’s Lutheran Church, Box Hill. The congregation’s Advent Action program unveils giving opportunities throughout this church season.
The congregation’s volunteer Justice and Mercy Ministry Team, a small band of volunteers mostly aged over 60, run the program as one of a range of social justice causes in their local community and beyond.
The group may be small, but its secret is working together with like-minded groups in the local community through the Whitehorse Churches Care group network. Whitehorse Churches Care involves 30-plus churches working together across the council area to support the community’s most vulnerable. It runs a range of outreach services, from a community pop-up space in a local shopping centre to providing care packs. This strengthens their impact and the bonds between the churches, connecting people across denominations, and encouraging opportunities for charitable collaboration.
For example, the Big Boxes of Kindness that Box Hill members are filling this year with festive foods and pantry staples came through another church, also in Whitehorse Churches Care, which offered the Lutheran congregation spare boxes and resources. Complete with a letter of instruction, the full Big Boxes of Kindness are donated to the local migrant information centre for distribution to new migrants and refugees.
Box Hill Pastoral Care Coordinator Cathy Beaton, 60, also volunteers with Whitehorse Churches Care. She says this is the second year in a row that St Paul’s has been offered the boxes for the congregation to fill. Cathy says the Christmas hampers are greatly appreciated by the recipients: ‘I spoke with one of the migrant centre workers earlier this year and she said there was great joy and rejoicing over the hampers, it brought much delight to the people.’
That is only one of the Advent giving choices on offer at Box Hill. Another is the bauble gift tree, an outreach of the Prison Fellowship Australia’s Angel Tree program. Each bauble collected from the Christmas tree in the church’s foyer includes the name and address of a child or grandchild of a prisoner in one of Victoria’s prisons.
With the bauble, the donor gets some guidance on what the child might like to receive, then buys and sends the gift to the recipient on behalf of the prisoner, accompanied by their message.
Thirdly, Australian Lutheran World Service’s Gift of Grace program is promoted as another way to support the season of giving on a global scale. Giving Grace cards as a Christmas gift to family and friends acknowledges a donation of presents – from goats to toilets – to communities in need around the world.
The St Paul’s Justice and Mercy Ministry Team is not your normal committee, says Cathy. Each participant is an ambassador for a justice and mercy cause, from refugees and migrants to Indigenous reconciliation and more.
‘Team members are called ambassadors, as our members are passionate about a justice and mercy cause’, she says. ‘A handful of dedicated people can make a difference.’
Last year alone, 34 huge red boxes were delivered to the local migrant information centres in Box Hill and nearby Ringwood, about 120 gifts were sent to the children and grandchildren of Victorian prisoners, and many ALWS Gifts of Grace brought joy to children and communities in need.
Justice and Mercy team leader John Hinz and Box Hill Pastor Neville Otto are among the ambassadors in the team, which has run Advent Action for the past three years.
Cathy says it is just the latest in a long involvement for St Paul’s of supporting local organisations, ministries and charities. ‘I think in some ways during COVID we became a bit insular, and everyone was isolated during lockdown. So, it was really important that we could provide a way for people to look outward again’, she says.
And size doesn’t have to be a barrier to action. St Paul’s has shown that working together with others, such as local churches, or the local council, can create opportunities to help.
‘Sometimes we don’t have the resources to do something on our own. But (working) together encourages each other, builds a network of relationships, and together, people can do things that they could not necessarily do on their own if they don’t have enough people’, says Cathy. ‘This gives us a way of connecting with our neighbours, of serving and loving our neighbours.’
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