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New leader for Lutheran Media

Dr Tania Nelson is the new manager of Lutheran Media.

Tania, who has served as the LCANZ’s Executive Officer – Local Mission since August 2016, succeeded Pastor Richard Fox at the helm of the multi-media ministry outreach arm of the church last month. Richard, who led Lutheran Media for 11 years, has returned to parish ministry, at Glynde in South Australia.

Tania’s appointment was announced by LCANZ Bishop Paul Smith in late August.

The first woman and the first lay person to hold the role, she applied for the manager’s position because she had ‘long believed that Lutheran Media is a vital mission-focused ministry of the LCANZ’.

‘It just makes sense to me to utilise media, in all its many forms, to reach people with the saving message of God’s gracious love for us’, she said after her appointment. ‘I feel that God is calling me to play a role in this wonderful outreach ministry.

‘I am so excited, and incredibly humbled, to step into the large shoes of the many people who have grown Lutheran Media to what it is today.

‘Lutheran Media has had an amazing and unique history, beginning in its early days via the radio waves and extending now to a variety of social media platforms. I still recall the deep and soothing voice of Emeritus President Rev Dr Lance Steicke bringing words of encouragement to listeners, as I played the Face to Face cartridges in the Mount Gambier community radio studio where I volunteered in the 1980s.

‘I thank the former directors of Lutheran Media, and particularly outgoing director Pastor Richard Fox, for leading and building Lutheran Media to a place where millions can hear messages of hope of a loving and saving God. I’m looking forward to working with the excellent Lutheran Media staff team, and discerning where God is calling us in this next phase of our God’s mission work.’

Bishop Paul said he was thankful to God ‘for the seven years of Christian service Tania has given to our church’s work in her leadership in the department for Local Mission’.

‘She has an overflowing joyful passion for the witness of God’s people to the world’, he said. ‘Now she “moves sideways” to her new role with Lutheran Media in the same cause of bringing Christ to the nations. (Pastor Richard) can rest in the good report that the ministry of Lutheran Media will be in the hands of a faithful co-worker in the gospel. Please join me in praising God that Tania has offered her gifts for this work of our church.’

During her tenure as the LCANZ’s head of Local Mission, Tania has provided strategic oversight of Care Ministries, Grow Ministries, Cross-Cultural Ministry, New and Renewing Churches and Lutheran Media. She also implemented the General Synod decision to bring the boards for Lutheran Aged Care Australia, Lutheran Media Ministry and Child Youth and Family Ministry and the interim Board for Local Mission into what is now known as the Council for Local Mission.

Prior to taking on the executive officer role, the former teacher was the Head of School of Theological Studies and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Australian Lutheran College (ALC). Tania is also a casual academic at ALC this year, teaching a unit in the college’s higher education program.

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Way Forward team completes evaluation of submissions

During July and August around 50 members of the Way Forward team and working groups devoted many hours to evaluating 60 submissions received from church members from across the LCANZ.

The submissions were assessed against key criteria set by the General Church Board (GCB) and the College of Bishops (CoB), including the extent to which they met the intent of the General Synod resolution for ‘one church with two ordination practices’.

‘This was not an easy process, as the working groups assessing the submissions consist of people with different experiences, backgrounds and views’, said Stella Thredgold, director of the Way Forward project. ‘But the effort was worth it, as the best outcomes are reached from the benefit of diverse perspectives.

‘The teams have worked together to discuss some challenging aspects and differing opinions, resulting in agreement through compromise, respect and openness. This shows that diverse views do not need to be an impediment to unity and commitment to a shared goal.’

Stella said that, overall, the submissions demonstrated a good understanding of the challenging issues confronting the church at this time and provided helpful insights and frameworks for how these issues might be addressed.

‘The team sends a heartfelt thankyou to everyone who contributed a submission and also to the many people who sent words of encouragement and suggestions for how the process could be improved’, she said. ‘Be assured that we are taking your feedback on board as we all work towards a united church in which people are respected as brothers and sisters in Christ, regardless of their personal views on ordination.’

GCB and CoB met in person in mid-August, dedicating four hours to the Way Forward project, including reviewing progress to date and providing guidance and leadership for the next phases. They also noted that a pastoral care plan has been developed and that a major communication to congregations was planned for late September.

For more information go to: www.lca.org.au/wayforward

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Bishops call for day of prayer, church unity

The LCANZ bishops have called on the people of the church to set aside Sunday 8 October for a churchwide day of prayer focusing on the unity of the church. This is a significant day as it is just a year from the 2024 Convention of General Synod.

At the in-person sessions of the 2021–23 Convention of General Synod, the General Church Board and College of Bishops were asked to consider possible ways forward in the decades-long ordination debate. The Way Forward project is working to develop a framework whereby the LCANZ could function as one church with two different practices of ordination. It is intended that this proposal will be brought to the 2024 Convention of General Synod, 4–7 October 2024.

‘Across the church’, said LCANZ Bishop Paul Smith, ‘there are sisters and brothers in Christ of our Lutheran communities who are working together in the Way Forward project to guide our church to consider what is required for us to properly address what has been asked for by the resolution of General Synod.

‘We are asking the entire church to pray for these sisters and brothers, our leaders, and everyone who is affected by these conversations. We are calling for focused churchwide prayer on Sunday 8 October, and for ongoing prayer in the congregations and households of the church.

‘The prophet Zechariah declares a promise of our gracious God, “They will call on my name, and I will answer them. I will say, ‘They are my people’; and they will say, ‘The Lord is our God’.”’ (Zechariah 13).

Congregations have been asked to mark 8 October on their calendars for the churchwide Call to Prayer, while ongoing prayer on this matter throughout October and beyond is also encouraged. Worship orders, including the Call to Prayer elements, are available on the Worship Planning Page at www.lca.org.au/wpp

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SA–NT District bishop installed

Pastor Andrew Brook was installed as the new Bishop of the South Australia – Northern Territory District of the LCANZ on 3 September in a service at Concordia College in suburban Adelaide.

Installed by LCANZ Bishop Paul Smith, Bishop Andrew was elected unopposed at the district’s Convention of Synod at Victor Harbor, south of Adelaide in May.

He has succeeded Bishop David Altus, who did not seek re-election after 13 years in the role and who had been acting as ‘caretaker bishop’ since the convention.

Bishop Andrew has been lead pastor at St John’s Lutheran Church at Unley in South Australia since 2017, prior to that serving in the Victoria–Tasmania District at Burnie–Devonport, Tasmania, and Good Shepherd, Ringwood, and St Paul’s Box Hill, both in suburban Melbourne. He also served as the Victoria–Tasmania District Pastor for Child, Youth, Tertiary and Family Ministry and was a tertiary chaplain at the University of Melbourne, and pastor to the student congregation meeting at St John’s Southgate, in central Melbourne.

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Lutheran artists prepare and share a visual feast

Lutheran artists from across Australia have prepared and shared a visual feast for the senses in this year’s LCANZ Simultaneous Art Exhibition 2023.

Exhibitions were held in August in a variety of settings, including an office foyer, a studio gallery, a Lutheran school and at least seven churches. Participants based in New South Wales, South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia interpreted the theme ‘Come to the Banquet’ using a wide range of artistic styles and media.

It was the third churchwide art showcase, with previous simultaneous exhibitions held in 2021 and 2022. Contributing artists ranged from young schoolchildren to elderly retirees.

The exhibition at St John’s Lutheran Church in Perth celebrated its diverse community, with displays highlighting a different continent each weekend, while retired secondary teacher Naomi Zanker staged a solo exhibition in her studio gallery in Nhill, Victoria, with works underpinned by Bible texts including: ‘Taste and see that the Lord is good’ (Psalm 34:6).

At St Paul’s Lutheran Church in Sydney, the exhibition contained works by congregation members as well as those created by participants in a school holiday art workshop, while at St Peter’s at Port Macquarie, members and friends of the church shared their work.

In South Australia, exhibitions were held at the LCANZ Churchwide Office and Immanuel Lutheran Church in North Adelaide, suburban Glynde Lutheran Church, St Mark’s Mount Barker in the Adelaide Hills, St Petri Nuriootpa in the Barossa Valley and Loxton Lutheran School in the Riverland. The exhibitions at Mount Barker and Nuriootpa also included participants from local Lutheran schools. Members of the multiethnic community at Glynde traversed an expansive list of artistic media, including ‘Mukimono’ or vegetable carving, papier-mâché, calligraphy, collage, appliqué, knitting, sewing, drawing, painting and photography. They also may have featured the largest work of the churchwide event – an 8-metre-wide exhibit by Paul Schubert entitled ‘The Last Supper’, which stretched the width of the church hall.

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LCA’s treasured hymnbook turns 50

A fixture in many homes and churches across the LCANZ, the Lutheran Hymnal turns 50 this month.

Authorised by the Lutheran Church of Australia and first published by Lutheran Publishing House in October 1973, the treasured and popular volume of hymns, liturgy, prayers, worship orders and information, was into its second edition by June 1974 and its first reprint by 1980.

Among the events and celebrations marking the anniversary was a Friends of Lutheran Archives gathering at North Adelaide in late August. ‘United in song – the story behind the Lutheran Hymnal (1973)’, the meeting featured ALC pastoral studies student Jacob Fabich as guest speaker and Andrew Ampt as organist to lead the hymn singing.

The event showcased the history of the hymnal, including why a new hymnbook was needed in place of one published in 1922; the fact it took 22 years to produce, with work beginning across the two synods 15 years before the birth of the LCA; the people responsible for its development; and the church’s reaction to what was the biggest publishing venture the LCA has ever undertaken.

The meeting’s program was live-streamed and can be accessed online at the Friends of Lutheran Archives YouTube channel.

In Canberra, the Lutheran Hymnal’s birthday was to be marked at Hymnfest on 30 September at St Peter’s Lutheran Church at Reid.

Organised in collaboration with the Royal School of Church Music, the event was planned to include a choir and a performance by Sydney city organist Robert Ampt, brother of well-known Adelaide organist Andrew Ampt.

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In from the wild

Going GREYT! 1 Peter 4:10

In Going GREYT! we feature stories of some of our ‘more experienced’ people within the LCANZ, who have been called to make a positive contribution in their retirement. We pray their examples of service will be an inspiration and encouragement to us all as we look to be Christ’s hands and feet wherever we are.

by Rachel Koopmans

The warble of native birds, the rustling of nature, the sigh of a light breeze … these are the sounds that brush my ears when at last I make contact with Margaret Curnow.

She’s on Queensland’s Moreton Island with her grandchildren, whose unfledged voices sweep and wheel into our conversation and away again, like the cormorants who dot the bay. It’s fitting that I’ve found her in nature, a bird of paradise perfectly at home in the wild.

Margaret’s a hard woman to catch; possibly more so since a distant King formally acknowledged what her loved ones already know about her: a life of service, given passionately and given freely. ‘We were raised to be carers, workers, servants; steeped in Lutheran tradition’, she confirms. Tenets that seem at odds with her free-spirited nature but aren’t.

The Order of Australia recognises and celebrates people for distinguished and conspicuous service. Notably, the majority of recipients in the General Division this year were women, a first since the award was established in 1975.

Margaret is from that generation of women who were forced to resign from work once they married, but she married a visionary man of faith who encouraged her in her teaching vocation – her late husband Bill also had an AM, awarded for service to the construction industry, support of collaborative research and as an educator in 2010. Margaret’s OAM is for service to Special Education, and to the community.

Born in Papua New Guinea (PNG) to missionary parents, she preferred the freedom of the jungle to the rigours of homeschooling, running wild on the island of Umboi where her father, Vic Neumann, was plantation manager at Gizarum and master of the mission vessel Umboi 2.

Margaret describes her childhood as ‘idyllic’, the kind one reads about in the Enid Blyton-style stories of old; a dream that perhaps no longer exists. When she moved with her family to Australia at age 11, she could neither read nor write and spoke Pidgin with a smattering of English.

She was badly behaved.

‘They put me in a Prep class with the babies – I was very naughty, I didn’t want to know what they were teaching, and I was teased for being a dunce’, Margaret shares. The transition was tough, with a lot of tears. ‘I cried every night for a long time’, she confesses.

While primary school was tough, Margaret eventually went to St Peters Lutheran College at Indooroopilly in suburban Brisbane on a scholarship, where she flourished. A teaching degree was the affordable option; she excelled at practical teaching. Despite the work ban caused by her marriage to Bill, Margaret found her way into Special Education, teaching at the State School for Spastic Children New Farm, and later at Inala Special School (as they were known then) – both in the Brisbane suburbs. Her own schooling challenges informed her work. ‘I know what it is to struggle to understand’, she explains. ‘I could relate to those children.’

At Inala, she worked with teens who were unable to participate in a standard curriculum, teaching them to read and communicate using phonetics. A stint in Victoria included time as assistant to the Master at Geelong Grammar, caring for children with disabilities and learning difficulties, including reading issues.

In between her work in education and raising a family, the love and care shown Margaret by St Peters was also returned in spades: she and Bill reinvested that love via service to the old scholar’s association for 44 years. Together their legacy of servant leadership cannot be overestimated, and in 2008 the college’s Curnow House was named in their honour. Bill was appointed patron for a time, a position Margaret assumed when he died in 2022.

His passing has been tough. ‘We were a team – we worked perfectly together. After 58 years of marriage, I’m not used to being alone’, she shares.

These days Margaret lives in Toowoomba, in Queensland’s Darling Downs, in a house Bill designed. She attends Good Shepherd Lutheran Church. ‘I’m a firm believer that if everyone followed the Ten Commandments, the world really would be a better place’, she asserts.

Her colourful dress, glasses and accessories are an outward expression of a vivacious and joy-filled passion for life. ‘I guess I’m colourful because of PNG’, Margaret explains. Colourful and still a little wild, infused with the liberation of those early years.

It was in PNG that Margaret first learned to understand herself as a lovingly created child of God, set free to serve others. Perhaps that’s why there’s been such joy in her vocation because she knows that real freedom comes from both understanding and being understood.

Rachel Koopmans serves as Communications Advisor for the LCANZ’s Queensland District. This story first appeared under the title ‘In from the Wild: Margaret Curnow Makes the King’s Birthday Honours List’ in the Queensland eNews.

Within our Lutheran family, there are many GREYT people who serve tirelessly and humbly in their church and wider communities. By sharing stories of how God shines his light through his people in this column, we hope others are encouraged to explore how they can use their gifts to share his light in the world. Know of any other GREYT stories in your local community? Email the editor lisa.mcintosh@lca.org.au

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Directory – October–November 2023

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Your Voice – October–November 2023

LETTERS FROM MEMBERS OF THE LCANZ

Jesus’ humble life contrasts with ‘blatant display of riches’

As I enter the autumn of my years (based on current events I dread what winter will bring!), I find myself pondering the perplexities and practices of modern life, particularly Christian life. Recently we had the coronation of King Charles III, a sumptuous spectacle resplendent with history, tradition and esoteric religious rites, including the ‘secret’ order supposedly descended from the ‘Divine Right of Kings’.

I was dazzled by the magnificent robes of the ‘princes’ of particularly the Anglican Church as they assisted in this event. No doubt many of them were able to relax later in their palaces provided as a reward for their ascendancy in the church ranks.

A few days later, I saw a photo of Catholic cardinals in their black robes and red hats, seated in the basilica in the Vatican – a state dedicated to religion. I read that the Vatican employs a jeweller to provide adornments for ecclesiastical vestments and other office ‘necessities’.

As I witnessed these lavish celebrations, which purport to be Christian-based, I found it extremely difficult to reconcile them with a poor, itinerant preacher, the Son of God and Man, who had nowhere to lay his head, let alone adorn it with precious stones. Surely this blatant display of riches is inappropriate in a Christian setting.

Janise Fournier – Murray Bridge SA

Encourage others to bring a friend

We support the article ‘Bring a friend Sunday’ (The Lutheran, Aug-Sept 2023, page 26).

We, of the congregation in Maitland, South Australia, arranged a similar Sunday last year, filling two pews with new people. Several were fairly new Christians, and most had not been in a Lutheran church before.

The message was very well received, with the more orderly service order, plus the explanation of the Apostles’ Creed standing out for them. An added attraction was the inspection of the local Lutheran school and the beautiful refreshments that followed.

May we encourage congregations to consider and implement this relatively simple mission approach.

Hedley Krieg – Ardrossan SA

Unity of believers ‘over-arching concern’

God has given us the scriptures as a revelation of divine grace, love and mercy. Jesus prayed that the believers would be one (John 17:20–23), and Paul reminds us that the basis of our unity is Christ crucified (1 Cor 1:10,23). The number of times that Paul appeals to the believers to live peaceably and in unity makes it clear that the early church struggled, as we do, to keep their eyes on Jesus rather than get bogged down in conflicts over things not central to our faith.

A letter to The Lutheran (Aug-Sept 2023) refers to 1 Corinthians 11:19: ‘Indeed, there have to be factions (divisions) among you, for only so will it become clear who among you are genuine’ (NRSV).

These words need to be read within the context of Paul’s over-arching concern in 1 Corinthians for the unity of believers, and his repeated warnings against dividing into parties around leading figures and disputed topics (chapter 3). There is no contradiction between verse 19 and the writing that precedes and follows it when we understand that Paul is making a facetious comment in order to challenge the Corinthians to think about their behaviour at the Lord’s Table. The Corinthians that have wilfully or unthinkingly kept themselves separate at the Table are called to examine themselves with the implicit invitation to return to full fellowship and equal sharing.

God has given to each of us the ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor 5:18). As the Way Forward project seeks to find a pathway for the LCANZ to continue in harmony and unity despite there being different theological opinions regarding the ordination of both men and women, we can be confident that the Bible does not encourage us to break the fellowship of the LCANZ.

Tanya Wittwer – Carey Gully SA

Opinions expressed in letters are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect those of the editor or the Lutheran Church of Australia and New Zealand. Shorter letters will be given preference over longer letters. Subscribers’ letters will be given preference over those from non-subscribers. Letters longer than 300 words and those containing personal attack will not be published. No more than two letters from the same author will be published in a calendar year. Some letters may be edited for clarity.

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Coffee Break – October–November 2023

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