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The last bastion

by Sam Paior

Inclusion—it’s a basic concept. One that Jesus was mighty good at. Tax collectors, prostitutes, people who couldn’t walk, children—you name them, he loved them.

But he didn’t just love them, he also included them. They were an integral part of Jesus’ world. Of our world. When a baby is born, parents hold a level of hope and expectation for their child: child care, kindy, primary school, high school or college, university or TAFE, a job, move out, find a partner, buy a home, have a family of their own—and so it goes.

When a family finds out that their child has a disability, that trajectory looks somewhat different: special kindy, special school, special high school, a job with an Australian Disability Enterprise (formerly known as sheltered workshops), move into a group home with strangers. A partner and children? Much less likely.

How can we change that? How can we include children and adults with disability in all areas of our spiritual and educational lives?

My 15-year-old son Ben has Down syndrome. But his life has been different from many others who share the same genetic enhancement. I have always expected him to be a fully included, valued member of my family and his community—and that includes his faith community. This hasn’t always been easy. One church wouldn’t allow him in Sunday school without my supervision (without asking even the most basic questions about how he might need to be supported). One Lutheran college never returned my calls when I inquired about enrolling him, while another told me that they received no funding to support ‘children like him’.

Leaving aside their magnificent grounds (which should surely be less important than welcoming and educating all of God’s children into our faith), these places of faith continue to shun our children and adults with disability. Whether the blocks are financial or are simply barriers of ignorance and prejudice doesn’t matter: we must do better.

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Angel of hope

by Rebecka Colldunberg

I wish I didn’t have to write this story. I wish stories like this didn’t exist.

I’m not alone. In her final months of life, our story’s protagonist put her heart and soul into a cause that she hoped would one day end the need for anyone to write a story like this.

At the beginning of 2013 Julie Schrodter was in the Royal Brisbane Hospital undergoing chemotherapy treatment. Eager for any distraction she gathered a handful of pamphlets and casually meandered through them. Some she kept, most she put back. But one in particular caught her attention: Weekend to end Women’s Cancer. It detailed a weekend event where participants— both women and men—entered as teams and undertook a 60-kilometre walk together. Funds raised by the teams supported ground-breaking and critical cancer research at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute.

‘She asked me one little question’, Lois Kube recalls: ‘“Will you walk with me?”’

 

Despite being seriously ill, Julie couldn’t shake the idea of forming a team for the event. The moment she arrived home she picked up her phone and called her dearest friend. ‘She asked me one little question’, Lois Kube recalls: ‘“Will you walk with me?”’

Up until the moment Julie called her, Lois had no idea what the Weekend to end Women’s Cancer was, but her answer was an immediate and enthusiastic yes. ‘I just knew that if Julie thought she could do this as sick she was, then I had to join her’, she says.

From that point on, their combined passion for the weekend became infectious. ‘Things began to snowball’, Neil Kube, Lois’s husband and fellow team member, remembers. ‘As the two ladies encouraged family and friends to join them, the team grew to 28 members. Almost all of them were Lutherans, from all over Queensland.’

Julie’s husband David says she‘was proud of the support she received from her team. It gave her the strength and drive to get herself through the bad days and make the most of every opportunity. Our team was named Legs of Hope.’

Hope was not just a word for Julie; it was an ethos she lived by. ‘Hope is what Julie hung onto’, Lois says, explaining the team name. ‘Hope that the pain would go away, hope for a cure and, mostly, the hope that God already provided for her with eternal life.’ Not only did Julie’s fellow team members carry her hope in their

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A century, not out

by Linda Macqueen

In 1938, 16-year-old Melva von Bertouch was at Adelaide Railway Station, farewelling a boy she liked. Young seminarian Bill Stolz was there too—not to farewell the boy, but to talk to Melva, a friend of his sister.

‘He talked and talked and talked … so much that I never got to say goodbye to that boy I liked!’ Melva laughs. They had chatted a few times before, outside Immanuel College, where Melva was a final-year student. Not long afterwards, 23-year-old Bill, as a brand-new pastor, had to head north to his first posting—Proston, in a home mission field in Queensland.

A few months later Bill’s thoughts returned to the lovely young Melva. He plucked up the courage to write to her, asking if they could correspond ‘with the idea that they might marry’. His boldness paid off. Bill and Melva have now been married for 70 years. ‘I don’t think he ever proposed’, Melva says. ‘I agreed that I’d write to him, and that he could come down to Adelaide in three years and we’d get engaged. But I didn’t want to get married until I was at least 21. And it would have to be in September; I wanted to get married in September.’

So they wrote, every month. And while their letters contained matters of the heart, they also described the ups and downs of daily life. ‘In the letters

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Walk the talk

by Rosie Schefe

It’s a bit scary the first time. Walking in, knowing nobody and needing to explain you are a chaplain.

And then there’s the atmosphere. High walls, fences and barbed wire. Uniforms, handcuffs, keys and following directions as a guest of ‘the system’. It’s enough to make anyone nervous about visiting a person in prison.

Pastor Neil Hampel knows this experience, knows it well. He began ministry as a prison chaplain after 40 years in parish ministry, continuing as a volunteer for another eight years after his retirement in 2002. He estimates that from 1998 to 2010 he spent ten years as a voluntary prison chaplain, taking time out occasionally to serve parishes in a locum capacity.

As a chaplain I was able to be a servant of Christ and to minister in his name. I believe; so I live and preach.’

He’d had some chaplaincy experience previously, working with small industries or government bodies, but his prisonvisiting experience was limited. He was ministering in Port Augusta, South Australia, when the call went out for people to serve as chaplains in the prison.

‘The coordinating chaplain, a kindred spirit from the Uniting Church, gave me some basic information and told me that my role was to get to know the prisoners and to share the gospel’, Neil says. And that is what he did, once every week for the next four years.

Neil’s first visit took him straight to the prison’s secure unit (Port Augusta houses high-, medium- and low-security prisoners). Effectively, his job was to cold-call, to identify himself as a member of the chaplaincy team and to build a relationship—through the trapdoor in the cell door.

Neil says, ‘It didn’t matter to me why they were there. Each one is a son of Adam. All I could do was to befriend them in the name of Jesus.

‘Some were willing to talk, some weren’t. Prisoners soon assess whether you are genuine or not. You have to be consistent, be reliable and dependable. You have to walk the talk and talk the walk’, he says.

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Statement on Marriage

Pastor John Henderson, LCA Bishop

On 22 May 2015 voters in the Republic of Ireland were asked to determine whether ‘marriage may be contracted in accordance with law by two persons without distinction as to their sex’. Of nearly 2 million votes cast, 62% voted ‘yes’.

The success of this referendum, supported by the Irish government, has sparked a worldwide response. It is seen as the first popular vote to enact same-sex marriage, rather than a vote by elected representatives, as has already happened in New Zealand (2013), many European countries, and parts of the USA. Does this signify a turning of the popular tide in relation to the issue, and how should we respond?

A senior Vatican diplomat, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, has said, ‘The church must take account of this reality, but in the sense that it must strengthen its commitment to evangelisation. I think that you cannot just talk of a defeat for Christian principles, but of a defeat for humanity’.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten and his deputy Tanya Plibersek were among the first Australian politicians to respond to the Irish referendum by introducing a private members bill to Parliament. Well-known voices such as 2GB’s Alan Jones have come out in support of same-sex marriage. Now Prime Minister Tony Abbot seems to be preparing for a free vote in the Parliament, without the usual ‘party line’ restrictions. It could take place as early as August. All this seems to mean that the odds of a change in Australian marriage law have increased significantly.

In Australia, marriage is regulated by a Federal Act (1961), which defines marriage as ‘the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life’. While in full agreement with this definition, the Lutheran Church of Australia recognises that governments have the duty and responsibility under God to make and enforce laws for the ordering of society. For Lutherans, marriage is not a sacrament belonging to our salvation, but an order for the welfare of human society. If the rules of society stand in clear contradiction of the Word of God, the church is not bound by them.

An example of this freedom occurred when the LCA discussed conscientious objection to conscripted military service during the Vietnam War. It argued:

When governments wantonly subvert their God-ordained functions and act in contempt and violation of God’s law, the individual Christian is bound to examine his position as a citizen and to let his conscience, bound by the Word of God, determine at what point and in which matters he must refuse obedience rather than to permit men to involve him in sin. Acts 5:29; Augsburg Confession XVI, 2.3.7. (Conscientious Objection to Service in War, CTICR, adopted by General Convention 1970)

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Present and distinct

By Nevin Nitschke and Rosie Schefe

What is a lay worker? What do they do and where do they work?

If you had been present at the Nunyara Conference Centre in Belair (Adelaide Hills) in May, you might have found this question easy to answer. About 70 lay workers, from almost every Australian state, gathered for the 2015 LCA National Lay Workers Conference. But an easy answer might still not have been forthcoming.

There were paid lay workers, and volunteers. The youngest was 17 and the oldest has seen a few more than 80 birthdays. They held various job titles: chaplain, pastoral carer, ministry support worker, child and youth worker, young adult ministry worker, camp manager, camp staff, mission and outreach worker, culture-specific worker, worship and music coordinator, musician … the list goes on.

These are the mission and ministry encouragers of the Lutheran Church of Australia. Their calling is to serve God and to be witnesses for Jesus in their communities. So they gathered together to explore what it means to be ‘knowing, hearing and following God in real life and ministry’.

Lay work, whether paid or voluntary, can be a lonely vocation. Sometimes lay worker roles are hard to define, or not well thought out before they are filled. Sometimes the lay workers get the jobs that nobody else in the church is keen to do. It can be easy to think that their work is not valuable or producing measurable results. Sometimes knowing, hearing and following God is the hardest road.

‘knowing, hearing and following God in real life and ministry’

That is why the Board for Lay Ministry runs the national conference every two years: it gives paid and voluntary lay workers an opportunity to gather together to learn, to network, to grow in their love for Jesus, to support each other and to be supported and encouraged in the ministry positions into which God has called them.

Core to the aims of the conference is learning. This time, pastors Peter Steicke and Michael Dutschke set the tone of the conference with their presentations on knowing and hearing God. LCA church planting coordinator Dean Eaton then led participants into study of 1 Peter. Tim Hein invited the lay workers to consider what it means to follow Jesus. He reminded them that to be holy means to be present and distinct, not distant or undetectable. What a great guiding principle for lay workers in their roles!

But it wasn’t all sitting and listening. On Thursday afternoon everyone was loaded onto a bus for a brief tour through Adelaide’s CBD and dropped off in Port Adelaide for a dolphin cruise on the Port River. Brandon Chaplin was the guest speaker for that evening’s cruise dinner. He shared from his heart

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Lace and grace

by Linda Macqueen

Judging by the photo, Sunday, 12 September 1943 was a sunny day in the country town of Appila, South Australia. Cool, though, more than likely. Spring mornings are still nippy in these parts.

Not that Lorraine would remember anything about the day. She was a babe in her mother’s arms. Maybe she was a bit grizzly, having been woken and bathed earlier than usual, and pulled and poked into the lacy white gown her mother had lovingly sewn. It was Lorraine’s baptism day.

As was the tradition in those days, this was the first time her mother would have been to church since her baby’s birth. Baptism day was an exciting day for young mothers—arriving at church dressed in their best (and probably new) dress, glowing with pride and joy as the other women hurried over to ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ at the lace-and-satin bundle.

What matters is that God made me his child that day, long, long before I even knew him

All the regular Trinity Lutheran folk were at Appila church that day. Lorraine’s sponsors—two aunts and an uncle— were there too, of course, dressed in their finest for this red-letter day. The young pastor, Bill Stolz, three days shy of his 28th birthday, was glancing through the rite of baptism one more time, making sure he wouldn’t stumble at a critical moment, or forget the baby’s name. Not that he was nervous; he’d already baptised 54 babies during his short pastoral ministry. ‘People made a lot more babies in those days’, he says cheekily.

‘I can’t remember my parents telling me anything about my baptism day’, says 71-year-old Lorraine Kempf (nee Pech, formerly Waack). ‘Not that the details matter. What matters is that God made me his child that day, long, long before I even knew him. I can thankfully say that God chose me, and has kept me in my baptismal faith. I love this Bible verse: “But even before I was born, God chose me and called me by his marvellous grace” (Galatians 1:15).

‘Years later, in my confirmation lessons, I learnt what God had done for me on that Sunday morning, 12 September 1943. All the things Jesus Christ won for me through his death and resurrection were given to me, no strings attached: forgiveness of my sins, deliverance from death, and eternal life.’

Over the years, every time Lorraine would run into Pastor Stolz, she would remind him (not that he needed reminding, she says) that he was the pastor who baptised her. She had always felt a special bond with him.

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A fruitful beginning

by Rosie Schefe

Seven years after his first visit, Michael (also known as Mick) Hauser will soon return to the coastal city of Lae, in Papua New Guinea. His return will complete one cycle of learning for Michael, just as a new one begins.

In 2008 Michael was a participant in a study tour to Papua New Guinea. In Lae the group stayed in a guesthouse where LCA Mission International program officer (now interim director) Glenice Hartwich was also staying.

Glenice remembers meeting Michael: ‘It was on the steps of the guesthouse. We talked about volunteering, and Mick asked me if there were opportunities for volunteering through the LCA. I was able to tell him that, yes, there were. The following year he was off on a three-week trip to Sabah, in Malaysia, as a Mission International volunteer.’

Life’s experience is perhaps the great teacher, particularly when it comes to being a multicultural Christian

When Michael returns to Papua New Guinea, he will do so as a lay theologian, appointed to serve at the Martin Luther Seminary (initially for two years) as a lecturer in systematic theology and historical studies. His appointment is part of the LCA’s 129-year ongoing partnership with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Papua New Guinea (ELCPNG).

But Michael’s story begins much earlier than 2008. He describes his background: ‘I was born into a very German Lutheran background, on both sides of the family. I was educated at every turn by Lutheran institutions: Faith Lutheran College at Redlands, St Peter’s College Indooroopilly and then Australian Lutheran College (ALC).’

But as a young adult he strayed away from matters of faith. He eventually returned to Lutheran schools, as a residential supervisor at Yirara College in Alice Springs, Northern Territory, and then at his old school, St Peters College;

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Lutheran hospitality— neither dampened nor scorched

By Rebecka Colldunberg

A WARM WELCOME

Dateline: January 2015
Place: Tanunda and Williamstown, South Australia
Disaster: Sampson Flat bushfire

When they were threatened by searing bushfires, the residents and staff of Abbeyfield aged-care facility in Wlliamstown were evacuated and were welcomed with open arms into Tanunda Lutheran Homes (TLH).

‘The senior management team were all on site and prepared the Gramp Chapel for the arrival of 29 residents and staff’, TLH chief executive officer Lee Martin said.

‘The residents and staff felt comforted to be staying in the chapel at their time of need; they felt calm and protected’, the general manager of Abbeyfield, Barbara Wieland, said. ‘I was so touched by a Tanunda resident who approached me when we were given the all-clear to return to Abbeyfield and asked, “Are you really sure it’s safe to return? You are welcome as long as you need to be here.” That attitude just summed up how we were treated.’

Shortly after their return to Abbeyfield, the residents and staff were keen to return the hospitality, so they organised an afternoon tea to say thank you. Barbara also presented TLH with a gift to show Abbeyfield’s appreciation—a candle (now displayed in the Gramp Chapel) and a pair of ‘friendship birds’ as a sign of the new relationship between Abbeyfield and Tanunda. Several visits are planned throughout the remainder of the year to give the two groups of residents an opportunity to catch up. The first one is planned to happen this month.

FOOD AND FRIENDSHIP BLOWS IN

Dateline: February 2015
Place: Rockhampton, Queensland
Disaster: Cyclone Marcia hits Rockhampton

Nanthakumaran, his wife Sujiatha and their children came to Australia as Tamil refugees from war-torn Sri Lanka. They rented a house in Rockhampton and formed a friendship with Lutheran pastor Rob Edwards and his wife Joyleen, whom they would often welcome into their home and fill up with delicious oriental cuisine.

The morning after Cyclone Marcia, Nanthakumaran’s oldest son called Pastor Rob with some bad news, ‘Hello, Pastor’, he said, ‘Our house is broken … our roof blew off.’ Pastor Rob went to the house straightaway. ‘I could see immediately that the house was uninhabitable. I knew that there would be shelters set up for this very circumstance, and I knew also that they would be very crowded and temporary at best. The thought came that they could stay with us.’

The Tamil family welcomed the invitation, on the proviso that Rob …

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I once was lost

By Mark Worthing

In 2013 the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) adopted and released a statement titled ‘Welcoming the Stranger’ and challenged Lutherans around the world to consider their mission and ministry in light of this profound biblical principle.

At the fourth Australian Conference on Lutheran Education (ACLE 4), held in Brisbane in September 2013, about 1000 Australian Lutheran educators were challenged by LWF president, Bishop Munib Younan, to think about what it means to welcome the stranger.

The LWF statement Bishop Younan introduced begins by asking us to make a personal pledge: ‘A core value of my faith is to welcome the stranger, the refugee, the internally displaced, the other. I shall treat him or her as I would like to be treated. I will challenge others … to do the same.’ But who really is ‘the stranger’?

In May 2006 I was in Iran, to speak at a conference on religion and medicine at Tehran University. I arrived early, so decided to head into the old city and check out its famed bookstores and food stalls. In my enthusiasm, I failed to note the name of the hotel at which I was staying or even the name of the suburb in which it was located. By about 10.00 pm I was getting cold and I realised I was hopelessly lost in this very foreign city of 14 million Farsi speakers. With my blue eyes, pale skin, brown hair (yes, it was once brown!) and Western dress, I stood out as being out of place. After many acts of hospitality by ‘strangers’ who spoke a little English, or German, or French, I finally arrived back at my hotel in the early hours of the morning. I will never forget the dozens of Iranians willing to help the stranger among them that chilly May night.

That incident gave me a new perspective on the concept of the stranger. I had always assumed the stranger was someone else, someone who needed my help. As the LWF statement reminds us, ‘we are all considered

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