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Faith in pictures

by Ruth Brisbane

After many years of prayer, fundraising and hard work, the West Australian District and St Johns Lutheran Church in Perth have completed their major project: a striking modern building set next to the historic inner city church.

The Bible has endless stories and images, so I was in my element

The new building is multipurpose. Stage One provides a church hall, kitchen, meeting rooms and offices for the congregation and district, as well as lease income from its tenancies and car park. But it is the exterior walls of the car park that will serve as a statement of faith to passers-by.

When St Johns building committee learnt that planning regulations required one per cent of the project costs to be spent on public art, they seized the opportunity to present gospel images to the surrounding community. The striking metal artwork produced also serves the security and ventilation requirements of the lower level car park.

The sculptured panels were created by shaping and welding solid steel bars and plate, completed with a galvanised finish to create a silver-grey colour.

Artist Voytek Kozlowski was excited by the commission. ‘The Bible has endless stories and images, so I was in my element’, he said.

It was a joy for the St Johns committee and Pastor Andre Meyer to work with Voytek, who understood so well the message behind the images. Voytek was raised in Poland where, he says, his first exposure to visual art came within his boyhood church. As a child he loved to gaze at the wooden carvings that covered the walls, and these images continue to inspire him today. But these days Voytek is drawn to the permanence of working with metal. ‘When I am gone, this will still be here’, he said.

St Johns’ Pastor Andre Meyer described the significance of the images stretching across the six panels:

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A passionate encounter

by Bernice Koch

It can be lonely growing up in a one-child family. It was especially so for Claire, even though she grew up in China—with almost 1.5 billion people, the most populous country in the world. But modern technology can become a good substitute for human company.

Claire turned to listening to ‘all music, and of course, modern pop’ to counter her feelings of loneliness. By the time she was fourteen the music was going in and out of her consciousness without leaving any real impression. She ‘listened today, but tomorrow there was nothing left’. Tomorrow was another day when she could switch to another tune. It never left a lasting impression because ‘there was always new music coming’.

‘It was overwhelming; I was blown away. Previously, the music was nice, but there was no connection’

Claire selected music as her elective at secondary school. Her teacher liked baroque music, attracted to its structure. Many students were in the lecture hall when Claire heard the opening chorale of Johann Sebastian Bach’s St Matthew’s Passion for the first time.

‘It was overwhelming; I was blown away. Previously, the music was nice, but there was no connection’, she explained to me. Now her emotions were affected so deeply by Bach’s music that she had to go home. Claire listened to the music again and again. ‘My mind went blank. I never knew music could evoke such strong emotion. It was something greater than yourself. You gave yourself to it. You yielded to it. It was greater than any earthly being. Words are useless; it was so grand. It was really deep stuff. I had listened to Mozart and Tchaikovsky before, but I couldn’t relate to it’, she said.

Claire began to explore, using YouTube as her guide. She gradually learnt about JS Bach—as a Lutheran, as a German and as a composer. As Claire kept coming back to Bach’s motets, her knowledge of and love for the German language grew and developed. Claire had been studying English too—now her love for and appreciation of English literature also increased. She found it difficult to describe in Chinese Mandarin these new emotions filling her soul but found it easier to express them in English.

The beginnings of Christian belief further isolated Claire from her parents. Their aim for their daughter was for her to be successful in her studies. Chinese culture and her school environment did not encourage Claire’s emotional expression. Claire experienced feelings of isolation and detachment from the world around her. When she did try to explain her thoughts about the music to her teacher, it only resulted in anger. ‘I still wanted to be accepted, even though I felt so different and my thinking had changed from the others. It was a formative age,” she said.

Claire began to read about the different branches of Christianity and

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CELEBRATE

by Stuart Gray

What a joyous occasion!

On 9 November, more than 500 people were privileged to experience the joy and excitement of witnessing the dedication of a new church building, at Shepparton, in Victoria’s Goulburn Valley. Celebrations were particularly jubilant, as the congregation’s African choirs’ rhythmic singing exuded praise, thanks, honour and glory to God.

The opening of the new St Paul’s Lutheran church was the culmination of a wonderful story of God’s grace to a small, struggling congregation and to people who had fled their countries, losing all that they had owned.

They saw the Lutheran church as their ‘mother’

The emphasis of the day was not on the journey to get to this point but on the new beginning that the dedication of St Paul’s represents.

Rev Matt Anker of St Paul’s summed it up succinctly: ‘The building is complete, but the journey has just begun’.

But the journey towards the completed building is a story worth telling.

Before Pastor Matt took up his call to Shepparton in February 2007, he was advised by then St Paul’s chairperson, Bev Schumacher, that a couple of Africans had been worshipping with them for a few months. African refugees had begun to arrive in Shepparton and, because they had come to know Jesus in the Lutheran church back home and were then cared for in refugee camps run by Lutheran World Service, they saw the Lutheran church as their ‘mother’. They wanted to be part of the church in Australia too.

First were Baharti and his family from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)—and they alone increased the size of the congregation by one-third. Then came more families—from the DRC, from South Sudan and Burundi.

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In the steps of the Carpenter

by Rosie Schefe

It’s not yet mid-morning, but already a hot sun beats out of the white-blue sky, bouncing around the farmyard and making the long, bleached grass even drier.

Inside the century-old barn things are cooler, the light is diffused and the fine coat of sawdust which covers almost everything somehow blurs hard edges away. The stone walls reduce the outside wind to a gentle breeze in here, making it a pleasant place to sit and think or talk.

This is the Woodenmind workshop, on a seemingly remote farm that is not really so far from the small South Australian town of Eudunda, in the hills dividing the Barossa Valley from the Murray Plains.

No precious, high-shelf keepsake this. These figures are made to touch, to play with, to pick up and move about.

 

Carpenter Peter Voigt, who has owned this farm for nearly 20 years—almost as long as he’s been a cabinet-maker— describes the farm itself as ‘an excuse not to work’. In the workshop, though, it is obvious that plenty of work is going on.

A computer-guided router and its associated dust-collector hum away at one end, occasionally changing pitch as the drill hits resistance in the piece of wood it is transforming into a series of figures. Peter himself sits on a chair, quietly talking to me, his words accompanied by the constant scratch of sandpaper over wood as he smooths the curves of the object in his fingers.

Nearby, tables and shelves are filled with similar figures in various stages of completion—from fresh off the router to partly or almost fully sanded. Each one has been lovingly sanded by hand; the curving, rounded shapes offer few opportunities for using machine-made short cuts.

Peter is making the figures for a nativity set. Each set comprises fourteen pieces: the baby Jesus and the manger; Mary, Joseph, a shepherd, sheep, lamb and cow; a donkey, a camel and three wise men. The final—and largest—figure is the risen Christ.

No precious, high-shelf keepsake this. These figures are made to touch, to play with, to pick up and move about. They are robust and solid, finished with a skin-friendly coat of beeswax and

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The other LLL

‘You’re welcome!’ Two words frequently heard in cities and towns across Australia and New Zealand, as the Longest Lutheran Lunch brought communities together in fellowship and celebration.

This year’s theme was a timely reminder that the focus of this annual celebration is the people who are normally found on the outside of our church doors, not on the inside. It is a way of welcoming friends, neighbours and even strangers to step across the threshold.

Lutheran schools are also embracing the idea with enthusiasm: each year more schools join the fun—like the 420 students at Redeemer Lutheran School in Nuriootpa, South Australia (pictured above). While the students (or their parents) are loyal supporters of the original LLL, this Long Lunch line was a chance to bond with student buddies over lunchboxes packed with lamb or lamingtons (and a great way to get their photo published in The Lutheran). Thanks for our headline, Redeemer!

What a wonderful way to welcome people to church! Our Redeemer at Warracknabeal, Victoria, held its Long Lunch around tables extending out from the church doors (left). After lunch it was time for guessing games and the making of the Longest Loom Band (above), which stretched for a mighty 26.4 metres. Now that’s a useful mission tool for binding the generations together … Vol 48 No11 P354

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The turn of the tide

by Rebecka Colldunberg

In 1954 a young Vietnamese man, among thousands of others, lost his life battling for the independence of his country. His son was born soon after.

The soundtrack of this boy’s childhood and adolescence was gunshots, rocket fire and screams. Screams—blood and death accompanying them—from the enemy, from strangers and, on many occasions, from his own family and friends.

God blesses his people with the commandment to welcome strangers

This was life for the young man, his daily reality. But although he had experienced no other way of living, he knew this way was wrong and that life should be different.

In 1954 a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed seven-year-old boy roamed his parents’ South Australian farm. The soundtrack of his childhood and adolescence was the happy clatter and chatter of farm life, laughter and church bells. This was life for this young man, his daily reality. But although he had experienced no other way of living, he knew he was blessed to have this life and that there were people in the world not so blessed. He wanted life to be different for them.

Both young men met and married amazing women, who complemented their souls and shared their dreams, hopes, faith and desire for all people to live in a better, safer world.

In 1977 the paths of these two families crossed in a meeting that changed their lives. Saigon fell to the Communists in April 1975. In 1977 newlyweds Hieu and Lan …

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www.faith.formation

by Rosie Schefe

An eight-year-old child has not known life before the iPhone; an 18-year-old has not known life before the internet. People communicate in ways not even imagined a few decades ago. Some congregations find all this new technology a hindrance to ministry, but could it be a blessing?

In a series of workshops held across Australia this year, Roman Catholic educator John Roberto argues that churches have been slow to adapt to the digital environment, viewing it as a place filled with threats rather than as a landscape of opportunity. While mobile devices might seem like a distraction, what they can do is open up new pathways of learning and of faith formation.

Mobile devices have fundamentally changed the relationship between information, time and space, John Roberto says. This is paralleled by the rise of social networks, fuelled by social media phenomena, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Linkedin, Pinterest and Instagram. Rather than looking to authoritative sources, technology-savvy people now filter and evaluate news and other information through social networks.

‘People have become content curators; when they discover content they will share it with their broad network’,

‘Reciprocal sharing is the way in which people build their own social capital and reputations.’ Similar shifts are occurring in education, where digital media is allowing learning to happen anywhere and anytime, where learners become active participants rather than just consumers of information, and where people access material from a range of places rather than from one single institution. By re-imagining faith formation programs to suit this landscape, churches could better deliver lifelong learning and help to maintain connections with families and individuals, John maintains.

He uses the idea of ‘faith formation networks’ to explain how this might be done. A faith formation network brings people of different generations together, and supplies them with programs, activities, faith formation experiences and other resources that are tailored to match their needs and lifestyles.

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The church gig

by Chris Zweck

It’s a sunny October afternoon at Gympie State High School, Queensland. A group of students have gathered in the school’s outdoor amphitheatre to hear Christian hip-hop artist Patrick Davis perform.

Davis has a troubled past: his brother was murdered at a young age, and he spent much of his own life incarcerated. However, Davis ‘found God’ and now he travels America, Australia and the United Kingdom sharing his story of redemption. As Davis takes to the stage, his unique blend of hip-hop, reggae, soul and rock captivate the students, who are slowly engrossed by his message. As the group plays their final song, applause erupts. This is Live@theChapel—a grassroots music ministry that promotes contemporary artists with a Christian worldview.

Even though I’d left the church, God was still speaking to me through music

 

Since it began in 2009, Live@theChapel has become a permanent fixture in several churches across Australia. The success of the concept lies in its minimalistic approach. Bimonthly, a single Christian artist or a band is invited to a venue to play. The audience is given the chance to discover the artists’ life, to make a donation or purchase their music in support. It’s an intimate affair, where the impact music has had is exposed in its full rawness to an audience, helping them discover the artists’ musical journey.

It’s not surprising, then, that the event’s creator, Lutheran pastor Frank Rasenberger, has himself experienced a profound musical journey. The son of parents who migrated to Australia from Germany in the early sixties, Pastor Frank says music was always part of his life. ‘I’ve always had a passion for contemporary music. Music was always there—even during the times when I went away from the church’, he says. While his passion for music has never faltered, Pastor Frank admits that throughout his early years he struggled with faith. A firstgeneration Australian, he was raised in a nominally Christian household, where going to church was viewed more as a means of finding social inclusion than as an opportunity for worshipping God. ‘We would go to church once a fortnight or month’, he says. ‘We didn’t have home devotions or anything, so faith never became personal to me.’

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Speaking to Pharoah

by Rosie Schefe

In Jesus’ time, nobody liked tax collectors. But in 2014, it’s the people behind corporate taxdodging who are being exposed for draining billions of dollars each year from the world’s poorest people, who live in developing countries.

This issue was the focus of the recent Micah Challenge ‘Voices for Justice’ conference, which brought together more than 200 Christians from all over Australia who are passionate about social justice and fighting global poverty.

The highlight … was meeting other like-minded Christians … who care enough about the world’s poor to do something concrete about the poverty

Micah Challenge is a global movement of aid and development agencies, churches, schools, groups and individuals who speak out against poverty and injustice, in support of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals.

When this year’s delegates gathered in Canberra in June, this mission was broadened to include speaking out against corporate tax-dodging. Delegates’ first two days together were spent at a Canberra church, training for the campaign, praying and worshipping. They also planned and prepared for the final two days and pinnacle of the Voices for Justice program: lobby group meetings with members of parliament at Parliament House.

Second-time delegate and member of Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Belconnen

 

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ROLL UP! ROLL UP!

by Rebecka Colldunberg

Before you start scratching your head and rushing frantically to Google, this is a rhetorical question, because, of course, the answer is: nobody! The clowns, the games, the excitement, the tricks, the noise, the lollies … what is there not to love?

Just one small thing actually, and that is that the circus only lasts a few hours—and then you go home. Not so at this year’s Alberton Lutheran Parish’s annual holiday program, though.

The Queensland parish’s Lutheran Holiday Program (LHP) is not new; in fact, it has been an eagerly-anticipated annual event for 25 years. ‘Initially, the program was for the community of Jacobs Well, which is near our congregations of St Peters and Bethlehem, and it was to minister to the local children’, LHP volunteer director Jenni Keith explained. ‘We originally did the program during sugarcane season, when the local farmers were busy with the harvest. It gave us a wonderful opportunity to spend time with their children.’

Parish pastor Rev Greg Vangsness continued, ‘For many years the Lutherans and the Apostolics had the only church plants in the district. Having a program for children was a stepping stone for the gospel to be presented to the parents who came along to support their children. The LHP became widely regarded as something that was done well and gave the community a consciousness of the value of the church within society.’

As the years passed, many of the sugarcane fields turned into housing estates, but the program did not dwindle. In fact, much like the cane toads of those fields, the LHP grew in strength and numbers. It wasn’t long before the program outgrew its small hired community hall and moved to the church grounds. And this year, a quarter of a century after 57 bright-eyed and bushy-tailed children enjoyed the first Alberton Parish camp, just over 200 eager campers swarmed the grounds of LORDS (Lutheran Ormeau Rivers District School) for five days of circus fun with a strong biblical foundation.

‘I obtained a few different circus programs’, Jenni says, explaining the painstaking work of creating the program for 2014. ‘Then our very talented team put a set of themes together, wrote a matching drama program and worked out crafts, snacks and games based on the circus theme.’

Asking Jenni to pick a stand-out moment of the week was akin to asking a mother to pick her favourite child. But for Pastor Greg the decision was easy, and he seemed to speak for everyone:

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