Archive for category: Features

by Craig Heidenreich

If someone accused me of being racist, I think I would feel quite defensive because of all the negative connotations around that term.

I would probably defend myself with the thought that I am more tolerant and open-minded than that other bigoted person I know – that person who says what the rest of us only think (from time to time).

Let’s be honest, humans experience this strange tension along racial lines that is almost as old as history itself.

What is this driving force in our nature that will justify ourselves by putting someone else down?

Sadly, this is as old as sin itself, as old as Adam justifying himself by putting Eve down – ‘this woman you gave me caused me to eat the fruit’. It wasn’t Adam’s finest moment to focus on gender that day and about as silly as our focus on genetics.

Racism is part of the air we breathe in this fallen world and is fed by our insecurities.

We squirm when family members or certain politicians overtly appeal to the worst in our tribal natures, but we also contend with it in many subtle ways.

We need to fight this instinct if we choose to follow Jesus and be anything like our Heavenly Father.

In heaven, when ‘every tribe and tongue’ are worshipping, there is simply no racial hierarchy.

Jesus left his followers with a final request – that we should go out among all the nations to invite them back into a relationship with him.

The Father loves the whole world. Probably the most quoted verse of the New Testament would be John 3:16, ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave …’.

Our Heavenly Father invites us to love like he loves and enter into his joy as each lost sheep is found.

Let me offer a stark challenge: Racism is one of Satan’s primary attacks against God’s plan to gather all people back to himself!

Satan tempts us to judge the very people that Jesus died to save, the people we are called to love.

We need to see this attack for what it is and not tolerate it – it is as deadly as the self-righteousness that stops me associating with a sinner when I should be ‘the beggar showing another where to find bread’.

As we adjust our thinking to value what the Lord wants, let’s take in something of his sheer delight in the diversity of the humans he has made.

This is not about tolerating each other. This is about celebrating each other. This is about a church that is enriched and completed when we all come together.

So, what does this all mean in practice?

If we as individuals are to be free of this subtle racist pull, we probably need to ask the Lord to wash our minds of attitudes that we have taken in from our parents, our schooling, the impact of media, and even our church life. He may bring attitudes to mind that we should repent of.

Just think of the strong confirmation bias that happens when we access the internet and get our news from limited or similar sources. We think that we are sophisticated enough to spot the prejudice, but our minds can be shaped by what we see and hear.

I am aware of a dislike of certain nations or ethnicities that have lodged in me after watching some movie (maybe 30 years ago). The movie was probably quite biased, but at the time it suited my fallen nature to dislike those people. All these years later I find myself reacting to certain accents when I hear them.

How easily we start to judge other nations or ethnic groups for systemic injustices while self-righteously thinking, ‘I am not like that’. This is very thin ice!

We need to go through the Lord’s washing machine as much as Peter did in Acts 10. A voice from heaven said to him that day, ‘You must stop calling unclean, what God has made clean’.

When we meet together in church, our human instinct is to gather with others like ourselves and to seek leaders who look like us.

Is it possible that our church experience should be less about our comfort and more about our growth in love?

Humans contend with all sorts of tensions that play out along generational, gender, social and intellectual lines. These are the contexts for us to ‘prefer one another in love’ (Rom 12:10). Our racial differences are also a great context to act maturely and, in a world riven by racism, our mutual respect (across racial lines) is a clear witness to the work of our Lord.

Recently I was in a church service watching people line up to take communion and the line that day was a veritable ‘united nations’. It made my heart feel glad to see the transforming work of Christ in action among our Lutheran family.

Let’s lift our gaze to focus on what the Lord has in mind.

 

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Some Queensland Lutherans would know at least a little about new LCANZ Bishop Paul Smith, who served as their district bishop between 2015 and 2021. But many in our church may not have heard the incredible and inspiring story behind the faith journey of our sixth churchwide leader. Who is Paul Smith and how has God led him to this role?

With a surname like Smith, with no German heritage, and hailing from the Atherton Tablelands in Far North Queensland, it’s hardly surprising that the incoming LCANZ bishop is not a born-and-bred Lutheran.

While God brought him to baptism through the Anglican church in Western Queensland as an infant in 1962, Bishop Paul Smith was not raised as a churchgoing Christian. And, as the biography of Paul in Robin Kleinschmidt’s book Your Most Humble Servant states, his childhood family life gave him ‘no experience of regular worship, religious teaching, prayer or Christian formation’.

But God had his eye on Paul and when family circumstances led to him attending St Peters Lutheran College at Indooroopilly in Brisbane as a boarding student in Year 11, his life and faith were transformed. His teachers – including chaplain and English teacher Pastor (now Dr) John Kleinig and the late Adrienne Jericho, who would later become the executive director of Lutheran Education Australia and took Paul for Scripture classes – were among those whose Christian example and gospel witness greatly affected him. Some of his classmates were instrumental in his early faith journey, too.

He was not only confirmed in his Christian faith while attending St Peters, but he also acknowledged a call to the ordained ministry and began studying at the then Luther Seminary (now Australian Lutheran College) in Adelaide in 1980.

He took time out of his pastoral ministry training in 1982 and worked in factories, studied at Adelaide University and continued with part-time seminary study. After a bout of glandular fever, he returned to ‘the Sem’ full-time in 1984. Also in 1984, Paul met Heidi Muller from Henty New South Wales, who was studying at Lutheran Teachers College and was the sister of his best friend at seminary, Tim. Heidi and Paul were married in 1986 and today they have three adult children, Ben, Felicity and Jeremy.

Today, Bishop Paul calls Heidi his ‘co-worker’. ‘She will pray with me, pray for me, encourage me, listen to me and tell me when I’m being a cranky old goat’, he says of his wife, who has studied theology and is a qualified secondary teacher, as well as having worked as a Lutheran aged-care chaplain. This year she will begin work for the SA-NT District as its chaplaincy ministries coordinator.

‘And so, we have that open and robust relationship. She’s a dyed-in-the-wool, card-carrying Lutheran but she understands it doesn’t mean culture, history and community only, it means pointing to the big arrow down – what God does for us, and Heidi is good at keeping me earnest in that way. I’m very grateful for that, so she’s a co-worker in that sense and a team participant in my life as a Christian.’

Having completed his vicarage year at Underdale-Glandore parish under Pastor Clem Traeger in suburban Adelaide in 1987, Paul was ordained the following year at Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Adelaide.

Pastor Paul’s first assignment was as the first Lutheran college chaplain at Trinity Lutheran College Ashmore on Queensland’s Gold Coast. This first ordained ministry role continued for Paul what has become a close and valued relationship with Lutheran schools.

His next call was his first parish ministry, at Tailem Bend/Karoonda in South Australia, where he served between 1992 and 1995. To follow were parish ministries at Immanuel North Adelaide from 1995 to 2001 and from 2002 to 2005 at Good Shepherd Toowoomba in Queensland. These calls were followed by a return to service as a college pastor, firstly back at St Peters Indooroopilly and then at Pacific Lutheran College at Caloundra.

During his time at Toowoomba, Pastor Paul was first elected as a member of Queensland’s District Church Council, a role he would fill from 2003 to 2007, rejoining in 2010. Later that year he was elected as the first vice-president of the LCA’s Queensland District, a role he would fill until being elected bishop in 2015.

Committed to encouraging and progressing the service of younger leaders in the church, Bishop Paul served two terms and so did not stand for re-election in 2021.

He returned to St Peters as an interim college pastor in the latter half of 2021 and was elected as bishop of the LCANZ in October last year .

He believes God will use his life and ministry experiences in his service as churchwide bishop.

‘I believe God continues to prepare you for any and every role and God will always surprise you’, he says. ‘Has God equipped me especially with experience for this role? Yes, the people in the church have given me the opportunity to make mistakes in the name of Christ and in the cause of the gospel. The people of the church have given me great privileges.’

Bishop Paul comes across as a great optimist when it comes to people and the church. He whistles while he walks, smiles often, loves speaking with people and describes himself as ‘not a glass-half-empty person, nor a glass-half-full person, but a glass-overflowing person’.

He lists three main hopes for the coming years in the LCANZ. ‘The first one is that we would find good dialogue with young Christian people’, he says. ‘At the moment we don’t have a good dialogue with them. What we say, young people aren’t really hearing too well. What they say, is often not heard or properly understood.

‘The second hope that I’d have is that we would discover a growing collaboration with Christian sisters and brothers of our New Zealand and Australian church communities around us.

‘The third one is to discover the way Lutherans are evangelical in the 21st century. How are we Lutherans being evangelical to bring Christ to the nations? We have this great tradition of Lutheran witness, let’s see that grow and flourish in a way that’s authentic to who we are.’

Bishop Paul Smith will be installed as bishop of the LCANZ at Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Adelaide on 20 February. Attendance will be by invitation only, but the service will be livestreamed.

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