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by Nevin Nitschke
In the cool morning air in northern Thailand, a young woman looks at green rice fields across a flowing stream, all still partly in the shadow of the forested mountains. The lush vegetation that seems intent on blanketing her Lua community village is filled with the sounds of life. So much so, that it is almost possible to hear the growth in the plants that were once home to tigers and elephants.
Khun Daw reflects on her past and the fear her family felt from the tight hold spirit doctors had on their lives. These fears were enhanced by the closeness of life in a small community, being enclosed by nature and surviving as ‘foreigners’ whose forebears came from nearby Laos less than a hundred years ago. She remembers when each day was ruled by what the spirit doctor allowed and demanded.
As Khun Daw rides her motorbike through the valley, she recalls when she first found hope – the moment that led to her freedom from fear. Even at 13 years old she knew her family was falling apart. Her father escaped the harsh reality of his life through heavy drinking, which led to constant fighting between her parents at that time.
Khun Daw’s head and stomach often ached with pain, needing regular hospital visits. The control of daily life by the village spirit doctor felt like a vice.
As she turns her bike off the main road and begins the climb up a dirt track, she remembers the moment she asked for help, not from her mother or the spirit doctor, but from an evangelist who visited their home. ‘Who is Jesus and what is the Bible?’, she had asked.
On her climb up the mountain road, she passes a marked field. It is marked to show that the spirit doctor had once forbidden crops to be planted there. It is another reminder of the fear that once controlled them. At the top of the rutted track, she stops next to a simple building that has become the heart of this community. Only three local families now don’t have a relationship with Jesus, but even they will attend the church service she is about to lead.
As Khun Daw begins to lead the worship service, she does so as part of a team of 11 evangelists. All of them know what it is to be freed from fear. Each one serves with a desire to share with their communities that there is only one God and that he gave his life for them. Fear is fading and God’s love has produced joy, trust and hope.
Nevin Nitschke is an LCA International Mission Program Officer.
For more inspiring articles about how God is changing lives of people throughout PNG and South-East Asia, go to www.lcamission.org.au/category/stories
by Lisa McIntosh
Each year in The Lutheran, we introduce the wider church to the newest pastors of the LCANZ, including sharing a bit about their work and family backgrounds and their call to the ordained ministry. It is both amazing and encouraging to learn of the many different paths our shepherds have taken to get where they are today. No two are exactly alike. And God uses their experiences for his kingdom as they serve in our congregations, schools, care settings, or district or churchwide ministries.
Among the ranks of serving pastors in the LCANZ are former funeral directors and footy umpires, fast-food outlet managers and farmers, taxi (and bus) drivers and teachers, economists and engineers, scientists, business bankers, finance and IT industry specialists, medical doctors and defence force personnel, cleaners, counsellors and copywriters, retail managers and sales staff, and even a prize-winning livestock photographer. And the list goes on.
But what do these ‘former lives’ mean for present-day ministries? Do any of the skills learnt behind a fast-food or shop counter, or on a tractor, in a laboratory, factory or classroom really translate into a parish setting?
Rev Dr Dan Mueller, who has served the Walla Walla Lutheran Parish in New South Wales since 2017, thinks so. A former software engineer and research scientist who worked in the Netherlands for several years, Pastor Dan believes there are two aspects from his ‘previous life’ that God continues to use in his ministry. ‘Firstly, I always had a desire to help and heal people. This is why I specialised in medical computing’, he says. ‘In particular, I designed algorithms and wrote software used by doctors in hospitals to diagnose and treat various medical conditions including cancer. This desire to help remains in my pastoral ministry. Now I help by speaking God’s gospel word of comfort; now I heal with water, bread and wine.
‘Secondly, my time living abroad and travelling, has shown me the diversity of God’s wonderful creation. It was a thrill to meet people with vastly different stories from my own. Each culture, each person, each story, enables us as individuals and as a church collective to hear, see, know, experience God more fully.’
Pastor Matt Bishop’s own experience backs up the idea that God can use any work or vocational journey to grow his kingdom. Pastor Matt, who currently serves at Blair Athol in South Australia and was ordained in 2015, was an Economic Policy Advisor with the Commonwealth Treasury, worked in the Australian Government’s Department of Finance, was deployed to the Papua New Guinea Treasury, and managed a McDonald’s franchise and served as a kitchen hand with the fast-food giant.
‘I don’t think too much is wasted, right down to being able to use my previous “Maccas” experience to place 24 pancakes expertly on a barbecue hotplate at the local high school breakfast club our (former) congregation ran in Morley Western Australia’, he said. ‘My research and policy development skills, and my God-given inquiring mind, continue to find all sorts of applications.’
With Pastor Peter Klemm’s call to the ministry taking more than 20 years to come to fruition, he also had plenty of time to explore different occupations. Pastor Peter, who serves at Cummins on SA’s Eyre Peninsula, was a farmhand on his family’s farm after leaving school, next headed to Central Australia to work at the Finke River Mission store at Hermannsburg/Ntaria, then worked in roles including tyre-fitter, delivery driver and selling batteries, stockfeed, petrol, hardware and paint, as well as quoting jobs for tradesmen for HR Sanders in Clare in SA’s Mid-North.
Pastor Peter believes that his previous roles have helped him to be able to relate to people from all walks of life and ‘to always lean on God in all things’.
‘I believe God has placed me into ministry after moulding me over a number of years’, he says. ‘God has given me a pastoral heart, a thirst to know more about him, a willingness to listen to other people and a yearning to visit people, whether on the tractor or header, in aged-care facilities, or their homes.’
Pastor Peter Heintze also comes from a rural background and says he spent 34 years ‘wandering in the wilderness’ before studying for the ministry and being ordained in 2017.
‘God was preparing me for something that I did not think I was capable of, or even worthy’, says Pastor Peter, who serves at Coonalpyn in SA’s South-East. ‘What amazes me is how God uses our journeys through someone like me, who did not like school, left as soon as I could to work on the family farm for 20 years, which I did not like, but I did learn a lot.’
As well as having been a primary producer for two decades, Pastor Peter worked as a cleaner, a school handyman and tutor, a Community Development Employment Projects supervisor, a mining laboratory soil sampler, a Big W warehouse employee, a Centrelink work supervisor, a painter/renovator and in water compliance.
‘The different occupations, the diverse range of people I worked with, the people skills I acquired, the life experiences gained, the myriad of role models, and the power of the Holy Spirit helped to prepare me for the ordained ministry’, he says.
Another pastor who spent many years of his pre-ministry life in his family’s business is Darryl Shoesmith, who serves at Christchurch in New Zealand.
Pastor Darryl, who previously studied at Queensland Agricultural College in Gatton, worked at the college as a vet’s assistant for a year while undertaking an honours endorsement in wildlife management. The following year though, he was employed at the family firearms shop as a retail assistant.
A love of the craftsmanship of firearms and their history led to study in gunsmithing in the US in 1982 and, after returning to Australia and Shoesmith Firearms, he worked as an employee for several years and then managed the business until 2008 when he retired early.
While Pastor Darryl had given thought to studying for the ministry earlier, it was only in his fourth year of retirement, after discussions with the pastor taking his father’s funeral, that he pursued his new vocation.
And he believes his customer-service background has helped prepare him for serving a parish. ‘Dealing with, speaking with, getting to know, so many different types of people on a day-to-day basis is a good grounding because it is not just about them, but is good for knowing yourself’, he says.
Pastor Joseph Theodorsen also had customer or client-focused roles before studying for the ministry and being installed to serve Top End Lutheran Parish Northern Territory earlier this year. After attending school in Western Australia, he was a service station attendant then manager, a clerk, a recruitment consultant, a Bachelor of Education student and taxi driver who had explored the option of becoming a Specific Ministry Pastor at his home church of Geraldton before moving to Adelaide to attend Australian Lutheran College to study to become a General Ministry Pastor.
‘There are many ways God had planned for me to grow as his servant through the various roles I had before the ordained ministry’, he says. ‘Many of them were customer or client-focused, and a desire to help people was always very strong for me. Also, the wide range of people that I would interact with through these roles, particularly as a taxi driver and at the service station, was great preparation for the ministry. To have had such a large amount of experience with people from all walks of life helps in many ways.’
Like the other pastors who’ve shared their reflections here, South African-born Roelof Buitendag didn’t start out wanting to be a pastor. After a move to Australia and studies in psychology and science, his main role was as a sleep scientist, but he had also worked in casual jobs as a shop hand at a convenience store in West End, Queensland, in a bagel shop, as a bartender, hotel cleaner, sales attendant and paint mixer with Dulux Paints, bricky’s labourer, and a youth coordinator.
Pastor Roelof, who serves at Ipspwich Queensland, believes God’s will for our lives is often only ‘revealed as we walk on that journey’. ‘Everything beforehand has helped me relate to people and hopefully helped me communicate the reality and truth of the God of the Bible into the utmost needs of people’, he says.
By Libby Jewson
Change is not easy and can bring fear, uncertainty and insecurity.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought many changes to our home, work and worship lives, including some that we would have thought unimaginable just 18 months ago.
It has put further pressure on our faith communities, too, through church closures, ongoing but ever-changing restrictions, increasing compliance requirements and the need to re-think and adapt how we conduct and take part in worship and how we engage with and serve the communities around us.
I believe this has left many people weary – especially in my home state of Victoria – and, in some cases, they are disheartened about life and church.
Even before COVID, some people within the LCANZ expressed fears that change in the world around us would threaten the very survival of our church as we have known it. Others believe a viable future for the church comes down to whether or not we are prepared to change to connect with and minister to that ‘world’. Coupled with already-dwindling attendances in many mainstream churches, including ours prior to 2020, we may feel that we face the multi-pronged attacks of hostility from without and division within.
But it’s not all doom and gloom – far from it. We are all God’s children, and his unfathomable love is the one constant, unchanging reality for the world. Also, our Father, Son and Spirit have promised to be with us, walk alongside us and hold us in loving arms as we face the trials of life, including unexpected and unwanted changes.
And many great things are happening across the Lutheran community in Australia and New Zealand. There are indeed differences in thinking across the church about how and whether we need to change to not just survive, but thrive as we seek to further God’s kingdom. But I believe we can work together to address these differences. And I am hopeful we can do this collaboratively in a spirit of trust and respect.
From my experience in both church and professional life, I believe that managing change well and coming through the other side stronger is all about working in respectful partnerships with others, including – and even especially – those we may disagree with.
One image used to describe this partnership of ‘opposites’, is that of the place where the river meets the sea – fresh water and saltwater mingling into one body, but each still existing in its own right. It’s an image evoked in the Archie Roach song Liyarn Ngarn which, translated from the Yawuru First Nations language, literally means ‘a coming together of spirits’. It is a place of richness and vitality. It is also the metaphor used for the theme of the LCA’s Reconciliation Action Plan website (www.rap.lca.org.au).
Such collaborations of disparate partners suggest that, when we are open to and respectful in working with people of different viewpoints, each can learn from and be enriched and blessed by the other.
We also may come to humbly recognise that each person is individually gifted by God and has a role to play in bringing the good news of Christ’s saving sacrifice and love to the world, as we read in 1 Peter 4:10 (‘Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace’), 1 Corinthians 12:14 (‘For the body is not one member, but many’) and elsewhere. I am an accredited partnership broker and partnerships and system change have been passions of mine for more than two decades. Perhaps more helpfully described as a change-maker, bridge-builder or servant leader, a partnership broker is an active ‘go-between’ who supports partners in navigating their journey together by helping them to create a map, plan their route, choose their ‘mode of transport’ and change direction when necessary.
Partnerships can be reactive, adaptive or transformative. Reactive partnerships are formed as a strategy to deliver outcomes within the framework of the existing status quo – in other words, without significant change. Adaptive partnerships are designed to deliver development that occurs somewhat separate from, but alongside, the mainstream – so it will involve some change, though not likely fast or revolutionary. Transformative partnerships are intentionally created to challenge and change mainstream systems and mindsets.
The world’s longest-established organisation dedicated to multi-stakeholder partnering, The Partnering Initiative (https://thepartneringinitiative.org/), outlines the ‘partnering cycle’ in The Partnering Toolbook. This cycle goes through the phases of scoping needs and building relationships, managing and maintaining such elements as governance arrangements and partner capacities, reviewing and revising the partnership effectiveness and collaboration agreement and, finally, sustaining outcomes within partnerships. The cycle can then continue as the partnership matures and develops.
Many things can threaten productive partnerships, according to the Partnership Brokers Association (PBA), the international professional body for those managing and developing collaboration processes.
Challenges that partnerships commonly face include anxiety about differences between the partners, power imbalances, hidden agendas, competitiveness and uncertainty. In each case though, the PBA says there are core principles the partnership can adopt to address these, and benefits that result from them.
Some relationships don’t reflect partnership behaviour – there may be an imbalance in communication between the members or the intent of partnership principles may not be understood. These are simply about exchanging information or are more operational.
A genuine partnership features mutual accountability and shared risk between the partners. The partners are equal and develop goals and strategies together, paving the way for exciting and often unimaginable outcomes at the start of the partnership journey.
Of course, there are many benefits and blessings that can flow from working together in genuine partnerships, including in our church. We gain knowledge, capabilities and resilience in the face of change. Partnerships can also help each member to develop a healthy curiosity about the other member/s and a willingness to understand and learn as they work together. This helps to get rid of rushing to judgement about other ministries. And this is not a new concept; there are many examples of this happening already.
In a simple example, when congregations and families team up, aided by resources and support from district and churchwide child and youth ministries, the faith of our youngest members is nurtured. For many years, congregations have established and partnered with Lutheran schools, and work with them in mission. Partnerships can also exist between churches located in the same region, as through this collaboration they discover opportunities for projects and ministry that haven’t even been thought of yet!
So how do we use the same strategy of working in genuine, equitable partnerships when we face far more complex questions, uncertainties and change together as a church? The development of a partnership agreement derived using a collaborative process and the framework as outlined allows for this. Once the partners begin to follow the principles and work together, there is no end to the projects that could develop and exciting opportunities that may arise.
The key is to recognise that it is only through God’s grace that we can hope to put aside our will and prayerfully seek to follow his leading together, especially when circumstances change. Then we can explore ways in which partnerships could provide opportunities for the unforced rhythms of grace (Matthew 11:28–30) – continually coming in to Jesus’ rest and going out in his grace. Working together is always more effective than working in silos.
We will hear God’s voice through the partnership as we put aside our differences to work together and seek to do his will. Are there more opportunities that we have not yet taken up as a church where we can adopt a partnership approach?
A member at Our Redeemer Lutheran Church North Geelong, Victoria, Libby Jewson has worked in organisation and systems design, agency partnerships, leadership and management and, most recently, leadership in the family violence sector. She also has extensive experience in multi-sector and multi-organisational partnerships. She is the chair of the Greater Geelong Lutheran Forum, which brings together the leaders and pastors of three Lutheran parishes, Geelong Lutheran College and Araluen Lutheran Camp, to explore opportunities to do things better together that they can’t do alone.
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