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It’s not just about the music …

by Fiona Weckert

Young adults – who are they and where are they?

It can be difficult to define a young adult. The Australian Bureau of Statistics records young adults as between 18 and 34 years of age. Some would argue you’re a young adult at 16 and still a young adult at 38! Often the church refers to a young adult as someone aged between 18 and 24, but then where do you fit after the age of 24 if you aren’t a ‘young married’ or ‘new parent’ or are still living at home (a ‘kidult’)? It’s a challenging time for the church, but an equally challenging time for young adults.

Early in 2014 Lutheran Youth of Queensland (LYQ) conducted an online survey of young adults aged 18–25 to find out how they view themselves, their faith and their church.

Of the 321 persons who responded, 283 identified as Christian, 22 as non- Christian and 16 as ‘sort-of’ Christian. Two hundred responders had grown up in the Lutheran church and around 85 per cent of them still identify as Lutheran. Most (257 survey responders) attend worship at least monthly, with almost 72 per cent of them attending church each week.

It is important here to remember that this survey group is very small: the majority of them come from the 20 per cent of young people who have stuck with the church and with faith in some way. Other research tells us that we lose 80 per cent of young people who were connected to the church as children by the time they become adults. Christian researcher Phillip Hughes estimates that this is as many as 50,000 young people every year from Australian churches.

All survey answers were given anonymously. Questions were asked around several main themes, most of them with set options to choose from.
These included:

  • the experience of transition to new congregations and the extent of preparation for such an event;
  • the spiritual background and current spiritual activity of family;
  • aspects of a faith journey to this point, including youth group and Christian Life Week attendance, family devotions/faith talk and times of ‘wandering away from the faith’;
  • spirituality and current church attendance of friends;
  • for all regular and non-regular worshippers, two free-field questions:

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Fishers for people

JASWANTH KUKATLAPALLI

Age: 27
Home congregation: St Paul’s Lutheran Church, Wellington, New Zealand Assigned to: Wodonga Vic

How did your call happen? First, the sickness I had as a child and miraculous recovery led my parents to commit me to God’s work. It wasn’t easy becoming a pastor in India, but God had a different plan. I ended up in Auckland, then in Wellington the call was renewed, which led me to Adelaide.

Any ‘aha’ moments during your pastoral minister studies? Given my faith journey consisted of worshipping in various churches (Lutheran, Church of South India, Pentecostal, Baptist), I had quite a few. To name one: an investigation of an article on justification helped me immensely since it answered most of my questions and doubts.

Your favourite meal: besides fish’n’chips (or fush’n’chups)! Hyderabadi Biryani at the Paradise restaurant in Hyderabad, India (if possible), or if not, Paradise restaurant in Auckland, NZ.

You get angry when: I have to do the same thing over andover again. For example, casting fishing line again and again and just reeling in seaweed gets me big time!

TONY CASTLE

Age: 46

Family: wife Helen and Bethany (12)

Home congregation: St John’s, Dernancourt SA

Assigned to: Gippsland parish, Vic

Any ‘aha’ moments during your pastoral ministry studies? There’s always plenty of ‘aha’ moments when you study God’s word, even the same texts. God never ceasesto speak to us as we grow.

Five words your ALC teachers use to describe you: Dr Zweck introduced me to a PNG pastor in pidgin. I can’t speak pidgin but I guessed what he said; ‘This one here is a very naughty boy!’

The Bible verse/s you turn to when life gets you down: Love the psalms … 23, 24, 46, 91, 121 …

Funniest thing you ever did: Fishing with classmate Jaswanth ‘Tangles’ Kukatlapalli would have to be a recent highlight!

Why you want to be a pastor: When I considered all of the things that I could study to become, the only thing that made sense was to help people receive the gift of eternal life from God through Christ: decision made

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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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