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621

Celebrating Christmas 2020-style

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by Libby Krahling

COVID-19 restrictions, regulations and precautions have meant many changes to our lives – including to the way we have worshipped as faith communities, families and individuals. We hope that whatever your situation, Advent and Christmas are times of great joy and thanksgiving as we again celebrate our unchanging, ever-loving God coming to us in human form. To follow are some ideas to help you and your congregation navigate these special times in 2020.

Advent ideas

Lutheran Tract Mission has a new downloadable Advent devotional booklet, as well as many excellent Advent and Christmas tracts and resources for all ages (see also page 16). Go to www.ltm.org.au or phone 08 8360 7222.

Grow Ministries has a fantastic GIFT (Growing in Faith Together) pack for Advent (www.growministries.org.au).

More ideas and resources include:

  • Advent wreath – light a candle each Sunday of Advent. Instructions for creating the wreath and liturgy to accompany the candle-lighting can be found on the Worship Planning Page (WPP) via

www.lca.org.au/wpp/prepare-services, click on the date then the Church@Home tab.

  • Jesse Tree – an interesting alternative which helps you remember God’s promises and the path leading to the birth of the Messiah. Instructions for creating a Jesse Tree and devotions are on the WPP.
  • Advent calendars – open a window each day to build excitement.
  • Advent paper chain – a fun, easy way for people in their homes, aged-care residences or schools to focus on the meaning of Advent and Christmas – while making the place look festive! Instructions are on the WPP or at growministries.org.au.
  • Growing Faith at Home sheets – Grow has made these excellent weekly devotion sheets available for free. They include discussion starters, daily readings, creative responses and ideas for service. Access these on the WPP through Advent and Christmas.

Spread the love!

Sharing the good news of God’s love is always vital. But this year especially sharing joy with people who are lonely or struggling due to isolation or illness is a great way to bless them and to lift your spirits too.

  • Put away the computer and write Christmas cards. During a year in which we have been separated more than usual, make someone’s Christmas by sending them words of encouragement in a hand-written card.
  • Donate food or toys as appropriate to your local community care organisation for those in need this Christmas. Contact your local LCA/NZ District office for suggestions on where to make donations.
  • Support ALWS Gifts of Grace and bring love to life for people from around the world, through a gift of school supplies, COVID-19 clinics, pigs and more, while blessing your friends and family, too. Go to alws.org.au/gifts-of-grace for more information or phone 1300 763 407.

Public worship

If your congregation is struggling with limited numbers or social-distancing requirements due to COVID-19 restrictions, consider these options:

  • Offer a combination of live and online service options. You might record a Christmas service for people who can’t be there in person and have ‘live’ services for those who can attend.
  • Change service venues. Can you hold Christmas worship services in a park, school or community hall to allow for more people?
  • Pre-record elements of the service. If you are running multiple services, or want to have a children’s presentation, consider pre-recording parts of the service such as the music or nativity play. That way you can share the joy with multiple services or online without a lot of extra work. Recording in advance also makes Christmas week not so hectic.

Christmas plays

Christmas plays are a great chance to involve children and others in the service. With restrictions, staging the traditional play might be more difficult. Here are a few ideas to adapt this beautiful tradition:

  • Pre-record your play and share it during the service. If you are sharing it online, make sure participants and their families know how it will be shared. This might be a good option if you have limited space and need to have several services.
  • Consider a Christmas play on an internet conferencing system such as Zoom – have families/households act out different parts of the script. It doesn’t have to be perfect; it just needs to share the great news of Jesus’ birth! Scripts are available from the Christmas@Home section of the WPP.
  • Ask families to take photos or videos of themselves acting out different parts of the nativity story, and then use these to illustrate carols or readings during the service.
  • Rather than a play with multiple speaking roles, simplify things by using a narrator and having participants mime, so you don’t have to reuse microphones. Remember that people in the same household don’t have to physically distance, so perhaps have one household come up at a time.
  • Show a Christmas video – An Unexpected Christmas (https://youtu.be/TM1XusYVqNY) is a cute video from New Zealand and the church which produced it has given permission for public screenings (but not broadcasts).
  • Set up a nativity display outside and have a small devotional-style service so people can worship together in small groups or households. This could be a static display or incorporate scheduled times for a live nativity.

Christmas@Home

If you are unable to worship publicly this year or are separated from the people you love, you can still make this Christmas special.

  • Contact your local church and ask what they are doing for Christmas – they may have a way for you to worship with them.
  • Watch a service online. Congregations which will live-stream or pre-record Christmas services are listed on the WPP. If you live in Adelaide or Melbourne, you may be able to watch Lutheran services on TV.
  • Use the Church@Home resources for Christmas on the WPP. You will find:
  • a printable service order with a matching PowerPoint
  • links to YouTube online music video clips so you can sing along to the carols, hymns and songs for the day
  • printable Bible readings and prayers
  • links to a lessons and carols service on YouTube and digital music service Spotify
  • fun crafts and devotional activities to brighten your day and your home

Wherever you are this Christmas, we pray that you are filled with the joy and hope of the Messiah’s birth!

Libby Krahling is Administration Coordinator for the LCA’s Commission on Worship.

622

Trio of honours for The Lutheran

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The Lutheran has received three honours in the Australasian Religious Press Association (ARPA) awards.

Our churchwide magazine took out the gold award in the Best Feature Multiple Author category and a bronze award in the Best Headline category. The Lutheran was also highly commended in the Publication of the Year category, which was won by NZ Catholic newspaper. Also highly commended was Eternity news service and magazine, published by Bible Society of Australia, which took out ARPA’s premier annual honour, The Gutenberg Award. The Lutheran won The Gutenberg Award in 2011.

The Lutheran received its gold award for a feature package published in the December 2019 edition under the theme ‘A God of Second Chances’.

The judges said: ‘The vulnerability of these features demonstrates the high degree of trust the subjects of each story have in The Lutheran. These are stories of broken lives transformed by God’s love. The stories engage and move the readers, reminding us of our own brokenness and the power of a church in action at the coal face.

‘This feature is honest, vulnerable, raw and invitational’, they said. ‘God is alive today, intervening in individual lives, enabling people no matter what their past, to be reconciled and look to a new beginning.’ The judges congratulated editor Lisa McIntosh for framing the feature in her ‘wonderful opening letter’. The bronze award was received for Lisa’s clever headline ‘Taking hay while the sun shines’, which was published in March 2019 on a story about Lutheran farmers making hay runs to help others doing it tough during times of drought.

Linda Macqueen, LCA Communications Manager and former editor of The Lutheran, is delighted to see our church’s magazine continuing to thrive and serve the people of the LCA/NZ under Lisa’s editorship. ‘Lisa’s extensive talents and sheer hard work combine to create a gift of grace and excellence for our church every month’, Linda said. ‘It’s a huge accolade to win the top award in the hotly contested category of Feature Package. To also be one of only two magazines to be highly commended for Publication of Year is something we can all be proud of.’

ARPA is an ecumenical Christian communication network for Australian and New Zealand print and online publications and their editors, journalists, designers and contributors. It has a membership of more than 80 publications, as well as individual members and publication staff members.

623

The gifts of a simple life

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by Christine Matthias

Lockdown. The word brings to mind images of prison. And that’s what it must have seemed like for some people around Australia, New Zealand and the world. I have felt deeply for those required to stay home, isolated and without friends and family.

Here in South Australia, the lockdown wasn’t as severe or lengthy as in many places, but we have still had to adjust to changes in work, home and church life, and things are changing again now.

Yet, as we moved to online school and university for our three daughters and restrictions for travel and shopping, we realised as a family that we already live a fairly simple life.

All five of us love to cook, so we had more time to be creative in the kitchen. We love playing board games and watching movies. We have a large garden and enjoy spending time in it. We love walking and were grateful our restrictions allowed us to do that. And we spent many nights sitting around our ‘campfire’ sharing stories.

On the other hand, our struggles were cancelled flights for visiting or hosting family and friends, both interstate in Australia and the United States. Not knowing when we will be with family again is a cause of grief. We recognise the importance of the touch of loved ones and the true joy of hearing their voices.

As Christmas approaches, we enjoy saying we have an ‘occupational hazard’ when people ask what we’ll be doing. For reasons of faith and calling, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are always spent at church. We have to be creative in finding time to spend with each other, to open presents and to visit extended family.

But we also have formed simple yet cherished family Christmas traditions. Over the years our girls have re-told the nativity story, acting it out and using stuffed animals, dolls, toys, drawings, stop motion videos, a knitted nativity set and other figurines to relay the message of Jesus’ birth.

One Christmas we introduced a treasure hunt. The hunt is now an annual event which can take a whole day. One year, the first clue was a piece of music. So the girls tried playing cello, guitar, flute, violins and piano in an attempt to decipher it. But the notes were actually Morse code!

So rather than spending hours shopping, we put hours into planning clues to stump them. The hunt is now the gift.

Perhaps this Christmas, we will organise an online treasure hunt including extended family across the ocean and the states.

That’s the way of life for us now – it is not the ending, but the journey that matters. It is about spending time together.

So, while many things have changed this year, maybe our Christmas won’t be all that different. As always, we will enjoy the simple things we love to do together and, most importantly, celebrate the birth of our Saviour Jesus.

Christine Matthias and her family are members at Good Shepherd Para Vista, South Australia.

624

Dwelling in God’s word – Christmas without all the trimmings

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by Nigel Rosenzweig

So 2020 did not run according to our plan and it looks as though our Christmas celebrations might be different from what we are used to, too.

In the past, the weeks leading up to Christmas have generally involved scripting, decorating, prop making and rehearsing in preparation for the biggest church gathering of the year. Every year I have looked forward to seeing children, youth and adults dress up as angels, shepherds and wise men to retell the Christmas narrative around the manger in the lowly stable.

Read Luke 2:1–20 and Matthew 1:18-2:12.

Share your favourite memories of Christmas Eve presentations over the years.

But what will Christmas be like in 2020? For many congregations, Christmas may feel a little different. We will still seek to creatively share the Christmas message but it might seem unfamiliar as we do so in a COVID-safe way.

Personally, I will be ‘between parishes’. This will be my first year in 24 years that I have not led a congregation at Christmas time. This gives me a rare opportunity to ‘unplug’ from all of the Christmas trimmings and ask myself, ‘So what does it mean that Jesus was born for me?’ The Gospels of Mark and John remove the trimmings for us and give us stripped-back presentations of Jesus’ birth.

Read Mark 1:1 and John 1:1–5, 9–14. What do you notice in these readings?

These Gospel accounts focus us on the one who is at the heart of our Christmas celebrations. When we remove all the trimmings of Christmas, the one who remains is Jesus who has made his dwelling with us. Jesus is God with us. And no social-distancing restrictions or COVID-safe planning can take his presence from us!

So why celebrate Christmas even if we do not have all the trimmings?

Go back and re-read Matthew 1:21.

Jesus came into the world to save his people from their sins. He came to redeem us from our sin. Into the mess that we make for ourselves, God sent Jesus. The promise of a Saviour is seen in many Old Testament passages.

Read Psalm 130. What is the gift that is ours because of our Lord Jesus, whose birth and presence we celebrate at Christmas?

We would like to think that we are able to live the perfect life on our own but we would be fooling ourselves to think so. The scriptures provide us with a mirror to show our need for a Saviour.

Read Romans 3:23,24. What do these verses reveal to you?

When all of the trimmings of Christmas are removed, we can see more clearly the gift God has for us.

Read Romans 5:1–21. What does this chapter teach you about God’s gift to us?

Prayer

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gift of your Son Jesus. Help us to let go of the trimmings of Christmas, turn away from our sin and fix our eyes on your son Jesus who came and suffered to save us. Thank you for bringing us peace, forgiveness and eternal life with you through Jesus. Holy Spirit, continue to grow our character in these challenging times that we may live with hope. Amen.

Pastor Nigel Rosenzweig is concluding a termed call with both the LCA/NZ’s Grow Ministries Local Mission department and St John’s Lutheran Church Unley in suburban Adelaide. In 2021 he will take on a regular call as pastor at Victor Harbor, South Australia. 

625

God’s creation is blooming marvellous

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Going GREYT! 1 Peter 4:10

In Going GREYT! we feature stories of some of our ‘more experienced’ people within the LCA, who have been called to make a positive contribution in their retirement. We pray their examples of service will be an inspiration and encouragement to us all as we look to be Christ’s hands and feet wherever we are, with whatever gifts and opportunities we’ve been given. 

God’s creation is blooming marvellous

by Helen Beringen

When the first flush of spring and summer flowers bloom, who doesn’t want to stop and smell the roses?

So a rose garden planted lovingly as a heartwarming invitation to a church is surely going to be a welcoming sign, and an opportunity to witness to the beauty of God’s creation.

Enter Bethlehem Lutheran Church, in suburban Perth, nestled amongst a sea of houses in Morley. Four years ago, the large grassed block received a magnificent makeover. The natives shrouding the front of the church had grown straggly with age. But from the few rose bushes hidden in their midst, an idea grew to develop a rose garden.

Foundation members Ewald Schmidt, known as Wally, and his wife Ruth felt a push from Creation’s Chief Gardener to build the rose garden in a well-used thoroughfare to the local primary school and a beautiful local park.

’The church garden looked a bit sad and it brought tears to our eyes’, said Ruth.

‘And God said “don’t stand there, do something”’.

So despite professing no green thumbs, the retired couple aged 86 and 83 respectively, did just that.

‘We took it on bit by bit’, they recall. This work continued until the entire garden was renovated.

‘As we are not fenced off from our neighbourhood, not only is it a testament to all the beauty of God’s creation, it provides a lovely wider witness to caring for God’s creation and the joy God gives us through serving each other’, says Bethlehem’s Pastor Matt Bishop.

‘Moreover, on a late-October day when the roses are in their first full flush of the season, you can smell the delightful scents all around our block. Accordingly, we’ve had many positive comments from our neighbours, even from the local councillor.’

Who would have thought that a garden ministry could be created simply from proud perfumed stands of roses? From Double Delight to Cardinal and even Pope John Paul 2 varieties, the fragrant and sometimes cheeky choices now create a delightful and welcome experience for passers-by.

And with 66 years of marriage under their belts, the Schmidts are inseparable in their weekly toil – pruning, trimming, fertilising, watering and tidying.

‘We get an old pillow and kneel side by side – never too far from each other’, says Ruth. ‘We’re not good gardeners but we like to tidy up! And you’re never too old to learn.’

And they certainly feel like the Chief Gardener is with them, as they have learnt along the way how to care for the roses. ‘We are just presenting God’s creation’, says Ruth. ‘They are easy to manage and ever so beautiful.

‘When we come home, we are not tired, we feel great. We’ve been working in God’s creation.’

Powered by God’s blessing of good health and strong work ethic, they ‘trust and obey’, in the words of a favourite hymn, knowing God will be there to guide them.

‘It’s been a privilege to work in the church grounds’, says Ruth. ‘We don’t have a walking stick yet. We just use a rake and a broom.’

The couple met in January 1954, when both were working in the timber town of Bridgetown in southern Western Australia. Both were refugees from World War II – Ruth from Lithuania and Wally from Germany. It was a whirlwind romance and they were married by that August. They have been blessed with three children, five grandchildren and one great-grandson. They were Morley members since its inception and Wally was among the men presenting the ’sacred vessels’ at the dedication of the present church site in 1972, captured in full-page spreads in the 23 October 1972 edition of The Lutheran!

In September, the Bethlehem congregation honoured the Schmidts’ work with a little plaque in the rose garden, noting their loving nurture of the garden to the ‘Glory to God’.

As Pastor Matt reflects, keeping gardens looking good is not without challenges though, so it’s great that others are pitching in, such as long-term pastoral assistant John Zadow, who for decades has kept on top of all the mowing and edging. He’s also one of the Morley team which provides a breakfast ministry to a local school (featured in this column in 2018).

The humble service that keeps the flowers blooming is not only a blessing for the Morley community but also the gardeners.

Ruth and Wally reflect how the Lord has blessed them, echoed in their favourite Psalm 103.

‘It’s not about us, it’s God’s creation. We are just going along, not wasting our time. He looks after us and gives our health as we present God’s creations.’

Helen Beringen is a Brisbane-based writer who is inspired by the many GREYT people who serve tirelessly and humbly in our community. By sharing stories of how God shines his light through his people, she hopes others are encouraged to explore how they can use their gifts to share his light in the world.

Know of any other GREYT stories in your local community? Email the editor lisa.mcintosh@lca.org.au

626

Share the hope of Christmas

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If you’d like to share the hope we have because of the birth of the Christ child with friends, neighbours, colleagues or family members at Christmas, Lutheran Media has something new to help.

Their beautiful Messages of Hope Christmas cards feature a Christmas verse and Christian message inside and come in packs of five for just $5. To order your cards, phone 1800 353 350 or go to www.lutheranmedia.org.au and follow the links on the homepage or go directly to www.lutheranmedia.org.au/store and sort the page by ‘latest’ to find them quickly.

Calendars with style and substance

Among the other wonderful resources you’ll find in the Lutheran Media online store or access by phoning the above number, are the free scripture calendars for 2021. Thanks to the many talented entrants in the photo competition, the calendar is full of stunning photos. Order one for yourself or to give as a gift.

More gift ideas

Other ideal Christmas gifts include DVDs of lessons and carols services from Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Adelaide and Christmas DVDs for children, while there are also free Happyland Christmas cards for kids.

Other new resources include free Messages of Hope postcards which mark Lutheran Media’s 75th anniversary this year.

You can also support the life-changing outreach work of Lutheran Media by donating through the website at www.lutheranmedia.org.au or over the phone on 1800 353 350. There are also forms available for donations via email to luthmedia@lca.org.au or by post (197 Archer St, North Adelaide SA 5006).

627

Learning festival for anyone, anywhere

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by Merryn Ruwoldt

The 2021 Festival of Learning is an initiative of Australian Lutheran College (ALC) which brings learning to members and friends of the church in an easy, accessible and affordable way.

To be held from 15 to 19 February 2021, the festival will comprise a range of sessions from ALC faculty and other LCA/NZ theologians and teachers.

Participants can attend in person or online and join one session or attend a week’s worth. Some topics have one session, others are a short series and there are even opportunities to commence semester-length accredited subjects.

More than 100 people joined online short courses earlier this year and the Festival of Learning will be another opportunity for those interested in enhancing their biblical and theological knowledge to meet and learn together.

Appropriate internet download speed is required to participate online, but age, location or previous education are not barriers to being involved. Everyone is welcome.

At ALC we don’t just learn for interest, we learn for life (John 10:10).

For further information about the program, please email events@alc.edu.au

Merryn Ruwoldt is Associate Dean for Learning and Teaching at ALC.

628

Back on tract for Christmas

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by Anne Hansen

The COVID-19 pandemic may have caused changes to our church gatherings and will likely affect Christmas worship and gatherings, despite restrictions easing in many Australian states and New Zealand.

But one thing that hasn’t changed is Lutheran Tract Mission’s (LTM) support for congregations and individual church members by providing tracts which share the joy of the birth of Jesus. LTM has seasonal tracts for children, including activity sheets.

Your congregation may wish to order these inexpensive tracts and send or letterbox drop them around your neighbourhood, school or within the congregation.

There are tracts in the forms of postcards, leaflets, text cards and bookmarks for all ages. You can view them all on our website: www.ltm.org.au

You can also send an e-tract for Christmas, too, which also saves on time and postage.

Delve into Scripture daily

Lutheran Tract Mission has supplied a Daily Bible Readings tract for the LCA each year since 2008 and the ‘Daily Bible Readings for 2021’ is already available for 20c a copy.

Order one for yourself, for each family in your congregation, for your neighbour or for your school. Each reading is from the revised common lectionary of the LCA/NZ as followed by your church. This is one way to make reading the Bible a daily occurrence.

You can order it or send the e-tract via the LTM website (search ‘Daily Bible Readings’), at www.ltm.org.au or phone 08 8360 7222.

Anne Hansen is Lutheran Tract Mission Development Officer. LTM is an outreach ministry of the LLL.

629

Giving 10,000 children the gift of school

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The LCA/NZ’s overseas aid agency, Australian Lutheran World Service (ALWS), last month launched a 100-day campaign to support 10,000 children in refugee camps and other crisis situations to return to school when COVID-19 allows.

Who will the campaign support?

Children targeted are living at Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, Displaced Persons Camps in Somalia, and in poverty-affected areas across South Sudan.

According to ALWS Community Action manager, Jonathan Krause, these areas already know the critical value of Lutheran-supported education delivered by ALWS partner Lutheran World Federation (LWF).

‘Just as in Australia, where the word “Lutheran” signifies high-quality education from teaching teams that value each child individually, the same applies where our Lutheran family works through ALWS’, he says.

‘A classroom in a refugee camp may look very different from one at St Peters or Immanuel here in Australia, but there is no difference in the commitment to equip students with the skills they need to achieve their potential. And that’s something that’s been part of our Lutheran identity and ministry from when Lutherans first arrived in Australia in the 1830s.’

What’s the mission behind this initiative?

The ‘10,000 children … 100 days’ campaign was launched on Sunday 22 November because the gospel reading for that day is Jesus’ call to reach out and serve those ‘overlooked or ignored’ (Matthew 25:40 – The Message).

‘At ALWS our mission is to seek out those who might otherwise be forgotten, and enable our church to give the care that brings love to life’, Jonathan says. ‘In everyday ALWS ministry, this includes people with special needs, the elderly in a community, those who may be rejected culturally or simply because they are a woman. In education, the forgotten may include older children who have missed out on school because they had to flee conflict, girls at risk of being forced into early marriage, orphans and children separated from family and, of course, children with special needs.’

What practical support does ‘10,000 children … 100 days’ provide?

ALWS says it can cost just $26 to support a child in their schooling for one year. This can help supply such essentials as school books, uniforms, school desks, training for refugee teachers, school lunches and clean water for drinking and for handwashing to protect against COVID-19. ‘Finding support over the next 100 days to get 10,000 children back to school is a big challenge, but at ALWS I am blessed every day to see the generosity of our Lutheran family in helping others’, Jonathan says. ‘The ALWS GRACE Project, Walk My Way, Gifts of Grace – ours is a church where people want to get their hands dirty and make things happen. Not with big fanfare, but humbly and simply wanting to serve others. When this kind of love comes to life, it is a blessing always for those who are forgotten.’

Join the ALWS ‘10,000 children … 100 days’ campaign with $26 per child to support school for a year, tax-deductible: alws.org.au * 1300 763 407.