Posts

,

Ordination joy despite lockdown

Despite a COVID-19 lockdown forcing a last-minute change of plans, Stanley Roberts was ordained in unique circumstances as a Specific Ministry Pastor (SMP) at Papunya in the Northern Territory late last year.

LCA/NZ Bishop John Henderson had planned to conduct the ordination on 22 November at the Indigenous community 240 kilometres west of Alice Springs, but a snap lockdown announced in South Australia a few days earlier prevented him leaving Adelaide.

However, local leaders decided to proceed, with Finke River Mission (FRM) fieldworker Pastor Paul Traeger ordaining and installing Stanley to his new roles. Pastor Stanley will serve as SMP for Papunya and the Pintupi-Luritja language area. It is believed to be the first time in the LCA that an SMP has ordained another SMP. More than 200 people attended the service held at the local school basketball court due to the church having been damaged by a fire. After a procession of pastors and evangelists, Papunya Pastor Graham Poulson opened the service, conducted a baptism and preached, while Pastor Stanley led the communion liturgy after his ordination.

Pastor Stanley, 45, is the son of the late Pastor Murphy Roberts, who 38 years ago became one of the first Pintupi-Luritja pastors ordained. While his father did not live to see Stanley ordained, one relative who did was a local pastor, who sadly died suddenly just four days later. Pastor Stanley said later: ‘He must have been waiting for me’.

Pastor Stanley was also presented with the late Pastor Max Stollznow’s robe. Pastor Max was serving as FRM Support Worker and pastor at Papunya when Murphy Roberts was ordained.

A former community night patrol worker, Pastor Stanley finished that role in 2019 to concentrate on ministry duties, having completed the FRM pastors’ curriculum. He is married to Sheila and has four children.

– reporting by Pastor Paul Traeger

 

Subscribe here to receive stories & upcoming issues in full

/by
, , ,

Whatever our sin may be, God’s love is unceasing

JESUS IS GOD’S LOVE.

HE GIVES US NEW HEARTS –

TO LAY ASIDE OUR OLD WAYS,

TO BELIEVE AND FOLLOW HIM,

TO LIVE WITH HIM EVERY DAY.

HEARTLAND

Rev John Henderson

Bishop Lutheran Church of Australia

‘Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting’ (Psalm 139:23,24 NRSV).

‘Pastor, you’ve only got popcorn sins!’

That’s what a wealthy businessman and church member told me as he spoke of the personal cost of keeping his company afloat. In order to operate he needed to obtain sensitive environmental permits, which had drawn him into immorality and high-level corruption in the industry sector and the state regulatory authority.

The situation and what it was doing to him was causing my friend grief. Before becoming a Christian he had played the game along with the worst of them. Now, as a follower of Jesus, he wanted a different life. He was facing some major choices about that. But how serious does sin have to be to be sin?

In our daily rounds of family, work and society, we generally grade wrongdoing from lesser to more serious. That’s where my friend’s comment came from. Deeds that don’t break the law are sort of okay, even if we don’t approve of them.

Lust, greed, avarice, slander, sexual immorality – up to the point of illegality our society doesn’t overly regulate such things. Before God, however, we know that’s not enough. Living within the law of the land does not make us righteous before God.

Recently, I was walking in the streets around my office. North Adelaide is a leafy and expensive suburb of period mansions and prestige apartments, well beyond the price range of your average pastor.

As I passed a For Sale sign, I had the involuntary thought, ‘I will never be able to afford a place like that, no matter how diligently and hard I work’. Was that thought a sin?

In the street that day I was surrounded by God’s beauty in creation. Trees were blossoming, birds were singing, the skies were blue and the grass green, and I felt safe and in good health. Jesus was my Saviour. Why, then, did I lust after something I did not have and did not need? Only because of sin, which always tries to make me dissatisfied with God’s good gifts. It’s insidious, subtle and evasive. Sometimes it’s obvious, but other times it sneaks up as a fleeting but persistent impulse. I may choose not to act on it, but at that moment an invisible barrier is thrown up between me and God.

God knows what we are like, on the inside and on the outside. If we’re honest with ourselves, we know it too. God shows us in his word who we truly are. He holds up a mirror to us. And when we finally see the truth of who we are, it cuts through to the heart. We can only repent and throw ourselves onto the mercy of God, who loves us unceasingly, whatever our sin may be.

It is now Advent. Once again, we are getting ready for our Saviour. The colour is purple for repentance and the arrival of the Prince of Peace.

During Advent our true preparation will not be the decorations and purchasing of gifts, but the cleansing of our hearts through repentance and faith.

Popcorn sins or not, we must turn to Jesus, our only hope: born as a baby, one of us, to deal with the insidious problem of sin once and for all.

Already a subscriber? Click here to login and read this article.
Not a subscriber? Click here to receive stories & upcoming issues in full
/by
, , ,

What’s in our name? The call to share the good news

JESUS IS GOD’S LOVE.

HE GIVES US NEW HEARTS –

TO LAY ASIDE OUR OLD WAYS,

TO BELIEVE AND FOLLOW HIM,

TO LIVE WITH HIM EVERY DAY.

HEARTLAND

Rev John Henderson

Bishop Lutheran Church of Australia

‘This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe’ (Romans 3:22 NIV).

During my school years in Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra, people would sometimes ask me about my ‘religion’. Their frequent response to hearing ‘Lutheran’ was, ‘Is that a sect?’ Admitting to being Lutheran was a quick way to lose friends. For compulsory Religious Education, the list of denominations would be exhausted by the time I got to put my hand up.

What, indeed, is ‘Lutheran’? Why use the name of a 16th-century Saxon monk of whom most Aussies and Kiwis have never heard? And even if they’ve heard, they hardly care – unless, that is, they are already inside the smallish Lutheran bubble.

The names of many churches are pretty obvious. Roman Catholic is the Roman branch of the catholic (universal) church. Orthodox is Trinitarian Christian. Anglicanism originated in the British Isles. Uniting Church and Churches of Christ are straightforward, as is Salvation Army. Baptist is a reference to believer-baptism, Presbyterian to church governance by presbyters (elders). Methodism began with a practical ‘method’ of evangelism.

‘Lutheran’, however, was first used as an insult during a religious debate in 1519. Luther didn’t like the name, but it stuck. He wrote in 1522, ‘I ask that my name be left silent and people not call themselves Lutheran, but rather Christians’.

So that was one down for Luther and one up for popular opinion! It goes to show that Lutherans do not accept something as true just because Luther said it. For truth, we turn to Scripture. In 1528, seemingly having given up on the name issue, the reformer wrote, ‘Luther himself will not be Lutheran if he does not purely teach the holy Scripture’.

We Lutherans do have a bias about holy Scripture: we read it through a Christ-centred lens. We believe that we are saved only by God’s grace and only through faith in Jesus Christ. A famous Reformation painting shows Luther preaching to the congregation: his left hand on the Bible and his right hand pointing to the crucified Christ, whose cross stands front and centre.

The early Lutherans were reformers, not separatists. They retained baptism, holy communion, the ecumenical creeds, the liturgy and the seasons. They didn’t smash statues or whitewash walls. They kept the crucifix as a symbol of the crucified Christ.

Their protest was against spiritual abuse. Other things they left alone, unless they obscured the gospel.

Today we are still passionate about faith, anchored in the truth of Scripture and the centrality of Jesus. In that sense we are evangelical, a name we used for ourselves until recently. It comes from ‘evangel’, meaning ‘good news’ or ‘gospel’. The good news of God’s love for us in his Son, Jesus Christ our Saviour, is at the centre of everything we believe and teach as Lutherans.

Lutherans are at their very best when they respond to God’s call to go into the world to share the good news of the kingdom. We have all we need – God’s word, baptism, and holy communion.

Just as sauce does not stay in the bottle but must be poured out to add its special flavour, so God has placed us in the world to be poured out in his service, pointing people to Christ as the Saviour of the world. That, in the end, is what it is to be truly Lutheran.

Already a subscriber? Click here to login and read this article.
Not a subscriber? Click here to receive stories & upcoming issues in full
/by
, , ,

Salvation for all – a story worth sharing

JESUS IS GOD’S LOVE.

HE GIVES US NEW HEARTS –

TO LAY ASIDE OUR OLD WAYS,

TO BELIEVE AND FOLLOW HIM,

TO LIVE WITH HIM EVERY DAY.

HEARTLAND

Rev John Henderson

Bishop Lutheran Church of Australia

‘“These people have received the Holy Spirit, just as we also did. Can anyone, then, stop them from being baptised with water?” So [the apostle Peter] ordered them to be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ’
(Acts 10:47,48a GNB).

Years ago, when I was a young pastor, I said in a Sunday sermon that the Bible verses I was speaking about were a ‘story’. Later, an older pastor took me aside to tell me I was wrong. He thought a ‘story’ meant something made up and therefore not true. I disagreed with him then and I still do now.

Stories are important. We each have a story – the story of our life. It’s a real story, told from the inside as only we can tell it. Similarly, parents and teachers use stories every day to teach children about life. Kids love stories. Adults love stories too. They are important to our growth and learning.

It’s no surprise, then, that when God speaks to us, he often does so in the form of a story. The Bible is a collection of books that tell the story of God’s love for human beings and for the world. From Adam and Eve to Noah, to Abraham and Isaac, to Moses and Joshua, to David and Solomon, through the prophets to John the Baptist and, finally, to Jesus the Christ.

The Book of Acts tells part of God’s story. It tells how the Holy Spirit worked to spread Christianity throughout the Mediterranean world. It’s a dynamic story of faith, preaching, wonders and a growing church. It also tells of danger, active opposition and strident debate as Christians learned that God accepts all people without discrimination.

Acts contains the story of Cornelius, a Roman centurion and a good man. For the Jews, he was a religious outsider, or Gentile, which was a huge barrier in those days. One day an angel of the Lord told Cornelius to invite the apostle Peter to visit. Peter was an observant Jew, but God gave him a vision of all kinds of forbidden foods mixed together, which he was told to eat. Because of the vision, Peter could accept Cornelius’s invitation with a clean conscience, despite his religious training. Peter told Cornelius his own story and the story of Jesus. Suddenly, the Holy Spirit came on the household and they all were baptised. God had shown that salvation in Jesus has no barriers, religious or otherwise. When Peter shared this story with other Christians, it changed their attitude to people of a different background.

Acts shows how faith spreads by telling the story of Jesus. The apostles used it to explain how everything that God had done among the Jews – as recorded in the Old Testament –  led up to this point. They told all who would listen how Jesus, who died but whom God raised from the dead, now saves everyone who believes in him.

Christians today continue to tell the same story, so that people of every background – women and men, children and adults – may believe in Jesus and be saved. It is still our direction and motivation. It still excites us because Jesus is just as much alive among us as he was among them. God raised him from the dead, and we believe that he will also raise us. That’s worth sharing, over and over, until he returns and takes us to be with him in heaven.

The story of Jesus Christ, which is the church’s story, has also become my story, and I pray it is yours also. He is our life and our salvation, as he is for all people, everywhere, for all time.

Already a subscriber? Click here to login and read this article.
Not a subscriber? Click here to receive stories & upcoming issues in full
/by