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Christian meditation is an ancient practice dating back thousands of years, to the first days of the church. And it was part of the tradition of those of the Jewish faith long before that. There are many biblical references to meditation, from Genesis through the New Testament, with many specific mentions in the Psalms.

In fact in Psalm 1, God’s people are urged to meditate on his word – on his law – ‘day and night’.

Martin Luther, too, practised, taught and wrote on meditation. He reformed and simplified the medieval monastic model as he did so, according to LCA Pastor Tim Jarick, in his paper ‘Mysticism, Monks and Marty: Meditation in the Lutheran tradition’.

Pastor Tim, Chaplain at Pacific Lutheran College at Caloundra in Queensland, explains that Luther put praying to God for guidance first before reading the Scriptures in his model and made the cross of Christ central to the Lutheran tradition of meditation.

And yet, as Lutherans in Australia and New Zealand, many of us have grown without much knowledge of what Christian meditation is and how and why it is an important, even central, element of our faith journeys.

Indeed, until recent times, many modern Christians have shied away from the practice, says Lutheran Pastor Stephen Abraham. Pastor Stephen, who was already teaching Christian meditation when a spinal injury left him with permanent debilitating and chronic pain and forced his retirement from full-time ministry in his early 30s, uses meditation whenever his pain is severe.

He has developed his own style of Christian meditation over three decades, which draws on a range of influences including the Desert Fathers (early Christian hermits, ascetics and monks, who lived in the Egyptian desert from the 3rd century); Roman Catholic priest, Benedictine monk and spiritual writer John Main; the French ecumenical monastic fraternity Taizé, Martin Luther and, of course, the meditations present in the Bible.

Pastor Stephen says that in other religions meditation is about ‘controlling your mind’ or ‘mindlessly losing yourself’, whereas, in Christianity, it is about ‘giving your thoughts to God’ and ‘giving him control of your thinking’. ‘It is letting your mind-space be governed by God’s word so that the Holy Spirit can direct your daily life’, he says.

‘Meditation is something all humans share: a relaxed focus, a tool to calm mind and body, a place of solace in a busy world.

‘Muslims pray, but we as Christians aren’t afraid to pray or use Christian prayer in our daily life just because Muslims pray. Hindus sing, but we don’t write off all singing us “un-Christian” or an evil practice. Likewise, Buddhists meditate, but for 3000 or more years meditation has been part of the Judeo/Christian experience, even if modern Christians have shied away from it.

‘Just as Christian prayers and music are uniquely Christian, Christian meditation flows from our encounter with the Trinity as revealed in the Bible. In practice, it is a place where the Holy Spirit can guide our reflection as we focus on God’s word.’

Pastor Anthony Price, who serves the worshipping communities of Gawler Lutheran Church north of Adelaide and is accredited as a Spiritual Director and Retreat Leader, teaches Christian meditation and offers spiritual direction. He believes there are several reasons why meditation may have become a ‘lost’ practice in the Lutheran church.

‘Firstly, maybe that’s to do with the New Age movement and that people have a perception that it’s a bit weird’, he says. ‘That’s the unhealthy forms of meditation that take us off of the word, and Jesus and the Triune God.

‘I also think there’s a fear of the unknown – people just don’t know about it.

‘And I have to think about my role as a church leader. If I wasn’t really experiencing it myself, I wouldn’t have been teaching it. So while we as pastors may have learnt about it, if we haven’t experienced it in a life-transforming way, we may not have taken on board the centrality of meditation. And Luther is a fine example, who tells us and teaches us how important it is for us.’

Kathy Worthing, a member of the World Community for Christian Meditation state executive for South Australia and leader of a Christian meditation group, believes this contemplative ministry form is having a revival among everyday Christians – including in the LCA/NZ.

‘Recent spiritual writers such as John Main, Laurence Freeman, Joan Chittister and Richard Rohr have been at the forefront of the resurgence in the practice of Christian meditation, taking it beyond the monastery walls and into the lives of everyday Christians’, she says. ‘As Laurence Freeman said in A Pearl of Great Price, “Our world sorely needs the silent infrastructure of contemplation woven into the institutions and frenetic schedules. It needs the healing and transforming power that only the spirit can set free in us and among us”.’

Pastor Anthony, who had a life-changing experience through attending a retreat based on the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius in 2009 says he came to realise that it’s an important element of our faith-life to have a heart – or experiential – connection with Scripture, as well as a head – or intellectual – one.

He took a year out of parish ministry in 2012 to complete a Master’s degree in Spiritual Direction with the University of Divinity. He has led retreats using his Lutheran adaptation of The Ignatian Exercises, a retreat program written by Ignatius of Loyola, a Spanish Christian layman at the time who would later become the founder of the Jesuits. The program features Christian meditations centred on the Scriptures, the gospels and various prayers.

He believes the main benefit of Christian meditation ‘is to experience Christ himself’. ‘He says, “I am with you always”, so it enables us to experience him and his love and helps us to grow in faith, to grow in hope, to grow in love – real love in action as we join Jesus in his mission’, Pastor Anthony says.

‘The word meditation literally means “to chew on”, so it belongs to all of us as human beings. Jesus says, “Do not worry”, and worry is a form of meditation; it’s something that we ruminate again and again. So we all naturally meditate, but in terms of Christian meditation, the all-important aspect is, “Where’s the emphasis? What’s the content that we’re meditating on?”

‘For us as Christians, it’s the God that we believe in, the Triune God, Father, Son and Spirit, and where we experience him most centrally is in Scripture, through God’s word.’

Pastor Stephen has written a Christian meditation program with the hope of making the practice easy for time-poor people. For a copy, you can email him at stephen.abraham@lca.org.au

He also has produced YouTube meditation videos, which can be watched and heard at www.youtube.com/c/StephenAbrahamMusic/videos and songs on online social audio platform SoundCloud, which are available for free at https://soundcloud.com/stephenabraham/sets/breathing-scripture/s-pv895

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by Lisa McIntosh

When Matt Schubert became mission facilitator/church planter at Rockingham Mandurah Lutheran Church (RMLC) in Western Australia earlier this year, he didn’t know what God had in store for him and the congregation’s outreach ministries beyond 2020.

RMLC, which worships across two sites south of Perth, began a church-planting journey more than four years ago, praying for guidance. In following God’s lead, they committed to support a mission facilitator position for three years and to plant a new church. But, as a relatively small congregation, they knew they wouldn’t be able to source all the necessary money from within their immediate community.

Chairperson Monika Tropiano admits to ‘some anxiety’ – in addition to quiet prayer and contemplation – over how RMLC would raise the $250,000 they needed to make the outreach ministry sustainable.

Meanwhile, the 16-member Redeemer congregation at Nairne in the Adelaide Hills – more than 2700 kilometres from RMLC – had been planning to support a church plant in northern Adelaide with some of the proceeds of a 2006 land sale. But that South Australian church plant didn’t materialise and so, when the Redeemer members learnt of the need at RMLC, they donated $50,000 to the Western Australian church. Matt and the leaders of RMLC were thrilled by God’s goodness. ‘This gift towards our church-planting endeavour in WA is an incredible example of Christian maturity’, Matt says. ‘The question that these people asked was not “What’s best for us?”. They instead asked, “What’s best for God’s mission?”.

‘The nature of any missionary work – church planting included – is that I spend a lot of my time with people who don’t initially value gospel ministry. In a very real sense, the Nairne congregation are standing in the gap for not-yet-Christians, placing value on a ministry the unconverted don’t yet value, supporting a church which is yet to exist.’

In response to the gift, RMLC Pastor Steve Liersch says, ’If it were not COVID times, I would have hugged anyone I saw. Praise God! Prayers have truly been answered. This reflects that God is up to something within our church and the wider LCA. Only he could have orchestrated such an amazing and inspiring gift.

‘I hope that Matt’s next few years here will not only bear fruit with people coming to know Jesus as their Lord and Saviour, but also in that process the Holy Spirit will use him to inspire others to be involved. We have already had adult baptisms as a result of Matt’s ministry and this will hopefully show even more how everyday people, conversations and opportunities can be used by God for eternal blessings and current inspiration for his church.’

This is the latest chapter in another story of God’s faithfulness in bringing good out of disappointments or hard times. When the Redeemer congregation was given a parcel of land by John and Maureen Nitschke in the late 1980s, they intended to build a church. Established 33 years ago, the congregation has never had its own worship centre, instead holding services in the local Uniting Church building.

But when the land was deemed unsuitable by the local council due to parking requirements, Redeemer members were led by the Holy Spirit to turn their disappointment into blessings for others. They aimed to support a church plant in the Adelaide Hills, but plans for possible developments in their local area stalled, according to Nairne chairperson Michael Gladigau and other members.

‘We wanted to be good stewards of the gifts we were custodians to’, they say. ‘The Holy Spirit moved us to investigate looking into giving some of this money to (the LCA’s) New and Renewing Churches. God is always leading us and answering prayers, as he knows best. We need to trust him. Our vision is limited. God is omniscient.’

What they learnt regarding church planting, together with prayerful consideration on how the funds would be used for furthering the planting of God’s word, led them to first make a gift of $50,000 to a church plant in south-east Queensland in 2018. At that time the recipients – LCA/NZ church planter Chris Podlich and the young leaders of Beyond Church in northern Brisbane – believed God was calling them to move.

Approximately 2000 kilometres from Nairne, Beyond had been planted out of Living Faith Lutheran Church at Murrumba Downs in 2015. Now it was time to step out in faith into the heart of the unchurched community they had been preparing to serve. But, Chris says, they didn’t know where they would establish a new base or how they would fund setting up their own church facilities. Within a 48-hour period, God had shown them the ‘how’ and the ‘where’, with Nairne committing its financial gift and a local state school agreeing to welcome them into their campus at Griffin.

The move has enabled Beyond to establish its distinct presence as ‘a church that unchurched people love to attend’. It has grown from one service to two; one small group to nine; one youth environment to three; one team of eight leaders to multiple teams that have more than 50 leaders in them; and service projects that began with 10 people serving having grown to involve more than 30 people in them.

As with Rockingham-Mandurah, before COVID-19 adult baptisms had become a regular feature of life and ministry at Beyond.

Chris has met with members of the Nairne congregation when he’s had the chance and says the two donations they have made to Beyond have brought much more than financial benefit.

‘It’s something that I’ve personally drawn on and I know our leadership team has drawn on as an encouragement when things get hard,’ he says. ‘When you ask, “Is this worth it?” and you look back on those times, you think, “Well, God clearly thinks it’s worth it”. God’s been moving in people’s hearts. Clearly God’s behind this. These gifts change lives.’

Another example of the life-changing power of local mission through church planting is occurring in Epping, a north-western suburb of Sydney, around 1300 kilometres from Nairne. In 2019, Redeemer provided seed money towards staff for a multi-ethnic church plant out of LifeWay Lutheran Church. Lead Pastor Mark Schultz says the gift was an ‘incredible encouragement’ and an answer to prayer as LifeWay wrestled with how to do mission and ministry in a changing community, with 59 per cent of people speaking a language other than English at home and a third of the suburb being recent arrivals.

‘It enabled us to get into the local schools and work with young people as they straddle multiple cultures, and employ Mandarin and Cantonese speakers to be bridge-builders between cultures’, Pastor Mark says. ‘Walking in mission is a constant journey of trust; it’s easy to hold back because we fear a lack of resources, but reminders like this draw us back to a faithful God, in whom we lack no good thing.’

LifeWay has now embarked on another step of faith. In conjunction with the NSW District, it has just employed a church planter, Danny Brock, to plant LifeWay Westside, a greenfields multi-ethnic church near the new International airport in Western Sydney.

Michael and the Redeemer folk say hearing the grateful responses from people who have received the gifts gives them ‘a feeling of joy and thankfulness that we are able to help others through the blessings we have received’.

‘We are reminded of the wonderful miracle that Jesus performed when feeding the multitudes with a couple of fish and a few loaves of bread’, they say. ‘This one block of land is enabling multitudes to know of God’s love for them. We hope that God’s word will be proclaimed to as many people as possible and people will be led to faith in our Lord Jesus Christ and be saved.’

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