Victoria Tasmania District of the Lutheran Church of Australia

1201 Riversdale Road
Box Hill South VIC 3128
Phone 03 9236 1200

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22 September 2021 District eVoices

This fortnight’s edition of District eVoices contains

  • a devotion from Pr Matthias Prenzler (District Assistant Bishop)
  • news of the consecration of the new St James Moorabbin Church
  • an update from Pr Brett Kennett regarding the recent New Horizons Conference
  • an update on the recent webinar on the Social Trends and Mission Opportunities
  • some free and low cost webinars on church leadership though pandemic and on worship
  • updates on Calls and Vacancies
  • updates on COVID restrictions
  • plus more

See this eNews and more HERE

2021 New Horizons Conference

Around 50 attendees from Vic, SA, ACT and New Zealand gathered on-line recently for this year’s New Horizons conference.

A wide range of grassroots LCANZ members and friends, all of whom are experimenting with a variety of local ministry and mission practices, shared their learnings with the conference.

Key note speakers expanded on the following themes:

  • How to take the first practical steps in sharing the good news of Jesus with our neighbours.
  • Beginning an on-line ministry and building up our congregational reach through on-line community.
  • Non-threatening ways to build relationships with the people in your suburb.
  • Creating welcoming physical spaces at church – key aspects to look out for.
  • Being missionaries in our own suburb. How to reach out to those who would find the ‘culture’ of any local church very foreign.
  • Creating spaces (physical and listening spaces) for engaging and mentoring young people and folks from multi-ethnic backgrounds.
  • Opening up a small-group home ministry for non-christian friends.
  • Overcoming physical, emotional and intellectual barriers to engagement with visitors.

Feedback from participants was overwhelmingly enthusiastic.

Thanks to our partners LCA New and Renewing Churches department and especially Craig Heidenreich and Pr. Nathan Hedt for their partnership in the conference, their teaching, and their encouragement.

Find out more about LCA Cross Cultural Ministry

Find out more about LCA New & Renewing Churches

LCA Christian Care Sunday project

God’s love comes to life through care ministries every single day in our Lutheran congregations, aged-care and community services. This year, the LCANZ invites your congregation to celebrate this Christian care by setting aside one Sunday (or worshipping time) in your gathered community to acknowledge, bless and honour those people and organisations engaged in care work.

Whether this is visiting those isolated in their homes, providing meals for people in crisis, playgroups, kids clubs and youth groups for community interaction and a place to belong for children and care givers, right up to the running of residential care facilities, independent living villages and social work services – everyday people are providing care 365 days of the year.

The Christian Care Sunday project provides resources for congregations to celebrate the care roles and work, both formal and informal, of Lutheran church members and our employees in Lutheran aged-care and community services. You can get started today, by heading to  www.lca.org.au/ccs  to download the free resources and start planning your Christian Care Sunday celebration.

There are a range of free resources to support you, including intergenerational resources provided by Grow Ministries. Ready-to-Go worship services (on PowerPoint and as printable documents) are available for download, together with a Worship Planning Page liturgical resource with suggestions for songs, drama, visual arts, bible readings, prayers and spoken responses.

We hope this opportunity to reflect on, plan for and celebrate Christian care in your community reminds you of our inspiration and energy for all these neighbourly good deeds – it is because God loves us that we care.

The way we care for our neighbour transforms the world – why not celebrate these acts of kindness and compassion together with your church sometime soon!

Our Undoing – a devotional message from Pr Gordon Wegener

In times such as these, when things are coming apart, we look around for someone to blame, someone to fix it. We blame our leaders, the Prime Minister and Premier, when it comes to politics, or the Bishop, when it’s about the Church. When we feel powerless, we search for those we hope have power, and can somehow magically fix it all, so our lives are comfortable again.

With our strategic mind, we hope to understand things, and that often gives us the illusion of safety. We plan and expect that all will turn out the way that we expect. This can be very intoxicating, and our ego can be quite enamoured with our capability. It can be quite a distance from our true self. As I heard recently, “Everybody is doing their best, and it is never very good.” Even people in the hierarchy are just doing the best they can.

Currently we are following John 6 in the Gospel readings, and I am always struck by verse 15. Once the crowd had their fill after the abundant feeding, they wanted to “take (Jesus) by force and make him king.” Jesus could have been a prince on a throne, holding power, riches, and every kind of privilege. Instead, he denied it, let it go.

I was reading recently in a meditation by Richard Rohr on “Letting Go of Power,” Daily Meditation 12 August. “Jesus consciously chose a path that assured suffering, humiliation, desolation, and finally death on a cross… None of this was an accident or coincidence… God needed us to finally comprehend the truth: God is not a sky king who heads an empire; God is the love that gives himself away for the sake of more love.”

“In Jesus, God shows us what it looks like to be this vulnerable, humble, and self-giving. In him, we see one who did not run from things which broke his heart, nor did he first calculate what he could gain from the situation. Jesus sought instead to give away his life, so that others might flourish as God intends.”

There is much about this which speaks to where we find ourselves in this pandemic. We find ourselves being stripped away as we want to protect ourselves and what is ours. We are confronted by limits and powerlessness, frailty and endings, something we thought in our modern mind that we had outgrown. Even as Church, we had become convinced of our own success and privilege.

We have the invitation to our own humiliation, our undoing. This can happen at any time in our lives, but usually we hope it will happen to others. It can happen through the experience of long-term ill health or chronic pain, becoming the humiliation of having to ask for help. Through such a way, we may realise our compassion for others limping along like us, that we are all walking in this wounded body.

I close with this meditation from David Whyte, in a series on, “The Poetry of Self Compassion.”

What would it mean in my life – to undo myself? What does un-doing feel like physically? Can I stay with that physical sense, not fleeing from it, but letting it blossom into something that is, to begin with, unrecognizable?

Is this what Jesus means when he says, “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 10: 39)?

LCANZ National Youth Adult Forum Changes

There are a few changes we need to let you know about regarding holding this event from 4-6 September 2021 in Adelaide.

In consultation with the Lutheran Church of Australia and New Zealand leadership, we have decided to postpone the face-to-face event this year.  This is due to the unpredictable border closures around Australia due to the current outbreak of COVID-19. It is our hope that we can hold a face-to-face component of this event around late August/Early September in 2022.  However, on September 6, 2021, we plan to arrange to meet online. This will be from 10.00am—3.00pm (ACST).  You will meet Bishop John Henderson and the Executive Officer of the Church, Peter Schirmer.

With these changes now in place, we would ask you to confirm your interest in being involved in the LCANZ National Young Adult Forum as this now includes two events. The first event will be the one day online on Monday 6th September and the second event will be a 2–3-day face-to-face event in August/September 2022. It is important to us that you commit to both events to gain the big picture of the LCANZ and for continuity of participants. It is most likely that we will arrange regular contact with you throughout the 12 months between the online event and the face-to-face event, so be prepared to get involved via an online network to discuss matters of interest to do with the National Convention of Synod.

Once we have heard from you, we will pursue your expression of interest by speaking with your Pastor and District leadership. You will then be notified of your participation.

Please let us know of your intentions no later than the end of next week, Friday 6th August 2021. If we don’t hear from you, we will assume you no longer wish to be involved.

Kind regards
Jodi on behalf of the Grow Ministries Team

 

2021 District Convention of Synod Resolutions and Elections

3.2.1 BE IT RESOLVED that: District Convention of Synod ratify DCC’s decision to approve the 2021 budget given the delay in holding Convention due to the pandemic; and receive the District Administrator’s report, and in particular encourage that through the Finance & Risk Committee and DCC, leads the process in closing the budget gap.

3.1.1 BE IT RESOLVED that: The District Convention of Synod adopts the 2021-2024 Strategic Directions as the focus areas for the District Church Council – including the District’s ministries – for 2021 to 2024

3.2.2 BE IT RESOLVED that: The District Convention of Synod adopt the changes to LCAVD Constitution as detailed in the proposal and as marked up in the attachment to the Book of Reports. The changes reflect the updated governance arrangements with LEVNT Ltd and requests the DA to oversight the updating of the LCAVD Constitution document. 

3.2.3 BE IT RESOLVED that: District Convention of Synod requests DCC to work together with LEVNT Ltd  and the relevant schools and congregations to resolve land ownership arrangements, based on beneficial ownership being determined.

District Church Council
David Bergmann, Ralph Brinkmann, Andrea Cross, Pr Milton Fritsch, Katie Lang, Sue Morrison, Pr Tim Stringer, Adam Zibell
Council for Ministry Support
Susanna Bowman, Pr Bord Briese, Sharon Ghalayini, Sabine Haeusler, Pr Carl Thiele (additional lay members will be appointed by DCC at the next DCC meeting)
Assistant Bishop 
Pr Matthias Prenzler
Zone Counsellors
Pr Howard Beard, Pr Boyd Briese, Pr Levi Graham, Pr Wayne Muschamp, Pr Chris Raatz, Pr Mike Steicke

Change to District Constitution By Laws flagged

In light of COVID considerations the LCA Victorian District Church Council is seeking permission to use alternative meeting methods, should a face to face meeting become impractical due to COVID restrictions.

Therefore the Victorian District Church Council  has instructed the District Administrator in his capacity as Secretary of the District to submit to the current (39th) District Convention delegates a postal vote to authorise changes to the LCA Victorian District’s bylaws in respect of meeting methods.

This approach is broadly in line with the National Churches approach to General Convention of Synod commencing late September 2021. Delegates to the 39th Victorian & Tasmanian District Convention of Synod (2019) are being asked to vote in a postal ballot ahead of this year’s District Convention with ballots to be posted before the end of March.

The ballot will request that those delegates approve changes to the bylaws to enable Victorian & Tasmanian District Convention of Synod to take place by alternative arrangements if required. Further, the changes to the bylaws will allow procedures in transacting business and nominations and elections to be amended to suit the environment in which the meeting takes place.

The ballot papers with supporting information are being posted to delegates (at the home address listed on District files) later this month.

They must be returned to the District Administrator, Stephen Mildred, in the prepaid supplied envelope on or before a postmarked date of 27 April 2021.

Meet the Two Mugs

Who are the Two Mugs?
We are Pastor John Weier (Warracknabeal) and Pastor Geoff Schefe (Horsham).

How did Two Mugs come about?
Pr John was to lead one of the devotional worship services at Continuing Education for Pastors (CEP) in April 2018.  Between us we decided that we wanted to ‘do something different’.  We brewed an idea to have a conversational look at the chosen text which was Psalm 42.  The positive feedback from that experience emboldened us to consider doing more messages in that style.                        We even talked about getting technical and doing some kind of recording.

Why the name, Two Mugs?
John and I are both coffee fanatics, and not just your undersized latté either, it has to be mug sized!

How long have we been doing Two Mugs?
We began very rudimentary recordings for Advent in 2018.  The first was done on John’s mobile phone in his echoey dining room.  We soon realized that we had to investigate better technology, mainly based on helpful critical reviews from several friendly, faithful friends.  So we up-scaled technology with better cameras, better microphones and better lighting.  And we got better at what we were doing, becoming much more comfortable in our overall aim, which is to bring the Word of God to people in a relaxed, conversational way.  We were even asked to give a live example of our work, leading the opening service of the LWV (Lutheran Women of Victoria) Wimmera-Mallee zone rally in 2019, discussing ‘Treasures in Clay Jars’ (2 Corinthians 4).

The COVID-19 restrictions on public worship provided an ideal avenue for us to use technology like YouTube to spread the Gospel message and remind people that church buildings were shut, but the work of The Church continues – undaunted.

Along the way we have developed such a rapport we are like brothers.  One begins a sentence or idea and the other finishes it.

The most enjoyable thing about doing Two Mugs?
We laugh – a lot – and laughter is good.  I believe we both enjoy that brotherly gift of being able to ‘bounce things off each other’ and come up with the same conclusions. We seem to think on very similar wavelengths.  And did I mention that we laugh a lot?

We have both found that our time together has proved psychologically therapeutic.  We have sometimes met up feeling a bit down but have invariably finished our planning or recording session on a high.  Oh, and we laugh a lot!

Can we, will we continue if/when my call to New Zealand becomes a reality?

Our intention is to get even more techy and continue – when and how we are able.

God is good – He will make a way.

By Pastors John Weier and Geoff Schefe – Two Mugs Productions.

Pr Geoff and Pr John doing their thing

Pr Geoff and Pr John doing their thing

 

You can find the most recent Two Mugs video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUNl4dtOfB8

Farewell Pastor Tom Peitsch

Pastor Tom Peitsch was farewelled on Sunday 05 July at a small service at the Lilydale Immanuel Lutheran Church. Pastor Tom had served Lilydale and Croydon Outer Eastern since 2015 and more recently also served the Doncaster Lutheran Church as the congregations joined in a pastor sharing arrangement since 2019.
District Pastor for Congregational Support, Brett Kennett performed the rite of farewell. In a final video message to the congregations he has served Pastor Tom thanked members for their support and shared his prayer that God will continue to guide and direct them as they seek to know his will and that God blesses them in faith and strengthens them as people of grace, claimed by God through his love for them in Jesus Christ.
We thank Pastor Tom for his good service to his members and his support of the Victorian Tasmanian District, including sitting on the District Continuing Education planning committee. We pray that he and Flossie can enjoy a relaxing and rewarding life under God’s good care.

Introducing the LCA Reconciliation Action Plan

Introducing the LCA Reconciliation Action Plan

As we are reconciled with Christ through his death and resurrection, as Christians, God calls us to be reconciled with one another (2Cor 5:18,19).

Since 2015, I’ve been blessed to be involved with a small team who have been working with people from across Australia and with Reconciliation Australia on a Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) for the LCA. You’ll be able to read more about this in the May edition of The Lutheran magazine and the LCA RAP website www.rap.lca.org.au

Many people are already supporting the ministry of the LCA with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in areas such as Central Australia. Thank you for this important support.

The LCA has demonstrated historical leadership in our relationships with First Nation peoples, however, this is not the end of such engagement – it is the beginning.

Developing an LCA RAP is an opportunity to grow. Like the baptised new life we live reconciled in Christ, each day is a new beginning and a new opportunity to grow in relationships with those around us.

Wherever it is that we are as church, where you are as a baptised member of God’s family, its clear that many First Nations peoples are located somewhere close by in Australia’s cities, towns and rural communities. This means perhaps in your own community! The LCA RAP will help us all to consider what this means for us. And asking the “what does this mean for us?” is very much the Lutheran question isn’t it!

The LCA Vision for the RAP, inspired by the gospel of reconciliation in Jesus Christ, our Church’s vision for reconciliation, empowered by the Holy Spirit is…

‘to bring to life an expression of our ministry that helps all peoples understand, value and respect the histories, cultures, lands and contributions of First Nations peoples; to recognise and honour our common humanity and for equity in opportunity to flourish, so together we can grow as God’s people’

What can you and I…what can we do together during National Reconciliation Week and beyond?

I simply suggest a couple of starters:

Consider how you can grow in your relationship with your Lord who by his cross has reconciled you to God in grace.
As a child of grace how can you grow in learning to bring love to life in recognising new opportunities to understand, value and respect the contributions of First Nations and peoples and our ministry of grace in Christ? Check out the Lutheran and the RAP website.

I’d love to hear from you as well.

Neville Otto
E neville.otto@lca.org.au

What is National Reconciliation Week?

National Reconciliation Week (NRW) started as the Week of Prayer for Reconciliation in 1993 (the International Year of the World’s Indigenous Peoples) and was supported by Australia’s major faith communities. In 1996, the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation launched Australia’s first NRW.
In 2000, Reconciliation Australia was established to continue to provide national leadership on reconciliation. In the same year, approximately 300,000 people walked across Sydney Harbour Bridge as part of NRW, to show their support for reconciliation.
Today, NRW is celebrated by businesses, schools, organisations, and individuals Australia-wide. Hundreds of NRW events are held each year. You can find an event near you at www.reconciliation.org.au