Dec2014
Sydney hostage drama
Martin Place in Sydney is about as close to the heart of modern Australia as you can get. It’s a short sloping mall in the centre of our largest city. The Reserve Bank, Channel 7, and the Cenotaph major business and institutions vie for space. At the top are the NSW law courts and Parliament,… Read more
Dec2014
The travelling trowel
I call it the travelling trowel. Its working life begins in Perth in 1903. It is 29 April and the day of the foundation-stone laying for the new St Johannes school and church. Rev EH Fischer had been sent to the Western Australian mission field two years earlier as a church planter, staying until 1910…. Read more
Dec2014
Familiarity breeds … impatience?
Jesus told us to pray, ‘Lead us not into temptation’. But every year my parents did what we asked God not to do—they led us into temptation. And temptation was called The Christmas Tree. Every year, about four weeks before Christmas, our parents would drive us 20 kilometres down the road to a tree farm… Read more
Nov2014
We want to grow!
Is your congregation on autopilot? Maybe it is time to pause and reflect on why your congregation does what it does. The fundamentals of what we do don’t change. It is still all about God giving us his love and grace through his Son Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit at work through… Read more
Nov2014
War and peace
Professor Hermann Sasse came to Australia in 1949 with the post-war migrant wave. Notwithstanding his call to lecture in Church History at Immanuel Seminary, he was still to some extent a refugee—with push factors perhaps stronger than the pull factor. Born in July 1895, Hermann Sasse began theological studies at the University of Berlin in… Read more
Nov2014
Eyes focused, finger on the pulse
As the sun set below the western horizon, darkness settled over the ocean like an ebony blanket. I stood on the balcony, grasping the railing and watching lightning bolts touch the water, far out to sea. I was torn: to fish, or not to fish? That, my friends, is the real question. Then, in the… Read more
Oct2014
A welcome peace!
I met Anja* when she had just been diagnosed with terminal cancer. It happened many years ago, when I was a Lutheran chaplain in a large city hospital. We saw many patients who had come to Australia after the Second World War and had a Lutheran background but no connection with a congregation. “Have you… Read more
Sep2014
Let Jesus speak!
You are relaxing with friends. Most of them are not Christian. They know you are involved in the Lutheran Church. One of them says, ‘I saw on the news that another clergyman has been charged with abusing children.’ What do you say? Do you get defensive and say that it really is only a very… Read more
Sep2014
A day to remember
Picnic … a day of nerves and excitement. In the 1800s the annual school examination was monumental for students, teachers and congregations alike, for everyone was invited. In 1857, teacher Martin Basedow and his pupils assembled in Dr Carl Muecke’s independent Lutheran Church (Tabor) in Tanunda, South Australia, along with 150 parents and friends as… Read more
Sep2014
The Holy Grail … is a servant’s cup
Sometimes it seems like every church is on an endless quest to figure it out—to find the formula to bring people into membership. I guess we’ve tried every possible recipe: a dash of new programs, some exciting three-point preaching, maybe even a (gasp!) drum kit somewhere in the general vicinity of the sanctuary. We’ve copied… Read more
