Nov2015
The artist speaks
by Reid Matthias
On the western edge of the Lockyer Valley, the Toowoomba Range stands as a silent sentinel. Throughout the day, the hills reflect different hues from the sun. It is an amazing thing to see them redirected from the early morning greens to the afternoon browns and then the lavender that springs across the ridges in… Read more
Nov2015
Set free
by Rev Dr Steen Olsen
‘I slept in and so didn’t get to do my 20-minute personal devotion this morning. I feel like God is disappointed with me.’ When I was a young Christian in high school and university, I understood that God’s law convicted me of my sin. Then at some point in confirmation class I got it. Jesus… Read more
Aug2015
The church that followed its people
by Janette Lange
What do you do when you have a large family and no local Lutheran church? Build a church on your own farm, of course! And when those children move off the farm to town? Take the church building with you—brick by brick. That’s what happened in the remarkable story of the Trinity Lutheran Church in… Read more
Aug2015
The origin of worship
by Reid Matthias
The annual State of Origin Rugby League contest captured my interest again this year. As I viewed the football matches, and the various traditions associated with them—the costumes, the sounds and the (almost) charismatic fervour stemming from the pre-game rituals—I pondered how the rituals of Origin and the worship service tell a similar story. Because… Read more
Aug2015
Dare to be different
by Rev Dr Steen Olsen
When we engage with non-Christian family, friends and neighbours, we often run into attitudes that are very different from our own. People may have opinions about issues such as refugees, homosexuality, morality, abortion, euthanasia, evolution, the Bible and racial matters that make us feel uncomfortable. That is not surprising. How do we respond? Often, both… Read more
Jul2015
A bridge and a beacon
by Rachel Kuchel
This is the story of a church for the nation. St Peter’s Canberra: built from contributions of church groups, congregations and people from all over the country and still filled with a global membership, it is now a story that belongs to the church—across the nation and across the seas. In 1960, Max Lohe, president… Read more
Jul2015
It’s ‘a God thing’
by Reid Matthias
At the Lutheran Youth of Queensland annual appeal dinner, I spied someone across the room that I really wanted to talk with: Danielle Robinson. Danielle is the family ministry chaplain at Grace Lutheran Church in Redcliffe. When you meet Danielle, you find that she is affable, quick to laugh and even quicker to engage in… Read more
Jul2015
Pregnant congregations bring life
by Rev Dr Steen Olsen
A healthy tree produces fruit. God created it to do just that. Jesus tells the story of a man who owned a fig tree that produced no figs, so he instructed the gardener to cut it down. The gardener replied, ‘Let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure… Read more
Jun2015
A hearty welcome and new beginning
by Rachel Kuchel
Post-war, one in six Lutherans was a refugee. By the mid-1960s, one in five Australians was a post-war migrant It was a topsy-turvy state of affairs. The world had been turned upside down, inside out and back-to-front and was now trying to find a new way to balance. Armistice had been declared and World War… Read more
Jun2015
Welcoming the stranger
by Rev Dr Steen Olsen
For three months we worshipped at a different church each Sunday. Ruth and I had just moved back to Adelaide so I could begin work as the SA/NT Director for Mission. When we arrived for a service I would go and stand by myself in a corner and wait to see what happened. In those… Read more
