Web version   |  Manage your LCA eNews subscriptions, or unsubscribe  |   Unsubscribe from this List Forward

9 December, 2015

Christmas Blessing

To Lay Workers across Australia and New Zealand....We are in roles where we see the beautiful work God does through you. We thankyou for your work...for the times when it's a joy to serve and the times when a career in gardening looks much less complicated! May you find a moment of peace this Christmas in the arms of Jesus and the company of those you love.

Nevin, Erika, Glenn and Verena

mission and ministry encouragers

Lay Ministry bits and pieces...

As part of the Governance review undertaken by the LCA, a number of changes will be introduced to the way the LCA is structured.

The Board for Lay Ministry over the next three years will cease to exist and will instead become part of a new Church Worker Support Department. This new department will see all pastors, lay workers and other paid employees and volunteers throughout the LCA being looked after under the banner of the Church Worker Support Department.
The new department will look after the pastoral, ministry and HR needs of this group.

For 2016 the Lay Ministry Department will continue to operate as usual as the new department begins to take form.

A survey will shortly be sent to all lay workers and to pastors and employers of lay workers.
It is timely to use this survey to review the support that has been provided to lay workers and to consider wisely the future support needs of all church workers under the new department. It is important that you complete this survey and contribute to the review of the Lay Ministry Department as well as the planning for the new Church Worker Support Department.
It is anticipated that the results of this survey will be collated and sent out to you in February/March 2016.

The form the new department takes will reflect the needs of church workers.Your contribution does matter. I strongly encourage you to take the time to complete and return the survey.

 

You all have a story to tell! Please don't be shy in forwarding your story to me so that we can share it in upcoming encouragers.

If we can help in anyway as you work in your communities as mission & ministry encouragers, let us know.

Staff holidays

Lay Ministry staff will return to work in 2016 on the following dates:

Nevin  Jan 17th, Verena  Jan 18th, Erika  Feb 1st,  Glenn Jan 6th

Changes in Lay Ministry Workers

In the last edition I mentioned that Carla Lynch was new to Lay Ministry and was serving at Holy Cross in Qld....apparently Carla has returned home across the Murray River to Holy Cross in Murray Bridge SA!


New
Boyce CatherineAge Care Chaplain, Woodridge, Trinder Aged Care Centre, Qld
Cook Jan Office Coordinator, Morphett Vale Calvary Congregation, SA
Doecke Neville - Arrarnta Support Worker, LCA Finke River Mission
Gollasch VickiCommunity Action Officer, Australian Lutheran World Service, Vic
Green SharonChild, Youth & Family Ministry Director, Nuriootpa St Petri Congregation, SA
Logan Isaiah - Luminate Coordinator, Qld District Department for Lutheran Youth of Queensland
Noske RussellFinance Officer, Australian Lutheran World Service, NSW
Pennisi RebeccaYouth Coordinator, Rochedale Our Saviour Congregation, Qld
Schilling RachelResource Curator & Congregational Mentor, LCA Grow Ministries
Siddall Brent Family & Community Worker Wanganui St John Congregation NZ
Williams CassandraOffice Secretary, Mt Gambier St Martins Congregation, SA

Left Positions
Fischer Comissa - Design Coordinator 'the Lutheran': 'The Lutheran' Magazine
Woods WendyInterim Intern Coordinator, Warrambui Retreat & Conference Centre

Warrambui Interns
Herrmann Jennifer
Kneen Jethro
Mireye Sifa

Tandara Interns
Ker James
Tedham James

Changed Positions
Castle-Schmidt FionaOffice Coordinator, Morphett Vale Calvary Congregation, SA to Member Support Services Officer, LCA Administrative


Thankyou to the Lay Workers who are finishing their roles and blessings as you continue your journey in life with Jesus.

If you would like to welcome or congratulate these people or the writers of the stories in this edition, click on their name to send an email

Christiaan Hersevoort ...Christ's chisel

There’s a saying that ‘good things come in small packages’: spend a little time with Christiaan Hersevoort and you quickly appreciate this truth. You can’t help but wonder how such a big heart fits inside this small man.
Christiaan is a Lutheran hospital chaplain, serving the busy Lyell McEwin Hospital in Elizabeth: a public hospital that treats up to 65,000 people each year and still growing. As a lay chaplain (part of a team of chaplains in the hospital) he says he is uniquely privileged and called to serve the patients, family members and staff with whom he comes in contact.
On his first day in 2013 Christiaan walked in to Lyell McEwin in company with another Lutheran lay chaplain. That day they helped to organise a wedding in the hospital prayer room. The father of the bride was wheeled in on his hospital bed, so his youngest daughter and her fiance could make their vows in his presence.
“As they said their vows I could see his scarred hand rise from the bed to cover their hands [in blessing],” Christiaan said. “In that moment I could see that God gives and God takes away, that he is always with us. God was taking away the struggle and suffering of this man’s last journey of life, but he was also potentially bringing the blessing of new life to the world through this new family”.
He has been involved in funerals too: in February Christiaan conducted the funeral of a man he had been visiting for six months. “In that time we had become good friends; talking, praying and joking—accepting each other as human beings,” Christiaan said.
A retired pastor-friend of both men had been expected to take the funeral, but at the last moment found himself about to undergo major surgery. With the approval of the dead man’s family, the pastor guided Christiaan through the funeral preparations and Lutheran rites so that he was able to conduct the service in his friend’s chosen funeral parlour.
“I am thrown into many things: there are good days and bad days,” Christiaan says simply.
Christiaan is no stranger to the concept of ‘good days and bad days’. His life encompasses many of both. Born in the Netherlands, baptised and confirmed in the Dutch Reformed Church, Christiaan walked out of church and into army service in 1969. It was almost 50 years before he returned.
Christiaan met and married his wife; together they had a daughter. In 1981 the Hersevoort family migrated to Australia and Christiaan worked as a telephone technician (including during construction of the modern Lyell McEwin Hospital). “But I was deaf, blind and dumb, not listening to God,” he says of this time.
In 2002 things began to change. Doctors found an aneurism on the left lobe of Christiaan’s brain. It was inoperable. He was offered radiation therapy as an alternative with no guarantees it would work and a three-year waiting period to find out whether it had. He chose the procedure.
In 2005 Christiaan and his wife made a double appointment with an Adelaide neurosurgeon: Christiaan to find out whether his treatment had been successful and his wife to discuss some troubling symptoms. Good days and bad days collided—head on.
Christiaan was told that his aneurism had “been obliterated”, that it was gone. His wife was told that she had a brain tumour which had already metastasised into cancer. Her prognosis was for just three to four months and she was immediately referred to the Modbury Hospice.
When he gets emotional, Christiaan talks about himself in the third person; “Christiaan knew then why he was saved. It was because he had to take care of his loved one”, he says.
He did so for almost two years, until she passed away peacefully at Modbury Hospice at Easter, 2007. “Then Christiaan went totally bonkers—drinking, gambling, doing crazy things,” he says. He was 60 years old.
About a year later he began to hear God’s awakening call; “Christiaan, what are you doing with your life? Come to me”. One Sunday morning he walked past Golden Grove Lutheran Church on his way to pick up the paper. Something about it drew him. It took another six weeks before he walked in, but when he did, he felt as though he had come home. He turned his back on the pubs and never regretted it.
Keen to learn more about the teachings of the church he was now part of, Christiaan found himself led to study at Australian Lutheran College, graduating with his Diploma of Theology (specialising in counselling) in 2012. “I wanted to go into pastoral care, but I wanted to do it with knowledge,” he said. When he read that the SA/NT District was in need of hospital chaplains he knew he had found his calling.
Christiaan began his chaplaincy work in November 2012 at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and has been sole Lutheran chaplain at Lyell McEwin since the beginning of 2014. “The drive for me is our Lord Jesus Christ. It isn’t anything for me, but yet I come home from a day in the hospital with the biggest peace in my heart”, he says.
“Jesus forgave me. My past is in the past. Today he tells me ‘I need you to work for me. I am the carpenter, you are my chisel.’
“God has shown so much love to me that I just have to give it away. And when I do that, he fills me up with so much more!” Christiaan says with a smile.
Christiaan recommends that anyone who is willing to serve should consider whether pastoral care or chaplaincy is a ministry for which they are gifted. “The rewards are high: peace in your mind—the peace of Christ,” he says.
Christiaan hersevoort.jpg: Chaplain Christiaan Hersevoort holds a prayer cross. These crosses are a resource which chaplains at Lyell McEwin Hospital give to patients who need a physical reminder of Christ’s presence. Story & Photo: Rosie Schefe, Editor Together

Helen Middelmann's email on prof supervision...

I am currently a pastoral carer at Immanuel Lutheran church, Woden, ACT, and Lutheran chaplain to the Canberra hospital. With more than 20 years’ experience in pastoral care and hospital chaplaincy I thought you might be interested to hear of my experience of professional supervision.

For much of this time I did not have professional supervision. Some years ago, however, when I was in a paid position as a pastoral carer at Calvary hospital ACT (in addition to serving as a Lutheran chaplain there) I was required by my employer to have professional supervision. This was a valuable experience, and one which I would recommend to all lay workers/chaplains. Supervision gave me an opportunity to debrief confidential situations, be challenged, affirmed and to reflect theologically on my practice. Unfortunately, as most of my ministry within the church (at Holy Cross, Belconnen, ACT) has been in an honorary capacity I have not been able to afford professional supervision, to my detriment I believe, as I had an experience of burnout.

However, since I returned to Immanuel  Woden, ACT, and was asked to take on the pastoral care and hospital chaplaincy roles, the Board of Leadership offered to pay me something. As I do not wish to be paid for ministry, but recognise the value of supervision, I asked the Board of Leadership if they would pay for professional supervision for me. This was granted and I have now found a wonderful supervisor whom I see roughly every six weeks. My supervisor is Sue Dunbar, a qualified supervisor and spiritual director in the Uniting church.

While I have not done a CPE course (but have basic counselling training) I work with the CPE model of Action/Reflection. However, there is great value in having a supervisor because even using action/reflection it is easy to have blind spots!

My supervisor gave me a copy of the Uniting Church’s “Getting the most out of professional supervision”, an excellent document prepared by the Queensland Synod of the Uniting Church in Australia. The UCA expects all its pastors and ‘ministry agents’ to receive professional supervision. I believe it would be valuable to require this of our church workers, both pastors and lay workers. It is very encouraging that you have written about this.

alc options....

Enrolments are open for 2016 higher ed and vocational ed courses. Click here for details.

All Lay Workers, but particularly those in Leadership positions should consider undertaking the Foundations course in the Congregational Leadership training series pictured below. Cost for this should be covered by your congregation.

click here for more details

click here for more details

& frequently asked questions

mission quotes....

God had an only Son and He made Him a missionary.
– David Livingstone

God isn’t looking for people of great faith, but for individuals ready to follow Him.    - Hudson Taylor

 

Have a wonderful Christmas break

Need help, support, encouragement...?

We can help with:

  • ministry plans
  • setting up prayer/support teams
  • training options
  • developing a ministry team
  • employment agreements
  • a listening ear