New website resource to support congregations
A Congregational Life website designed to support LCANZ congregations and agencies in areas including worship, pastoral care, discipleship and faith teaching, outreach and church planting, and community service is being developed by the church.
As an outcome of a recently released report addressing the LCANZ’s ongoing ministry challenges, including its pastoral supply shortage, the website will help equip faith communities as they adjust to the church’s changing context. To be launched later this year and presented from a user point of view, it will offer accessible and relevant resources and raise awareness of learning pathways that are currently available or being developed.
The website was recommended in the summary report of the Ministry Future project, which was received with approval earlier this month by the General Church Board (GCB). Led by Victorian District Bishop Emeritus Greg Pietsch, the project was established by the College of Bishops (CoB) in 2022, with the support of GCB, to ‘consider and develop a coordinated response’ to the decreasing number of pastors in the LCANZ and the changing nature of its communities.
In response to CoB’s request, the report contains a multi-faceted approach to tackling what Pastor Greg says are ‘clearly evident’ difficulties facing the church. The three-part response developed to address these challenges is:
- a regional rather than solely congregation or parish approach to organising pastoral ministry,
- suitable pathways into general and specialised service – both lay and ordained, paid and voluntary, and
- a regular way of ordering the service of lay people involved in word and/or sacrament ministry, in addition to the existing preparation and call of Specific Ministry Pastors (SMPs).
‘(We have) a large number of pastoral vacancies, long periods in vacancy with frustration over the call process and communities struggling to afford a pastor’, Pastor Greg says in the report. ‘Yet ministry needs and mission opportunities continue in the Lord’s harvest field.’
He says each LCANZ District has been responding as best it can, using the resources available, such as drawing on retired pastors and, in some cases, licensing lay people to undertake what would otherwise be tasks of an ordained minister.
The report suggests that the current circumstances may even be able to be turned into a ‘creative opportunity in the Lord’s gospel mission’.
‘How do we let the word of the Lord flourish among us today?’, Pastor Greg asks.
‘One way is to multiply the ministry of our pastors by working more in a team across a larger number of communities. Regionalisation envisages a zone or region of congregations and parishes being served with the full range of word and sacrament ministry collectively, using a team approach led by an overseeing General Ministry Pastor (GMP) with the possibility of other GMPs or SMPs in the team as well.
‘Each congregation/worshipping community will continue with its own lay leadership and volunteer ministry roles of the traditional kind, supplemented where possible by a local SMP or designated lay person with a pastoral leadership role.’ The project prepared a ‘Guide to Regional Ministry’ and a model agreement to help local communities make the change. These are available from District Bishops.
Pastor Greg also is thankful to God that laypeople are taking up ministry service in many ways – service which, he says, ‘needs affirmation, training and support’.
‘So, another response to our situation is to understand, appreciate and advance the service of lay and ordained alike with education and training to match – pathways into service and for service development’, he says.
To give a better understanding of the church’s situation, and as an impetus to meeting new training needs, the Ministry Future project also has drafted a proposed LCANZ Ministry Personnel Framework. This maps out the range of ministry roles and specialisations across the church, with corresponding education and formation, accreditation and call or appointment mechanisms.
The Ministry Future project also contributed to the ongoing examination by CoB and the Commission on Theology and Inter-Church Relations (CTICR) of the third response to the church’s situation – the ‘ordering’ of ministry.
‘“Ordering” ministry is the term used to describe the way the church understands and delineates the different roles in church ministry’, Pastor Greg says. ‘The most essential “ordering” is the distinction between lay and ordained vocations or callings. After proclaiming the central teaching of justification by grace alone, through faith … the Augsburg Confession goes on to teach, “So that we may obtain this faith, the ministry of teaching the gospel and administering the sacraments was instituted” (by God).
‘All Christians are called into “the priesthood of all believers”, that is, to participate in God’s saving work in all our different roles and most essentially to receive and share the gospel itself.’
Pastor Greg says the Ministry Future project ‘does not pretend to be every answer to the changes we face’, but rather that it hopes to be of help.
‘We face both a personal call – to grow in God’s word and promises ourselves – and a collective one – to walk together in faith and action’, he says. ‘To that end, the project has helped raise awareness of our situation, fostered collaboration in exploring responses and begun some balls rolling – that is, specific directions and actions.
Pastor Greg also encourages members of the LCANZ to commit the church, its communities and the project outcomes to prayer. ‘Ask the Lord of the harvest … to let this project multiply and equip servants – lay and ordained – so that his life-giving word flourishes among us in the very changed church and world today’, he says.
The Ministry Future report, along with a question-and-answer document about the project, is available to be downloaded at www.lca.org.au/ministry-future
