Spreading the message of reconciliation

‘Reconciliation week’ took on a new meaning for nine members of the LCANZ when they attended a biblical reconciliation intensive in Adelaide.

Held by the LCANZ’s Reconciliation Ministry department, the five-day study gathering was part of the Training to Teach Biblical Reconciliation course. Chris Antonini (Duncraig WA), Judy Butler (Mount Gravatt Qld), Michael Eckert (Warradale SA), Alicia Graham (St Johns Bundaberg Qld), Sue Housego (Wodonga Vic), Diane Kleinig (Tea Tree Gully SA), Lynette Priebbenow (Middle Park Qld) and pastors Adam Eime (Peace Lutheran College Cairns Qld) and Carl Richter (Mildura Vic) took part.

The intensive concentrated on learning styles, key aspects to teaching, and the content delivered in a biblical reconciliation workshop. Participants prepared and delivered a section of a workshop and produced material specific to their own contexts.

The two-part course aims to fulfil the need to have at least one person to teach biblical reconciliation in each district of the LCANZ, according to Pastor Paul Kerber, Assistant to the Bishop for Reconciliation Ministry.

‘The course is seen as the first step in growing local biblical reconciliation ministry people to serve the church with teaching and practical skills’, Pastor Paul says.

‘Our life comes from a relationship with God and our relationship with him is to affect our relationships with each other. Therefore, biblical reconciliation is really “Lutheran spirituality”, grounding people in teaching and practical aspects to living out their identity as a forgiven child of God in relationship with him and in relationship with each other.’ A key benefit of the course is that many more people will have access to biblical reconciliation teaching, he says.

Participant Diane Kleinig says the course content ‘really resonated with her’. ‘We need to be able to love each other through forgiveness and repentance and live the gospel, so that the church becomes alive and is not just something that happens on a Sunday’, she says.

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