Role in Pastoral Care
The church states that "We Lutherans believe that we are called to love people as Christ loved us - and that doesn't mean only those people who are members of our church. Wherever we are able, we gladly extend our loving care to anyone who might need us, including those who are elderly, disabled or disadvantaged in any way. Increasingly we are offering a helping hand also to indigenous people, and refugees and new arrivals.
We believe the words of Jesus, who said that when we reach out in love and care to someone else, we do it for him (Matthew 25:37.)"
The LCA provides pastoral care for the following groups in particular:
- retired and elderly people
- people with disabilities
- homeless or at risk
- families and relationships
- indigenous people
- refugees and new arrivals.
The Church also runs an operation to provide food as a way of bonding communities. Indeed, it feels that this aspect of charity is one of its strengths. They state that "Hospitality involving food is something Lutherans have always been good at. It’s indigenous to who we are. Perhaps it started with the traditional German heritage many of us share – where hard manual labour fuelled large healthy appetites. Perhaps it’s the blessings we now enjoy, thanks to the many cultures that gather in our Australian and New Zealand congregations as Lutherans. Perhaps it all goes back to Martin Luther himself who regularly brought people together around food and wine for his famous ‘Table Talk’ sessions."
They also cite "the example of Jesus who enjoyed food and hospitality as a way to break down barriers and connect with those for whom society had no time."
Read more about this topic: Lutheran Church Of Australia
Famous quotes containing the words role in, role, pastoral and/or care:
“If women’s role in life is limited solely to housewife/mother, it clearly ends when she can no longer bear more children and the children she has borne leave home.”
—Betty Friedan (20th century)
“His role was as the gentle teacher, the logical, compassionate, caring and articulate teacher, who inspired you so that you wanted to please him more than life itself.”
—Carol Lawrence, U.S. singer, star of West Side Story. Conversations About Bernstein, p. 172, ed. William Westbrook Burton, Oxford University Press (1995)
“Et in Arcadia ego.
[I too am in Arcadia.]”
—Anonymous, Anonymous.
Tomb inscription, appearing in classical paintings by Guercino and Poussin, among others. The words probably mean that even the most ideal earthly lives are mortal. Arcadia, a mountainous region in the central Peloponnese, Greece, was the rustic abode of Pan, depicted in literature and art as a land of innocence and ease, and was the title of Sir Philip Sidney’s pastoral romance (1590)
“We cannot cheat on DNA. We cannot get round photosynthesis. We cannot say I am not going to give a damn about phytoplankton. All these tiny mechanisms provide the preconditions of our planetary life. To say we do not care is to say in the most literal sense that “we choose death.””
—Barbara Ward (1914–1981)