I trust you are coping well enough with the onset of winter, the effects of another lockdown and all that goes with it.  I’ve had a few extra moments to think and the image of some formative experiences came back to me.  Don was a Uniting Church Elder where I had my first ministry placement, in the country, about 30 years ago.  Don was a caring, gentle older fellow who ran sheep and a bit of a tourist experience with shearing a little way out of town.  We had two small children with us and church folk were wonderful at inviting us to all sorts of things we didn’t do in the city.  Don invited us out to his farm and to see some shearing.

My experience of sheep was not vast, but I’d been to farms before.  Helping to move sheep is one of those things farmers seem to like to entertain kids with – or perhaps they entertain themselves with children’s antics with their animals?  Sheep, in my experience do what they want.  If you try to make them go one way, they go the other, if you push the flock, they split and regroup, doing their own thing.  If you have to handle a sheep, you find they are not weak.

Don spoke to his sheep and they came, he nudged one with his knee; it got into position.  Don took hold of a leg, swung his over the sheep, as the sheep was gently turned onto it’s back and the shearing began in one fluid motion, the wool was all off in under 5 minutes.   When you watch a person working with an obvious skill, it makes the difficult seem so easy.

“My sheep hear my voice, I know them, they follow me.”   God seems to have a thing about sheep.  Sheep are the most mentioned animal in the Bible.  ‘The Lord is my shepherd.’  ‘I am the Good Shepherd’, ‘Peter, feed my sheep.’ These are all very familiar, as is Jesus command that we love one another as I have loved you.  So it’s easy to see why the Christian church has always used the language of pastoral care when it comes to our ways of looking after each other.  It’s equally clear that we aren’t sheep and won’t always go with the rest of the flock.  We prefer to be treated as individuals and know that a ‘one size fits all’ approach to anything won’t work, especially with something as complex as our relationships.

The last set of Pastoral Care lists was a temporary one, to tide us over the vacancy and Covid period of not meeting.  Meeting again this year, the Elders recognised we could do better.  Responses were very encouraging from those we approached to help with this.  Since last month we have reviewed the lists and put a team of 28 together, dividing the list between us, trying to work with requests and existing relationships.   Each pastoral carer has a group of between 4 and 11, some as couples working together.  So, we will soon have a new pastoral system with readjusted lists and more people taking on some responsibility.  For some, not much will change, for others it will be a new beginning, sorting out what will work best for us; please give it your support.

We know that there is already a wonderful amount of caring relationships and networks of connection that exist in this community of faith.  They help to give expression to Christ’s call for us to ‘love one another as I have loved you.’ The new system is of course, not to cut across relationships or to stop others caring, just to make sure we leave no one out and help to increase our connectedness as a Christian community.  It’s a vital area in the life of the church.  We will have a recommitment service for us all to take part in on June 27th, in the 10 am service.  I hope you can be part of this too; support it with your prayers and your active involvement.

Grace & Peace,   Ian

Thanks to the hard work of Jack, John and Stan for relocating the tree from behind the Chapel, where it may have become problematic to our building as it grew larger.

It is now a focal point near the Labyrinth.

Ron and Jenny have just celebrated 50 years of marriage with a luncheon with family, and later with friends for afternoon tea at home.

They went to Magnetic Island for their honeymoon.

Allan and Lorraine celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary with a family gathering recently (once Covid restrictions allowed.) 

They were married by Rev Bruce (Allan’s father).

Goroke Silo Art visited by John and Olwyne recently, when they enjoyed travelling the Silo Art Trail

Sunny Broadbeach enjoyed by Alan and Faye