As a nine-year-old, Ian Kleinig watched a lantern slide show of New Guinean children being baptised under trees and he dreamt of being a missionary. It was God’s will that from 1948 he served as a missionary in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and that in 1966 Pastor Ian arrived in Madras (now Chennai) in India […]
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Malaysia (ELCM) is one of four Lutheran synods in Malaysia. Its focus is on working with the Tamil people of Peninsula (West) Malaysia. Malaysia is a multi-religious and multi-ethnic nation. The Malay majority are Muslims and it is a crime to convert Malays. Those Malays who do convert to Christianity […]
I grew up in a non-Christian family but attended a Catholic school where talking about God or Jesus was part of the environment. I recall very strongly that we prayed during assembly every Monday. On one occasion, I was invited to a children’s camp and one memory from that time was imprinted on me and […]
In a moving show of generosity and Christian partnership, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Myanmar (ELCM)/Lutheran Bethlehem Church has donated three Sundays’ worth of offerings towards bushfire relief through the LCA/NZ. Despite being based in a poor South-Eastern Asian nation in which more than 30 per cent of people live below the poverty line of […]
I was born into a Christian family and grew up in a church in the heart of Kuala Lumpur city. I am the only child of a pastor of a conservative Pentecostal church and my mother is a full-time church worker helping in the church’s evangelistic ministry. I joined the full time ministry focusing on […]
Anyone who has willingly hiked 1100 kilometres has to love the journey. For 68-year-old Queenslander Anne Maczkowiack, walking the 800 kilometre Camino De Santiago trail across Spain was only a part of a post-retirement reward in 2014. She and husband Robert decided to add an extra 300 kilometres to start from Barcelona. That says something […]
In our ‘modern’ world, a common perception is that we are able to connect globally more than ever before. Smart phones, satellites, cyberspace and airplanes make this an easy presumption. Nevertheless, is it true? The bible speaks of a connectedness that far outweighs our handheld devices and all manner of technological connectivity. READ: Matt 28: […]
Papua New Guinea (PNG), where I work, is Australia’s nearest neighbour, a former Australian territory, and home to about 12% of the world’s languages, which is a lot of languages in one country! It is a diverse, challenging and welcoming country. I work in Gulf Province with the Kope people, where three times a year […]
We live in a world where you don’t need to look far to find discouragement. Australia’s current bushfire crisis has devastated so many in our nation. It has touched the lives of many and the hearts of even more. While there have been countless acts of inspiring heroism and generosity, the crisis can seem insurmountable. […]
‘The sound of random groups singing from huts on the hillside, drums beating, the generator that kicked in for limited hours of power, heavy rain each night, and a pig outside my window, put me to sleep each night’. In 12 January 2020, Bishop David Altus represented the LCA at the Synod of the Evangelical […]