A farewell message from Bishop David Altus
‘Blessed to be Church’
By the time you read this, the church will have elected a new bishop, and I will be in caretaker mode, serving until the bishop-elect is ready to be installed. I anticipate serving until around the end of July and will then retire.
I express my gratitude to everyone I have had the privilege of serving for over 13 years now in this role, and for nearly 37 years in ministry. I thank God for you, for your prayers and encouragement, for the situations and challenges that have grown me as person and as a pastor, and for the ways in which I have had to rely on God and live by faith, which is always a good thing. I trust that I have served you for God along the way, for your blessing.
I want to thank the College of Bishops, District Church Council and staff over the years, and especially my wife Carolyn and my family, for their support along the way.
This role is an impossible one, as your new bishop will soon discover, but I have learned that is an ok place to be. For when God is with you all things are possible, as he promises. The verse from Philippians 4:13 that has always appeared at the bottom of all my communications says: ‘Christ gives me the strength to face everything’. I have found God to be true to that word. In an uncertain future we live with the certainty of his presence, the assurance of his promises, and in the power of his Spirit. I pray you will step into the future without fear, but with faith.
Our recent Synod theme was ‘Blessed to be Church’. I have discovered during my lifetime and especially in ministry how precious it is to be part of God’s church, as imperfect as we are individually and together.
- Blessed with Christian parents who practised what they believed.
- Blessed by youth and older members who encouraged and modelled being disciples of Jesus to me.
- Blessed in 37 years of pastoral ministry in rural and city parishes, and part of aged care and schools.
- Blessed by being humbled and inspired by people like you who keep on believing and praying and serving when life, and even family, have turned against you.
- Blessed in these last 13 years in an oversight role where I have seen God at work in people like you in all sorts of places. I wish you could all have come with me to see the church in action – it would give you encouragement about being church where you are today.
- Blessed from sitting with other leaders of Christian Churches in SA.
- Blessed even from the more difficult and uncomfortable experiences and failures that have kept me humble and dependent on God’s grace.
- Blessed by so much more.
We are blessed to be church. I hope that is how it is for you, as it has been for me.
Your story of ‘blessed to be church’ might look and sound different, but I pray you can look back and see the blessing of the Lord of the church on your own life and in our common life, both in your local worshipping community and in our District of the LCA.
It is easy to be critical of the church. We are fallen human beings. There is plenty of ammunition to fire at us, and we do shoot ourselves in the foot a lot, but I hope you see yourselves as blessed to be, and blessed to belong to God’s church.
- Blessed to be embraced by God’s forgiving love in Jesus.
- Blessed to be baptised into his forever family.
- Blessed to sit at his table together.
- Blessed to look forward to heaven together.
- Blessed not to have to worry about past sins, and blessed not to worry about our final destination.
- Blessed to live in the world without fear.
- Blessed to serve God in his mission.
In his book Life Together that I have read something of for each of my 13 years as bishop and in most of my years in ministry, Bonhoeffer says the fact that anyone believes is a miracle. We dare not take for granted that we can come together with people who share our faith and our common hope for heaven, who support each other in the struggle of life and alongside whom we are called to serve. Bonhoeffer writes:
‘It is by the grace of God that a congregation is permitted to gather visibly in the world to share God’s word and sacrament. Not all Christians receive this blessing. The imprisoned, the sick, the scattered lonely, they stand alone. They know that visible fellowship is a blessing……the physical presence of another Christian is a source of incomparable joy and strength to the believer…’
Whether your worshipping community today is large or small, growing or shrinking, ageing or youthful, what you think and wish it to be, or not, as a community of disciples, you have the ongoing blessing of the same crucified and risen Jesus who remained continually present with those first believers. Jesus our ascended Lord who lives to continually bless his church.
At the end of every coming together of God’s people, a blessing is pronounced on your life individually and together. God goes with you, and his Spirit within you. You go ‘blessed to be church’ in the world, the world for whom Jesus died.
In Luke’s account of the Ascension it is while he is blessing them that Jesus leaves their sight.
But in their leaving and going back to be church, they were continually blessed and so are we, in life, in death, as his church, in his mission. We are truly ‘blessed to be his church’.
So this is goodbye from me. ‘Goodbye’ which originally meant ‘God be with you’. I leave you as Bishop with his blessing.
‘The Lord bless you and keep you,
The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you
The Lord look on you with his favour
And give you peace’
This message first appeared in the June 2023 edition of the SA-NT District magazine, ‘Together’.
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