Helping launching a sister ministry in Australia

I’m writing this just two days after Dixie and I arrived home, having answered a two-year-old ‘Macedonian’ style invitation to “come over to Australia and help us.”

The request came from Richard Pearce, pastor of the Caloundra Church of Christ in Queensland, Australia. He and Shirley, together with Trevor and Judy Holt, were participating in their first CASA International Leadership Conference, held that year in Costa Mesa CA. Richard had been surfing the net in search of an organization that was helping prepare pastors and laity for older adult ministry when he came upon the www.gocasa.org website. He liked what he saw, felt the Lord encouraging him to investigate further, and so they came.

Richard and Shirley returned to further scope out what we were doing during the 2009 conference in Chicago. They could see big changes were taking place in CASA Network and that we were facing huge challenges as an organization. But they were inspired and went home ready to join in the challenge. Back home in Australia, a Board was taking shape, dates were set, and the word spread. The Caloundra Church of Christ had previously conducted several seniors’ conferences, but this would be the first Fresh Horizons Leadership Conference.

The hope was for 50 pastors and lay leaders to attend. By the time the day arrived, 94 were registered for the Leadership Conference from several states and 1 visiting pastor all the way from New Zealand! Over 130 participated in the 3-day Seniors Conference that followed. Richard and his ministry team were terrific. They worked hard and prayed much. The interest during and after the conference was very strong and plans are being laid to expand their work across the continent and New Zealand.

Australia is very much like the USA and Canada in that over one-third (38 percent) of Australians are 45+ in age. (Interestingly, one in every five at age 55 is registered on Facebook.) In 1901, the overwhelming majority (96 percent) of Australians described themselves as Christian. One hundred years later, that number has declined to 64 percent (down from 71 percent in 1996). There is much for the Bridge (45-69) and Sage generations (70+) to do to reach the generations that follow. Ministry to and through older adults in Australia, as in America and around the world, is vital to the whole body of Christ.

This was my second ‘out of country’ experience this year. The first was with Pete Menconi in a conference in Calgary Alberta Canada under the guiding hand of Wally Fus, one of the pastors at Brentwood Baptist Church. This, together with considerable activity throughout the USA, is important to note. It speaks to a new spiritual awakening in midlife and beyond age adults throughout the world that is ever so slowly beginning to happen.

There is a growing hunger among midlife and beyond age Christ followers everywhere to be a meaningful part of what God is doing. Still, we are not yet at the ‘tipping point,’ that level at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable. It is still stoppable, still very much an uphill challenge. But we are closer now than two years ago when Richard and Shirley and Trevor and Judy came to see and to dream with us of what God might do in the land ‘down under.’

Don Hegan, a Presbyterian pastor from New Zealand writes in an email, “I am still on a high after the conference and have spoken to Ian C and hope to catch up with him and his Pastor to share about this. Also I am in email contact with folk in the Church about our own conference (in New Zealand) some time in the future. This Sunday I will be sharing about my time in ‘Aussie’ and then straight after we have our AGM, quite a strategic time.”

Peter van Donge wrote saying, “Thank you both for coming to Australia and sharing the vision you have regarding ministry to those in the second half of life. I’m delighted at the fruit I’m already aware of and am sure that it will bear fruit in a whole range of ways. No doubt others have communicated additional potential developments with you. You’ll be on our prayer list as you exercise this ministry to others. Tell Dixie I have already been able to promote the mentoring concept she shared with some folk in the small church I am pastoring at the moment and they responded positively.”

There you have it. A bit of the news of what we found ‘down under.’ Don’t forget to pray for these great people. Our new best friends. Partners in ministry. Men and women who love Jesus deeply and who are busy stirring the glowing embers of their peers, determined to leave a light on for the next generations!