Australia: searching for a way forward together

As bishop of the church in Australia and New Zealand, Paul Smith led the Convention which approved women’s ordination

(LWI) - Raised in a remote, rural town on the northeastern tip of Queensland, Australia, Paul Smith knew nothing at all about the Lutheran faith and certainly never dreamed he would one day be serving in a church. His father, a magistrate and his mother, a shop keeper who had trained as an army nurse, baptized him in the Anglican church of which they were nominally members. 

But his parents were not church goers, so the children were brought up with no experience of regular worship, prayer or Christian formation. Until 1977, when his parents divorced and Paul, the youngest child, was sent to boarding school at St Peter’s Lutheran College in Brisbane. There, as an impressionable teenager, his life was “transformed by my teachers and colleagues in the community, whose words and Christian witness had a huge effect on me.” 

A “college convert,” as he calls himself, Paul was not only confirmed but also felt a call to ministry and consequently enrolled in the Lutheran seminary in Adelaide. Over the following years, he also studied anthropology and medieval history at university, worked in a factory and got married to the sister of his best friend at seminary, before being ordained in 1988. It was the first step of a journey that led to his election as leader of the Lutheran Church in Australia and New Zealand (LCANZ) in October 2021. 

What was your experience as a student at a Lutheran boarding school, coming as you did from a non-church going background? 

It was shock at first, going from never attending church to being at a service every day of the week and twice on Sundays! But it was an excellent school, with many children of missionaries working in Papua New Guinea. I was deeply impressed by the faith of some of those classmates, as well as by my teachers who really transformed my life. By the end of year eleven, I knew I wanted to be part of that work of sharing the good news of the gospel with others.  

What was your first job after your ordination at Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Adelaide? 

I was sent back to Queensland to serve as college pastor at Trinity College Ashmore, another Lutheran school on the Gold Coast. It was my first full-time role, and it was the start of a life-long love for education and for forming young people in leadership. This is very important as our numbers are declining and the average age of parishioners and pastors in the LCANZ is around 68 years old. At our schools, we employ staff from other Christian communities, so we are very ecumenical, but our vision and principles are clearly Lutheran. 

Queensland is different from the rest of Australia, where the church was started by German missionaries and was also influenced by Scandinavian migrants, so the surnames of our people still reflect that. Today, the church in Queensland governs half of all the Lutheran schools in the country and runs about 95 percent of the early childhood and early learning centers.  

You served as bishop of the Queensland district, didn’t you? 

Yes, but only after serving for twenty-five years in parish and college ministry in South Australia, as well as Queensland. Those experiences in parishes and schools were vital in preparing me and equipping me for ministry as bishop, firstly in Queensland, where I served from 2015 to 2021, and now as leader of the Lutheran Church in Australia and New Zealand.  

Tell us something about your church and the relationship with Lutherans in New Zealand? 

Officially, the church in New Zealand is called a district of the LCANZ, but it also has a certain autonomy and numbers around a thousand baptized members. The church in New Zealand has a keen cultural connection with the First Nations people, the Māori. In Australia, we have about 140,000 members, with around 30,000 of them attending services on an average Sunday and about 45,000 pupils in our Lutheran schools. 

The history of the church began in the 1830s but was complicated by different synods and divisions within those synods. In 1921, six synods joined together to form the United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Australia, primarily with the goal of doing mission work in Papua New Guinea. In 1966, all the synods finally united into the present-day Lutheran Church of Australia. 

Your church has recently approved the ordination of women – it has been a long and difficult journey, hasn’t it? 

It has been a journey that we have been on since 1966, when women were originally not allowed a vote in the newly united Lutheran church. At the end of the 1970s, they gained the right to vote, then to be delegates to the national Convention, then to be school principals, then to be pastoral assistants and lay readers. The first time that the question of ordination was debated was in the year 2000 and it was a logical evolution.  

In that year, a paper for our church was published by the theological commission stating that Scripture and theology allow for women to be ordained as pastors, but that was not passed by the Convention. After that, there were five Conventions presenting different proposals to include women in ministry, but they were all unable to gain the required two thirds majority vote.  

In 2023, a proposal to our General Convention from the Queensland district asked for a framework to be developed which allowed for women’s ordination but also had a provision for parishes that accepted only male pastors. We had just over a year of discussions about finding a way forward together and finally a resolution was approved at our Convention last October. 

What was the atmosphere like at that meeting? 

Personally, I have a deep appreciation of the nature of that Convention, in particular the tone of respectful and purposeful dialogue that provided space for each of us, just as the delegates did during their landmark gathering back in 1966. This is coupled with sadness that some have accused the church of not staying faithful to Scripture and to our Lutheran heritage. The decision comes after three decades of study and contains specific pastoral provision and support for those who did not vote in favor. But as church, we are called to bear one another’s burdens and to find the way forward together.  

What were some of the other issues discussed at that Convention? 

We discussed the ministry of the Australian Lutheran World Service as humanitarian work is at the core of our church. Our congregations cherish this work, our schools are actively involved in supporting this ministry and people give very generously to support it. You know, we have a history of refugees coming from Germany and elsewhere and there is still a very strong sense of helping our neighbors in times of need.  

What does it mean for you and your church to be a part of the global communion of churches? 

Since 1994 our church has been an associate member of the Lutheran World Federation and I was privileged to join other Australian delegates at the 2023 Assembly in Kraków, Poland. At the end of that gathering, we emphasized that this should not be a “once off” event, but instead it should be an expression of stronger connections and deepening partnerships with churches around the world and especially within our Asia Pacific region.