Anglicare Sunday by Stephen Harrison
When I was eighteen, I worked part time in a kebab store in Albert St in Brisbane. At the time I was completing a degree in chemistry and worked in the shop for some extra money. One day our boss organized a training session with the owner of the franchise. I suspect the owner fancied himself as the next Tony Robbins and was using us for practice. As he stood before the small group of employees, he asked us to put up our hands up if we were completely happy with our lives. Without a huge amount of thought I put my hand up…and I was the only one.
The franchise owner was taken back. I don’t recall a lot of the conversation that followed between us but I remember him asking: is there nothing you would change about your life? Now I do have a contrarian streak in me, but I was eighteen, living at home, had few responsibilities apart from my Uni studies and I was earning enough at the kebab shop to enjoy myself. I also knew enough about other people’s lives to know my life was great. Why wouldn’t I be happy with it.
Being happy with my life however was a problem for him. If I didn’t want to change anything, how would he be able to impart his wisdom. The thing is I think he asked me the wrong question. If he had asked me: are you happy with the world you live in? I am positive I would have said an emphatic: No! And I would have named all the things I thought were wrong with the world and how it impacted people around me.
And it is at that point that he might have asked me: And what are you doing about it? How can you be happy in yourself if those around you are suffering?
I wonder…
Are you happy with what is happening in the world around you? With the shape and direction of our society? If you are not happy, what problems do you see?
Now I am not a person that thinks today is particularly worse than 20 or 200 or 2000 years ago. Each era has its own unique set of issues. But if you are looking at the same world as me you might see some of the following things:
Issues of Homelessness
According to the 2021 Census, on Census Night, there were 116,000 people experiencing homelessness in Australia. Forty four percent of those people were in improvised dwellings, tents, or sleeping out. Most of those people were younger but we also see people in their 80’s on the streets.
Rising Mental Health Issues
1 in 5 Australians experience a mental or behavioral condition. That’s nearly 4 million people. According to the World Health Organisation, an estimated 45% of Australians will experience a mental health condition in their lifetime. These issues will impact all of us in one way or another, whether it is us or our family and friends.
You may not see but you may hear about the issue of Domestic Violence According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, one in six women and one in 16 men have experienced violence from a current or former partner.
We are also seeing a growing issue of Loneliness. About 44 per cent of Australian adolescents and adults regularly feel lonely, including 25 percent who feel chronically lonely. Mental and physical health researchers have found that loneliness is an important cause of adverse wellbeing issues in all age groups.
No doubt you could list a whole range of other problems.
I wonder…
Is this the society you want to live in? Are you happy with the way it is? What should we be doing?
Now there are some who might say the church should just be about spiritual stuff and not get involved with the social stuff. This view goes against the whole view of scripture. We see in the life of Jesus someone who cared about the physical and social ills of his community. Jesus fed the hungry, healed the sick and preached against injustice.
And then we have all of Jesus’ teaching about the Kingdom of God. A vision of a world where we live as God would have us live. A world and society very different to the one we live in now. The kingdom of God is characterised by love, mercy, and compassion. It is a realm where people are called to love God with all their heart, soul, and mind, and to love their neighbors as themselves.
Scripture talks about the coming kingdom, something yet to be fulfilled where everything will be perfected, but also that we are to live as if the kingdom is here already, we are to live by its rules and precepts now. So, if we are followers of Jesus, we are citizens in his kingdom, and we are called to care and called to serve.
So where does the Anglicare fit into all that?
Today Anglicare is the part of the church that is tasked with specific responsibility in regard to community welfare, social justice, health and aged and community care.
Our vision is to create a more loving, just and inclusive society, reflecting the life and teachings of Christ.
We do a lot to try and fulfil this vision.
Anglicare has over 3400 employees, 600 volunteers and last year we supported on 45 000 Queenslanders. Anglicare is well known for our work in residential aged care and in home and community care. We provide exceptional service to senior members of our community and their families.
We are engaged in foster & kinship care and support 1500 families. We have done this work for over 25 years across Queensland. Anglicare undertakes a variety of initiatives to combat youth homelessness and help people to build happier and healthier lives off the streets. We provide counselling and support programs to help people manage both their physical and mental health.
Anglicare’s research and advocacy work supports our vision of a more loving, just and inclusive society. We work actively with others to enable the voices of the people we support through our service delivery to be heard loud and clear, and to meaningfully inform positive social change.
We do a lot!
This Sunday is Anglican Sunday, and we are asking the whole church to pray for us.
The work of Anglicare is the work of the church. Those who do that work are participating in God’s mission in the world. I encourage you to get to know our front-line workers if you can and to thank them. The whole church should be proud of the work Anglicare does. Our society may not be the way we want it but the church through Anglicare is doing significant work to create a more loving just and inclusive society, reflecting the life and teaching of Jesus. I encourage you to get behind it and be part of it.
Stephen Harrison
Director of Mission, Research and Advocacy
Anglicare Southern Queensland