From the Chaplain - Edition 6 - 2022

Term 2 at Westminster is already looking like ‘the Term of New Things’; day one the opening of the new Forder Centre after the preceding day’s opening of the new 400 Block and Year 12 facility. And not just buildings! Over the past two years of COVID, there has even been a new format of teaching adopted, online learning. We are never standing still at Westminster. Change is all about!

You might consider that the one person in the school who would be holding to things staying the same is the Chaplain. But not so. I find that life itself is ever-changing. And so with it, faith too. We can never really stay ‘where we are’, unchanged. Even the Bible itself, as a ‘living’ document, changes as it is read into new times.

The Uniting Church recognised this in its founding document, ‘The Basis of Union’, where it speaks of the church as ever a work-in-progress: “The Uniting Church affirms that it belongs to the people of God on the way to the promised end.”

The prophet Isaiah spoke God’s hope to people of faith long ago: “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the desert” [Isaiah 43:19].

May we ever be open to God’s ‘new thing’ for us and take it opportunity.

Rev Phil Hoffmann
Chaplain