Thank you for your ongoing support of the St Michael’s Institute

  • 15 February 2022
  • Ray Jarratt
My dear friends, I am writing to thank you for your ongoing support of the St Michael’s Institute.

It was established in response to two things. The first was a growing awareness that, right across the church, there were men and women who felt a call to serve God in a substantive way by serving the communities of faith in which they found themselves – but who had no training pathway that would equip and qualify them for such work. The second is that much of the training that is available is not aimed at people who wanted to serve in a lay capacity.

The Institute was established as an independent organisation. It is a registered charity, with tax-deductible status, whose purpose is to advance education and the Christian faith by providing broad-based tertiary theological, counselling and chaplaincy education and training, alone or in association with other organisations; and to place trained and in-training personnel in youth worker/chaplaincy roles in schools and parishes, to provide pastoral care to young people to enhance their educational outcomes and nurture their spiritual development.
The Institute’s tertiary partner in this work is Alphacrucis University College – Australia’s first Protestant Christian University College.

Our first commitment was to support Briony Davidson. She was proposed to Kambala to serve in a role in the RE department of the school. You support has covered the cost of the accredited  training she needed and I am happy to report that Briony will graduate later this year with two degrees – a Masters degree in Ministry and a Masters Degree in Counselling. 

Both degrees have been targeted, on the foundation pf existing degrees, to meet the needs of a Christian person serving in a role like Briony’s. Her work at Kambala has, by the grace of God, been remarkably effective. The need for teachers with Briony’s training and skillset is a pressing one felt right across the country and I believe she will be the first of many.

I am writing to also bring you up to date with what else the Institute has been doing. Because we have been working to lay down foundational pathways that are new, the early work of the Institute has taken a great deal of time. But I am happy to share with you that 2022 will see the following programs move on from their early stages into substantial ministries that I pray will be replicated in locations across the country.

Accredited biblical literacy courses, developed with the Institute, being run in conjunction with the Diocese of Adelaide and the people of two church plants in northern Adelaide.
Training in trauma management, counselling, social work and biblical literacy for Diocesan workers in the Diocese of the Murray in South Australia.
The first stage of a proposed, national gap year program for state school students, being run in partnership with Young Life Australia and centred, for the moment, in Armidale.
The establishment of a parish-based ministry training scheme for young people – to begin in two churches in Western Sydney.

The establishment of a national Licensed Lay Ministry training program for men and women seeking to serve in parishes in licensed lay leadership roles.

Your support has made Briony’s work in Kambala possible, but it has also underpinned the development of everything else the St Michael’s Institute is being called to.

The need to support Briony has not ended. We still need $8,000.00 to finalise the cost of her degrees. The firm establishment of the Institute’s other programs will need the ongoing financial support of donors like you who are committed to the growth of the Church, its people and its ministry in Australia.

It is my prayer that you will continue to give.