I see a lot of people are worried about school chaplaincy funding.
There is a case about to start in the High Court challenging the right of the Federal Government to pay for school chaplains. I'm no lawyer but as far as I can see there is no basis in the constitution to stop the Government funding chaplains in general as long as they are not restricted to one particular faith group.
Generally chaplains are well supported in schools and seen as helpful source of pastoral care.
But it does make me wonder why we think that Government funding is necessary to a missional role that the church should be providing anyway.
In Narrabri, when school chaplains started we looked closely at the conditions of the programme. At the time we had been operating our Schools Ministry for several years as a combined project of the churches of Narrabri. We talked and prayed extensively about the issue and came to the conclusion that we were better off to continue the way we were.
There are two advantages to this:
1. Nobody can tell us what we are or are not allowed to do. Yes, we work within the school structure. But our worker is an agent of the church not of the state. Under chaplaincy funding, chaplains are not allowed to "proselytise" which is a term for persuading people to join a particular religion- which includes evangelism. If you are planting missionaries in a place the thing you want them to do is evangelism.
2. We are not dependent on the whims of the Government or the public service. The Government cannot stop us operating just by withdrawing money. If the High Court challenge is successful, we are not prevented from operating.
Sure, we could do more with more money. But I figure that God is richer than the Federal Government and if we are faithful in obeying His call then He will supply what we need.
When churches become dependent on the Government to provide funding for its mission, they run the very real risk of changing their message to please the Government or just watering down the gospel so that it doesn't offend unbelievers.
I'm not being critical of other church groups that have gone down that path. But I do appreciate the freedom that we have here because our school minister is fnded by the churches.
New Life Narrabri 
How wonderful that you have people like this in schools. We try so hard in this country to meet all the children's needs – educationally – even nutritionally yet we ignore their spiritual needs.
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It's a quite recent development but is very welcome. And like in the US it's just a very small minority trying to get rid of it.
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Well, it is an outreach. I feel bad for these little kids growing up without it. I think maybe we need to campaign harder in this country for something like this. I'll talk to my daughter about it, she may have some ideas on how to go about it.
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I think you've got bigger issues there about constitutional separation of church and state. We've inherited more of the British sense that faith should be in the public sphere. In NSW we have Scripture lessons in schools. It goes back to the fact that in the early days of the colony the Church of England pretty well had the only schools. When the Government took over the education system one of the conditions was that ministers and lay people have the right to go and teach one lesson a week. That is a huge outreach opportunity, when so many children grow up with no contact with church.The humanists are hitting back with an "ethics" course. What they fail to realise is that to make it work they would need an army of volunteers in every town and suburb. It's a bit hard to get passionate about teaching children how to respond to multiple party invitations on the same day, or getting unwanted presents.
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They need school chaplains in my area, real bad.
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We do, certainly. And maybe one old grandma can't do anything to change things, but if we don't try, what good are we?
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Go for it! "One old grandma" in our town raised money to build a special room on the school grounds for our chaplain to use as a ministry centre. It confused the Department of Education as it was a first and they didn't know what bureaucratic boxes to put it in!
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Ahhhh! Great motivation!!
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