Moving Forward, Reaching Upward

Pastor Robert G Lingard

PhD Candidate (Sociology) (SCU), BD (MCD), BSc(Hons) (UNSW), Adv Dip SA Min (SA COFE), Member TCMA

Robert made his commitment to Christ as a child and grew up actively engaged in a local Lismore congregation. As a young man he held a number of ministry roles in his home congregation, and in Sydney as he studied. These roles included Sunday School teacher, musician, drama team member, and clown. He was also an active member of a Scripture Union Family Mission (‘beach mission’) for an number of years. He took part in short term mission team work to PNG (1990), and subsequently to Germany (1991). Robert returned to Germany to serve as assistant to The Salvation Army’s national youth director (1992-93). He entered ministry training with The Salvation Army in 1995, and was in congregational pastoral leadership with The Salvation Army, along with his wife, Lynette, in NSW and Qld until 2005. Robert presently shares pastoral responsibility for the New Heights Christian Fellowship congregation, Lismore. He is also a member of the Lismore Minister’s Fellowship. His particular passion in church ministry is teaching the Scriptures and helping people to understand how the Scriptures are relevant as God’s loving guide for their lives.

In additional to church ministry, Robert is employed by Southern Cross University (SCU) as Senior Pastoral Care Coordinator, where he provides leadership to the chaplaincy team. He is also Vice-President of the university chaplains’ professional association, the Tertiary Ministry Campus Association (TCMA), and represents the TCMA as an elected member to the International Association for Chaplains in Higher Education. Robert has experience as a casual lecturer, tutor, and research assistant at SCU (School of Education, School of Arts and Social Sciences, and School of Health and Human Sciences), and as research assistant at Griffith University (School of Humanities, Languages & Social Science). He sits on the SCU Human Research Ethics Committee.

Robert regularly presents at national and international conferences. He has publications in the fields of chaplaincy and pastoral care, philosophy, and student development. He is currently completing his PhD research investigating how values were placed during the public debates of legislation to ban human reproductive cloning in Australia.