Ken Schmidt Biography

3Clinical Counsellor – 37 years in mental health

Qualifications: Chaplain/Counsellor

Background:

Ken was born the 5th of 8 children to poor farming parents on a small mixed dairy farm along the Murray River in South Australia. He was educated at the local school and later attended Immanuel College in Adelaide to complete secondary education. Ken was then was accepted into a seven (7) year theological degree at Luther Seminary in North Adelaide. He graduated and was ordained into Holy Ministry in December 1979.

Employment Experience:

The Lutheran Church of Australia employed Ken as a Parish Pastor first in outback Western Australia, amongst very isolated and struggling rural people, in towns, farms, stations, islands, and mining regions. After seven (7) years, Ken was transferred by the Church to rural Queensland and served a large, busy inland parish, where one of his responsibilities was to care for the Qld Premier and his family, through some difficult and turbulent times, as well as the wider community.

Ken’s next Parish was a significant change as it was a busy inner-city Sydney ministry, where he took up work at Epping, the largest Lutheran Church in Sydney. Members were from very diverse cultural, social, educational, financial, and ethnic backgrounds, and came from across 90 different Sydney suburbs. This helped diversify his knowledge and experience by exposing him to a broad spectrum of personal issues and experiences from people of many different backgrounds.

In 1994, Ken was challenged to enter a specialised area of personal focus: as a Chaplain/Counsellor at a large state-of-the-art Nursing Home and Retirement Village on the Sunshine Coast in Qld. Here, he also studied and earned a postgraduate degree in Counselling to further assist with the care of all residents, staff, volunteers, and families. It was a large, diverse, busy community, where ageing, isolation, loneliness, death, loss, grief, bereavement, trauma, palliative care, separation from loved ones, and a raft of other issues were his daily focus. Ken worked and served full-time in this environment for 12 years with Lutheran Community Services.

In 2006, after having also served part-time as an Australian Army Reserve Chaplain for twenty-four (24) years
(much of the time in Infantry Battalions), Ken decided to enter full-time Army Chaplaincy with the Australian Regular Army and the Department of Defence. Here Ken served for fourteen (14) years, and deployed with soldiers on Operations into East Timor, Afghanistan and Iraq. Ken also visited PNG, Malaysia, France and Belgium. In total, Ken has served for thirty-eight (38) years with our great Australian Army soldiers, amidst all their personal sufferings, separations, struggles, stress, trauma, challenges, isolation, griefs, losses, bereavements, as well as their many triumphs, joys and successes.

Trauma Specific Training/Experience

  • Level 4 EMIT/EMDR Practitioner and Trainer

Qualifications:

  • B Theology;
  • B Counselling;
  • Dip Industrial and Operational Chaplaincy
  • Member: Australian Counselling Association
  • Member: Australian College of Supervisors
  • Member: Australian College of Counsellors
  • Member: Australian College of Christian Counsellors

Military Awards (Army):

  • Australian Active Service Medal
  • Afghanistan Medal
  • Australian Service Medal
  • Operational Service Medal
  • Reserve Forces Decoration
  • Australian Defence Medal
  • UN ISAF Medal

Areas of Counselling Specialties:

Life changes, Loss, Grief, Bereavement, Meaning and Purpose, Beliefs, Faith, Values, Challenges, Opportunities, Life in the Military, Life after the Military, Palliative Care, Aged Care, Rural Life, Traumas.

Other team member profiles:
Cath Edwards
Grahame Smith
Glen Hughes
Linda Elsey