The Rev David Pettett has been chosen as the new assistant director, chaplaincy for Anglicare Sydney, replacing the Rev Graham McKay.

Anglicare’s director of community care, Ian Jackson, said “It’s great to have David on board... with his many years of experience and expertise, he will be a great leader of our chaplaincy team”.

Mr Pettett served as a missionary with OMF in Japan and as a curate and rector across the Diocese before taking up the first of his chaplaincy appointments — with the Royal Australian Navy Reserve in 1992.

Mr Pettett became a chaplain to the Prince of Wales Hospital campus in 1998, gaining an MA in pastoral care and counselling in 2003. He moved to prison chaplaincy at Silverwater in 2004 and to Lithgow Correctional Centre four years later.

Image: David Pettett with his dog Jack

“I think chaplaincy is the coalface of ministry,” Mr Pettett says. “Certainly for me prison chaplaincy has been the best ministry I’ve ever done because you’re dealing directly with people in hard places... they approach the chaplain to ask questions: ‘Where is God?’; ‘How is God in this crisis I’m in?’

“I’m very keen to see chaplaincy develop and for Anglicare Sydney to be a strong evangelical voice within the chaplaincy community, so that the way we do chaplaincy becomes a model for how Christians ought to be doing chaplaincy.

“I also think we’ve got a great opportunity with the partnership we have with parishes and the interest people in the parishes are showing in chaplaincy — knowing it’s a real area of need that we can reach out and touch people’s lives, introduce Christ to them and help them work through whatever they have to deal with at that point.”