Anglican Taonga Winter 2013

WINTER 2013 // No.43

Taonga ANGLICAN

OUR PLACE

On the wing A flying visit to the Chatham Islands FA I T H I N A C T I O N

In Prison you visited me An extraordinary story of friendship MISSION

Signs and portents Walking the pathway the Maori prophets have trod

DIGBY FOR DEAN : : HIGH VOLTAGE MINISTRY : : RELIGIONS IN SCHOOL

W I N T E R

2013 Page 1

Anglican Taonga

WINTER 2013

PREVIEW

An architect’s impression of the completed Interpretive Centre.

Shapes of things

I

to come

f you look at the photo below, you may detect something missing.

People.

But don’t be fooled. Come Christmas Day, 2014, thousands will be milling here.

This is, after all, Oihi in the Bay of Islands – where, on Christmas Day 1814, at Ruatara’s invitation, Samuel Marsden preached his famous sermon.

It’s the cradle of the nation, in other words.

The place where the gospel arrived on

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these shores. Where tangata whenua and settlers began a new life together.

And we’re fast approaching the bicentennial of that beginning.

Now, let’s get our bearings with this shot.

At the left edge of the image, barely visible beneath the dark hills, is the Marsden Cross.

That’s just up from the water’s edge at Oihi Bay and it marks the spot, more or less, where Marsden preached and where the missionary families he left behind built

their tiny settlement.

Further to the right (above the vertical poles at the left end of the scaffolding) you’ll see Rangihoua Pa, where Ruatara lived.

And that building? It’s the Interpretive Centre, designed by Pip Cheshire for the Marsden Cross Trust Board.

The boxing that you see will shape its rammed-earth walls, and those walls will be topped by a free-form roof.

It will be striking – and oriented directly towards the Cross, about a kilometre in the distance.

The centre will allow visitors arriving by road to orient themselves. They’ll gain an outline of the Ruatara-Marsden relationship there.

Those visitors will then be able to amble along a pathway down the contours of the hill to the Marsden Cross.

Older walkers will be able to tackle that walk with some assurance – and there’ll be way-stations en route where they can pause to read panels that tell stories of the area and of the lives of the missionary families living within a Maori community.

We had forecast, last issue, that we’d run a feature on the Oihi developments in this issue. But we’re keeping our powder dry till next time.

In the meantime, check out the progress.

Thanks to Peter Jones for shinning up a pine tree to take the shot.

Anglican Taonga WINTER 2013

Anglican Taonga WINTER 2013

Contents 04

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16

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26

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REGULAR 16 Social Justice: Jolyon White sheds light on the Living Wage 18 Youth: Dion Fasi walking alongside youth 32 Children: Julie Hintz: keeping our kids safe 38 Environment: Phillip Donnell on planet-saving discipleship 42 Film: John Bluck unpacks the making of a fundamentalist 43 The Far Side: Imogen de la Bere on two-wheeled morality Anglican Taonga is published by the Commission on Communications and distributed to all ministry units and agencies of the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia – Te Haahi Mihinare ki Aotearoa ki Niu Tireni ki nga Moutere o Te Moana Nui a Kiwa.

Editor Julanne Clarke-Morris 786 Cumberland Street Otepoti - Dunedin 9016 Ph 03 477-1556 julanneclarkemorris@gmail.com Design Marcus Thomas Design Ph 04 389-6964 marcust@orcon.net.nz Distribution Chris Church Ph 03 351-4404 chrischurch@orcon.net.nz Advertising Brian Watkins Ph 06 875-8488 Mob 021 072-9892 brian@grow.co.nz Media Officer Lloyd Ashton Ph 09 521-4439 021 348-470 mediaofficer@anglicanchurch.org.nz.

Taonga Online Editor Brian Thomas Ph 03 351 4404 bjthomas@orcon.net.nz Cover: Buller’s Albatross, Chatham Islands.

Photograph by Sarah Wilcox © 2013.

Features

08

In prison: you visited me One woman’s extraordinary story of friendship in prisons

13

Digby for Wellington Meet the capital’s new dean

20

Walking with the Maori prophets Hirini Kaa’s revelations from the journey

24

Faith in dialogue Jocelyn Armstrong on classroom encounters in World Religion

26

Take it to the trees John Flenley plants hope in the face of climate change

28

At home in the Chatham Islands Sarah Wilcox pops in to meet the locals

31

Visiting angels Brian Thomas sees flittering signs of spring in a winter garden

34

In church: To be or not to be?

Bruce Gilberd lays out the unseen benefits of regular worship

For the latest on the Anglican world, check out our website:

www.anglicantaonga.org.nz Page 3

Anglican Taonga

WINTER 2013

PEOPLE

Postcards from

the edge

Tony Gerritsen warns Lloyd Ashton to beware of sparks flying at St John’s College…

This should be a dangerous place.

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Y

ou can’t miss it.

Beside the main entrance to St John’s College, immediately behind the masonry wall on St John’s Rd, is a large ungainly power box.

It was there when Tony Gerritsen was a student at the college 30 years ago – and it’s still there now that he is the new Manukura or Principal.

But despite its clunkiness, he would hate to see that box go.

Because there’s a sign on it: a skull and crossbones proclaiming DANGER. HIGH VOLTAGE. And that, Tony says, is a metaphor for what St John’s should be all about.

“It should be a dangerous place.

“People should come out of here very different from how they went in.

“St John’s College should be transformative for them.

“So that they, in turn, can be transformative.”

He freely acknowledges too that, in the past, St John’s has sometimes been dangerous for the wrong reasons.

He’s not talking about that kind of danger.

He’s talking about positive danger.

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Part of the challenge facing St John’s, Tony says, is that truth isn’t what it used to be.

The church needs to face up to that fact, and to prepare its ordinands accordingly.

“The church,” he says, “is having to face the realities of being part of a totally different paradigm.

“Truth is far less empirical than it once was. It is now much more relative truth.

“It is ‘my truth’ for the Gen X, Gen Ys – and yet the church is predominantly led by those who are Modernists.

“People who have been trained in a paradigm of church which was essentially the Pastor/Teacher model of clergy.

“And as Alan Roxburgh pointed out when he was in New Zealand, what the church needs more now are ‘APEs’ – Apostles, Prophets and Evangelists, using the Ephesians 4:11 template.

“The Apostles – the entrepreneurs, the people who are prepared to take a risk; the Prophets – those who have a prophetic voice; and the Evangelists – those with a missional heart.”

There are implications there for the

Anglican Taonga WINTER 2013

Now it’s much more about being the ‘Guide on the Side’

classroom and lecture theatre, says Tony.

“Learning,” he says, “used to pivot around the ‘Sage on the Stage’, the giver of information and knowledge…

“But what younger people and younger clerics are looking for now, I think, is somebody who can mentor them.

“So now it’s much more about: ‘The Guide on the Side.’ ” Tony says St John’s needs to deliver three things to the students who are entrusted to its care.

“Our first need,” he says, “is to build a deep sense of community here.

“We live in a multicultural society, which in terms of families and extended families, is also a fracturing society – so there’s a real need to build a place of deep community.

“Then, there’s the need to help people here develop as disciples of Jesus.

Dangerous disciples of Jesus. And that’s about a radical transformation of their lives.

“Finally, I think we then need to reach out, to engage with society in a meaningful way, to offer ourselves as a gift to society – and to be transformative, not only by our words, but more importantly by our actions: our being.”

All this has to be negotiated, says Tony, with the knowledge that the church – in New Zealand, at least – is a less-than-10 percent minority in society.

“We don’t have the rights that we once might have had,” he says. “And so all that we can ever do is offer ourselves, and our thoughts as a gift into the conversation.” *

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Beyond that, says Tony, he doesn’t have “smart answers” to offer at the moment.

With him just starting back at the college, he says it would be entirely inappropriate for him to imply that he had it all sussed now, anyway.

That’s why he is spending his first six weeks going walkabout.

He’ll visit every episcopal unit in the province – every diocese, every hui

INSET: Here’s Tony and Jill Gerritsen with some of the younger crew at All Saints, Apia. Tony plans to visit every episcopal unit in the province during his six weeks in his new job, and he started with a visit to the Islands.

amorangi – listening to what their hopes are, and to what their needs and aspirations are where the college is concerned.

Both for the people they send to St John’s, and who are later returned to them, and in terms of the wider educational role that the college can fulfil.

“My role is to lead and manage the college for the next five years,” he says, “and I will start that by listening.

“That listening process never finishes,” he says. “Listening to the dioceses and hui amorangi, to other stakeholders, and listening always to Scripture and the Spirit.”

By Lloyd Ashton

Calling all our subscribers…

We’re updating our mag mailing database – and we’d be grateful if you could take a moment to check that the delivery address we have for you is correct.

Please contact Chris Church chrischurch@orcon.net.nz with any corrections.

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Anglican Taonga

WINTER 2013

PEOPLE

Gail’s mission accomplished

L

et’s not sugarcoat the pill.

Before Gail Thomson arrived at St John’s College, the place was in a mess.

Why else would Te Kotahitanga have commissioned Sir Paul Reeves and Kathryn Beck to do a structural review of the College in 2009?

Why else would the 2010 General Synod have accepted their recommendations, holus bolus – which included doing away with three separate tikanga colleges?

And why else would they have recruited a commissioner to get the place functioning as a single college, ready to be led by a single principal?

Gail Thomson, who has just stepped down as that commissioner, says simply that there was “room for improvement” when she arrived in August 2010.

But now that she’s handed over the baton to the college’s new Manukura, or Principal, Tony Gerritsen, people aren’t holding back their appreciation for what she achieved.

The big guns – Archbishop Philip Richardson, Bishop Kito Pikaahu, the chairman of Te Kotahitanga, and Bishop Api Qiliho among them – paid tribute to Gail at a dinner put on by the St John’s College Trust Board and Te Kotahitanga in early July.

Later that week, Tony Gerritsen, the deans, the faculty and students thanked her at a separate Eucharist and farewell dinner.

Gail’s biggest challenge, she says, was

getting the three tikanga to work together.

Getting each to paddle their waka in the same direction – and being able to tick off the requirements set out in Te Kotahitanga’s strategic plan for the College, was also the highlight of her three years here.

Gail could be tough. She’d challenge anybody, if she felt she had to. No beating about the bush.

But she also had a lightness of touch. One of Gail’s special attributes, according to Paula Jakeman, Te Kotahitanga’s Executive Officer, was that she was persistent, she would keep challenging people – and yet not break relationships with them.

“She treated people as she expected them to treat her,” says Paula. “It was a joy and a real privilege to work with someone who was that professional.”

Huia Swann, who paid tribute to Gail at the student’s farewell dinner, put her finger on one of the reasons why Gail could keep those relationships intact.

Huia could take hard decisions coming from Gail, she said – because she knew she was being treated fairly. *

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Gail Thomson had come to St John’s with credentials that suggested she could deliver.

For 11 years she’d been the head of Dio School for Girls in Auckland – which has 1550 students, and 210 staff – and she’d left there in 2003 to become an educational consultant and trouble-shooter.

Among her post Dio tasks, she’d been called in as the commissioner of three large Auckland secondary schools.

One of those schools, Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate in Otara, was led by three principals. Gail had been wheeled in there after a damning ERO report and claims of abuse.

Since that low point, according to Wikipedia, the school and its new board of trustees have “moved on from strength to strength.”

Gail’s experience at that Otara school wasn’t bad preparation for what she faced at St John’s.

And what she achieved there. *

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The fact that Gail has finished her time at St John’s doesn’t mean she’s easing into her slippers.

Nor that she’s finished helping out with Anglican causes.

For a start, she’s now heading up a group of four (who include Hone Harawira) which has been commissioned by the Queen Victoria and St Stephen’s Schools Trust Board to examine the feasibility of re-opening those iconic schools.

She’s also twice been to Selwyn College in Honiara in the Solomon Islands – and she’s helping that school get on track, too.

Gail’s also the chairperson of the Hilary House Leadership Centre Trust. Back when she was the Commissioner of Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate, the old Hilary home on Remuera Rd was under threat.

Gail arranged for the Hillary house to be carted to the Collegiate site in Otara – where it will soon be reopened, as a Leadership Training Centre.

And then, to prevent her from becoming entirely idle, Gail continues to accept invitations from school principals and senior school leadership teams to review their operations.

“I really enjoyed my time at St John’s College,” says Gail. “I found it very rewarding.”

“People warned me that this would be an incredibly difficult job.

“But in fact it hasn’t been.

“Nowhere near as difficult,” she says, “as some of the things I have encountered.”

– Lloyd Ashton

㼀㼔㼑㻌㻶㼛㼔㼍㼚㼚㼑㻌㻸㼛㼔㼟㼑㻌㻿㼏㼔㼛㼘㼍㼞㼟㼔㼕㼜㻌 ANGLICAN DIOCESE

㻭㼜㼜㼘㼕㼏㼍㼠㼕㼛㼚㼟㻌 㼍㼞㼑㻌 㼎㼑㼕㼚㼓㻌 㼍㼏㼏㼑㼜㼠㼑㼐㻌 㼒㼛㼞㻌 㼚㼑㼣㻌 㼟㼏㼔㼛㼘㼍㼞㼟㼔㼕㼜㼟㻌 㼠㼛㻌 㼎㼑㻌 㼍㼣㼍㼞㼐㼑㼐㻌 㼒㼛㼞㻌 㼠㼑㼞㼠㼕㼍㼞㼥㻌 㼟㼠㼡㼐㼥㻌 㼕㼚㻌 㼠㼔㼑㻌 㻞㻜㻝㻠㻌 㼥 The 㼛㼚㼣㼍㼞㼐㻚㻌㻌Johanne Lohse Scholarship

㼀㼔㼕㼟㻌 㼟㼏㼔㼛㼘㼍㼞㼟㼔㼕㼜㻌 㼕㼟㻌accepted 㼛㼜㼑㼚㻌 㼠㼛㻌for 㼐㼍㼡㼓㼔㼠㼑㼞㼟㻌 㼛㼒㻌 㼏㼡㼞㼞㼑㼚㼠㻌 㼠㼕㼙㼑㻌 㼛㼞㼐㼍㼕㼚㼑㼐㻌 㼛㼒㻌 㼠㼔㼑㻌 㻭㼚㼓㼘㼕㼏㼍㼚㻌 㻯㼔㼡㼞㼏㼔 Applications are being new scholarships to be㼒㼡㼘㼘㻌 awarded for tertiary㻹㼕㼚㼕㼟㼠㼑㼞㼟㻌 study in㻭㼛㼠㼑㼍㼞㼛㼍㻘㻌㻺㼑㼣㻌㼆㼑㼍㼘㼍㼚㼐㻌㼍㼚㼐㻌㻼㼛㼘㼥㼚㼑㼟㼕㼍㻌㼒㼛㼞㻌㼍㼟㼟㼕㼟㼠㼍㼚㼏㼑㻌㼣㼕㼠㼔㻌㼒㼕㼞㼟㼠㻌㼐㼑㼓㼞㼑㼑㻌㼠㼑㼞㼠㼕㼍㼞㼥㻌㼟㼠㼡㼐㼥㻚㻌㼀㼔㼑㻌㼍㼜㼜㼘㼕㼏㼍㼚㼠㼟㻌㼙㼡㼟㼠 the 2014 year onward.

㼍㼓㼑㼐㻌㼎㼑㼠㼣㼑㼑㼚㻌㻝㻣㻌㼍㼚㼐㻌㻞㻢㻌㼍㼚㼐㻌㼎㼑㻌㼍㼎㼘㼑㻌㼠㼛㻌㼜㼞㼛㼢㼕㼐㼑㻌㼑㼢㼕㼐㼑㼚㼏㼑㻌㼛㼒㻌㼎㼕㼞㼠㼔㻌㼍㼚㼐㻌㼎㼍㼜㼠㼕㼟㼙㻌㼍㼚㼐㻌㼔㼍㼢㼑㻌㼎㼑㼑㼚㻌㼞㼑㼟㼕㼐㼑㼚㼠㻌㼕㼚㻌 This scholarship is open to daughters of current fulltime ordained Ministers of the Anglican Church of 㻺㼑㼣㻌㼆㼑㼍㼘㼍㼚㼐㻌㻭㼚㼓㼘㼕㼏㼍㼚㻌㻯㼔㼡㼞㼏㼔㻌㼎㼛㼡㼚㼐㼍㼞㼕㼑㼟㻌㼒㼛㼞㻌㼍㼠㻌㼘㼑㼍㼟㼠㻌㻟㻌㼥㼑㼍㼞㼟㻌㼜㼞㼕㼛㼞㻚㻌 Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia for assistance with first degree tertiary study. The applicants must be aged between㼍㼞㼑㻌㼡㼟㼡㼍㼘㼘㼥㻌 17 and 26 and be able to provide of㼍㼚㼐㻌 birth㼕㼟㻌㼏㼛㼚㼐㼕㼠㼕㼛㼚㼍㼘㻌 and baptism and have been 㼀㼔㼑㻌 㼟㼏㼔㼛㼘㼍㼞㼟㼔㼕㼜㼟㻌 㼍㼣㼍㼞㼐㼑㼐㻌 㼒㼛㼞㻌 㼡㼜㻌 㼠㼛㻌evidence 㻟㻌 㼥㼑㼍㼞㼟㻌 㼛㼚㻌㼟㼍㼠㼕㼟㼒㼍㼏㼠㼛㼞㼥㻌 㼜㼞㼛㼓㼞㼑㼟㼟㻌 㼕㼚㻌 resident in the New Zealand Anglican Church boundaries for at least 3 years prior. 㼍㼜㼜㼞㼛㼢㼑㼐㻌㼏㼛㼡㼞㼟㼑㻚㻌㻭㼜㼜㼘㼕㼏㼍㼠㼕㼛㼚㼟㻌㼛㼜㼑㼚㻌㼛㼚㻌㻝㻌㻭㼡㼓㼡㼟㼠㻌㼍㼚㼐㻌㼏㼘㼛㼟㼑㻌㼛㼚㻌㼠㼔㼑㻌㻟㻝㻌㻻㼏㼠㼛㼎㼑㼞㻌㻞㻜㻝㻟㻚㻌㼀㼔㼑㻌㼞㼑㼝㼡㼕㼞㼑㼐㻌㼍㼜㼜㼘㼕㼏㼍㼠

OF CHRISTCHURCH

㼒㼛㼞㼙㻌 㼏㼍㼚㻌 㼎㼑㻌are 㼛㼎㼠㼍㼕㼚㼑㼐㻌 㼎㼥㻌 㼐㼛㼣㼚㼘㼛㼍㼐㼕㼚㼓㻌 㼒㼞㼛㼙㻌 㼣㼣㼣㻚㻚㼍㼚㼓㼘㼕㼏㼍㼚㼘㼕㼒㼑㻚㼛㼞㼓㻚㼚㼦㻌 The scholarships usually awarded for up to 3 㼠㼔㼑㻌 years㼐㼛㼏㼡㼙㼑㼚㼠㼟㻌 and are conditional on satisfactory progress in 㼛㼞㻌 㼎㼥㻌 㼣㼞㼕㼠㼕㼚㼓㻌 㼠㼛 㼑㼙㼍㼕㼘㼕㼚㼓㻧㻌 the approved course. Applications open on 1 August and close on the 31 October 2013. The required application form can be obtained by downloading the documents from www.anglicanlife.org.nz or by 㻯㼔㼡㼞㼏㼔㻌㻼㼞㼛㼜㼑㼞㼠㼥㻌㼀㼞㼡㼟㼠㼑㼑㼟㻌㻭㼏㼏㼛㼡㼚㼠㼍㼚㼠㻌 writing to, or emailing the address below.

㻌 㻌 㻌 㻱㼙㼍㼕㼘㻦㻌㻌㼏㼜㼠㼍㼏㼏㼛㼡㼚㼠㼍㼚㼠㻬㼍㼚㼓㼘㼕㼏㼍㼚㼘㼕㼒㼑㻚㼛㼞㼓㻚㼚㼦㻌 㻼㻻㻌㻮㼛㼤㻌㻠㻠㻟㻤㻌 㻌 Church Property Trustees Accountant | PO Box 4438, Christchurch 8140 | Email: cptaccountant@anglicanlife.org.nz 㻯㼔㼞㼕㼟㼠㼏㼔㼡㼞㼏㼔㻘㻌㻤㻝㻠㻜

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Anglican Taonga WINTER 2013

PERSPECTIVE

Aboard the Anglican waka Bishop of Wellington Justin Duckworth is often asked why he became an Anglican.

His response to that question reads equally well as an encouragement, or as a warning.

Do Anglicans readily claim these treasures we’ve inherited?

+ Justin’s top eight on why it’s worth being Anglican Liturgy The daily office is a rich and beautiful foundation for our prayer life. Having been involved in Urban Vision’s grass roots ministry for many years in exhausting contexts, we realised that often when we came to prayer, we were just too tired, or too overwhelmed to find words to pray. We needed to find a spirituality that offered us a daily resource that would feed us.

The daily office carried us through those seasons, allowing us to pray even when we no longer felt we could.

Justice I appreciate the strong, active justice tradition within our Church. As a church we have always recognised that social justice is important. When we are confronted by injustice, the starting point for us as a church is not if we should respond, but how.

Three Tikanga Recognising that there are still challenges in our three Tikanga structure, I deeply appreciate being part of a church that is actively wrestling with these foundational issues for faith in Aotearoa and the Pacific.

History It’s important for me to belong to a church with a long history - so we can learn and grow - despite being frustrated with how slow we might move in places! It is a Taonga to be connected with the saints who first heard the call and came half way

round the world to spread the good news of Jesus.

Having spent all my life in the wider Wellington context, it’s been disappointing to watch churches constantly trying to ‘re-invent the wheel’. In many cases the “newer” churches can seem to suffer from amnesia, not taking the treasure and learning from the wisdom of history.

Also, being part of a historical church means I must take responsibility for my history, issues of colonisation and past wounds are my challenges, my responsibility, which I willingly embrace.

Eucharist I meet with Jesus afresh in the Eucharist. I understand that as I share and take the elements, that in a real sense, I am opening my life again to the Spirit’s transforming work within and through me.

Local - global I am bored with the rampant cultural value of rugged individualism. I want to belong strongly to the body of Christ, not just in my local area, but also in a real sense, to the wider body. It is simply amazing that each parish belongs to the diocese, then the diocese to the Province, and the Province to the global Anglican Communion. I want to help draw people together, not further accentuate the distances. I want to be part of a diocese not because of bureaucracy, but because it is family.

the geographical spread of its parishes.

I am constantly amazed that we are present in so many diverse communities.

We are privileged to be a part of more communities than just about any other entity. This is an amazing gift, we really are a grassroots church, with the potential to be salt, light and yeast in so many places.

Breadth I love the theological diversity present in the Anglican Church. I want to be challenged by different perspectives that can enrich my sense of God’s mission today. I don’t want everybody to think like me. I also recognise that on many days I find this hard. I want to be part of a theologically broad church that can still manage to move together, meaningfully partnering in Jesus’ Kingdom work.

The Rt Rev Justin Duckworth is Bishop of Wellington. justin@wn.ang.org.nz

I am bored with the rampant cultural value of rugged individualism.

Location A strength of the Anglican Church is Page 7

Anglican Taonga

WINTER 2013

FA I T H I N A C T I O N

It’s the one in

the mirror

For the last 30 years, she’s been hanging out with undesirables.

Kiwis, it seems, are tigers for punishment.

work to reach out to those inside.

There are almost 9000 men and women behind bars here.

About the same number are released each year – and the stats show that two-thirds of them end up back inside.

That’s despite the Deputy Prime Minister, Bill English, recognising that “prisons are a fiscal and moral failure.”

To visit the prisoners, to befriend and encourage them.

To show them that they’re not rejects – in God’s eyes, at least – and to show them that there is hope.

Meanwhile, there are a few souls who’ve made it their life’s

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Lloyd Ashton has had the privilege of meeting one of those veteran visitors.

Anglican Taonga WINTER 2013

W

e’re known by the company we keep.

Sadly, at the age of 93, May Mackey appears never to have taken that truth on board.

Because for the last 30 years, she’s made a point of hanging out with undesirables.

Convicted criminals. Murderers and rapists among them. In their hundreds.

Even some innocents too, languishing on remand in prison until they are acquitted at trial.

The point is, they’re all the same, in May’s eyes.

They’re all people, that is.

All people who just happen to be in prison.

Most days of the working week for the last 30 years May and her friend Ben Dickson have been mingling with them – either at Mt Eden Prison, or at Paremoremo.

And on Sundays, May and Ben head into Mt Eden all over again – to take part in the services held there that morning.

They’ve built up relationships of trust with many of these men.

There’s part of May’s story, though, which she doesn’t tell her friends in The Rock.

But it came to light, nonetheless, on January 6 this year, at a park in Te Atatu, out in Auckland’s west.

Police and family members had gathered that day to lay wreaths at a new memorial unveiled to honour the memory of two policemen gunned down on a West Auckland Sunday afternoon, exactly 50 years earlier.

One of those slain policemen was Detective Inspector Wally Chalmers, QPM. The gunman – he spent the rest of his days in a psychiatric ward – had another policeman in his sights when Wally challenged him, and drew his fire.

Wally left a widow – they’d been married less than three years – and two young children.

And May is that widow. *

*

*

*

*

The die was cast for May back in 1937.

She was a teenager in Caversham, working in a Dunedin clothing factory.

She’d bike to work with a girlfriend who

worked there, too.

This particular morning May had spotted a booklet fluttering on the footpath. It was called: The Reason Why,

by Robert Laidlaw, the founder of The Farmers’ Trading Company.

Her friend, who was a Christian, read that tract to her as they rode – and through her reading, May says she became “convicted”.

“And there was an opportunity at the end of the book to sign your name, if you wished – and I’d never heard the expression – to accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your saviour.”

She signed. She threw herself into Christian work in Dunedin too, and, at the age of 26, headed to Auckland’s Bible Training Institute, or BTI, which was the forerunner of today’s Laidlaw College.

That’s where May’s story takes another turn.

Back in 1946, just about every student who went to BTI had the foreign mission field in their sights.

When they’d finished their two year stint at BTI, they’d head to China, Indonesia, Bolivia or parts of Africa.

Wherever.

But 1946 was also the year that Emma Kake arrived at BTI. Emma was Nga Puhi, and she was the first Maori woman to go there.

And one of the odd twists of fate is that even though May is Pakeha, she looks Maori.

You’d swear she has iwi ties.

Emma Kake thought so too, apparently.

She gravitated to her, and those two became fast friends.

And because May had no cash to get back to Dunedin for her holidays, she spent the first of these with the Kake whanau, at their whare out in the sticks behind Whangarei.

May was the first Pakeha they’d ever had under their roof. They took her to their hearts, and wove her into marae and community life.

“I felt so much part of the family I thought: ‘I’m not looking overseas. I’m not moving out of Maori-land.”

And that’s how come May Garnett, as she then was, came to be the matron of the Shelly Beach Maori Girls Hostel in Ponsonby, in 1948, looking after 25 young Maori women.

They’re all the same, in May’s eyes.

They’re all people.

Those young wahine had come to the big smoke from up north to work, mostly in the city’s clothing factories – and their mums and dads had urged May to “look after our girls.”

Sometimes, that was easier said than done – because those teenage girls usually had rellies around Freemans Bay, and in the weekends they’d be inclined to sneak out and party-up. So May often found herself walking the streets alone at night, bringing the girls back home.

Inspector Wally Chalmers of Auckland Central had cause to issue May with a stern warning about that activity.

“He’s hearing reports,” May recalls, “of this stupid woman walking the streets at night – and he’s afraid she’ll get skittled.”

True.

But it was also true that Inspector Chalmers, who was a member of the Prezzie church in Freeman’s Bay, had been skittled by May Garnett.

When they married, in April 1960, May was 40, and Wally was 43.

They adopted a couple of kids – and in less than three years, Wally was gone, shot down in an incident that led to the formation of the police armed offenders’ squad. *

*

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May’s prison work started like this: In 1968 she’d remarried. Dave Mackey was the lucky guy. He was Tainui, an ex United Maori Missions hostel boy who’d been farming down Mangakino way.

Dave’s first wife had died. So May and Dave were both grieving, struggling by themselves to raise four kids – and they’d been longtime friends. Getting married was a no-brainer.

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“Ma, where are you?

“Where have you been?

“We’ve been missing you!

“Well now, that’s so heart-warming, isn’t it?

“We’ve been missing you!” *

*

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“We don’t go in to talk religion.

“Not. At. All. “We don’t need to.

“We go in as friends.

“We know how to feel our way – to present what we represent.

“And they know… if they’ve got a need, they seek an opportunity to seek you out.” *

No hurdle,” she says.

“None. At. All.”

So Dave moved to Auckland, and May and Dave went back into looking after Maori trade trainees in hostels.

Then, about 1982, Dave heard that his old mate Nehe Dewes, who was the Presbyterian prison chaplain at Waikeria prison, was being transferred to The Rock. To Mt Eden Prison.

May and Dave went to Nehe’s induction there – and Nehe, realising the weight of what he’d taken on, soon took up their offer to help, to find visitors for the men.

That’s how May got started.

Dave died eight years ago. Nehe Dewes is retired back in Tikitiki – and of the original crew, there are three still going strong – Wally Haywood, who’s now the chaplain at Paremoremo West, Ben Dickson and May. *

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Some who’d lived through the kind of tragedy May knew would find it hard to Page 10

mix with felons. Murderers among them.

But it’s never been an issue for her, she says, to go into the prisons.

“No hurdle,” she says. “None. At. All. “It was just the most natural thing.

“I didn’t have to grow into it.

“I’ve always had a yen for the underdog. Always. It was part of me.”

In all her 30 years, she says she’s never felt intimidated, either.

“Never even had a harsh word. No feeling of fear, at any stage.”

Part of the reason for that, maybe, is the way they view the men inside.

“They’re people to us,” she says.

“We see them as people.

“In fact we’re so removed… that we never ask why they’re inside.”

Maybe too, part of the reason why prison visiting has never been an issue for her is because it’s never been about May. “The significance of a person”, she says, “is not in themselves.

“It’s in whom they represent.” *

B

*

*

*

*

ecause May had had the flu, she couldn’t make the trip out to Pare the Wednesday before we met.

So she’d missed catching up with a man she and Ben have been visiting out there for 17 years.

That man – we’ll call him Willie – has permission to phone May on Saturday mornings.

So their last conversation, she said, began like this:

*

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*

*

So if it’s not hard-sell religion, what motivates May? Simple.

“The message of redemption, which changed me, motivates me.

“With due respect to all the help the men get from psychologists, from programmes, from help from outside, from all these paid people… we know our message of redemption is the absolute.

It’s the only answer.”

Part of the reason for May’s rapport with the men is that she knows the world from which so many have come.

“You just ask: ‘So where do you come from?’

“And when they tell you: ‘You say: Ohh… I know your relations. And you just mention some names…

“This is the Maori world, so it’s all whanau stuff. It’s all family stuff.” *

*

*

*

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“I’ll tell you a surprising thing: “We’ve got about three or four Tongan teams of volunteers who come in on a Sunday.

“We’ve got one beautiful AOG Samoan team from Mt Roskill.

“And we’ve got St Paul’s church.

“But we’ve got no Maori teams.

“I said to the men once: ‘You know, that’s funny isn’t it?’

‘Nah,’ they said.

“We’re all locked up inside.’ *

*

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*

So what’s May’s Mt Eden routine?

Anglican Taonga WINTER 2013

Well, at any one time Mt Eden has between 900 and 1000 prisoners.

About a quarter of those men have been convicted, and are serving time – and the rest are on remand, awaiting trial.

So there’s an ever-changing population, divvied-up among 22 units.

Each unit has an elevated console with large, darkened sloping windows – rather like the bridge of a ship that’s going nowhere – through which the officers monitor the prisoners.

If there’s an officer “on the floor”, May and Ben can go in. Once they do, they split up.

The men are playing cards, pool, or table tennis… and even though the unit population is constantly changing, “they’re always one or two we’ve already spoken to, and they’re ready and waiting for us.

“We just sit down and say: ‘Hi. How are things going?’”

“And some say to us later: ‘Even although we didn’t sit and talk with you, just to know that you’ve come to visit, is enough for us.’ ” *

*

*

*

*

“You would never keep going”, says May, “if it wasn’t for the appreciation, the changes in life that you see.”

She points to the carved bone taonga that she wears around her neck.

That was given to her 17 years ago,

by Willie, the man who’d rung her that morning.

He’s still in Paremoremo, with years left on his lag.

When he’d been brought in – his arrest had made national headlines – he’d been held in Mt Eden’s special needs unit.

In those days, May, Dave and Ben were running services in that unit on Thursday evenings.

That first Thursday Willie was inside, he didn’t come.

No doubt he’d heard the singing from his ‘slot’.

But he didn’t come the following Thursday evening, either.

On the third Thursday, though, he did come. That evening May had laid some posters on the floor. Including one of the face of the Lord.

“Something for the men to focus on”, May says, “while we were having our

little talk.

“We were talking about the Lord walking on stormy waters, right?”

As the men were leaving, Willie asked May if he could have that poster. Of course, she said.

“So the next week he came back, and said: ‘You know that poster?

‘I took it to my slot, and I put it at the far end.

‘I didn’t want it too near to me.

‘But each day I brought it closer.

‘And I have decided that this is the way I should go.

‘You were talking about the Lord walking on troubled waters, and calming rough seas, and that’s what I need.’

That was 17 years ago, and through thick and thin, Willie’s stayed steadfast.

While he was in Paremoremo, he married the mother of his three children.

“The eldest was a boy,” May remembers. “Beautiful child.

“He was a bright, intelligent boy, and his dad was absolutely devoted to him.

“He used to come and visit Dave and me. Dave used to say: ‘He’s the only one I’ll let use my motor mower. Everyone else runs over tree roots.’

“Ahh. The next thing we learned, that beautiful boy had taken his own life.

“So on this day, we all had to go up to meet Willie in the chapel to tell him. His wife, his brother, Dave and I, Ben, and other kaumatua.

“It wasn’t just a one-on-one – you know, we did it the Maori way.

“It was so sad. So desperately sad.

“And of course, Willie couldn’t go to his boy’s tangi.

“He did a beautiful bone carving for his boy. He was allowed to send that out, and that carving was buried with his son.

“I remember the boy’s mum sitting beside the open casket, with her

Locking onto the cause

W

e can do better.

As a society, and a church – we can find better ways to deal with crime and punishment.

Consider this: our rates of imprisonment are among the highest in the western world.

And that rate has climbed sharply in the last 20 years – even as the crime rate has fallen.

Consider this, too: when a person goes to prison, they never go alone.

The dreams and hopes of their kids go with them.

On any given day, about 20,000 Kiwi kids have a parent in prison. And those kids are seven times more likely to end up inside than other kids.

Consider this, finally: 40 percent of Maori men will end up inside at some stage of their lives. There are some streets, in some vulnerable Kiwi communities, where every household knows someone inside – usually a husband, a son, a dad, a neighbour or a friend.

So the bishops decided, at their gathering in Hamilton last year, that they’d like to help find a better way to grapple with our problem of crime and punishment.

So they’ve commissioned some research, and in the week of October 13 to October 20 – the week of our church year that begins with the remembering of Elizabeth Fry, the prison reformer, and ends with thanksgiving for Tarore, “whose death brought not vengeance but reconciliation” – there’ll be a week of intention and action on that prison theme.

There’ll be six areas of focus: prisoner reintegration; the underlying causes of crime, the treatment of prisoners, the children of prisoners, alternatives to imprisonment and restorative justice.

And there’ll be resources on each: watch the Taonga website for more on that.www.anglicantaonga.org.nz

By Lloyd Ashton

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Anglican Taonga

WINTER 2013

FA I T H I N A C T I O N

reason I’m sitting here is that joker out there!’

“I hope that at the end of our little karakia together, we’ll all be able to say: ‘It’s the one in the mirror.’ When we can say that, that’s when we learn something.”

Every morning I say: You’re the reason I’m here.”

*

M

cellphone.

“And they let Willie, down in the prison, speak to her at the casket side.

“Then he said to his wife: ‘Put your cellphone to my boy, and I’ll say my farewells’.

“Very sad. So, he’s looking towards the day he gets out, so he can go up to the grave.” *

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*

Back then, Willie couldn’t really grieve for his boy.

That only happened eight years ago, when Dave Mackey went.

He dropped dead in a police station – he was at the prison mahi until the very end.

They held different memorial services for Dave around the prisons.

Including one up in D block.

And that was the trigger that allowed

Willie to really grieve, says May, for his boy. *

*

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*

Offering diplomas and degrees in theology, ministry, counselling and teaching, Laidlaw College aims to graduate men and women of strong faith and character who are equipped to renew their communities ENQUIRE with a faith as intelligent as it is courageous.

NOW FOR 2014!

Auckland | Christchurch | Distance Learning facebook | www.laidlaw.ac.nz | info@laidlaw.ac.nz

*

*

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ay came to St John’s College for this interview.

When we finished, she was heading into hospital, to the bedside of a man in his late seventies.

He’d been out for a couple of years, having spent five years inside for crimes he’d committed 40 years earlier.

They were going to be joined by Jimmy, who’d done five years in Paremoremo – and who’d turned to the Lord through Willie.

Three veterans, living the victorious life: May was fair bubbling at the prospect.

“Such a reunion,” she said, “it’s marvellous.”

While she was out Meadowbank way, May was planning another brief reunion, too.

On her way into the hospital, she’d duck off St John’s Rd, and head into Purewa cemetery.

To spend a few quiet minutes at Wally’s graveside.

Verily, verily I say unto you, unless a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. John 12:24, KJV Lloyd Ashton is this Church’s Media Officer. mediaofficer@anglicanchurch.org.nz.

T O T ! 7 PM H E H M IG E R U R C CO O N C T OB IS T CH O R F IN Y 2 1 & C H DA ND ON A M CKL AU

COME STUDY AT LAIDLAW!

J007628 / TAONGA

*

“A lovely thing happened, last Sunday.

We’d moved to this unit, and maybe 15 men came to the service.

“Only a few volunteers had turned up, so Ben and I were taking the service.

“So Ben said: Who would like to give us our welcome?

“Someone usually does a powhiri, and takes a prayer. And then this elderly Pakeha inmate – he must be in his late seventies – said: ‘I want to tell you something. Every morning I have a shave, I say to the man in the mirror: ‘You’re the reason I’m here.’

‘You’re the reason I’m here.’

“So I said to him: ‘Well. How lovely.

You’ve come a long way.’

“Because there’s a lot who say: ‘The

Are you longing to make a difference?

Page 12

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Anglican Taonga WINTER 2013

PEOPLE

It’s time

to return

Wellington Cathedral has appointed a new dean. He brings to his task a dramatic life story, an interesting set of church connections – and a personal experience “of the full force of grace”.

Lloyd Ashton reports.

F

unny the thoughts that can pop into your head when you’re just sitting in church, minding your own business.

Funny too, how those stray thoughts can turn your life on its head.

That’s happened to Digby Wilkinson a couple of times now.

Most recently, last June.

There Digby was, in the throng of folk gathered at Wellington Cathedral for Justin Duckworth’s ordination.

And then, out of the blue, this question pings into his mind: “What would it be like to be the dean of the cathedral?”

That’s not a question he’d entertained before.

But it wouldn’t go away. It was persistent.

Which was strange, given Digby’s line of work. He’s the Senior Minister of Palmerston North’s big Central Baptist

Church – and has been so for the last six years.

Even stranger was the fact that, quite unbeknown to Digby, Frank Nelson had already tendered his resignation as Dean of Wellington Cathedral.

He was burning out.

Starting to hate what he did.

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Anglican Taonga

WINTER 2013

PEOPLE

Walking the Camino de Santiago with Jane.

Digby didn’t find that out until a couple of weeks later.

But the thing is, Digby is also an Anglican priest – we’ll get to that in a minute – and next January, Digby Wilkinson will be installed as the new Dean of Wellington. *

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hances are, you’ve already read in the papers about how Digby came to be ordained.

But you may not know the back story, which goes like this: Back in 2000, the pressures at Otumoetai Baptist, the church he then led, were getting to him. He was burning out.

… gradually, those beautiful “R” words started to take shape for him.

Page 14

Starting to hate what he did.

He found an antidote to that depression.

Buying stuff. In his case, buying mountain bikes.

The buzz of buying a new bike made him feel better.

Briefly.

But like all addictions, once the buzz had worn off, he was driven to repeat the performance.

It all got way out of hand, and in 2002, the crisis hit him.

His addiction to buying mountain bikes had led to spiralling debt – and eventually, to arrest and conviction. He was sentenced to a community service term on a charge of theft, two of insurance fraud, and one of burglary.

That chain of events, he says, left him “jobless, characterless, close to friendless, alienated, disenfranchised and without hope.”

“I let myself down, and I let my family and friends down in ways that I can barely begin to describe.”

Paradoxically, he says, his crisis also led him to experience, for the first time, “the full force of real grace”.

“In a strange way,” he says, “I needed to experience grace and disgrace together.

What I learned is we never fall from grace, we can only fall into it – with God, at least.”

Upon his arrest, he resigned from the

Otumoetai church.

He then sought shelter in Tauranga’s Holy Trinity Anglican Church. Unable to face people, he helped mind the crèche where his baby daughter was being cared for, and he then slipped into church for the Eucharist.

When all else had failed, that fed him.

During the two years that Digby and his wife Jane were at Holy Trinity, gradually those beautiful “R” words started to take shape for him.

He found space to recover. He made restitution for the things that he’d taken.

Reconciliation came.

And finally, there was restoration to ministry.

He’d thought he was done with that.

He’d earned an MA Hons in Philosophy during those two years at Holy Trinity, and he’d thought that if he kept going, there might be a future for him at some university, somewhere.

And then, as he was sitting in church one day, there was that unexpected voice, delivering its startling message: “It’s time to return.” *

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en years on from his crisis, Digby thinks he understands where he went wrong.

“Like many people in ministry in the

Anglican Taonga WINTER 2013

1990s,” he says, “particularly in the evangelical church, I became caught up in bringing business models into the life of the church.

“Ministry moved from the spiritual care of the souls that God had entrusted to you, to growing God’s church.

“It was all about planning and outcomes.

You became a wheel within the mechanism, trying to make the machine work.”

To outward appearances, the machine at Otumoetai Baptist was humming along nicely.

But Digby’s interior life?

The wheels had fallen off there.

“I had actually relinquished the central components of ministry itself,” he says.

“Prayer, worship and the embodiment of Christ in our world, and forming a Christian community which takes those thing seriously.”

Seek ye first those things, appears to be the lesson.

And not: seek ye first bums on pews.

At the end of those two years at Holy Trinity Tauranga he was asked by the vestry to become a “preaching associate” – and a short time later, Bishop John Bluck spoke to him.

“You can’t keep doing this,” he said. “If you’re going to do ministry properly, you need to go through the ordination process.

Is that what you’d like?”

After that epiphany in the pew, there was no doubt in Digby’s mind. And so he was deaconed, and priested, in 2006.

By this time, though, he was also being sought by Palmerston North’s Central Baptist Church. The church there was persistent.

And with the growing sense that it was important to “finish well” with the Baptist Church, he heeded that call.

The Palmerston North Central Baptist Church years were good, says Digby, and fruitful.

But Digby made no secret, either, of his drawing to sacramental things. Nor the fact that, eventually, he’d like to find his way into fulltime Anglican ministry.

J

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anet Brown is the Dean’s Warden at the Wellington Cathedral.

She’s worshipped there for 25 years, and she says that among the candidates for the dean’s job, Digby was the obvious choice.

“All of us on the nominating team,” she says, “were of one mind about that.”

Janet says the nominators saw a “wonderful mix of strategic depth and the pragmatic” in him.

They liked the fact that Digby had begun his working life as a fitter and turner – and had managed to get his MA Hons in Social Science along the way to successful leadership of the Palmerston North church.

“We also saw,” she says, “the breadth and depth of his intellect, his grasp, his reading, his thinking. We loved his work growing worshipping communities, particularly young adults and families, and we loved the way he does that work with his wife Jane.”

Janet acknowledges that in the light of Digby’s past, some may raise their eyebrows.

“Because of my professional background – I come from a discipline that requires you to manage risk – I’ve thought carefully about those things. We, the nominators, are confident in our choice.

“And if we cannot see and hear and understand the power of redemption in a story like his, then in my view, we should shut up shop.”

“It’s been a long journey for Digby. And it’s been done in the most extraordinary state of humility and faith – having overreached himself, and made major errors, he has grown enormously, not just into grace, but into his abilities.

“And he would not have grown into that grace, nor developed those abilities, had he not had the crisis and been broken in that way.”

The Bishop of Wellington, Justin Duckworth, is also convinced that Digby has the goods.

“He caught us out of left field, really.

“I’m confident that Digby will honour the solid foundations of the cathedral’s past and present, and he will build on them. He is the person to lead the exploration of what being a cathedral in the capital city means in the 21st century.” *

S

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o what is Digby’s vision for being Dean?

“Before making grand plans,” he says, “you need to know what God has placed in your hands. You need to know the people, the issues, the context and the culture. Understanding those will be my first, prayerful task.

Aligning “the public face and inner life of the Cathedral,” is also a key, he says.

where there is a vibrant community… sacred space is multiplied

“Cathedrals are complex communities,” he says. “On one hand, they provide a ‘sacred space’ for the city, and on the other, they are a distinct worshipping community.”

Digby and Jane have just returned to New Zealand from walking the Camino de Santiago.

Along their way, they inspected dozens of Spanish churches and cathedrals. Some, he says, were imbued with “a palpable sense of life and faith.” Others were simply historic buildings.

“It became very clear to us that where there is a vibrant community, that sense of sacred space is multiplied. Where there wasn’t, that sense of sacred space had evaporated.”

Digby says he also sees the need to “continue and enhance” the Cathedral’s worship and education – to see that the mix of the cathedral congregation reflects the city at large. Reaching out to children, youth, young adults and families, he says, “will run alongside current ministry and not replace it – though, over time, it may inform it.”

“The great task of the Anglican Church in New Zealand is to take the very best of Anglican liturgical tradition,” he says, “and to make it accessible to a new generation.”

Digby and Jane Wilkinson have three children: Mitchell, who is 20, Elliot, 17 and Lucy, 12. Digby will continue his ministry at Palmerston North Central Baptist until Christmas Day, and he will be installed as Dean of the Cathedral of St Paul on 26 January 2014.

Footnote: As this issue was going to press, Waiapu announced its new dean. In the next issue of Anglican Taonga, we’ll introduce you to Michael Godfrey.

Lloyd Ashton is this Church’s Media Officer.

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SOCIAL JUSTICE

More than

just survival “those who gathered much had nothing over, and those who gathered little had no shortage; they gathered as much as each of them needed.”

Exodus 16:18

A Jolyon White puts the Living Wage on the table as a serious proposal for this Church’s backing.

The way he sees it, paying workers enough to live full lives, is not just better ethics, but smarter economics.

Page 16

s a society we seem to have lost any concept of too much, and have an endless tolerance for too little.

Our social services agencies are seeing the rise of a new problem in Aotearoa New Zealand, known as ‘in work’ poverty.

270,000 NZ children are deemed to be in poverty, even though 40% of them have a parent in full-time work.

Take Jacinta and her husband, who both work full-time in minimum wage jobs. They can cover rent and food, but not a lot else.

Extras like holidays or saving for the future are out of the question.

A major source of stress is the kids getting sick. Not just because of the doctor’s bill, but because they cannot afford the time off work to care for them.

When the minimum wage was introduced, it was 83% of the average wage. Now, it is 53%.

That is low enough to place working families below New Zealand’s official poverty line.

Don’t get me wrong. Jacinta and family can survive, partly because they have a supportive family. But, if you are working full-time, surely you should be able to live, not just survive.

The Living Wage movement takes the simple suggestion that if someone is working full-time, they should be able to participate fully in society.

The church has long since advocated for a fair working wage in the face of society’s downward pressures on costs.

In 1878, a clergyman called Joseph Cook distinguished between “starvation wages” and “just wages”.

In 1888, Dunedin’s Rutherford Waddell preached his famous “Sin of Cheapness” sermon against unjustly low wages.

In 1891, Pope Leo XII proclaimed that there should be a living wage.

The Living Wage movement was launched in Aotearoa New Zealand in 2012.

But despite media coverage, Wellington and Hamilton City Council endorsements, and the Warehouse opting for a Living

Anglican Taonga WINTER 2013

Quote here...

Fully trained employees on the job for three years at The Warehouse will soon qualify for the Living Wage.

Wage for many of their employees, it is still commonly misunderstood.

The Living Wage movement is not a minimum wage campaign. The minimum wage is an arbitrary political figure, which is enforced in legislation. By contrast, the Living Wage is based on the Annual Food Cost Survey, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s national rent figures and Statistics NZ expenditure figures for low decile households.

It takes into account childcare costs and a contribution to KiwiSaver and calculates what comes in from tax credits and govt subsidies.

In other words, the figure is tied to the actual cost of living in New Zealand.

One reason the Living Wage is gaining momentum is that it has a genuinely broad base of support. The Conservative Mayor of London, Boris Johnson has said, “Paying the London Living Wage is not only morally right, but makes good business sense too. What may appear to be an unaffordable cost should more often be viewed as a sound investment decision.”

It can look like good business sense for a number of reasons. One of the most compelling is the high cost of staff turnover.

When the Warehouse recently announced it would move to being a Living Wage employer, its CEO Mark Powel said cutting turnover rates by as

little as 1% would save a quarter of a million dollars a year.

When San Francisco Airport took on the Living Wage, affecting 5400 employees, the turnover amongst security screeners dropped from 95% to 19%.

The Living Wage movement has been gaining ground in the UK and USA since the early ‘90s. That means the arguments on what ills might happen as a result of the Living Wage, can be held up against real figures measuring its impact.

In 2003, a survey of 20 US cities who had legislated on the living wage concluded that in most municipalities, “contract costs increased by less than 0.1% of the overall local budget in the years after a living wage law was adopted.”

No evidence appears to support the oft-quoted theory that the Living Wage will lead to mass unemployment.

The Los Angeles living wage ordinance affected 7,700 workers. Of those, less than 1% lost their jobs. At San Francisco Airport, jobs covered by the Living Wage increased by 15%, despite a 9% decrease in airport activity.

But there’s another story that no amount of number-crunching can tell. That is the hope of hundreds of women and men like Jacinta, struggling on not enough to look after their children. The people who will no longer have to consider medical expense a luxury.

In other words, the figure is tied to the actual cost of living in New Zealand.

Then there’s the thousands of school kids who’ll be able to pay attention to their homework, or even get a good night’s sleep, because the family expenses stretch to heating the house.

Then there’s the positive impact on health, education and justice system budgets, as poverty rates go down – and for some – inequality swings a little closer to balance.

Churches can join the campaign very easily. Once there, we can develop and strengthen our ties with the local community by supporting a wider conversation about paying wages that respect people’s dignity.

Congregations can promote the idea by inviting local business leaders, workers, community boards and council members to a Living Wage presentation in our churches.

For more information, check out livingwage.org.nz or contact me via the address below.

The Rev Jolyon White is Social Justice Enabler for the Diocese of Christchurch. justice@anglicanlife.org.nz

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YO U T H

Just being there For Dion Fasi, the best value ministry we can offer to teenagers, is the kind that takes no preparation at all.

Young people crave connection.

Page 18

B

esides the expected tasks of preparing and delivering sermons and Bible studies, youth ministry will see you cheering on kids as they race each other to scoff dry Weetbix, searching for funny YouTube videos so you can be ‘relevant’ and nagging kids for their camp registration forms.

You’ll be informing the church warden about the window that just got broken, mixing jugs of Raro and taxiing kids to and from youth group, while resisting exhortations to “do a burnout gee”.

And of course, there’s looking up slang on Urban Dictionary, so you can work out if the kids are complimenting you or mocking you.

I did this for ten years at Massey Anglican Church of the Good Shepherd and loved it.

However, one of the most important things you can do in youth ministry is connecting with young people on a personal level. That’s where you

can offer them a relationship of trust, encouragement and support.

Some people call this mentoring.

Bible studies can take a lot of time and effort to prepare. So can social events and games. But as important as those things are, the truth is that the young people won’t remember everything you preach from the pulpit.

They won’t always enjoy or appreciate the movie night or broom hockey either.

But I’m convinced that the majority of young people will remember and will appreciate the time and effort you spend with them.

Things like taking one of the young guys to McDonald’s and buying him his first ever lime milkshake. Going kayaking with a couple of them. Getting systematically beaten at Call of Duty by a small group of them.

Some of these times of just hanging out have led to deep and meaningful conversations about life, God, girls, parents, school.

Anglican Taonga WINTER 2013

LEFT: Youth leaders get the low-down on mentoring at Tikanga Youth Exchange 2013.

Sometimes they led to nothing more than me having to go to the gym afterwards to work off that lime milkshake.

But all of these times meant that for that hour, those young people knew that they had access to me and that I cared about them and if they wanted to they could share with me the ‘stuff’ that was going on in and around them.

While I can’t prove it, I believe that the more I did this, the more they listened to the messages I gave from the pulpit and came to know God better.

It is this part of youth ministry that the whole church can be a part of and not just the youth pastor.

Young people crave connection and we can all offer it to them! Don’t assume just because you’re decades older that no young person would want to hang out with you.

Teenagers need all different types of connections. The cool 21 year-old youth pastor with the suped-up car gets their attention easily, but he or she is like an older brother or sister. They also need spiritual parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles, in other words, they need you.

So here are a few tips on connecting with young people on a personal level.

Surrender your agendas and make connection your goal. You could spend hours of quality time with great conversations and still have them refuse a relationship with God or reject the advice you give them. Transformation is God’s

job! I didn’t see the kids in my youth group as just ‘the kids in my youth group’.

I saw them as friends.

No time spent with teenagers is wasted.

Even if the conversation was stilted and consisted of you asking questions and them mumbling “yep”, “nah” or “dunno”, it was still a successful exchange.

Persevere with your goal of connection.

Many of the young people I grew close to were like brick walls when I first tried to connect with them. Keep chipping away!

Young people often feel awkward talking to older people (even more so in some cultures than others). But there are ways you can lessen some of that awkwardness.

Try doing an activity together, like washing dishes, setting out chairs for an event, going for a walk, or even throwing a ball around.

This way when the conversation goes quiet there’s still something happening rather than just an awkward silence.

When attempting to chat to a teenager at morning tea after the Sunday service, try sitting next to them, rather than standing face to face. A break in the conversation when you’re sitting side by side is way less uncomfortable than when you’re facing them.

You’ve probably been advised against just asking closed answer questions, but the opposite can also be counterproductive.

Asking questions that are too broad or abstract, like, “How’s life?” often don’t work. Open questions that ask for concrete answers, such as “What was the highlight of your week?” are better.

No time spent with teenagers is wasted.

If a young person does share a problem with you, share your wisdom and life experience with them, but don’t overload them with advice.

Telling them about a similar situation you’ve been through and what you learned or did in that situation empowers them to make choices.

So whether you’re a youth worker or simply a church member with a heart for young people, I pray that you will be blessed as you open the doors to connecting with young people.

PS. Remember that when connecting with young people there are some important issues on appropriate boundaries, which you need to find out about and keep in mind.

Dion Fasi is a former youth pastor of Massey Anglican Church of the Good Shepherd in West Auckland. He now lives in Dunedin, where he attends both Elim and St Matthew's Anglican Church. dionfasi@gmail.com

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Page 19

Anglican Taonga

WINTER 2013

MISSION

Historian Hirini Kaa talks today as though he's been to the top of the mountain and seen the other side.

The experience is born of an up close and personal encounter with the Maori prophets – and Hirini is still reeling from the impact.

Julanne Clarke-Morris catches up with where he’s at now.

The Prophets:

a journey of faith

H Some are stories of reconciliation and peace, others are tales soaked in blood.

Page 20

irini’s journey along the pathway of seven historic Maori prophets began when he was invited to present their stories for a documentary series on

Maori TV. Billed simply as “The Prophets” the series’ trailer reads: “While some of their narratives are stories of reconciliation and peace, others are tales soaked in blood.”

The slick seven-part documentary by Scottie Productions sets the scene with one of the earliest and least known biblicallyinspired Maori prophets, Ngapuhi tohunga, Papahurihia.

It trails along the influential path of Pai Marire founder, Te Ua Haumene, and

investigates Te Kooti’s legacy of the Ringatu faith.

Next it goes to Parihaka and Dunedin, to retell the stories of Tohu Kakahi and Te Whiti o Rongomai, and their movement of peaceful resistance.

In Episode five it crosses into Tuhoe country, to discover the way of Rua Kenana and to draw near to the site of his “City of God,” established in the Urewera mountains.

Finally, it opens a window on the 20th Century movement begun by visionary and faith healer Tahupotiki Wiremu Ratana.

Series producer Meg Douglas set out to bring the prophets to light for both a Maori and Pakeha audience, many of whom she expected would be hearing of them for the first time.

Anglican Taonga WINTER 2013

We wanted it to be faith telling a faith story.

Clockwise from left: Hirini Kaa:seeing the prophets in a new light, Ringatu prayer at Ruataupare House in Te Teko, Mt Taranaki rises over pathways trod by the Maori prophets, 1800s: Parihaka Village at peace.

But first, she needed a presenter whose religious background would add authenticity to the series.

Broadcaster and priest, the Ven Dr Hone Kaa was her choice.

When he took up the challenge, Hone brought his son Hirini on board, to add historic clout to the project.

Hirini came with his MA in history in tow. That was completed, in part, under Judith Binney’s tutelage, a historian whose work lays the foundations for much of the written histories of the prophets.

Picking up the task, the Kaas steered it away from the “adventure pirate flick” approach, which would have seen dramatic recreations of flashpoints in the prophets’ lives.

They set off instead, to tell a story of “faith looking at faith”.

Then, before funding could be approved, Hone became seriously ill and the Kaa family stepped back.

It became clear that Hone would not be able to complete the project.

And sadly, he passed away. While the series was still waiting in the wings.

When Scottie’s Meg Douglas and Maori TV came back to the drawing board, there was only one name on everybody’s lips.

Rev Hirini Kaa was the man to take up his father’s mantle for The Prophets. *

*

*

*

*

For Hirini, this journey along the prophets’ pathway has been a gift from his father. And his dad’s reputation went with him, opening doors along the way.

He needed that help on occasion, too.

Like the day the production crew turned up to meet Rua Kenana’s people, in the Urewera village of Matahi.

A really staunch powhiri met them on arrival, with pointed reminders of Hirini’s own Ngati Porou forbears coming through and killing people there.

In initial negotiations with the Ratana Church, difficult histories were raised again: “Well, there are only two groups of people we don’t get along with,” said one kaumatua,

And those are… Ngati Porou and Anglicans.”

But once those long-held antagonisms were out in the open, Hirini’s own status as a man of faith, his dad’s renown, and the fact he was there to listen, all helped to get the conversation started.

All of the movements have suffered injustice at the hands of the Crown at some stage.

And all of them have raised the ire of at least some part of our Church.

Yet like any detail of history, things seldom line up neatly with good all on one side, and bad on the other.

Essential to the prophetic vision was Maori resistance to the ravages of colonial invasion.

Yet Te Whiti longed for peace and prosperity between the peoples, and Ratana made a long-lasting political partnership with Labour, through Michael Joseph Savage.

Many of the 19thC movements had Pakeha supporters, and most had Maori opponents.

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Anglican Taonga

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Working on site for The Prophets: Hirini Kaa, Dan Apiata, Leon Narbey, Tainui Stephens and Whatanui Flavell.

When Ratana’s Trinitarian faith healing first began, evangelical Anglican and Methodist clergy were among his most ardent advocates.

But later, when tens of thousands of Maori had come to believe in Ratana’s access to spiritual power, the Anglican Church decided his theology had strayed too far, and his reach grown too large – and excommunicated both the man and his followers.

According to Hirini, that action forced people into an “either/or” choice, which led to the overnight loss of almost half of Te

we need to be grounded in the soil of Aotearoa.

Page 22

Haahi Mihinare’s1 adherents.

“In the middle of the Depression, that one action split Maori communities in half.

“You can still see graveyards in little villages, which are split by a physical line down the middle - with Ratana on one side, and Mihinare on the other” Of course, it wasn’t only the Pakeha church who acted against the prophets. Sir Apirana Ngata for example, had worked to keep Ratana’s movement out of Ngati Porou. Many Maori agreed with that stance.

Hirini can now see another way across the divides. When you get up close, the prophets look like different members of the same whanau, facing the same crisis and searching for the same solutions.

And historically, there are plenty of examples of family connections.

Although Hirini’s whanau has always been unshakably Mihinare, his GreatGrandmother was prophesied over by Te Kooti, and those words became part of the family history.

When an 1865 Ngati Porou civil war (between Pai Marire and Mihinare factions) ended with defeat for Pai Marire, the two groups reconciled through intermarriage.

“So we are Mihinare, but we still have whakapapa connections to the prophets.”

Hirini found himself moved just by being in the places these visionary leaders had walked.

“I had heard about all of these people, I had read about them, I knew about them.

“But then going there, to their holy places, and meeting their followers… …what I didn’t know, was how it was going to feel.”

Parihaka for example, lived up to everything he’d expected - and more.

He saw pain, still keenly felt, for the relatives who’d suffered the 1881 sacking of Parihaka.

He heard the intimate way Te Whiti and Tohu’s followers talked about their prophets.

In Matahi, he was struck by the ardent faith of Rua Kenana’s followers.

“These people just had this real inner glow. They had a self-awareness, a selfknowledge of being followers of Te Mihaia Hou (The New Messiah)2.

"They had this sense of peace.

They were so open.

“We have so much to learn from these movements.

“The real difference between us, and any of the prophetic movements, is that they know their story, they take it very seriously, and they want to share it.

“It reinforced for me how the mainstream church fails at communicating our message.”

“Our Mihinare story is just as big, not as tragic, but just as important.

“We need to be telling our own stories.

Not having others tell them for us.”

Hirini saw another dimension to the radical openness of Rua’s people.

“There were four of them. One was Mormon, one was Ringatu, one was Presbyterian and one was a searcher. … all sat there as followers of Rua. …

It was almost like saying, “In Christ, there is neither Ringatu, nor Mormon…”

“Here was a sign of the possibilities of faith, because these days faith is disappearing from Maori. “… Future generations have moved to the cities and now they have X-Box to worship instead of God. “There’s so much work to do, and we’re running out of time.”

Hirini points out that one of the prophets’ biggest attractions for Maori, is one of their most obvious traits.

Anglican Taonga WINTER 2013

They hail from right here. The movements look to this land for their stories of spiritual sustenance.

“I think we need to be grounded in the soil of Aotearoa. We need to relate Scripture directly to this context.

“We can’t keep looking to Europe or North America for answers on each new thing that comes up.”

After meeting some of the movements firsthand, Hirini has realized they are not – as he’d once thought of some - the opposite of the church. More like different branches on the same tree. “…we’ve all been looking for the same things, we’ve been seeking the Kingdom of God.” “I’m on a journey now. I would like to see unity. The Maori ecumenical movement fell apart a while ago – but we just need to admit that we need each other and get on with it.”

One common point is a foundational relationship with Scripture.

Each of the Maori visionaries were versed in both Old and New Testaments and were deeply influenced by them.

In fact, the power of Scripture runs like a golden thread right through the entire series.

“In the first episodes about the missionaries, we were challenging Maoridom by saying that Scripture has had a huge role.

“The longest standing movement for Maori sovereignty, the Kingitanga, arose out of Scripture.

“Scripture is in our DNA, we can’t take it out.

Previous generations took it for granted, it was mother’s milk.”

However, in contemporary Maori higher education, it is becoming increasingly counter-cultural to claim a place for Scripture.

“There’s this whole line of thought that wants to trace an unadulterated line of Maori culture from Hawaiiki to today.

And they want to excise Scripture and

Christianity out of that.

“Often their own kaumatua shake their heads in the background. They think it’s ridiculous to talk like that.”

Scripture can be an ideological battleground, says Hirini, which is why he brought in theologian Dr Jenny Te Paa and Mihinare biblical heavyweight, the Rev Don Tamihere.

As a go-to biblical scholar, what stands out about Don is his ability to speak powerfully into the heart of a Maori worldview - straight from the source of Scripture.

Hirini could see that working for the technicians behind the cameras.

“I was watching my mates filming Don. He was speaking about biblical concepts about whenua, putting it into a Maori context.

“This was a very experienced camera crew.3 I wouldn’t say they’re jaded, but they’ve pretty much heard it all.

“But with Don, the filming just went on and on, and they were gobsmacked.

Afterwards they said, “We could listen to that guy for hours”.

“I think there was a message in there that the churches have a lot to offer.

But it was in there subtly.”

When Taonga went to print, The Prophets episodes were still available for view on Maori TV’s website under a search for “prophets”.

The whole series can be ordered on DVD for $40, from the online shop at www.scottieproductions.co.nz.

Notes 1. Te Haahi Mihinare, Mihinare, – The Missionary Church, members of the Missionary Church, name used to describe Maori Anglicans.

2. While The New Messiah is a literal translation, the meaning of this term is more nuanced.

3. The crew included cameraman Leon Narbey, who filmed on the movies Whale Rider and The Orator.

Julanne Clarke-Morris is Editor of Taonga magazine.

We support families so children can enjoy the

happy, healthy & safe childhood they deserve a: 10 Beatty Street, Otahuhu 1640

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Anglican Taonga

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TD E HU EO C LAO T IGOYN

Opening windows on

World Religion

Jocelyn Armstrong makes an urgent case for teaching on other faiths

Dialogue with other faiths is not an optional extra.

Page 24

In April this year, Anglican religious educator Jocelyn Armstrong addressed a multireligious crowd of experts at the 300-strong international ‘Doha Interfaith Conference’ – in the heart of Qatar, a tiny Middle-Eastern Muslim state.

Her job was to put forward some of NZ’s best interfaith practice, in a new World Religions Social Studies unit she’s written for Aotearoa NZ schools.

Jocelyn shares with us why she thinks that knowing about other faiths is an increasingly urgent task.

F

aith and spirituality could become the cornerstones of world peace, according to a United Nations top official. But more people need to understand both the opportunities and the challenges of such a role.

At the Doha interfaith conference, the UN’s Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser1 highlighted the spread of religions around the globe as a source of both change and possibility.

Just over a century ago (in 1910), 93% of the world's Christians lived in Europe and the Americas. By 2010, that proportion had plummeted to 63%.

Over the same period, Christians in

Europe had dropped from 95% down to 76% of that continent’s population, and in the Americas, the fall was from 96% to 86%.

Alongside these declines, one exponential increase stands out.

Over the same one hundred years, Christians in sub-Saharan Africa rose from 9% to 63% of that region’s population.

The distribution of Muslim populations across the globe has made major shifts too.

Taken together, the Middle East and North African regional population is currently 93% Muslim.

However, today those two regions only account for 20% of the global Muslim total.

By 2010, 62% of the world’s Muslims lived in the Asia-Pacific region, with the majority made up by two of our nearest neighbours, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Christianity now has its greatest global reach in history. A quarter of all Christians live in Europe, a third in the Americas, another quarter in Sub-Saharan Africa and one eighth in the South-East Pacific. As this globalization of religion continues, Christians will increasingly find themselves living closer to other religions and alongside those of no religion.

Award-winning interfaith dialogue leader,

Anglican Taonga WINTER 2013

Lebanon’s Dr Mohamed El Sammak, points out how close proximity can create either positive or negative outcomes for peace.

Proximity can act as a “driver of conflict, or a bridge to co-existence,” he said.

So, how are the religions responding to this new reality?

How are our theological training institutes, our universities and schools facing up to this challenge?

Dr Scott Alexander from Chicago’s Catholic Theological Union (CTU) surprised his conference listeners with his own college’s answer, “When I was in (Catholic) seminary,” he said, “my Muslim professor and colleagues used to say...”

His words reflect the reality that since 2003, the CTU has offered Islamic as well as Jewish interfaith studies, and is among a growing number of US Catholic seminaries that have Muslim teaching staff.

In California, the United Methodist Claremont Seminary takes another approach. It has formed a consortium of Christian, Islamic and Jewish colleges where students can learn about the other two faiths, and experience the life of the other training colleges, while still based in their own.

In the UK, Cambridge University has involved the three Abrahamic faiths in the work of its Woolf Institute for Interfaith Studies, which opened in 1998.

The Woolf Institute’s Director, Dr Edward Kessler, explains how it is not enough to learn about other religions without any personal encounter.

“If our experiences and beliefs give

us our identity and meaning, then we must engage in real dialogue, explore the other’s perceptions, while becoming more aware of our own, ” he says.

Lebanon’s Mohamed El Sammak warns interfaith educators on the danger of trying to ignore differences.

“If the other is different, the other's differences are the other's identity,” he said. “If we eliminate or disregard those differences, we eliminate the other.”

The revised 2007 NZ School Curriculum is right in tune with these principles of recognizing and affirming difference. It aims to reflect cultural diversity and to value students’ differing histories and traditions. It sets out to ensure students’ identities are recognised and affirmed in the classroom, and that their learning connects and has meaning within their wider lives.

There is plenty of research to back up the importance of religious beliefs and practice as essential to people’s identity.

But engaging in discussion and learning about faith backgrounds requires an open, respectful and accepting environment, where inquiry and dialogue can take place.

In my secondary school textbook entitled 'Discovering Diversity,' Year 9 and 10 Social Studies students encounter religious identities and practices. Shaped by the inquiry method, the book introduces six World Religions now present in Aotearoa New Zealand, with local stories and photographs that engage the students in discussion, creative activities and reflective exercises.

Starting out with the familiar, students talk about the Christian public holidays of Christmas and Easter. They are put in touch with the core stories of the Christian faith and learn how festivals are an important part of all religions.

Similarly, discussions around a prayer room at school, or the familiar sight of turbans on their city’s streets, lead to discoveries about Islam’s daily routine of prayer and the Sikh use of sacred symbols.

As Pope Francis said recently, “Dialogue with other faiths is not an optional extra”.

If religions remain alien, unknown or misunderstood, this can inspire anxiety, fear and suspicion. If however, they

become the subject of inquiry, research and personal explanation, then teachers and students, both those with religious faith and those with none, can move beyond ignorance.

Students can learn to recognise and show respect for another’s religious commitments. In school, this can mean less alienation and bullying. The school’s culture then has a chance of spilling over into the wider community, helping to support a more harmonious acceptance of one another.

If we eliminate another’s differences, we eliminate them.

Now that many Aotearoa New Zealand schools are multicultural, primary schools need to be freed from the secular law that prohibits learning about the role of religion in life.

Our public secondary schools are not so bound, but teachers who lack the experience of dealing with religions in the classroom deserve support. This could be addressed by teacher training, which should include introductions to beliefs, people and places that reflect our diverse religious communities.

These are the next steps that could move us beyond a few noble curriculum words and a colourful new textbook.

Jocelyn Armstrong is the author of Discovering Diversity (Pearson Education, 2009). In 2007 she retired as Head of Religious Studies and Lay Chaplain at Auckland's Diocesan School for Girls. gandj.armstrong@xtra.co.nz 1. Qatar’s Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser is President of the United Nations Alliance of Civilisations whose aim is to improve understanding and cooperative relations among nations and peoples, across cultures and religions.

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Anglican Taonga

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ENVIRONMENT

John Flenley has unearthed a green and pleasant solution to halt the advance of Climate Change.

Why get stuck behind slow-moving technologies and laws, he asks, when all it should take to save the planet is some seedlings and a spade?

Take it to the trees “we could slow climate change, in just six years”

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S

everal years ago, my colleague, Dr. Peter Read1, calculated that human beings had the power to delay global warming. His theory2 was based on the ability of living trees to contain an identifiable quantity of carbon dioxide within their wood – and by doing so, to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

In 2009 I put this question to him, “If everyone in the world were to plant trees, how many would we each need to plant, in order to prevent global warming?”

After some time, Dr Read came back with his calculation: 40 trees for each person on the planet. That number, he believed, would delay global warming long enough for humankind to develop alternative technologies and avert the Climate Change crisis.

Sadly, in late 2009, on his way to the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit, Dr Read suffered a fatal heart attack. The figures behind his calculation were lost with him.

Some time after his death, when no

Anglican Taonga WINTER 2013

planters, 960 trees each. A natural forest in Alabama has about 700 trees to the acre.

An acre is 4426 m2 so one tree needs about 6.4 m2 – an area of 2.3m x 2.3m.

960 trees would need 1.3 acres, or half a hectare.

Half a hectare would be an impossible quantity of land to expect from any subsistence farmer, but it should be easy for a New Zealand one.

For non-farmers, the answer is simple: plant trees on public land.

Many city councils have schemes like Palmerston North’s, where tree planting is underway on the Council’s Pit Park and Linklater Reserves. Trees come from the Council, or from voluntary bodies like Pit Park People and A Rocha Manawatu.

Of course, at some stage, the CO2 contained in trees will be released back into the atmosphere – as trees die and decay. But once planted, a forest as a whole will survive, as new trees grow up to replace the old ones.

So once a forest has begun, its containment of CO2 continues.

But even the first lifecycle of this tree-planting scheme would have given the world 50 years delay before climate change becomes too extreme. We could use that time to develop suitable technology to remove the problem permanently.

New forests also nullify the harmful effects of bushfires, offer habitat protection to wildlife, and counteract ongoing losses from large-scale deforestation by logging.

The beauty of tree-planting is its simplicity. Solutions to avert climate change that depend on governments changing laws and regulations are too slow to be effective.

Alternative energy options such as electric cars, wind power, water, tidal and solar power are all held back by the expense of establishing the technology, and each have limitations on availability of sites and working lifespans.

By contrast, tree planting can be done immediately, by almost any individual.

No letters to MPs, no protest marching, no persuading of lawmakers is required.

Just go to the garden centre, buy a tree, dig a hole, plant it in your garden and watch it grow. Better still, get your children to plant one each.

Photo: ©Tania Ashman/Desert Spring Community Centre

evidence of the tree ratio appeared in his published work, I set out to attempt the arithmetic behind what he’d proposed.

The total carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere is around 720 billion tons3, while the world’s population sits at approx.

7 billion people.

Calculating the tonnage of CO2 that trees can sequester (from US forestry and CO2 measurement data)4 showed that planting 7 billion trees (one per person) would remove 747 million tons of CO2 from the atmosphere.

Times that amount by 40, and you have 30 billion tons, which would reduce our atmosphere’s CO2 concentration by around 4%.

CO2 levels are currently rising at 0.62% per year, so while a 4% reduction wouldn’t remove the problem, it would certainly go some of the way.

Of course this solution would never happen with the neatness of a sum.

Most people in the world would never hear of it, nor would they live where trees can grow, or have any way of obtaining seedlings.

Then, the trees themselves would take several decades before their growth was advanced enough to have the desired effect.

A novel approach would be to ask a group of people whose faith already compels them to care for creation – and so put this idea to the global church.

In time, all Christians should hear of it, which means we have reached approximately 25% of the world’s population.

So if every Christian on earth were to plant 160 trees, that could still give a 4% reduction of CO2.

Inevitably, many Christians still could not do this. But perhaps half might, in which case, they would need to plant 320 trees each. So, if half the world’s Christians were to plant, say, one tree per week, the goal could be reached in just 6 years.

But would it not be better if the original 40 trees were exceeded?

Perhaps a target of 120 trees per human, which might give a CO2 reduction of 13%. That might even reverse global warming, at least for a while.

So then every Christian would have to plant 480 trees each. Or, if only half were

…no protest marching, or persuading lawmakers required.

Or you could help other Christians who are already on the job – A Rocha, is a Christian conservation organization active in NZ, which specializes in growing and planting trees.

To contact A Rocha phone: 027 427 6242 or email newzealand@arocha.org.

References 1. Dr Peter Read has been described as an Ecological Economist.

2. Read, P. Responding to Global Warming: Technology, economics and politics of sustainable energy, Zed, London (1994).

3. Ibid., p.35.

4. To see the detailed calculation figures, go to http://www.anglicantaonga.org.nz/Features/SocialJustice/The-effect-of-tree-planting Rev Dr John Flenley is a scientist and retired Professor of Geography. He is Deacon for the Care of Creation for the Diocese of Wellington and chairs A Rocha Manawatu.

J.Flenley@massey.ac.nz

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OUR PLACE

At home in the Chatham Islands Imagine a place without sandflies, where cellphones are only useful for telling the time, people share their vegetables, eggs, fish and home-baking and nobody locks up their house.

Is this paradise, a TV ad, or reality show, perhaps? No.

…it certainly feels like somewhere else.

New Zealand in the 1950s?

Yes, and no.

This is the Chatham Islands. Part of Aotearoa New Zealand, but at the same time, not part of it.

Sarah Wilcox visited the Chathams in March this year and stopped in to worship and catch up with the locals.

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M

ainland kiwis may think of the Chathams as ours, but the locals talk about New Zealand like it’s a different country.

It certainly feels like somewhere else.

Twin clocks on the wall show island time running 45 minutes ahead of New Zealand’s, and the TV news comes on at 6.45 pm each day.

When I visited the islands, I headed along to the tiny Anglican Church on my first Sunday.

St Augustine’s is at Te One, a 40-minute walk from the island’s main centre, Waitangi, to the southeast.

It takes just as long to walk there along the beach as by the road, though chances are you’ll be picked up by a local if you choose the latter. On this day, a car pulled up beside me just five minutes out of Waitangi.

It was the local undertaker Eddie, keen to give me a lift.

Anglican Taonga WINTER 2013

Facing page: The Rev Charmaine Sarten passes one of the hatchments to its new home. That’s Maata Wharehoka beside her. Above: Dean Jamie Allen.

From left: The wee kauri church (1885), a warm welcome from Aunty Pat and Alf Johansen , St Augustine’s friendly brunch, looking across Waitangi and Petre Bay, the Rev Rewai Preece.

Since I was early, the vicar Rewai Preece called me in to his lounge for a chat. The room is chic vintage, as good as any hip 30-something would be proud to have created.

Rewai was born and bred in the Chathams, his mother Moriori and his father English. He left in 1940 at age 14 to train horses in Christchurch, returning in 1970 to work as a fisherman. He was ordained in 1987 after many years of service as a lay minister.

His love of the place is obvious.

“You’re at home here”, he tells me simply. “Over there it’s all concrete. “I have to go to synod once a year, but that’s enough.”

As Rewai excuses himself to put his ‘dress’ on. I wander over the grass to the church, which is never locked. The tiny kauri-panelled building has hardly changed from when it was built in 1885.

It’s a church in miniature and I feel too big for it. Beautifully proportioned, the altar has just enough room for candles, communion vessels and a bookstand.

Brass plaques along the sidewalls tell of various tragedies the congregation has had to endure. Drownings are common here. I recognise the same family names from local farmers and business folk still

round town.

Shipwrecks were a common source of early settlers – for those who found this land to their liking. Blind Jim’s Bay is named after one such shipwreck survivor who stayed on. He’d had cataracts.

Parishioner Alfred (Alf) Johansen’s Finnish great grandfather was another who arrived by shipwreck. That was in 1885, and three years later he married here.

Today St Augustine’s congregation is at 20, but the little church can stretch to 30, at a pinch. Visitors are welcomed as members for the week.

This particular morning, the service is simple and we keep in tune with ably guitar-led songs. As we reach the intercessions, together we pray, “...Our thanks for marae and the cities we have built; for science and discoveries, for our life together, for Aotearoa New Zealand, and the Chatham Islands.”

Their addition is almost defiant.

At communion, God’s love is there in Rewai’s smile as he places the circle of bread into my hands.

St Augustine’s stalwart Auntie Pat is sitting across from me. She’s dressed up

with drop earrings, a nice dress, heels, stockings and a warm hat – which is a good idea in weather that can change completely in ten minutes. Pat Lanauze is originally from Margate, a seaside town in East Kent, and came to the remote Chathams as a war bride with her husband Fred.

“The sea all around here helped me, because I grew up on the coast. And they were hard times in Europe then (with post-war food shortages and rationing).

Fred knew we wouldn’t starve here.”

Alf Johansen grew up in the house next door to Aunty Pat. “She brought me up really, and she always had her tins full! We did a lot of barter trading in those days and my family often had flounder from the lagoon to trade. I used to go out with friends and we’d catch 200 a night using homemade spears and some no 8 wire to thread them all onto.”

The Chathams have supported populations much larger than the 500 (plus 30 on Pitt Island) here these days.

This land at the end of the weather forecast is surprisingly temperate and fertile, though the sculpted trees are a testament to the constancy of the wind.

Seafood is plentiful and accessible.

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Anglican Taonga

WINTER 2013

R E C O N C I L I AT I O N

2000 Moriori were living on these islands known as Re-kohu, before the first European ship, the HMS Chatham, visited in 1791. Farming and fishing are still mainstays of the economy.

There are always visitors at St Augustine’s, drawn from the growing number of tourists who come to see the Islands’ variable tui, wood pigeon, fantail

Weka aren’t protected here, so you can eat them if you like.

Page 30

and plant species, and to sample the food and lifestyle here.

A weka rushes across the vicarage lawn. The bird isn’t protected here, so you can eat it if you like – the one I tried later at the Islands’ food festival was like a bony, slightly fatty, dark chicken.

After church, Rewai’s famous paua fritters had run out, so for morning tea he’d put on crayfish instead.

The lagoon is also home to black swans, which well-versed local Helen Bint says have been an important food source.

“The eggs were fantastic for making sponges and we used to use a swan wing as a brush inside the house – everyone had one.”

“I tried cooking a bird once – on Monday I roasted it, Tuesday I boiled it, Wednesday I casseroled it, Thursday I fried it and on Friday I chucked it out. It was so tough, it would have made perfect gate hinges!”

Helen has just spent two weeks showing her sister over from NZ round the island, revisiting some of their childhood haunts.

“It’s been the most wonderful two weeks you can imagine. … we’ve never been in a hurry and have been able to take our time. We spent an hour at the beach yesterday just watching the waves.”

“When I was living in New Zealand, my husband and I were managing a farm, and I had four children under five. I was just too stressed and got cancer.

“I had surgery, but back here, Aunty Pat pulled up a kitchen chair one day and she and three other ladies prayed for me. I’m forever thankful to her and to God for that – they saved my life. I haven’t had a touch of it since.”

Rewai smiles at his little flock as he sits back in his chair. This year he celebrated 24 years as a priest. As I head out into the day, it’s Helen’s final reflection that sums up the feeling of the place.

“It’s like a big family here,” she says, “you realise that people are the most important thing in life.”

Sarah Wilcox is a freelance science writer who belongs to Wellington’s St Paul’s Cathedral and Central Baptist Church. sarah@descipher.co.nz

W

ould you like to help with a Waikato University PhD. project on remembering a lost loved one through poetry?

I'd like to interview people whose partner passed away two years ago or more.

Please contact Sarah Penwarden at sarah.penwarden.research@gmail.com or by phone on: (09) 8379733.

Anglican Taonga WINTER 2013

Brian Thomas gains some feathered friends by shedding a little fat.

angels

Visitation of

P

eople who have their wits about them will say there are no such things as angels, but I’m looking at a visitation of them even as I write.

So why does it descend to suburbia at this time of year? To escape the claws of winter, and to feast on garden insects and nectar – plus the fatted calf that some of us hang from our trees.

It’s a sullen day in Christchurch.

Sodden, too, with a southerly hastening the annual fall. And yet the flight of angels outside my window spins and sparkles in the air as merrily as the proverbial larks of spring.

Word of a fresh bird-feeder in the ‘hood spreads within minutes, not only among the waxeyes, but also to the notorious Starling Gang. And those boys are quick to corner whatever’s going on the block.

I’m talking, of course, about the winter visitation of the silvereye or waxeye, that cheeky little native which flits into our backyard in a flash of olive green and loves nothing better than to chew the fat on our cherry tree.

We’ll get to that morsel later.

The silvereye’s name in Maori is tauhou, meaning "stranger" or "new arrival "– a reference, no doubt, to the fact that it wasn’t sighted in these islands until the 1830s.

It’s widespread across Australia, and is thought to have crossed the divide on the back of a trans-Tasman gale. Which is our gain and Australia’s loss, since the verdant little creature now nests in our affections as happily as it does in our tree-lines.

Starlings are nearly human in the way they jostle for advantage and straddle more than their share. Puffed-up in their dark finery they could pass as mob bosses – or corporate raiders.

I can’t deny that medication may be a life-saver for those in stark travail. But for my money, a $2.50 bird-feeder from the friendly local butcher is a cheaper fix for a touch of the blues than a $50 visit to the doctor and chemist.

Or so I thought originally. Waxeyes, you see, are busy eaters – and the butcher is getting a nice cut from feeding the habit.

Money well spent though. Especially if faith can stretch to seeing angels of hope dancing on the end of a piece of string.

The Rev Brian Thomas is online editor for Anglican Taonga.

But they lack the agility and grace of the waxeyes, which sneak up from below and pirouette from their revolving feast, as if to mock the clumsy interlopers.

On a day that looks and feels like a complete washout, this has to be the best show in town.

It’s also a God-given antidote to the depression dogging this broken city.

New figures reveal 66,000 Cantabrians are on anti-depressants – the highest rate in the country. And the Christchurch branch of St John has logged 209 selfharm or suicide-related calls already this year – more than one a day.

they sneak up from below and pirouette from their revolving feast

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CHILDREN

Safe in the , shepherd s care Julie Hintz takes a look at the safety basics we should all have sorted – well before we invite children or young people into our ministries.

…it was only God’s amazing protection that kept those boys and leaders safe.

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I

n a children’s ministry I coordinated about five years ago, we were blessed with 15 high-spirited, adventurous, nine and ten-year old boys, two talented male leaders and a hall shared with 25 other children.

The leaders and I were desperate to find ways to engage with these boys: to build real relationships and help them know their wonderful place in God’s bigger story.

We needed a space for them, so I came up with the idea of using a storage loft as their special ‘hang-out zone’.

I thought it was perfect. It was out of reach of the other kids, and accessible only by climbing to the top of a ladder.

We cleaned up the space, brought in cushions and hung big sheets of paper around for the kids to write on. I even put a piece of wood over a small hole in the floor, so no one’s foot slipped through.

At 3 metres off the ground, I realized we’d need some safety precautions.

My answer: a leader at the bottom of the ladder as the boys climbed and a leader at the top of the ladder, helping them to basically belly crawl through the one-metre square opening. Then, a bench we slid in

front of the ‘door’ after everyone was inside, so that no one fell out.

Not surprisingly, that loft was a huge hit – with both the kids and their leaders.

Looking back, I can’t believe what we did.

We used that loft for months before I actually did some research to critically examine its safety. I spoke with builders, ACC, the fire department and more.

I looked up building codes and OSH requirements.

Not only was the space completely inappropriate from a safety point of view, there was also no way to make it safe, for anything other than storage.

I learned a huge lesson during that time.

My heart for children; for loving them, helping them become disciples and creating spaces for them to spend time with each other and God, could not override the need to keep them safe.

What I realized is that their safety physical, emotional, spiritual and sexual, needed to be a foundation on which I did everything else.

Not an added extra for when I had the time.

I was so thankful we didn’t have any

Anglican Taonga WINTER 2013

form of interview (formal or informal), and 2 referees.

Police checks for all leaders Not everyone who has a clear check is safe, as offenders are not always caught right away. However, it is a basic level of safety and allows the police to communicate if someone should not work with children.

Risk assessment is critical

Training It’s important that everyone working with young people has some safety training. Build the training into your year and give ministry workers the opportunity to do refresher courses.

Follow the 2 x 2 rule Adults and older youth should never be alone with a group of kids, especially out of sight of others. If you do have a small group with only one leader, make sure that the door is open and there’s someone who passes by regularly.

Collect safety details each year accidents, but I can look back and see it was only God’s amazing protection that kept those boys and leaders safe.

When I thought of all the things that could have happened, it was a real wakeup call.

Today, wherever our children go, there are safety policies and procedures in place to protect them. Parents and caregivers have (and should have) high expectations that we will provide a safe environment for their children.

There’s a real desire in our churches and communities to keep children safe, so the question becomes, “How best do we do it?

How do we raise awareness and implement safety procedures in our programmes and events?

The following is a short checklist to help you and your faith community address some basic issues of safety, care and protection for children.

Children and young people are the top priority when it comes to safety, but we also need to keep our workers and volunteers safe. These checklists are not complete, but are a good starting point for action.

Staff and volunteer recruitment There should be an application process, which includes an application form, some

Collect each child’s emergency contacts, medical conditions, behavioural needs and allergies. If there are serious medical concerns, follow up with parents to create a safety plan for that child.

Keep attendance records accurately Not only is this helpful for follow up, but in case of emergency, it’s essential to know who is at your programme, both children and leaders.

Kids’ physical safety checklist • Know your emergency exits and procedures.

• Secure bookshelves to the wall. Secure all furniture that could tip if climbed.

• Use safety plugs in electrical outlets • Check for trip hazards; loose mats, wires, etc • Secure exits so little people can’t “escape” and strangers can’t enter your ministry area without being seen and approached by a leader.

• Keep the kitchen “off limits” to younger children • Consider heights, stairs, breakable glass and windows • Follow standard food handling procedures

• Be aware of food allergies. Consider being a peanut-free zone.

• Provide a way for children to clean their hands prior to eating • Risk assessment is critical to safe programmes. Make sure that you or another leader knows how to do this well.

• Adhere to adult to child suggested ratios (1:6-8 for primary school children, 1:3 for preschool) • Consider the safety of space and equipment when planning games and activities.

• Be inclusive in activity choices, allowing most children to be involved most of the time.

Allow children to opt out Not every child will want to participate in every activity. Look for ways for that child to still be part of what’s happening, i.e. by helping the leader. Set guidelines for nonparticipation (e.g. not disrupting the other children, offering books or colouring).

Up to date First Aid on standby A well-stocked first aid kit and a trained First-aider nearby, or on hand are essential.

When parents and caregivers allow us to work with their child, they’re entrusting us with someone very special. When we see children the way their parents see them, and more importantly, the way God sees them, the mandate to protect and nurture our young people is compelling.

Most dioceses have safety training workshops to help you and your faith community keep our children and youth safe, so can help you make your place a safer one. For more information check out www.childsafenz.org.nz Julie Hintz is the StrandZ Children’s Ministry Enabler for the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, NZ and Polynesia. julie@strandz.org.nz

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WORSHIP

Bishop Bruce Gilberd deciphers the subtle revolutions of heart and soul that have kept him gladly coming to church – for more than 70 years.

A bishop’s view

from the pew

O it reveals the lavish, forgiving love of God

Page 34

ver several decades I have listened carefully to people telling me why they don’t come to church.

I’ve even had empathy with some of their reasons.

Now, in my 75th year, I’ve decided it’s time to determine just why life wouldn’t be the same without coming to church.

The truth is, our common worship meets some fundamental needs. For many of us, these are needs we don’t always recall we have.

Some, in fact, are challenges we’d rather do without. Yet what we are offered at church can make us more conscious

of reality, more humble in outlook, stronger in will and enable us to live life to the fullest.

What keeps me coming back for more…

The gift Church reminds me that all life, including my own life, is a gift. I’m reminded that to be fully alive, I need to be deeply connected to other people, to creation and my Creator. This stirs heartfelt thankfulness in me, which in turn triggers joy.

Anglican Taonga WINTER 2013

I recognise anew that God is the source of all that is. God is a mystery beyond us, but also amongst us and within us. I see I am not in control of everything - instead, I am a dependent and hugely loved being that may humbly befriend my God.

Learning always Through song, silence, prayers and the reading of scriptures I become aware of my limited knowledge of deep truths. I am nurtured and encouraged to learn more, to go deeper and keep on growing as the years go by.

Sermons and addresses help me ground my faith in Scripture, reason, and the best of the church’s wisdom (Tradition). My mind is enlightened and my heart warmed.

Logic, reason and good science, those launching pads of faith, help me as I check my own thoughts against others’ wisdom.

Less of me, more of Thee Coming to church downsizes my ego.

My self-centredness is addressed, sometimes uncomfortably.

When I begin to see the reality of my flaws, it reveals the lavish, forgiving love of God that I can then receive. That forgiveness is there for all of us, but it needs to be received.

I find grace (God’s loving help) abounds in the scriptures and in the fellowship of Christians gathered around the Lord’s table.

As my hope is refreshed, self-giving kindness towards others becomes possible again.

The cup of salvation

weakens.

It is hard, but at church I am asked to face myself, and lift my game - if I am to effectively apply truth and love in daily life.

This is God’s ongoing call on my life.

No top scores In spite of a popular belief we can build up credit with God through good works, and so deserve (even reserve!) a place after death, coming to church makes clear this is not what our faith teaches.

The gospel’s good news is that God bridges the gap between the human race and himself - with lavish, undeserved and unending love, as seen in Jesus the Christ. In response to this love, we seek to serve God and others as our thanks - for all God is, has done and still does.

United we stand As part of the local worshipping community, I become increasingly aware that I belong to a huge company of believing people across the centuries and throughout the world.

I am not alone. No one need be alone.

Back to the big story Through the church’s seasons I am called back into the life of Christ and into

The Rt Rev Bruce Gilberd is a former Bishop of Auckland who lives in Tairua on the Coromandel Peninsula. brucepat@xtra.co.nz

Will you fly with us?

The sacrament of Holy Communion is a lifeline. This certain ‘Real Presence’ of Christ, in the blessed bread and wine, transfuses life into all present, making us into more fully alive, growing and deepened persons.

We urgently need pilots, engineers and finance managers to join us in this life-saving work.

Beyond our horizons At church we set our hearts and minds toward the wider world. We lay before God the needs of nations, peoples, our own country, communities and individuals.

We pray for justice and peace, and all those who work for their realisation.

We are reminded that the church that lives for itself will die by itself.

www.maf.org.nz 0800 87 85 88

Shaking me, sending me The words and silences of worship anchor me in the love of God, and challenge me to act justly in the marketplace and community.

I find this disturbingly necessary if I am to be true to my faith. Without these regular stimuli, my vision atrophies and my action

the Christian life. Particularly at Easter, as we celebrate life that is stronger than death, and love that is stronger than hate. Christ’s suffering was not in vain, we see, and our own suffering need never be wasted.

Life and love are indestructible.

In short, at church I am kept accountable for how I live: to myself, to others and ultimately to God. Worshipping God with others down the decades has been such a source of inspiration and growth that I can’t imagine ever giving it up.

Where flying is not a luxury but a lifeline 0632-promise keepers 13.indd 1

3/05/13 9:48 AM

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Anglican Taonga

WINTER 2013

PEOPLE

Sir Ellison Pogo: Still in Dunedin’s heart

F

riends and former colleagues of Archbishop Sir Ellison Leslie Pogo gathered to warm a bitterly cold Dunedin evening with memories of the archbishop’s former times in the farSouth Pacific.

On June 7, a crowd of wellwishers gathered at St Michael and All Angels Anglican Church in Anderson’s Bay, to remember Archbishop Pogo and pray for his family in a Church of Melanesia

Rev Tim Hurd (right) shares a story of Sir Ellison with the Revs Aram Oroi (centre) and Ivica Gregurec. (left)

Page 36

style Requiem Eucharist. Twelve clergy colleagues turned out to support the service presided over by Bishop of Dunedin, the Rt Rev Dr. Kelvin Wright.

St Michael’s was the only choice for the event. The church in Andy Bay was where Ellison had lived with his family when he arrived in Dunedin as a graduate fresh from his theological training. While there, he was ordained deacon by the Bishop of Dunedin, the Rt Rev Peter Mann. Ellison served as curate at St Michael’s as both deacon and priest, before returning to the Solomons to become Bishop of his home Diocese of Ysabel.

Deacon from St John’s Roslyn, the Rev. Barbara Dineen, remembered Sir Ellison well from former synods and diocesan events, “He was so much fun to have as part of our diocesan life. I remember the way that he and his closest colleagues sparked off one another, and the great excitement and pride we had that he’d been elected to go as a bishop from here.”

Bishop Kelvin shared his first recollection of Ellison – as a hotshot soccer teammate

and fellow student at St John’s College in Auckland. He remembered how the two Melanesian students (Ellison Pogo and John Lapli) had formed a block of speed and finesse to transform the College’s football team into an uncharacteristically winning side.

But what Bishop Kelvin remembered most, was Ellison’s natural ability to understand and get alongside others. That quality had made him “probably the one student who would have been counted as a friend by every one of his peers.”

Preaching at the requiem, the Rev Tim Hurd spoke warmly of knowing Sir Ellison as his Dad’s curate, while his father, the late Very Rev Michael Hurd, was vicar at Anderson’s Bay. Even as a boy of seven, Tim had recognised the humility, energy and skill that were to set Ellison apart. Later, Tim was reacquainted with Sir Ellison through working together with him at Board meetings of the Pacific Theological College in Suva, Fiji.

“I saw him in ecumenical action and in less formal settings. His warmth, charisma, ability – and as much humility as an archbishop can manage – were all still there.”

At supper after the solemn requiem, animated stories of the archbishop’s former times emerged in all directions, punctuated with outbreaks of laughter and remembered with obvious affection.

The service was initiated by the Rev Ivica Gregurec from St. Martin’s North East Valley, when he heard of Archbishop Ellison's connections to Dunedin. Ivica is a recent arrival in the diocese, following a sevenyear stint serving in pastoral ministry in the Solomon Islands.

An unexpected blessing was the presence of the Rev Aram Oroi from Makira in the Solomons. In Dunedin for a week from St John’s College in Auckland, Fr Aram came to the event after a local vicar saw “Church of Melanesia” beside his signature in the church visitors’ book and invited him to the service.

Fr Aram was both surprised and pleased to be there, “Even after more than 30 years, it is good to know that Sir Ellison is still remembered so fondly here. We should encourage these links that connect the church here to the Anglican Church of Melanesia,” he said.

– Julanne Clarke-Morris

Anglican Taonga Winter WINTER 2013

POETRY

You are You are in The living memory of scuttled skink as lifted rock is rested; Both undreamed galaxies and the ecology of topsoil boot scrapings; Energy more mysterious than a quark, more expansive than all dark matter; The powerful humility of the faithful who don’t bother to deflate the clever preacher; The despair of the hopeless, drunken adolescent and her child; All responsive, true listening of the heart; all friendship; The pain of those who feel trapped in sinkholes of conflict; The dying in the heart of the wealthy one who trusted the image of money; The yearning anger of the powerless one who knows poverty all too well;

(A response to “I Am...” Ex.3.14, Jno.8.58 etc.)

The small act of the one with little to offer but care; Water, no mere unearthed sign but the stuff that sacraments all real life; The leavening of bread dough, crop from paddock worked by our hands; Wine, fruit of vine fashioned for communal joy; Hope, grief, high and holy times, times of plain ordinariness; Celebrations of your presence, in and out of mere religion; You are. © Boyd Wilson, 2012

The Rev Boyd Wilson is a retired Anglican priest who lives in Central Otago.

His book of poetry and meditations With Our Feet on the Ground is available in NZ for $10 + p&p from boydles@xtra.co.nz or, outside NZ from Amazon.com.

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ENVIRONMENT

Phillip Donnell revisits a world-saving environmental code at the heart of our Christian DNA

Everything

in common I

t is just possible that one of the most effective Christian responses to the environmental crisis has been with us all along. To save this fragile planet, the argument now goes, the entire human race will have to go back to living in community.

What exactly does this mean? Surely we already live in communities?

Almost forty years ago, US psychologist Seymour Sarason defined community within a group as: • a sense of similarity to others • interdependence with others • giving to others • doing for others what is expected • feeling part of a larger dependable, stable structure Sound familiar? It should…

In his book Deep Economy, author Bill McKibben shows that our commonly held belief that “more is better” is a fallacy.

He demonstrates how once our basic human needs are met, greater individual

Photo: ©Tania Ashman/Desert Spring Community Centre

Page 38

affluence and higher levels of technology seem to actually result in a lower quality of life. His answer: to restore and strengthen our communities.

He follows the principle that if it’s good for community, most often it’s good for the environment – and vice-versa.

Just think about that. How many solutions to environmental problems come back to community? Community gardens, farmers’ markets, car-sharing programmes, public transport systems – each of these involve living together, working together, travelling together.

In contrast, much of what defines our contemporary world, from private automobiles to iPods, fosters both isolation and individualism – that can undermine, or even destroy, community.

But when we share with each other, we make fewer demands on God’s creation, and we live healthier, happier, lives.

In this regard, the church should have a head start. We are marked by the call to love God and to love our neighbour – and tied up in both, is our concern for God’s creation.

The church already is, (or at least, should be) what the world needs to learn to be – a community.

Obviously, it matters what we actually do. A church that races SUVs through a nature reserve is unlikely to be caring for creation.

But for now, it’s sufficient to recognise this basic truth: an effective response to the environmental crisis requires us to relearn community – a task that we as the church can readily do.

It is telling that the early Christians adopted this approach in the midst of their own increasingly difficult and challenging situation, marked by persecution, poverty and privation.

They were committed to life in community as the people of God. Fellowship (koinonia) meant sharing life together – and they put it into practice.

Sharing worship, table fellowship and even their valuable possessions, ensured that none amongst them was in need.

(Acts 2:44-47, 4:32-37).

The early Christians belonged to a relational organism, not an institution.

They were interdependent rather than independent, committed to each other’s welfare, financial and otherwise.

I believe that now the church is called to be a demonstration community – to show the world how it can be done.

Let’s face it. Community is hard work.

It’s hard in a marriage, in a family, in a small town. It may be almost impossible in a large city.

But community, marked by mutuality, is part of how God’s creation works.

And God designed the church to be a community.

Tips for building up your community • Be intentional about relationshipbuilding • Implement the “one another” statements in the New Testament • Create sociable gathering places • Fundraise to assist needy members • Share and exchange resources: food, shelter, tools, appliances, vehicles, etc.

• Run volunteer days, working bees, bake-offs, etc.

• Trade-off services and skills, set up and run time-banks • Start neighbourhood gatherings and newsletters • Set up a website for people to interact • Set up savings pools and local exchange-trading systems For more information on this list, contact Living Economies, www.le.org.nz 1. This set of characteristics defined community in the book Psychological Sense of Community: Prospects for a Community, Seymour B. Sarason, Jossey-Bass Publishing, San Francisco, 1974.

Phillip Donnell is the EnviroChurches Facilitator for Christian conservation organisation A Rocha Aotearoa NZ and teaches for Bishopdale College in Tauranga. pjdonnell@orcon.net.nz

Anglican Taonga WINTER 2013

SOCIAL JUSTICE

Cheap lives for

cheap clothes When Christian World Service sent condolences to grieving families and survivors of this year’s Bangladesh factory disaster, they replied with a call for help.

Gillian Southey unpacks some of the wider issues that people still face in the tragedy’s aftermath.

C

rumbling debris and a pool of foul water are all that’s left of the Rana Plaza factory that collapsed on the outskirts of Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, in April 2013.

More than 1100 people lost their lives in this one industrial accident, which is counted among the world’s worst.

Of the workers that survived, many are left injured and all have lost their incomes.

Soon after the tragedy, hundreds more jobs were lost, as factory owners closed down 22 additional buildings now deemed too dangerous to work in.

In this age of internet advocacy, the accident received an immediate global response. The international outrage that ensued led to calls for more robust monitoring of safety standards – not only for the factories – but for the big clothing retailers that contract production to developing countries like Bangladesh.

The highly skilled Bangladeshi garment industry employs 3.5 million people and exports 75% of its production. On the most part, it is young women, desperate to earn an income for their families, who provide it with a continual source of cheap labour.

These garment workers live in cramped, shanty-like boarding houses, sending home all they can save, often as the sole breadwinner for extended rural families.

Despite long hours, poor job security

and what are often exploitative conditions, sewing is still seen as less arduous than other jobs.

But the whole operation is caught in the grip of a permanent downward squeeze on prices. Both employers and workers live with the fear that any increase in costs will cause transnational corporations like The Gap to take their contracts elsewhere.

In Aotearoa NZ, we’ve become so accustomed to cheap clothes on foreign labels, it is easy not to give manufacturing a second thought. But if we were to stop buying from overseas now, our own garment industry could no longer serve us – and boycotting foreign labels would only hurt the people we’d rather protect.

It will take a more critical look at how the global garment trade is organised before we can act to change the current scenario. Part of that is questioning our own role in the market’s insatiable demand for cheaper clothing.

One international network applying pressure on the garment industry to shape up its practices is the Clean Clothes1 campaign. In May 2013 they advocated for the signing of a Fire and Building Safety Accord covering 1000 Bangladeshi factories.

The good news in this story is that profitdriven clothing label giants are starting to take heed of customers’ demands for better trade practices. Some have begun to

implement change.

Keeping up the pressure for fairer trade rules means that the race to pay workers the lowest wages, and to skimp on everything else, is no longer the only way to improve a company’s balance sheet.

Meanwhile, for Christian World Service’s partners in Dhaka, it is the injured and out of work factory collapse survivors who need our attention most urgently. The Bangladesh National Garment Workers Federation (NGWF) has asked CWS to support its Safe Work Place campaigners in their efforts to gain fair compensation for all those affected by the factory collapse.

CWS is calling for donations to support the workers and the families who have been left out in the cold.

Donations will reach NGWF swiftly through the CWS special Bangladesh Appeal.

You can donate by post to: CWS, PO Box 22652, Christchurch 8140. Or online, via: http://www.cws.org.nz/donate. Or by phone, on: 0800 74 73 72.

1. The Clean Clothes campaign is based in Europe and can be contacted through: http://www.cleanclothes.org/ Gillian Southey is Advocacy, Education and Campaigns Coordinator for Christian World Service, the Aotearoa New Zealand churches’ aid and development agency. gillian.southey@cws.org.nz

Page 39

Anglican Taonga

WINTER 2013

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Anglican Taonga WINTER 2013

BOOKS

New pieces for the mosaic MANA MAORI AND CHRISTIANITY EDS. HUGH MORRISON, MURRAY RAE LACHY PATERSON, BRETT KNOWLES. HUIA, WELLINGTON, 2012.

WWW.HUIA.CO.NZ $45 TIM MEADOWCROFT

E

ssays in this volume emerged from the Lineages of Faith research group’s 2009 symposium. Through Murray Rae’s introduction, the editors make clear they have no claim to a comprehensive coverage of the title’s theme.

Rather, they offer a series of “strands” in the ongoing story of Christianity in this land, or closer looks at particular tiles in the mosaic of our history. The book’s broad range of approaches and styles is a deliberate effort not to silence any voices by the muzzle of academic publishing conventions.

The first half of the book narrates the encounter between Maori and various denominations - Presbyterians, the Salvation Army, Pentecostals generally, and the Assemblies of God. The Mormons are in there too, and the final essay looks at Destiny Church.

These stories reflect familiar themes: struggles with culture, tensions between partnership and patriarchy, the paradox of institution and charism.

Both successes and failures sit within the wider story of Aotearoa New Zealand’s

struggle to become a bicultural nation.

This collection is refreshing for its serious treatment of the churches’ work within that bigger picture.

Chapters such as those on the Destiny and Presbyterian Churches bring valuable detail to stories whose broader outlines are well known, while lesser-known stories like that of the Salvation Army, early Mormon encounters, and the Assemblies of God also appear in detail, some for the first time in accessible form.

Part two of the book is weighted on specific individuals and groups, both Maori and Pakeha. Material on the MaoriPresbyterian encounter dominates, with a resulting focus on Tuhoe and work in the Ureweras.

Essays look at the formation of attitudes through Presbyterian children’s literature, and women missionaries’ contributions, which include reflections on issues of gender and race. Rua Kenana and the Ringatu Church receive a friendly critique and an oral history describes Maori experience of Sister Annie Henry (‘Hihita’) in the Urewera Ranges.

There are glimpses of other tiles in the mosaic: the work of Catholic Maori catechists; an appreciation of the prophetic ministry of Ratana; and an essay on the artistic contribution of Bishop Hapai Winiata.

The chapter by Bernard Kernot on Bishop Hapai’s ecclesiastical carving opened a door for me onto processes I know little about.

I particularly appreciated Murray Rae’s theological appraisal of Rua Kenana, Hone Te Rire’s oral history of Hihita, Philip Carew and Geoff Troughton’s account of the Assemblies of God, and the Mormon history by Robert Joseph. I found Keith Newman’s uncritical approach to Ratana somewhat problematic.

There is a two-fold value to this book.

Firstly, each story is intrinsically worth telling.

Secondly, the questions raised by what is missing are intrinsically worth asking.

What further oral histories of these encounters need to be recorded from a Maori perspective? What about more on the aesthetics of encounter? Is there more to be heard from women’s voices? Are there some events described that need more theological critique? And so on.

Part of the value of this book is its stimulus to find answers to questions that it only touches on or implies.

My only criticism is that the title implies a more representative treatment than the book achieves, but that is a small criticism and the contents make no such claims.

I recommend this book warmly.

The Rev Dr Tim Meadowcroft is Senior Lecturer in Biblical Studies at Laidlaw College.

TMeadowcroft@laidlaw.ac.nz

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Page 41

Anglican Taonga

WINTER 2013

FILM

The making of a fundamentalist John Bluck uncovers some eerily familiar characters in the recently released political thriller ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’.

Mira Nair’s new film unpacks an array of Islamist stereotypes as it charts one man’s unlikely journey into fundamentalism.

I

n the liberal imagination at least, fundamentalists are fanatics who enjoy their obsession with black and white, literal truth, relishing their certainties, smug in their righteousness.

If you want to hang onto that way of thinking, don’t go to this movie. Because it’s about a man who comes to his fundamentalism cautiously, unwillingly and full of questions still. Liberals will want to see this, and come away feeling distinctly uncomfortable.

Changez (played beautifully

by Riz Amed) is a young Pakistani academic, Princeton trained, flying high in the New York corporate world. He works for a firm that revalues companies with a view to downsizing them.

Changez makes a fat living by destroying other people’s jobs.

But that career goes pearshaped when he watches the Twin Towers collapse on 9/11 and finds his horror diluted by a smile of satisfaction from “the symbolism of watching America brought to its knees”.

That unacceptable sentiment grows as Changez’s American artist girlfriend Erica overwhelms him with her pop art exhibition full of mocking messages about Islam.

His moral outrage, and growing disillusion with his corporate climb, sends him back to Lahore where becomes a radical academic and change agent for a very different future.

The fundamental capitalist Page 42

becomes a fundamental patriot for Islam and Pakistan. His final speech uses the language of the Kingdom of God. But his journey to these new certainties is a stumbling one, hesitant at every stage.

This is a movie about the collapse of stereotypes, especially those of terrorists, Muslims and Asians. It gives us a taste of what it’s like to be caricatured, humiliated, and most graphically, stripsearched at airports, simply because your ethnic and religious profile sounds suspicion on the database of some security agency.

To be on the receiving end of such treatment would drive believers of any sort to violent response. But not Changez. His forbearance is extraordinary.

Enough to challenge anyone who is called to love your enemies and do good to those who hate you.

But to tell this story, director Mira Nair of Monsoon Wedding fame, resorts to a few stereotypes of her own, especially of “ugly Americans”.

I don’t know if all CIA agents drive black SUV’s, sweat inside flack jackets, wear wires in their ears and carry submachine pistols. But they do in this movie, unlike the book it’s based on.

Perhaps that’s the price of box office ratings and Mira seems happy to be heavy with one hand in order to lightly sketch the unravelling of fundamentalism with the other.

Such an approach has made a lot of critics uncomfortable, but I still think it’s worth the price of admission and more, especially for those of us with fixed ideas about the fixed ideas of others.

In the New Zealand context, you can read this film as commentary on our struggle to become a bicultural and multicultural society (to say nothing of church) that is halfway just and respectful of difference. Easy to say when you talk generally. Painful and disturbing when you anchor it in workplaces and art galleries, police practices, surveillance policies, even tikanga church politics.

There is no mention in the movie of the Uruweras or Ruatoki, the sleight of hand politics behind asset sales and Sky City casino deals, or the easy Kiwi equating of religion with extremism. But the connections are not hard to make.

It’s not a movie you can leave behind with your own fundamentalisms intact.

The Rt Rev John Bluck is a retired bishop currently serving as Acting Dean of Waiapu Cathedral. His published work is available on blucksbooks.com bluck@vodafone.co.nz

Anglican Taonga WINTER 2013

F R O M T H E FA R S I D E

Imogen de la Bere realises she’s happier outside the fast lane when the weekend rolls around.

Not exactly to my biking

D

o you meet them on a Sunday – the Lycra Locusts? Or is this just a European phenomenon?

I mean the cyclists who swarm around me on a Sunday morning when I’m on my way to church. Clad in every colour of a very subdued rainbow – black, fluorescent green, fluorescent orange, rumpsteak red and girl-guide blue – they congregate in dozens and set out on speedy pilgrimage. I hope they are making for a pub, but I fear they are too abstemious and self-disciplined for that.

As the flurry of wheels and bums passes my car I’m the one who feels unworthy.

After all, I’m only driving to church, while they are out cycling for the good of their bodies and the good of the world.

I have long concluded that cycling (and running) have replaced church-going for most of the middle-aged young in Europe. The reasons are obvious. Your standard middle-class Sunday cyclist is doing something which society admires, which costs pain and time, makes no emotional demands, has no stigma of past

paternalism or wrongdoing, makes him or her feel good afterwards, and when conjoined with the inevitable charity bike ride, helps others. The glow of sanctimoniousness is upon Sunday cycling.

So why shouldn’t cycling be the new church? Isn’t it obvious that’s what people want? They cycle from choice, in all weathers, whole families together. They’re keeping fit, doing good to the environment, and exhibiting thrift. They are probably nice to know on the street and have time to talk to each other.

What, as they say, is not to like?

So, kneeling in my antique choir stall on Sunday, surrounded by a number of other antiques, I ponder the difference.

If you could don Lycra, join the cycling club and do good to yourself, the environment, and society, why would you ever bother with church?

First– Inclusivity. To belong to the Church of Cycle you need to have a good bike, and the gear and be able to ride for some distance on it. To belong to the real church , you simply need to be alive – the

halt, the lame, the odd, the old, the young, the poor. All are welcome – no, rather all are implored to come in. The love of God embraces all deformity.

Second – Forgiveness. The Church of Cycle has no mechanism to forgive.

You might hide your sins away, but the real church has, over centuries of Spiritfilled work, come up with robust ways of absolving sins. Don’t think for one moment we don’t all need this special grace.

Third – Love. In the real church we work hard at loving each other. It’s the work of a lifetime. And it’s hard work. I don’t think people cycling towards the pub, or any other approved finish point, have any incentive to love the toiler next to them.

But Christians in church do. And it’s hard work, even harder than squeezing the shapeless bulk into Lycra.

No wonder there are so few of us.

Imogen de la Bere is a writer & director living in St Albans, near London. To read more on her blog, click through from www.anglicantaonga.org delaberi@googlemail.com

Page 43

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