Anglican Taonga Spring 2015 by Anglican Taonga

SPRING 2015 // No.49

Taonga ANGLICAN

MINISTRY

Lord, in your healing power On the rounds with Nelson's faith-filled parish nurses

PEOPLE

Called to reconcile

Meet Chris McLeod: Australia's new Aboriginal Anglican bishop

YO U T H

Prepare the way

Young theologians dive deep into Scripture and diversity

MISSIONS ON TRACK : : CHAMPION FOR KIDS : : SPIRITUAL DIRECTION

SPRING

2015 Page 1

ANGLICAN TAONGA

SPRING 2015

COMMENT

Archbishop Philip Richardson discovers the best of Anglicanism among a gathering of young pilgrims.

At our best "Wasting time with young people is a journey into the heart of God," wrote Latin American theologian Miguel Campos. Recent experience tells me that Campos is on to something. This July our Tikanga Toru Youth Commission hosted a Theological Hui at St Peter’s School in Cambridge, drawing young people from across our threetikanga Church. Led largely by younger people for their peers, the hui was not exclusively for youth. Some of us carried a sprinkle of salt in our hair. Ngati Haua and Te Hui Amorangi o te Manawa o te Wheke established a strong sense of place and local story with their welcome.

We glimpsed the Gospel reaching down the decades.

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Taranaki pilgrims line up in Waharoa, L-R: Abp Philip Richardson, Eva Greenhill, Stephen Tukotahi, Jacqui Paterson, Katelyn Bishop and Levi Torrey.

Women and men explored scripture and collaborative theology in a rich blend of languages, cultures and perspectives. Energetic, liturgically grounded worship, with times of deep reflection, framed our 48 hours together. Young leaders unpacked the themes “Prepare the Way”, “Show the Way” and “Lead the Way.” And they quickly dispelled any suspicion of theology as irrelevant to Christian witness today. Younger participants respected the experience of their elders and drew on their wisdom. It was moving to hear conversations cross generations and cultures. Moments of insight flashed as different perspectives added flavour and nuance to the teaching. We could all see that we are richer for the demands our diversity places on us. Archbishop Brown Turei’s story was a highlight for many. He spoke of his consistent faith over 65 years of ordained ministry and 90 years of unprecedented change. He also shared how that faith has been deeply rooted in cultural identity but not defined by it. A pilgrimage to Tarore's memorial formed the heart of our hui. Silence fell over the group as local elders recounted her life and death, and recalled the power of forgiveness that transformed and redeemed the world around her. Standing before Tarore’s grave, we were deeply affected by the story of her death,

her father Ngakuku’s decision to put aside revenge, then his call to trust in God’s justice and end the bloodshed. Tarore’s small Gospel of Luke carries a great story of this Church’s early history. Taken by one of the raiding party that killed her, Tarore’s little book became a source of reconciliation between enemies and led to many conversions. As we prepared to leave her memorial, a mist fell and a double rainbow arched across the sky, framing the distant Kaimai ranges and Wairere falls where Tarore was killed. We glimpsed the past connecting to the present and the Gospel reaching down the decades. This was our Anglican Church at its very best, said a teacher who was there. It revealed us as

• passionate about following Christ • confident in our diversity of language and culture • committed to strong relationships across diversity • empowered with expansive generosity of heart and mind Here indeed was Campos’ journey into the heart of God. Being with these young people was not just about hope for the future Church, but excitement for the Church as it is now.

ANGLICAN TAONGA

SPRING 2015

Anglican Taonga SPRING 2015

REGULAR 6 Youth: Kahu Bargh zooms in on godly conversations at July's hui 22 History John Stenhouse on how historians jettisoned the church 28 Spirituality Adrienne Thompson guides unfurling souls 38 Environment Phillip Donnell digs up an earthier way to heaven

ANGLICAN TAONGA

ANGLICAN TAONGA SPRING 2015

SPRING 2015

One that begins in creation, and takes centre-stage with Abraham. It's big picture stuff.

But they were also handed a challenge for Christians who live in privileged countries like New Zealand. Asian Christians need our help to tackle the human cost of poverty and exploitation in their region.

Not all smiles

Kiwi Anglicans in Jakarta L-R: Neill Ballantyne, Rev Anne Mills, Aleshia Lawson and Bishop Kito Pikaahu.

and sarongs

ne CCA delegate confronted Anne directly: “All those cheap things you buy in New Zealand," she said, "are made by women and children in my part of the world – who are no more than slaves." Maree Ayra, the young woman who

challenged Anne, works as women and families' development officer for her Anglican diocese in Bangladesh. "Buying Fair Trade items should not be an option for you,” she said. "It should be a decision about justice for your fellow human beings." The two met during the CCA Assembly, which draws members from 17 Asian ecumenical councils and more than 100 national churches across 21 countries.1 Every five years the Asian churches meet as CCA to renew ecumenical ties, report on regional political and economic shifts, and discern where the churches should head together.

Quote Beforehere... long, interfaith conversations won't be optional.

Same but different Bible CCA Assembly delegates met daily to study the Bible in groups across a spectrum of age, culture and church roles. For Anne Mills, it was a radical change from most Bible studies in New Zealand.

"It drove home to me that we usually read the Bible in individualised isolation; we only consider our own view,” she said. "When we read the Bible as a cultural majority, we are in danger of missing the point. "But when we read it with people from different cultures, including minority or persecuted communities, the scriptures open up in a whole new light." Hearing others respond to scripture reminded Anne how often Jesus' teaching addresses cultural and religious flashpoints between peoples. And how often he takes the side of the least in that equation.

A bigger world of faith CCA members related the challenge of living as faithful followers of Christ within pluralist societies. The majority of Asian Christians live in multifaith communities. And though they face persecution in some regions, most live alongside other faith groups in mutual

exploitation, begging, slavery and the harvesting of human organs." Much of the abuse happens, delegates heard, when people lose their homes and security under forced migration. Kiwi Anglican youth delegate Neill Ballantyne was struck by the scale of forced migration in Asia. "Moved by poverty, conflict or political instability, today more than 50 million people live as migrants within Asia," he said. Neill heard how migrants often have few rights that citizens in their new countries enjoy – which makes them vulnerable to abuse and neglect. "It was encouraging to see how the Asian churches are offering hospitality to migrants and advocating on their behalf," he said. Another Kiwi in Jakarta was CCA youth steward Aleshia Lawson, from the Diocese of Dunedin. Aleshia was moved by the indigenous people's struggle for self-determination in Indonesia. "I had never heard of West Papua before I heard (a delegate) talk about their struggle for independence," she said. "One of the saddest things the lady said was how they envied Papua New Guinea because the people were allowed to be Melanesian, to be themselves. "The Indonesians won't let West Papuans do that. "When she held up a map of Papua and showed us the line that separates West Papua from Papua New Guinea, I could see she was crying." Anne Mills was disturbed to learn

But as Lloyd Ashton has been finding out, the mission story has also shaped Chris Wright’s family in profound and personal ways.

Human trafficking is not just a problem "over there."

Anne Mills and Neill Ballantyne meet Indonesian locals at HKBP Serpong – a Batak Protestant Church with a congregation of 2000. HKBP Serpong members show off their church health clinic. Asian churches are stretched to meet the urgent needs in their region.

respect. Yet several churches expressed a shared concern about mission in their communities. "When some forms of evangelism are used to target believers from other faiths – without showing humility or respect – they can inflame religious tensions," they reported. Asian Christians try to ensure that social justice, respect and unity play a part in their relations with other faith communities. Anne predicts that multifaith relations will feature in our Pacific future, too. "It won't be long before these interfaith skills will not be optional, but necessary – for everyone's wellbeing," she said. "Without such conversations, we risk being bound by ignorance, fear or judgement of people from other religious backgrounds." Both CCA and its members strive to counter the many human rights violations in the region: forced migration, human trafficking, ill-treatment of refugees and displaced people, abuse of indigenous peoples and their homelands, threats to peace and security from political and military developments, climate change and the spread of HIV-AIDS. CCA Assembly reports showed how the churches tackle root causes, as well as supporting the victims. "Human trafficking is an issue we cannot ignore,"2 said Anne. "Wherever there is global migration, there too is the dark underbelly of human slavery. "We heard how people are used for commercial sexual exploitation or labour

Like father, like son

Note

hris Wright is the International Ministries Director of the Langham Partnership International – and he does take that 'international' bit seriously. Already this year he’s lectured, preached and attended meetings in Ethiopia, Cyprus (that was a gathering of messianic Jews and Palestinian believers) and the USA. Before Chris delivers key addresses here at Kings’ College in October, he’ll also have spent time in both Pakistan and India. And then, after our missions’ conference, he’ll teach on the Biblical theology of mission at the Arab Baptist theological seminary in Beirut, Lebanon. Where mission is concerned, the Rev Professor Dr Chris Wright is a world authority and a sought-after speaker. But when he was in Brazil this year, he was happy to follow a trail blazed by a

That was the first and last time I said ‘no’ to John Stott.

1. Member countries of CCA are Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, Cambodia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Laos, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand and Timor Leste. 2. The Anglican Communion is part of the Gobal Freedom Network set up against human trafficking. Its joint statement on modern day slavery is on the Anglican Centre in Rome's website: www.anglican centreinrome. org > Justice and Peace > Global Freedom Network > The Joint Declaration.

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bloke who’d had to quit school at 14. His dad, Joe. In 1926 Joe Wright set sail from Belfast to Brazil as a missionary evangelist. He travelled not by airliner, of course, but by ship. And then by mule, canoe and on foot. He lived and worked among the tribes in the Amazon. And this young man, who’d had no access to higher education, learned several tribal languages, long before outfits like Wycliffe Bible Translators or Missionary Aviation Fellowship had begun their work. Different generations. Vastly different technologies. But the same commission. That assignment has never changed. But in Chris Wright’s thinking, there are dimensions to it which faithful pioneers like Joe Wright could scarcely have dreamed about.

Joe Wright came back from Brazil to Belfast in 1930, married Chris’s mum, Maimie – and together they served three more stints in Brazil. They returned to Belfast for good after WWII, and Chris was born there in 1947. Chris had educational opportunities that Joe never had – and he made the most of them. He went to Cambridge University in the 1960s to study classics, and began work as a high school teacher in Belfast. But in his final year at Cambridge he took a productive detour – and picked up a first-class honours degree in theology. “I wasn’t expecting to do that,” Chris says. “But that outcome felt like God saying ‘I want you to pursue this. I want you to go further.’ So in 1971 Chris and his new wife Liz headed back to Cambridge, where Chris earnt a doctorate in Old Testament economic ethics. He was on course for a life in academia. But the more Chris studied, the more he felt drawn to teaching theology in a pastoral setting, like a Bible college or seminary. He also switched denominations at Cambridge. He’d grown up in an Irish Presbyterian Church "… listening to outstanding, expository Bible preaching.” In Cambridge, though, the Presbyterian Church was flat-lining. There was an evangelical Anglican church down the street which offered a warm welcome. So that settled that. The vicar there thrust Chris and Liz into preaching and leading, then asked Chris to consider ordained ministry. “We began to feel, yes, that could be a way ahead. If I wanted to teach theology to future pastors – it would be good to get pastoral experience.” Chris was ordained in 1977, and spent almost five years in pastoral ministry in Tonbridge, Kent. *

That parish work was a means to an end. An equipping for another task. But it was necessary training, Chris thought – and not even an invitation from the man described as “an architect of 20th century evangelicalism” could persuade him to take shortcuts. John Stott was an Anglican minister who, for many years, was the rector of All Souls Church, Langham Place in London. He was also at the forefront of a worldwide evangelical renaissance that culminated in the Lausanne Covenant of

1974, a significant manifesto in modern evangelical Christianity. John Stott had his antennae up, too. He was always scanning for evangelical upand-comers. "In 1978," says Chris, "the year after I finished my doctorate, I met John Stott at a conference. He took an interest in us, and asked if I would teach Old Testament in Singapore. “That was the first and last time I said ‘no’ to John Stott." While Chris was at Tonbridge, a friend pointed him towards Union Biblical Seminary (UBS) in Pune, India. They were looking for an Old Testament lecturer. So UBS invited Chris, and he resigned his pastoral post – but the family got stuck waiting for their Indian visas. That’s when Chris connected with All Nations Christian College, an international training centre for cross-cultural mission, near London. He spent a year teaching there, then taught at UBS from 1983-88, before returning to All Nations for a further 13 years – the last eight as Principal. During those five years in India, Chris learned to read the Bible in a different way. Not from a comfortable Western viewpoint, but related to other cultures and religions. “I began to think missionally about the Bible,” Chris says. “When I came back to All Nations I tried to develop that more strongly – and that’s what ended up in the books The Mission of God and The Mission of God’s People.” *

I began to think missionally about the Bible.

Absent

without leave

ANGLICAN TAONGA

Editor Julanne Clarke-Morris 786 Cumberland Street Otepoti – Dunedin 9016 Ph 03 477-1556 julanneclarkemorris@gmail.com Contributing Editor/ Web Editor Brian Thomas Ph 03 351 4404 bjthomas@orcon.net.nz Design Marcus Thomas Design info@marcusthomas.co.nz Distribution Aleshia Lawson Taonga Distribution Manager PO Box 6431, Dunedin 9059 taongadistribution@gmail.com Advertising Brian Watkins Ph 06 875-8488 021 072-9892 brian@grow.co.nz Media Officer Lloyd Ashton Ph 09 521-4439 021 348-470 mediaofficer@anglicanchurch.org.nz. Cover Parish nurse Jane Wulff spots her next house call on the road outside

When Chris McLeod was ordained as the first Aboriginal Bishop for South Australia in April, a contingent of Kiwi Anglicans flew to Adelaide for the celebration.

Since Reeves, influential historians have shunted the church into the sidings of New Zealand history. But there's no question of

KIA ORA, G’day and the Lord be with you

Not just archbishops and bishops – but also a gang from Te Waipounamu, which had hosted the 2013 Anglican Indigenous Network conference. Chris McLeod had been at that Christchurch conference,

so the Te Waipounamu crew were there to awhi him, to show their support for the mission Chris was about to begin.

Lloyd Ashton had met him in Christchurch, too – and as he’s been finding out, Bishop Chris McLeod, the Aboriginal Bishop for South Australia and Assistant Bishop in the Diocese of Adelaide, has a story to tell…

on August 16, 1975, Gough Whitlam handed over title of a portion of Wave Hill to the Gurindji. That was the first act of restitution to Aboriginal people in Australian history. So that’s why next August’s 50th anniversary of the Wave Hill Walk-off is a big deal among Aboriginal people.

"An unknown white man" For Bishop Chris McLeod though, the connections to Wave Hill go deeper still. Because Chris’s maternal grandmother was born there. Dolly Brown was a Gurindji woman who, in the terminology of times, was “a half-caste”. In 1913, the Northern Territory Protector of Aborigines resolved to deal with what he called “the half-caste problem” by rounding up hundreds of Aboriginal children from “native camps” and removing them to the Kahlin Compound and Half-Caste Home in Darwin. Dolly was among them. Chris doesn’t know exactly what happened to Dolly in Darwin. But he does know that when Dolly was 14, she gave birth to his mum Margaret. Margaret’s father, he says, “was an unknown white man.” And just as Dolly had been stolen from

her mother, so Margaret was stolen from hers. She was sent to The Bungalow, in Alice Springs. Photographs show the inmates there sleeping on the ground in corrugated-iron sheds, with a single blanket to ward off Central Australia’s winter nights. Dolly may have searched for her daughter. Chris does know Dolly and Margaret ended up in Alice at the same time, although they weren’t living together. And then, in about 1943, when Dolly was 25 or 26, she died in a TB epidemic, leaving Margaret, who was about 12, and her younger sister, who was perhaps four. The authorities uprooted Margaret again and took her to Adelaide, apparently convinced that she would assimilate better into white society there. She lived in an Anglican orphanage in Adelaide, and later boarded with Anglican families. She met Ron McLeod, Chris’ Dad, at a dance, they married, had two children, and made a home in Clovelly Park, an Adelaide suburb. Page 19

liberation from a dark

ANGLICAN TAONGA

Dr John Stenhouse is Associate Professor of History at the University of Otago. john.stenhouse@otago.ac.nz

The Anglican Diocese of Newcastle Australia has a number of Parishes needing the leadership of priests. The Parishes vary from coastal to city to rural areas. Some are full time appointments and some are part time.

After all, it’s only a short HOP across the ditch

ANGLICAN TAONGA SPRING 2015

SPRING 2015

MEMORIAL

Spiritual direction changes lives, she says, but seldom with any call for divine fireworks or grand epiphanies...

puritanical past. recasting colonial Christians as plaster saints. That is not the point. Our history could, however, reveal our faith communities in a fairer light – especially those that have spoken against the state or the status quo. Perhaps a useful question to ask is whether the antipuritan theory was wellfounded? It’s been 80 years since Curnow and his mates set out to free us from our puritan shackles. Surely, with New Zealand Christianity at its lowest ebb ever, we should be living in paradise? Has leaving the church behind made everything better? In many ways, especially for certain groups, New Zealand is a safer and more tolerant country today than its 1950s predecessor (for unwed mothers, or unmarried or LGBT people, for instance.) But is our country so much better for us all? For unemployed or low-waged workers? For families, children and young people at risk? For those whose beliefs and lifestyles differ significantly from the mainstream? Do New Zealanders love one another, including those who don’t see things our way, better than ever?

Keeping pace with You don't have to grit your teeth and mutter.

To find out more see our website www.newcastleanglican.org.au/our-diocese/positions-vacant Or email ministryenquiries@newcastleanglican.org.au

Jesus

have the best job in the world. I get to listen with people who are determined to pay attention to God: God discovered in the daily business of catching a bus, or sending an email, or drinking a flat white. God sought in deep joy, or weary longing, or stubborn resistance. How amazing is that? Here’s how it might unfold. Donna is in her 50s. She’s a wife, a Mum, a Grandma, and a life-long Christian. She’s led countless Bible studies, supported her clergy husband with every loyal bone in her body, served as a volunteer both in and out of church. The more I get to know her the more I respect how faithfully she follows Jesus. And yet. Donna began spiritual direction a few months ago. She was half afraid she was indulging in selfish introspection – that the time and money could be better spent elsewhere. But something inside her gave gentle permission. Actually – it’s OK. I can take time to reflect on my relationship with God. Donna talks about her family, her church, her desire to serve God. As she talks she reveals what she has been only halfaware of. She is so tired. Her life has been lived for God and for others but she’s finding little joy in it just now. Together we begin to explore Donna’s weariness and discouragement. "I know God loves us. I shouldn’t feel this way," she says. When I hear someone talking in generalities I sometimes stop them. I wonder if the words they are saying match up with the pictures they carry in their hearts – the emotions that possess their bodies. I might ask, ‘What would happen if you drew a picture of yourself and God? Where would each of you be?’ Sometimes the response to that question can be quite a revelation. Over time Donna came to discover that although she knew true things about God, she actually felt God as stern and distant. ‘God’ was driving her to work ever harder to please Him, but somehow she never could. No wonder she is tired and near despair. So what do I do as Donna makes these discoveries? Here’s what I love about spiritual direction. I don’t have to fix it. I don’t have to rescue her. I don’t have to remind her of the biblical truths she already knows. And Donna doesn’t have to pretend. She doesn’t have to grit her teeth and mutter "God said it; I believe it; that settles it!". Disappointment is allowed. Sadness is allowed. Emptiness is allowed.

It's not about two people, but three.

My training and experience have given me a variety of things to say or do that might be helpful to Donna. But the most helpful thing is to create and guard a safe space where she can take ‘a long, loving look at what is real.’ No further ‘doing’ required. As Donna becomes more deeply aware of the loneliness in her heart, she may need time to lament it for a while. Or she may be feeling betrayed by God, and full of anger. Perhaps she will remember experiences that warped her ability to trust God’s love. In seeing these clearly she may be able to lay aside the distortions. Perhaps she will be drawn to lines of scripture that will gradually seep into her soul and give her a different name for God, a different picture of God. Perhaps she’ll find a new way of prayer that nourishes her as her present prayer practice no longer does. Perhaps Jesus will come to her through her imagination and astonish her with an intimate word of love. Because – here’s the other thing I love in spiritual direction – it’s not about two people but three. The longer I practise it, the more confident I am that God is in this process, moving mysteriously, tenderly, lovingly – in Donna, in me, and in the space between us. I am committed to walking with Donna for as long as she wants me to. I’ll stay with her in her silence and darkness and help her notice how they feel. I’ll watch with her for the flickers of energy that say now it’s time to move – a small step or a giant bound forward. Perhaps one day she’ll have a brilliant sunrise. Just as likely, over weeks or months or even years, she’ll look around and see that, slowly and imperceptibly, everything has changed. She has come alive again. And I was allowed to companion her on this journey – which is awesome, in every meaning of the word. Adrienne Thompson is a spiritual director and professional supervisor in Wellington. She is involved in the Stillwaters Community and Wellington Central Baptist Church.

Pathway to

forgotten hope Commemorative historian George Davis believes there is more to Anzac Day than meets the eye. Its increasing popularity exposes vested interests, but also a spiritual void that most Kiwis don't even recognise is there.

t is not easy to commemorate the dead. Jacques Derrida's postmodern philosophy tackles part of what makes it so hard, in the double bind of giving a eulogy. He sees two impossible options: •

not speaking – and giving offence to the dead, their relatives and friends; or

•

speaking – while feeling sure our words will fail to adequately honour a life.

Derrida dwells on the power of speaking a dead person's name. As we voice the name, he says, we take part of that person into ourselves. We ingest it – literally making the person part of ourselves. Derrida's philosophy derives from reflection on his own friends' deaths – not for situations where mass deaths are remembered. Yet every casualty of war comes to ground in the loss of one man or woman's life. The recent trend of telling single life stories on Anzac Day drives home his point – that every death, every name is important. But on Anzac Day each year, fewer veterans or family members are there to remember the fallen in person. Most who attend have no direct relation to the names on the monuments.

Note: One of the things a spiritual director guarantees is confidentiality. So, “Donna” is not one person but a composite character, born out of many encounters with real people who have honoured me by sharing their real selves in spiritual direction.

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And yet this does not negate the memorial. Whereas memory is a cerebral object, a function of the brain, remembrance is the act of recall. It is a process that involves not only the personal memories of survivors, but the secondhand creations of the community. So even as the old soldiers' ranks dwindle, Anzac Day's public attraction remains – and continues to grow. There are economic, political and cultural drivers at play here. Tourism in the Gallipoli-Canakkale region is one; as is investment from governments of the nations involved. The centenary of the Anzac landing at Gallipoli has lifted Anzac Day's profile, along with school learning kits and TV documentaries, and new commemorative sites to observe the day. Yet beyond all that, Anzac Day may begin to fulfil an unmet spiritual need. Just as at funerals we empathise with the bereaved family and friends of the departed, so the Anzac Day crowds gather to observe and honour not only their own but others' sorrow. For some, the notes of the Last Post prompt an uncontrollable urge to weep. The sound has become an emotional trigger that sets off a grief response. But between the cannon's wake-up call and the final strains of the bugle, Anzac Day ceremonies are almost as quiet as the intense, private experience of mourning they were designed to bear. As sombre hymns and prayers focus on the dead, injured, physically and psychologically maimed from many conflicts, Anzac Day ceremonies count the cost of war. But far from being neutral, all these rituals take their substance from foundations in Christian theology and worship. Up to and on the first Anzac Day in 1916, New Zealand churches held services to pray for those at war, for the fallen and their grieving families. In April 1916, prayers at the weekly intercession service in Dunedin’s All Saints’ Church cited 60 people serving overseas by name. By 1919, there were 150 names each week, including 30 dead. It was the same almost everywhere round the country. At the close of WWI, our nation built

widespread public memorials to three ends: honouring those who had died, those who had served, and making certain we would never forget the horror of war. The message was clear: this was to be “the war to end all wars." Of course it wasn't to be. Derrida's concept of ingesting the name of the dead hints at a central Christian spiritual truth that is lost to many outside the church today. Each Anzac Day is a pilgrimage to a monumental place of grief where the community gathers to mourn – but also to go out renewed. For many it is the Good Friday they no longer have. Cultic symbols are present – the cenotaph (or in some cases the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior), the minute’s silence, the sound of guns, the flowers and messages, the religious representatives – most drawn from the symbols and practices of Christian faith. Anzac Day remembrance becomes a place of healing between the living and the dead, which adds another intimate connection with theology and Christian ritual. Each time we celebrate the Eucharist, we remember Christ’s life, death and resurrection. We are drawn into something greater than ourselves, and as we “ingest” Christ's heavenly food, we ingest that Spirit which motivates our lives. Communion renews our senses and the Spirit within us and leads to an understanding of the life we have in Christ – here and into eternity. Perhaps the Anzac Day crowds at dawn are reaching for the same. Is it too much of a leap to suggest that people today are realising that Anzac Day offers a pathway to understanding that, whatever befalls us in life, there is hope beyond death?

Every death, every name is important.

Dr George Davis is a specialist commemorations historian and an authority on Australian, New Zealand and Turkish war memorial observance. georgedavisnzer@gmail.com

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Poppies: Shutterstock Michael Baynes

Catholics, 'the Micks,’ he identified ‘a positive genius for vulgarity.’ As the 1930s Depression set in, young, left-leaning male writers and artists attacked the churches as pillars of a complacent, conservative, capitalist culture. Previously, newspaper editors and journalists such as Charles Marris, Alan Mulgan and Pat Lawlor had constituted an informal literary establishment, publishing the work of devout women writers such as Jessie Mackay, a Presbyterian, Ursula Bethell, an Anglican, and Eileen Duggan, a Catholic. The young nationalists jeered at this old guard, dismissing them as backwardlooking, British-oriented, conservative, churchy and puritanical. Now Allen Curnow, Frank Sargeson, Denis Glover and A.R.D. Fairburn took over,

Sinclair and Oliver were fair-minded enough to speak well of some missionaries and humanitarian Christians. Both acknowledged how Bishop Selwyn, Octavius Hadfield and Sir William Martin got race relations off to a more decent start by sticking up for Maori. By the 1980s, however, historian James Belich portrayed humanitarians and missionaries as scarcely less ethnocentric and prejudiced than hard line racists. Belich's general history of New Zealand declared post-1960s Christianity ‘doomed.’ Relying heavily on Belich, Michael King’s bestselling Penguin History of New Zealand, never mentioned Bishop Selwyn in 523 pages of text. So the man Reeves had praised as one of the colony's three greatest figures, disappeared almost without trace. The settler-critics that lambasted Bishop Selwyn as a Maori-loving religious fanatic would have been delighted.

Wave Hill

hris McLeod will take a few days off in August next year, to head up to Wave Hill. That’s in the Northern Territory, 600km south of Darwin – or about 3000km north by road from Adelaide, where Chris is based now. That’s a fair trip, in anybody’s language. So what’s the attraction? Well, next August is the 50th anniversary of the Wave Hill Walk-off. In August 1966 an Aboriginal stockman called Vincent Lingiari led 200 Gurindji stockmen, house servants and their families off the Wave Hill cattle station – into a strike that lasted eight years. The Gurindji people had called that territory home since The Dreamtime. But when the cattlemen came in 1883, things changed. The Gurindji soon found their waterholes fenced off, or fouled by cattle – which also trampled the plants they ate. Their hunting dogs were shot, along with the kangaroo they ate. So the Gurindji had no choice but to work on Wave Hill Station. In 1914 the British beef barons Vesteys bought Wave Hill – but their stockmen and servants lived in squalor. So Vincent Lingiari led them out. He campaigned throughout Australia – and

32 ANGLICAN TAONGA SPRING 2015

SPRING 2015

Spiritual director Adrienne Thompson is smitten by her chosen vocation – leading others into a closer walk with God.

They sought secular

Shutterstock Joy Brown

'a bunch of bores in stuffy drawers.'

n the last issue of Taonga I argued that historian William Pember Reeves began the trend that sidelined the churches from New Zealand history. While Reeves claimed he wrote objectively, ‘collecting and classifying facts' like a scientist, he gave short shrift to Christians – Maori and Pakeha – who got in the way of the state. In 1936, J.C. Beaglehole's short history of New Zealand took a more condescending tone toward the churches, when he saw fit to mention them at all. Raised in a Methodistturned-Unitarian family in Wellington, Beaglehole privately considered the Church of England ‘only fit for the dustbin’ and dismissed the Nonconformists— Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists and Methodists – as ‘half-witted.' In Roman

– from a dark puritanical past to a liberated secular present of ‘sunbathing and surfing, uninhibited striptease shows’ and ‘vast numbers of drinkers listening to singers or bands in suburban bars.’ W.H. Oliver's campaign was gentler, but an antipuritan lens darkened his account of the Prohibition movement.

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Anglican Taonga is published by General Synod 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.

Fanning the embers of heritage – a moment from Bishop Chris McLeod's ordination in Adelaide in April. (Brenton Edwards, StoriesWellTold).

They'd called that territory home since The Dreamtime.

SPIRITUALITY

determined to ‘stand upright here’ and write about New Zealand in kiwi style. They caricatured their predecessors as ‘a bunch of bores in stuffy drawers,’ and sneered at the ‘menstrual school’ of poetry. By the 1950s, Curnow and company had captured the literary limelight. Soon, three gifted young poet-historians – Robert M. Chapman, Keith Sinclair, and W.H. Oliver – began translating the antipuritanism of the literary nationalists into history and social science. In 1953, Chapman publicly blamed puritanism for almost all New Zealand's social evils, and the churches for bringing it here. Puritanism caused a litany of woes, he asserted: homicidal and suicidal violence, family dysfunction, marital disharmony, female frigidity, latent homosexuality, patriarchy, the ‘dominant mother’ (i.e. matriarchy), loneliness and lack of love. Chapman concluded with a sermonlike call for writers to emulate Joshua, God’s servant at Jericho, and liberate New Zealanders from their poisonous puritanical past. Keith Sinclair and W. H. Oliver obliged. In his stylish and popular A History of New Zealand (1959), Sinclair declared open season on ‘puritanical’ church people and movements. Whereas Reeves had described Otago’s Free Church leader, the Rev Thomas Burns as a ‘minister of sterling worth,’ Sinclair dispatched him as a ‘censorious old bigot.’ Missionary ideas were 'as destructive' of Maori society 'as bullets,’ he claimed. Sinclair's history was a story of salvation

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43 The Far Side Imogen de la Bere ponders murder versus maypoles

The long walk back to

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He was resolved to deal with 'the half-caste problem'.

August 16, 1975. Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam pouring sand through the hands of Vincent Lingiari, leader of the Wave Hill Walk-off, to commemorate the handing back of a portion of Wave Hill to the Gurindji people. (Mervyn Bishop).

By 1999 Chris Wright had been leading All Nations for more than a decade. But he had a hankering to write more, and to teach and minister overseas. “So I simply wrote to John Stott to ask what might be a next step. “As it happened, coincidentally or providentially, he was coming up towards his 80th birthday and thinking about the future for his own ministries. “He had set up the Evangelical Literature Trust (to get more good books into the hands of pastors and into seminary libraries in poorer parts of the world) and the Langham Trust (to help younger evangelical academics from the developing world to gain doctorates and return to teach in seminaries). Now he was planning a programme of training seminars in biblical preaching. “So he urged me to consider moving into a role that would bring those ministries into a more coherent international structure, and carry them forward.” And as International Ministries Director of Langham Partnership International, that’s exactly what Chris has been doing since 2001. At the same time, All Souls Langham Place invited Chris to be an honorary

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HISTORY

Historian John Stenhouse uncovers how the church went missing from kiwi history

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PEOPLE

Chris Wright, the main speaker at the October Missions' Conference in Auckland, likes to locate modern-day mission within a slightly broader framework.

Rev Anne Mills and the rest of the Kiwi Anglican delegation received a warm welcome to the Christian Conference of Asia (CCA) meeting in Jakarta, Indonesia this May.

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MISSION

ECUMENISM

Shutterstock ChameleonsEye

42 Film John Bluck watches miracles plucked from a war-zone orchard

Contents

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Features

Big vision for the little ones Diana Langdon sets lifelong disciples off to a flying start

Who's up the front? Carole Hughes embarks on a gender balance drive

Sorry, the meat's off Sarah Wilcox cares for creation veggie style

Fossil fuels falter Rod Oram searches the markets for climate saving changes

On fire for mission

Parenting preacher's kids

Chris Wright carries the flame of John Stott's global vision

John Cowan looks at ministry family foibles

Meet Chris McLeod: Australia's new Aboriginal Anglican bishop

Julanne Clarke-Morris checks out holistic Anglican nursing in Nelson

The long walk from Wave Hill

Proclaim the kingdom and heal

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

http://anglicantaonga.org.nz Page 3

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ECUMENISM

Rev Anne Mills and the rest of the Kiwi Anglican delegation received a warm welcome to the Christian Conference of Asia (CCA) meeting in Jakarta, Indonesia this May. But they were also handed a challenge for Christians who live in privileged countries like New Zealand. Asian Christians need our help to tackle the human cost of poverty and exploitation in their region.

Not all smiles

Quote Beforehere... long, interfaith conversations won't be optional.

Kiwi Anglicans in Jakarta L-R: Neill Ballantyne, Rev Anne Mills, Aleshia Lawson and Bishop Kito Pikaahu.

and sarongs challenged Anne, works as women and families' development officer for her Anglican diocese in Bangladesh. "Buying Fair Trade items should not be an option for you,” she said. "It should be a decision about justice for your fellow human beings." The two met during the CCA Assembly, which draws members from 17 Asian ecumenical councils and more than 100 national churches across 21 countries.1 Every five years the Asian churches meet as CCA to renew ecumenical ties, report on regional political and economic shifts, and discern where the churches should head together.

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Human trafficking is not just a problem "over there."

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human trafficking is not just a problem "over there." "New Zealand is a receiving country of human trafficking," she said. "Not only do some of the 'bargains' that we buy come at the cost of slavery, but the sex industry is also driven by consumers in Western countries. "The world has child sex slaves because we have created a market for them." The US State Office estimates 27 million people are enslaved worldwide – more than ever before in human history. With so many issues on the table, Anne believes our church must stay close to the CCA. "If we step back, we will be isolated from the conversations shaping our part of the world at a rapid rate," she said. "We ignore those conversations at our peril." Note 1. Member countries of CCA are Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, Cambodia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Laos, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand and Timor Leste. 2. The Anglican Communion is part of the Gobal Freedom Network set up against human trafficking. Its joint statement on modern day slavery is on the Anglican Centre in Rome's website: www.anglican centreinrome. org > Justice and Peace > Global Freedom Network > The Joint Declaration.

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YOUTH

Young theologians prepare the way Kahu Bargh and Michael Tamihere tuned in for Taonga at this July's Theological Hui – to see what new directions young Anglicans are forging together.

You don't have to be a professor to do theology.

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round 130 young Anglicans gathered in Cambridge for a hui on key texts from the Gospel of Luke. "The aim of the Theological Hui was for young and old to study theology together, share different perspectives, and then act on their new understanding," said organising group member Rosa Filoi. "We wanted people to ‘do theology’ themselves – or to at least give it a try.” Hosted by the Tikanga Toru Youth Commission (T3YC), the three-day hui for young leaders and theologians was held at St Peter’s School in Cambridge from 16-18 July. Delegates came from Tonga, Samoa, Fiji and across Aotearoa New Zealand. “You don’t have to be a professor to do theology, " T3 Youth Commissioner Michael Tamihere told the hui, "Each of us does theology every time we think about God and talk about God with others.”

A fine example to begin with was Tarore of Waharoa, a young Ngati Haua girl who had talked about God – and became a child evangelist. “We could have met and talked anywhere, but we wanted a place with depth and meaning. Tarore gave the hui its heart...” said Michael Tamihere. Local Ngati Haua kaumatua Mokoroa Gillett welcomed the hui to Tarore's burial site and explained how she had read her Gospel of Luke to her whanau, stirring hearts with the gospel. But before long, Tarore was killed in an enemy raid – as she slept. But instead of calling for reprisals over her death, her father Ngakuku preached forgiveness at her tangi, and urged his people to trust in God’s justice. Later, hearing words from the gospel he had stolen, Tarore's attacker was converted and reconciled with Tarore's father. "After visiting our saint's burial ground,

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Tarore gave the hui its heart.

Archdeacon Sepiuta Hala'api'api (front left) joins hui pilgrims at Tarore's memorial.

Rev Hohua Matauwhati (Ngāti Haua) welcomes delegates to Waharoa. Fellow kaumatua Mokoroa Gillett is to the left in black.

I realised the importance of valuing the gospel," said Patemosi Buekilagi, a hui delegate and youth worker from Suva's Holy Trinity Cathedral. "It was forgiveness that brought change for both Tarore's people and her attackers."

clearing obstacles to relationship.” Sam Frost, youth intern for the Diocese of Waiapu, could see how that might work. "In a low-trust congregation, fostering your own relationships is sometimes all you need to do," he said; "the high-trust relationships you have then encourage others to build on theirs. "The fruits of your relationship with God, and with other members of the congregation will result in stronger relationships between everyone, and together you will ‘never cease to bear fruit’.” In the second keynote, “Show The Way,” the Rev Ellen Bernstein and Rev Ngira Simmonds spoke about the road to Emmaus. “As a Church we’ve become drawn to huddling in the safety of the upper room,” said Ngira Simmonds, “but if we recognise ourselves on that Emmaus road we see

Three themes from Luke anchored the main hui sessions: Prepare the Way, Show the Way and Lead the Way. The Rev Don Tamihere and Rosa Filoi began with Luke 3:3-6, speaking on how to measure relationships with God and others. "Our pathways will be clearer," Rosa said, "if we can commit to loving and trusting relationships in Christ." “In Luke 3, God is asking us to make pathways straight," added Don, "that’s about

Archbishop Brown Turei shares his story, flanked by Archbishop Philip Richardson and Rev Sione Uluilakepa, Diocese of Polynesia Ministry Educator.

that as we journey together to the moment of breaking bread, we are revealed and completed together." Before the third session, a panel of theologians joined by Archbishops Brown Turei and Philip Richardson answered anonymous questions drawn from a box. "How did you come to faith and what makes you stick with it?" asked one. "Who are you discipling now?" asked another, while others wanted to know about testing times for the panellists' faith in God. In the third address, Suva's Dean Claude

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YOUTH

Kristin Cant leads delegates into the second chapter of Acts.

Fong Toy and Kirstin Cant presented “Lead The Way,” looking into the early church after Pentecost from Acts 2. Claude's concept of "ordinary church" struck a chord with Jacqui Paterson, chaplain at St Mary’s School in Taranaki. "For those of us grappling with what is often termed 'church decline', it was a reminder that small and/or ordinary can be special too. "Where does the implication ‘big-ness is better’ come from?" she asked. "If our communities focus on what they haven’t got ... then perhaps they are not seeing the precious gifts they have got." After each session, delegates put theology into action through workshops. Groups of delegates: • prepared plans of action to address social justice issues in their own communities

If we focus on what we haven't got, perhaps we won't see the precious gifts we have got.

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Above: Kinton Richards foregrounds his T3 study group. Top Right: Cruz Karauti-Fox's comment wins a wry smile from Tiana Tamihere.

• used poetry, art and the spoken word to communicate their understanding of God in new ways • learnt and performed a waiata-a-ringa (action song) composed especially for the hui. Preaching at the closing Eucharist, Archdeacon Sepiuta Hala’api’api drew attention to the three ‘p’s required to prepare the way. First, she said, is the path, which John the Baptist called to make straight. Second was the past, when the stranger on the Emmaus road interpreted all the scriptures concerning Jesus. And third was the privilege – of living as a messenger for Christ. “When you go back home you will face the same potholes ... the same waves and turbulence,” she said. “We pray that what will be different, will be your approach to the route.

“Like the two disciples who ran back to Jerusalem, we pray you will have a different mindset. Because the path God wants you to go back on is not new, but it is your responsibility to take something new.” T3YC events are usually designed for youth, but at the Theological Hui delegates ranged from age 15 to over 80. “It was amazing to see kaumatua sitting down and doing theology with rangatahi," said Michael Tamihere. “We took risks, we tried to create a broad tent with space for everybody – and I think it worked. "Now we need to hold on to the lessons, the conversations, the prayer – and build on the high-trust relationships we’ve started at this hui.” Kahu Bargh is a a Media Communications and Journalism graduate from the Diocese of Auckland, Michael Tamihere is Tikanga Toru Youth Commissioner. mank.shun@gmail.com, michael@t3.org.nz.

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Growing new disciples: Diana Langdon leads all-age worship at St John's Johnsonville.

PEOPLE

BIG vision for the little ones Diana Langdon is our new Strandz Enabler, the person charged with helping children’s and families’ ministries flourish throughout the Tikanga Pakeha dioceses in New Zealand. Diana grew up in South Africa and England, took her degree at one of the UK’s oldest colleges – then chose to live out a newfound faith in one of London’s grittiest neighbourhoods. So how come she’s fetched up here? Well, as Lloyd Ashton has been finding out, there’s a tale to be told about that…

icture this: Preteen kids, gathered at All Saint’s Peckham, in the south-east of London, calmly listening with Diana Langdon to some Bible stories. Captivated, they were. Revelling in their newfound identity as children of a loving Father, and not as streetwise urchins. Peace reigned in Peckham. Well, in this little pocket of it, anyway. Then it abruptly ended – as chicken heads started sailing in through a broken lattice window, fresh from the Rye Lane butchers, courtesy of some pranking teenagers. Pandemonium ensued, of course. But then there’s seldom a dull moment in Peckham: According to one blogger, Peckham is a dodgier proposition than Afghanistan and Somalia: "Every time we walk through

Peckham we expect to get offered drugs, murdered for drugs, searched for drugs or ground up into powder and used as drugs… If you have shoes that cost more than ten pounds in Peckham you are

They were from families with an almost genetic predisposition to dysfunction...

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I saw families change, as a result of their children

Prayers from the heart in Johnsonville. Great plans for small people: Diana connects with kids from All Saints' Hataitai.

considered to be a KING…” Ten years after that lively Bible study, Diana Langdon is a world away from Peckham. She’s our new Strandz Enabler, in fact, charged with helping children’s and families’ ministry to prosper throughout the Pakeha dioceses in New Zealand. But while you can take Diana out of Peckham, you’ll never be able to take Peckham out of Diana. Because that’s where she saw how potent children’s ministry can be. “The children I worked with,” she recalls, “were from families which had an almost genetic predisposition to dysfunction... “But I saw then that when you spent time with a child, and they grew in their faith, and they believed that God had great plans for them, and had a purpose for their life – they could break that cycle. I saw families change, as a result of their children. *

Diana was born in Cape Town – South Page 10

African mum, British dad – and her family moved to the UK, to a village an hour north of London, when Diana was 10. She first tasted New Zealand during her gap year OE – “I just loved it” – and then went on to King’s College in London to do her degree. In the UK, Diana’s family belonged to “traditional, high Anglican church. “I could recite every word of the liturgy. I knew when to bow. I knew when to spin around, and I knew when to sit and to stand. “But I had no clue,” she says, “who Jesus was. “And when I went to university I met these people who had a faith that was living. “One day, as I was walking with one of my friends, she said: ‘You know what? They’ll never understand – until they understand what grace is.’ “And I went: ‘You’re so right!’ “Then, because I actually had no idea what grace was, I got the book: ‘What’s so amazing about grace?’ “And I was really, completely bowled over to find out that there was nothing I could do to make God love me any more… “And nothing I could do would make him love me any the less.”

For Diana, that discovery – that encounter – changed everything. *

When she graduated, Diana signed on for a two-year internship in children and families ministry at All Saints’ Peckham. Each week, those interns studied some theology, and then they’d fan out into the community. They’d also run clubs six days a week – with games, creative projects and crafts – always anchored by some kind of Bible focus. “I could see,” says Diana, “that the dayto-day stuff of hanging out with children, getting messy, playing crazy games, and unpacking the Bible in a creative way – turning the words into something they could chew on – was transformative.” Towards the end of her internship, Diana’s pastoral mentor posed a question: “If you could do anything in the world,” he said, “what would it be?” Hmmm… memories of New Zealand sprang to her mind. “So I said: ‘I’d love to be doing what I’m doing now – working with children… but in New Zealand? Now that would be amazing…’ “He said: ‘Well, you know, pray big prayers.’ “I thought to myself: ‘This is the safest

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prayer to pray. Because it’s never going to happen.’ All Saints’ Peckham has close connections to the New Wine movement, which is big in the UK. So when Diana returned home that evening, she googled New Wine New Zealand. She found the leader of New Wine here was the Rev Paul Williamson (who was then the Vicar of All Saints Hataitai, and is now co-vicar at Holy Trinity Tauranga). So she emailed him, asking whether he knew of any kids and families’ ministry jobs in the land of the long white cloud. He came back to Diana overnight. He told her that jobs in children’s and families’ ministry in NZ were as scarce as hen’s teeth. Funny she should ask, though. Because All Saints Hataitai has been looking for a Children’s Ministry Team Leader for two years. So, Diana, would you please pack your bags now and become that person? Gobsmacked. That, more or less, sums up Diana’s reaction. She checked out other options – but kept circling back to that Hataitai one. “So I said: ‘Ok God, I want to go.’ But I don’t earn anything – so how am I going to get there?” A couple of days later, she found a Post-it note stuck to her computer with ‘800’ scrawled on it. She asked her vicar about that: “Someone’s given you money for a flight,” he said. “£800. But I don’t know why you’d need that?’ “I was like: ‘Oh, my goodness.’ ” *

So that’s why, in 2005, Diana came to New Zealand. Needless to say, kids’ ministry in Hataitai looks different to what it does in Peckham. But Diana revelled in it anyway. Almost five years later, though, at Easter 2010, Diana laid down her Hataitai assignment. “I loved the children’s work,” she explains. “But I had this growing desire to design resources for churches and kids – and to do it better than I was doing it.” So Diana spent 2011 doing a graphic arts diploma, and in 2012 began design work for churches throughout the lower

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Children at the centre: inter-generational worship at St John's Anglican Church, Johnsonville. Photos: Treasuring Hearts Photography www.treasuringhearts.com.

North Island. At the end of that year, she headed back to the UK to check in with her family. After all, she’d been away for almost seven years. But Diana continued to design for churches here – and that’s how she heard of the Strandz role. *

I thought: ‘This is the safest prayer to pray. Because it’s never going to happen.’

‘StraNdZ’ is not an acronym. It simply speaks of the gathering of the strands of children and families ministry for Tikanga Pakeha. “StraNdZ is a hub”, says Diana. “It’s a space, a gathering of people, resources and ideas, to set a vision for what kids’ and families ministry can look like here. “The thing that excites me about this job,” she says, “is that I have an overview. I get to share the stories. “It’s about connecting people. There’s some great stuff going on – so let’s not hold tightly to ‘our’ ministries and ideas. Let’s give them away, and encourage others.” Strandz also hosts gatherings of diocesan children and families workers twice a year “to share ideas, to envision. We bounce ideas off each other. We pray for each other. We learn from each other, and we go back to our regions knowing there’s bigger stuff going on.”

So what does Diana dream of achieving, then? “The Anglican Church is very good,” she says, “at being multi-generational. “We sometimes think that if we’ve got older people and babies in the same room we must be doing a great job. But that doesn’t mean they interact, or they’re working together. “We are very good at educating our kids. We’re very good at entertaining our kids. But it’s about recognising that kids are lifelong disciples.” “If at the end of five years, we were becoming a church which is seeing the fruits of being inter-generational, rather than multi-generational – then I’d be happy.” Page 11

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WOMEN

Gender stereotypes are still holding women back, says Archdeacon Carole Hughes. Unless we are vigilant, she warns, we'll default to the same old scripts that hand lesser roles to women. If we want a scene change for our daughters and granddaughters, then we need to rewrite the whole story.

We're not there yet...

rom birth we teach our children how to behave: what to value and what to judge as right or wrong. Every child learns what is "normal" from parents, community and culture. Those first messages prove very hard to shift. We can change behaviour in the short term, but humans soon revert to familiar patterns – unless new ones have taken their place. Different cultures give out different gender roles, but girls almost always

Quote here...places, In too many lower status exposes women to violence.

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receive lower status and power than boys. This March at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (UNCSW) in New York, I saw the gender mismatch pan out on a grand scale. I attended the two-week UN session alongside 8000 other women representing most nations and sectors of society. Inspiring women led business sessions, reported and took part in the events with impressive intellect, energy and passion for change. “The 21st century has got to be decisive," said Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, UN Women’s Executive Director. "The world must change, not just the women – 50/50 by 2030... This is not mission impossible!” "50/50" stands for UN Women's 2030 goal: equal gender representation on every local, national and global decision-making body. But from the perspective of 2015, that vision looks more than 15 years out of reach. For one, how can women lead when so many cannot find respect or safety in their homes? In too many places, women's lower status exposes them to violence.

Horror stories UN delegates shared shocking stories and phrases. Some Burmese believe that “only when bones are broken will she love you more." "Extramarital affairs are the woman's fault for not keeping him happy," is another popular saying. And if women "don't follow the rules [made by their husbands] then violence will happen." Such voices stop many women reporting domestic abuse. And if they do speak up, family loyalty may silence them yet again. That’s why Fiji's House of Sarah joined the Council for Anglican Women's Studies this year to host a three-tikanga hui in Auckland, entitled: That is not OK! Prevention of Violence is our Church’s Business. The hui called on our Church to: • Offer support and care for survivors of violence

• Train clergy to understand the issues and respond better • Implement the Anglican Communion's Safe Church Charter • Increase awareness of Title D, Canons 1 and 2, and

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Fiji’s House of Sarah lends voice to violence prevention at Vaughan Park this May. L-R : Fulori Vosatata, Rev Ann Drummond, Akanisi Tarabe, Rev Sereima Lomaloma, Kelera N Cokanasiga and Malinda Railala. Carole sets off for New York’s 9/11 memorial with fellow Anglicans (L-R): Rev Dalcy Dlamini (Swaziland) and Rev Gillian Moses (Australia).

It matters who is up front.

Communion colleagues fill a pew at the Church Centre UN. L-R: Rev Tatiana Ribeiro (Brazil), Dalcy Dlamini, Carole Hughes, Ann Skamp (IAWN Convenor, Australia) and Gillian Moses.

• Act as consistent advocates for violence prevention *

The New York Commission reviewed 20 years' work on women's rights since the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action was signed in 1995. Up to 189 government signatories to the Declaration reported on progress, but serious gaps remain. All nations could do more to dismantle negative stereotypes, prevent violence and appoint more women leaders. The last point is critical. Far fewer women than men can exercise leadership round the globe. And female leaders face impediments unknown to male colleagues.

Putting on the brakes Women leaders challenge our gender comfort zones, so they often attract judgemental jibes. Young women and girls take notice, and hesitate to enter the line of fire. They hold back from defending opinions, offering leadership, or dreaming of what they might achieve. They get the underlying message about leadership: male is default, female is exception. Even today, most assume men will take the reins – and praise them for it. And many

women can’t imagine themselves as leaders. Even when they rightfully earn top jobs – often against the odds – women are seldom lauded for long. "When a woman exercises directive leadership, it is called bossy," said Nive Sharat Chandran (YWCA Aotearoa NZ vicepresident) at the UNCSW. "Whereas for a man, [directive leadership] is powerful." But if girls see capable, successful women in business, education, family, church governance, worship and other public roles, then those limiting gender patterns start to wear thin. It matters who is up front. Mixed-gender leadership works, but a preponderance of men reinforces stereotypes. In New York this May, Nive Chandran also told UN delegates how New Zealand women were first to gain the vote but almost 120 years later still do not have 50% of seats in parliament (32% in 2015). Yet earlier this year, when one political writer suggested appointing more women to electoral seats and party lists, Kiwi media outlets reported the story as a political "man ban." Twenty years ago women led from the top four political posts in Aotearoa. Today, all four

positions are held by men. In 2010 New Zealand ranked fifth in gender equality, now it is thirteenth.

A first step In 2015 the Diocese of Polynesia's annual synod modelled one way to reset gender balance. Each parish was asked to send equal numbers of male and female reps to synod, and appointed a 50/50 group to General Synod. So the Diocese of Polynesia is well ahead of UN Women's 2030 target for 50/50 representation. But can we get the whole world there in 15 years? Let's at least start with our Church. How quickly can we move to 50/50 representation on every Anglican board, council and decision-making body in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia? The Ven Carole Hughes is Archdeacon of Auckland, Council for Anglican Women’s Studies Convenor and International Anglican Women's Network link for this Church. carole@auckanglican.org.nz

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MISSION

Chris Wright, the main speaker at the October Missions' Conference in Auckland, likes to locate modern-day mission within a slightly broader framework. One that begins in creation, and takes centre-stage with Abraham. It's big picture stuff. But as Lloyd Ashton has been finding out, the mission story has also shaped Chris Wright’s family in profound and personal ways.

Like father, like son

That was the first and last time I said ‘no’ to John Stott.

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I began to think missionally about the Bible.

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PEOPLE

curate and to join their preaching staff. So he and Liz moved to London, to a home close to John Stott’s apartment. They kept in close contact with him until he died in July 2011. *

That's a snapshot of Chris's journey. So what’s changed for him along the way? How is today’s mission different from his dad’s day? In one sense, not at all. “The calling on God’s people to participate with God in what He’s doing in the world is always at hand.” But the way that commission is outworked… that has to evolve, says Chris, as world needs and realities change. “In John Stott’s era, at the first Lausanne conference of 1974, the big change was that Evangelicals recognized the need to hold evangelism and social engagement together. “To see them as partners, not as competitors or rivals, but as necessary parts of Christian mission.” There are still some, says Chris, particularly in the USA, who maintain that the word ‘mission’ should be used only for evangelism, preaching and teaching. “In my opinion, though, that issue has been fairly well theologically settled. The majority of Evangelicals now accept that mission is intrinsically holistic, and must include deeds as well as words. “The more recent development is the recognition1 by most Evangelicals that creation care and the ecological dimension have a legitimate place within the world of Christian mission.” That recognition comes partly because of the urgency of the issue – people confronting the realities of climate change, destruction of environments and loss of

The marks of mission are not like marbles that you pick out of a bag.

Chris lines up with Nigerian church leaders at a Langham Preaching Seminar in Jos, Nigeria. L-R: Gideon Para-Malam, Femi Adeleye, Emmanuel Oladipo and Pandang Yamsat and Chris Wright.

species. But that's not the only reason. “We should be involved”, says Chris, “for theological reasons. It’s quite clearly there in the Bible – because Jesus says in the Great Commission that ‘all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me’. “Heaven and earth means the whole creation. The earth itself belongs to Christ by right of creation, redemption and inheritance, as Paul says in Colossians 1:15-20. “We cannot separate our love for Jesus Christ as our Lord from how we think and act in relation to his property – the earth that belongs to him. “Hence the calling of some people, not just to evangelize, not just to be involved in medical work or teaching, but to be involved (like A Rocha) in specific acts of creation care, and environmental science and biology, and a proper scientific approach to creation. That needs to be recognized as a legitimate part of the integrated nature of Christian mission.” Chris also thinks that US evangelical climate change deniers have got it wrong. “I don’t think their denial comes from evangelicalism. It comes, in part, from a certain kind of eschatology, a theology of the obliteration of the planet, which is anchored on what I believe is a wrong reading of one or two verses in 2 Peter. “Their position is very sad, very wrong, and in the long term, very destructive.” *

Chris’s conviction about the holistic nature of mission means he’s an enthusiastic advocate of the Five Marks of Mission Page 16

identified at ACC6 in 1984. “Those five marks of mission – evangelism, teaching and discipling, works of compassion and mercy, seeking justice, and care of creation – are what I believe. “All five need to be integrated. They’re not like marbles that you pick out of a bag, depending on what colour you like. “They are an integration of missional activity around the gospel, the whole Biblical story of what God has done to save the whole creation. “In other words, everything in heaven and earth – including people from every language and nation and tribe. So the integration of evangelism and social action and creation care around the biblical narrative of the gospel is where I see a robust mission theology. “That’s why I dislike the question: ‘Which is more important? Evangelism or saving trees?’ “It’s the wrong question. It’s trying to make a taxonomy out of something where God says – ‘Do all of this. As a whole church, be committed to all of these things, because Jesus is Lord of all creation.’ “To see all our mission integrated around a biblical gospel narrative… that’s what I hope to help people in Auckland to see. So: Joe Wright, Chris Wright. Different generations, different understandings. But each playing parts in a story whose sweep is so much grander than any of us. 1. See: the third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in Cape Town in October 2010: http:// www.lausanne.org/gatherings/congress/capetown-2010-3

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OVERSEAS AID

Gillian Southey from Christian World Service shares the story of Amach and her siblings, a tale repeated a million times over for refugees round the world.

Staying alive A mach has no trouble with her geography homework. She can name the regions of Uganda with ease. Nowadays the 13-year-old, who not long ago fled her home in South Sudan, is enjoying the chance to study after all she has been through. Her smile hides a tragic story. “We were sleeping when the shooting started,” she says. “My father told us to run away. We saw people with guns and joined others running. A man with a motorboat helped us across the river.” With her three siblings, she walked to northern Uganda – leaving behind the family home, cattle, 13 goats and her father. Her dad was killed in the fighting that still devastates much of the country. Only now able to talk about what happened, Amach shares how much she misses the goats – her responsibility. Fortunately, Amach has a foster aunt who looks out for her. And the ACT Alliance (Action by Churches Together) development agency, supported by Christian World Service, has built a hut for Amach’s orphaned family. ACT also provides two meals of porridge each day, offers psychosocial support and runs the school that the

children attend. Sudan’s growing numbers of refugees means hundreds of thousands of children like Amach face a precarious future. Of South Sudan’s more than two million displaced people – both internally and in neighbouring countries – half are children. Many have missed out on schooling for most of their lives and their prospects are not great. According to the United Nations, only 27% of South Sudan’s population are literate, and of that number only 16% are women. Without education, they are more likely to marry very young or join the fighting. As South Sudan marks its fourth anniversary of independence, the United Nations reports its humanitarian needs are higher than ever – 4.6 million people face a severe food shortage this year. Countries like Uganda have opened their borders to tens of thousands of uprooted people. New Zealand, on the other hand, has kept the annual quota at only 750 new refugees, plus 300 more under the family reunification scheme. That ranks New Zealand 90th in the world for per capita assistance to refugees – not a fair share, says CWS. At the same time, the only way to stop

Amach takes a break from study at her foster aunt's house.

the flow of economic migrants and refugees is to fund overseas initiatives that prioritise communities and their local economy. CWS supports development that does both. So to help refugees like Amach, you can take action: 1. Contact your MP and ask them to push for an increase in Aotearoa New Zealand’s refugee quota. 2. Donate to CWS Gifted at http://gift.org.nz/ to support girls’ education in South Sudan. Gillian Southey is Communications Coordinator for Christian World Service. gillian.southey@cws.org.nz

We were sleeping when the shooting started.

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PEOPLE

The long walk back to Fanning the embers of heritage – a moment from Bishop Chris McLeod's ordination in Adelaide in April. (Brenton Edwards, StoriesWellTold).

Wave Hill When Chris McLeod was ordained as the first Aboriginal Bishop for South Australia in April, a contingent of Kiwi Anglicans flew to Adelaide for the celebration.

They'd called that territory home since The Dreamtime.

Not just archbishops and bishops – but also a gang from Te Waipounamu, which had hosted the 2013 Anglican Indigenous Network conference. Chris McLeod had been at that Christchurch conference,

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so the Te Waipounamu crew were there to awhi him, to show their support for the mission Chris was about to begin.

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Beside the Todd River, Alice Springs, circa 1943. Chris McLeod’s grandmother Priscilla ‘Dolly’ Brown is at left, his mum Margaret McLeod is on the right, and his aunt Sylvia Burgess, Margaret’s baby sister, is in the middle. This is the only photo Chris has of his grandmother – Dolly died of TB soon after this shot was taken. August 16, 1975. Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam pouring sand through the hands of Vincent Lingiari, leader of the Wave Hill Walk-off, to commemorate the handing back of a portion of Wave Hill to the Gurindji people. (Mervyn Bishop).

He was resolved to deal with 'the half-caste problem'.

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PEOPLE

Chris McLeod, the first Aboriginal Bishop for South Australia.

Marriage, children and home life didn’t heal Margaret from the traumas she’d known, though. “My mother,” says Chris, “was very mistrustful. She suffered greatly through depression. And when her own two children came along, that just deepened the problem. “I think she lived in fear that we might be removed from her. There was this fear of white people, and fear that somebody was going to do something terrible to us. “My mother could be light-hearted and joyful. But there was always this elephant in the room. Mum didn’t say much about

Mum never could leave her history behind.

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the institutions that she'd been moved to. They were very painful memories for her.” Ron McLeod, a plumber, wasn’t equipped to help, Chris thinks. “Dad was a practical man of this time. We’re talking the 1950s and 1960s, and his view was that ‘there’s not much you can do about it’ so you have to ‘leave it behind and move ahead.’ “But mum never could leave her history behind.” Margaret McLeod died in 2006 – and Ron died a few weeks before Chris was ordained bishop. *

“Looking back now,” says Chris, “I can see that my sister and I grew up feeling very unsure about ourselves, and about our place in the world. “I remember feeling like somebody could take all this away very easily. That nothing good could come. “A few years back, a report into the Stolen Generations called Bringing them Home came out. One of the people interviewed said ‘they never felt like they fitted’. “When I read that, I thought: I know that feeling.” It was a feeling, Chris says, of being caught between two worlds – and belonging to neither.

“In my late teen years and early 20s I thought: ‘I can’t ignore this. Here’s something that’s shaped this family. Shaped me, shaped my sister, shaped my mother – and I have to embrace it.’ “So I would talk with my mother about what memories she could share with me – that she was willing to share with me. “I’d also talk with my cousins in Melbourne – my mother’s sister’s children – who were going through a similar process. “I’ve also been talking to other people who are the sons or daughters of the Stolen Generations and hearing their own journeys of self-discovery. “I really feel that was the beginning of my healing process.”

The call Chris’ mum, Margaret, “was always a faithful Anglican,” he says, and so was Dolly. Chris drifted away from church as a teenager but came back to faith when he met Susan, who was a Baptist. They married, at 20, moved into their own home – and when they visited their local Anglican Church, says Chris, “that was it for me. “I walked in and thought: ‘I’ve come home’.”

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I've got my work cut out for me, I think. Ordination day, April 11 2015. (Brenton Edwards, StoriesWellTold). Vincent Lingiari beside a monument erected to commemorate the handing back of a portion of Wave Hill to the Gurindji nation in 1975. This was the first act of restitution to Aboriginal people in Australian history. Photo source: A6135, K9/9/75/7, National Archives of Australia.

Chris was 21 then. Two years later, he was at Adelaide’s St Barnabas Theological College. The three years that Chris spent there marked another stage in his quest for identity. Not only did he have to explore whether he had a ‘call’; he also had to wrestle with who it was that God might be calling: “Who is me? “Who is this Chris McLeod who thinks he is being called?”

Few – and far between When Chris was priested in 1991 he was 27 – and only the third Aboriginal person to be ordained in the Diocese of Adelaide's 165-year history. There’s been no more since then, either. He’s served in three parishes in the diocese, and been the Vicar of St Jude’s, Brighton for the last 11 years. There haven’t been many Aboriginal folk in those parishes. But wherever Chris has served, he’s looked to minister to Aboriginal people. For 20 years, for example, he’s supported the National Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander Anglican Council, and he has represented NATSIAC at the Anglican Indigenous Network. Chris has long been a prison chaplain, too, and had lots of opportunities there.

Aboriginal people make up just 3 percent of the Australian population – but 28 percent of the prison population. He’s dealt with suicides, too. Australia’s first people are taking their own lives at the world’s highest rates – 1 in 12 Aboriginal deaths are suicides – and every year those stats keep getting worse. *

Archbishop Jeffrey Driver – the Archbishop of Adelaide and Metropolitan of South Australia – appointed Chris not only to meet a need in South Australia, but to fill a gap in episcopal leadership across the whole Australian church, which has no other Aboriginal bishops. Anglicare South Australia – which has about 60 Aboriginal staff – is helping bankroll Chris’s episcopal ministry. He’ll be supporting their team, yes – but they’re also backing him to have a bigger presence, both within the diocese and beyond. “Part of this,” says Chris, “is to explore where we might develop ministries with Aboriginal people. I see this as an advocacy role, too – to be an Aboriginal voice within a predominantly nonAboriginal church.” “With me around, I’m hoping that Aboriginal people who’ve had Anglican connections in the past will come to say: ‘Okay: I think I can be a part of this church

again.’ “For those Aboriginal people who aren’t Christian, I’d like to help them see that the good news of Jesus is compatible with a celebration of Aboriginal identity. “I hope to transcend Anglican boundaries, too – I want to encourage Aboriginal pastors and ministries, wherever they may be. “I also hope I’ll be a strong advocate for justice for all Aboriginal people. “I've got my work cut out for me, I think.” *

And those questions that Chris wrestled with as a younger man? The ones about his place in the world? Well, he’s not now expecting perfect answers to those this side of heaven. “I’m still resolving the issues around identity – and probably always will be,” he says. “However, I am more comfortable now with the journey. That wonderful line from T.S Eliot captures something of this for me: “We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.” Page 21

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HISTORY

Historian John Stenhouse uncovers how the church went missing from kiwi history

Shutterstock ChameleonsEye

Absent

without leave

'a bunch of bores in stuffy drawers.'

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Since Reeves, influential historians have shunted the church into the sidings of New Zealand history. But there's no question of

KIA ORA, G’day and the Lord be with you

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They sought secular liberation from a dark puritanical past. recasting colonial Christians as plaster saints. That is not the point. Our history could, however, reveal our faith communities in a fairer light – especially those that have spoken against the state or the status quo. Perhaps a useful question to ask is whether the antipuritan theory was wellfounded? It’s been 80 years since Curnow and his mates set out to free us from our puritan shackles. Surely, with New Zealand Christianity at its lowest ebb ever, we should be living in paradise? Has leaving the church behind made everything better? In many ways, especially for certain groups, New Zealand is a safer and more tolerant country today than its 1950s predecessor (for unwed mothers, or unmarried or LGBT people, for instance.) But is our country so much better for us all? For unemployed or low-waged workers? For families, children and young people at risk? For those whose beliefs and lifestyles differ significantly from the mainstream? Do New Zealanders love one another, including those who don’t see things our way, better than ever? Dr John Stenhouse is Associate Professor of History at the University of Otago. john.stenhouse@otago.ac.nz

After all, it’s only a short HOP across the ditch To find out more see our website www.newcastleanglican.org.au/our-diocese/positions-vacant Or email ministryenquiries@newcastleanglican.org.au

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LIFESTYLE

Sorry, the meat’s off Sarah Wilcox had no idea of the carbon toll for each steak we throw on the barbeque. Nor did she guess its potential for human harm. As Christians, we get no order from Scripture to take the veggie option, so most of us don't give it much thought.

Shutterstock Serhiy Shullye

But with creation and our bodies under threat – is it time for another look?

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t began with a question to Jon, my future son in law: “Are there health benefits to being vegetarian or vegan?” Jon has an enquiring mind and degrees in biotechnology and wine science. The next evening, he played me a video called Forks over Knives1 – and I knew my diet would have to change. It was exciting. The video summarises a major diet and health study in China beginning in the 1970s. The premier of China (himself dying of cancer) sent 650,000 workers to survey 880 million people across the country. They recorded the mortality rates for 48 diseases, including heart disease and 12 cancers. “It was the most ambitious biomedical research project ever undertaken,” writes Dr Colin Campbell, author of The China Study2, the book behind the video. The result was a ‘cancer atlas’ showing where certain types of cancer were high or

non-existent. Dr Campbell then rigorously mapped the atlas on to people's dietary patterns across the regions. “The study produced 8000 statistically significant associations between lifestyle, diet and disease... We had a study that was unmatched in comprehensiveness, quality and uniqueness,” said Dr Campbell. For example, people in economically developed areas ate more animal protein, and were more likely to get cancer, diabetes and heart disease. Those in poorer areas suffered from many diseases, including pneumonia and TB, which we no longer battle in Aotearoa New Zealand. Dr Campbell’s readable book tells the whole story, and is backed up by a mountain of reputable studies. For years I had gradually reduced the meat I cooked for the family, hoping they wouldn’t notice.

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MUM AND DAD GIVE IT A GO Sarah Wilcox’s parents, Carolyn and Mike Parker, gave up meat after reading The China Study. Carolyn: “(The book) suggested trying the diet for a month, and we thought we could do that.

Above: The whanau celebrates with rice, malai kofta and salad. Jon Musther, who got it all started, looks on from the back left. Right: Mike and Carolyn Parker.

"After that we didn’t want to go back to our old way of eating.

Facing page: Sarah checks out the veggie treats in Lower Hutt’s riverbank market.

Everything has to change.

“I bought the most fantastic vegetarian cookbook – a springboard to get me into a new kind of thinking ...”

So ditching meat will lighten my carbon footprint. If you take your impact on the planet seriously, then eating less – or giving up meat – is a logical next step. Especially if you already compost, recycle and minimise car and air travel. Cutting meat from your diet also rejects the commercial pressure to consume, and subverts the “have more because you can” attitude. It feels good to be happy with less. And that sits well with my faith. Greg Boyd, theologian, pastor, author and campaigner for non-violence, says: “[Being vegetarian] isn’t a doctrine, but it’s consistent with the principles of the gospel… I didn’t create any life, therefore it’s not mine to take. "Since making this commitment I’ve seen a dimension of beauty in things that I didn’t used to see, which for me confirms the rightness of the decision.”4

Mike: “We’ve hardly noticed the difference in our life, except for the [lack of] flies, smells and bills. It’s easy…you can find other things to eat and a lot are more tasty. "It’s not just having steak, chips and peas and leaving out the steak – everything has to change.” Carolyn: “I was a bit concer ned about nutrition, but we’ve had our blood checked and our iron is good. We have a clean bill of health. “Really, the change is revolutionary. I feel quite proud of what we’ve done.”

2. The China Study: T. Colin Campbell, PhD and Thomas M. Campbell MD 3. United Nations report: Tackling climate change through livestock http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3437e/i3437e00. htm 4. Nomad podcast 61.

Sarah Wilcox is a freelance science writer and belongs to Wellington Cathedral of St Paul and Wellington Central Baptist Church. Notes 1. Forks Over Knives film: Free download from forksoverknives.com

Shutterstock Africa Studio

I ignored the subtle pressure that “a meal isn’t a meal without meat.” Certain family members were known to search a vegetarian plate for meat hidden under a lettuce leaf! For me, the China Study is not just another food fad. Instead, it offers credible, scientifically verifiable dietary advice: if you want lifelong health, eat a whole-food, plant-based diet. So I gave up meat and took up plants. Wonderful, wonderful plants. Plants that make almonds, oats, purple carrots, asparagus, sourdough bread, peaches, coffee and dark chocolate. That was more than a year ago. I love it and I’d never go back. Some of the family still eat meat – but much less often – and they have to cook it themselves. It’s a fresh, light way to eat, with no more ‘food baby’ from eating too much. I’m not vegan though – I dislike the word, with its connotations of exclusivity and extremism. But I do ask for vegan food if I eat out. I still have cow’s milk in my tea, fish caught by friends, and cake when it's rude to refuse, but that’s about it for animal food. When people ask about my change in diet, I give three reasons: health, carbon footprint and the ethics of using animals for my food. A recent United Nations report says that growing 23 grams of beef (a single meatball) emits the same amount of carbon as burning a litre of petrol3. That means you could feed the family a steak meal or drive from Hamilton to Wellington – for the same carbon emissions.

“We have some fish and pulses, but mostly a lot more interesting vegetables. If we’re eating out, we just say we don’t have meat, and people respect that.

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ENVIRONMENT

Churches weigh up

climate cost

Rod Oram sees hopeful signs that churches are considering Creation in their decision-making. With fossil fuel prices in decline, and the divestment movement rising, the church may have chosen the right side – in financial, as well as ethical terms.

3 August 2015: Archbishop of Polynesia, the Most Rev Dr Winston Halapua, celebrates an Oceanic Eucharist on the sea-embattled shores of Pangaimotu Island in Tonga. Flanking him is preacher the Most Rev Dr John Sentamu, Archbishop of York, who visited the Diocese of Polynesia last month to promote international awareness of climate change.

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round the world today, clean energy is gaining significant economic and political ground over fossil fuels. A big shift has happened in the year since General Synod/te Hinota Whanui voted to divest (where practical) from fossil fuel companies by May 2016. Globally, churches are playing their part. The Church of England, for example, has begun its divestment journey, while the Archbishop of Canterbury – joined by other faith leaders – has urged action in the Lambeth Declaration 2015 on Climate Change. It sets higher standards for faith communities' care of creation, calling on them to: • recognise the urgency of moving to a low-carbon economy

• work to mitigate the effects of climate change on the poorest and most vulnerable communities, and • redouble efforts to reduce emissions that result from "our own institutional and individual activities." This August, Archbishops of Polynesia and York joined forces to cement climate change issues on the global Anglican agenda – with their witness from Polynesia's endangered shores. Pope Francis’ encyclical, 'Laudato Si’ – On Care of our Common Home,' offers another major church voice in the leadup to climate change negotiations in Paris this December. If the nations can agree in Paris, then binding targets to reduce greenhouse gas will offer a dramatic new start – after

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decades of deadlock. The Pope’s encyclical marries theology, science and economics in a clear, compelling (and in parts, beautiful) call for radically healthier relationships between humankind and the rest of God’s creation.1 Pope Francis' encyclical criticises throw-away culture, the sinful drive for profit and disregard for the earth. He mourns the climate change burden imposed on the poor through natural disasters, drought and in threatened coastal regions. And he writes scathingly about urban green spaces that host the rich, while nearby the city dumps toxic waste on the thresholds of the poor. Perhaps the most radical call in Laudato Si' is for a new global economic order, which would count the huge unpaid ecological debts owed by the world's wealthiest, most resource-greedy countries – on balance against majority world's development debts. *

Scientific projections show that to even halt temperature change to a 2degC rise would take a rapid switch to clean energy. That is why in June 2015, leaders of the world's seven largest economies committed to ending all carbon emissions by 2100. Meanwhile, we'll still need fossil fuels, to use as sparingly as we can. However, the real problem lies with fossil fuel companies. Their balance sheets are filled with untapped resources that, for the planet's sake, can never be burnt. Yet still they reinvest profits into the quest for more. The divestment movement sends a strong signal to those companies: the economic, environmental and financial risks of fossil fuel exploration are simply too great. In 2014 a large investors’ group (including the NZ Superannuation Fund) hired a global investment strategist, Mercer, to research risk management for fossil fuel investments. Mercer forecast that renewable energy will deliver a 6.6%-10.1% improvement in annual investment returns (over expected median returns) for the next 35 years. In contrast, oil investors will see their returns

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Students from St Andrew’s High School (Tonga) join with Anglican youth to carry the gospel bearer on a sea of shoulders. Later Abp John and Margaret Sentamu joined Tonga’s acting Prime Minister Hon. Siaosi Sovaleni to plant mangrove seedlings in the island’s most threatened coastal zone.

lose 4% off the expected annual median rate, and for coal that figure will be down 5.4%-6.6%. There are already dramatic examples; shares in Peabody, the largest US coal miner, collapsed from US$70 to US$2.50 in three years. Coal prices plummeted, too, as US natural gas flooded the power market, causing electricity generation plants to switch from coal to gas. US natural gas prices have fallen 80% in the last six years; world coal prices are down 70% in three years; and global oil prices have almost halved in the past year. Some expected economic and technological factors account for these dramatic drops – such as lower oil industry capital spending this year. But others are surprising, such as the unabated shift to renewable energy. Coal consumption is falling in China, for example, though its economy still grows by round 7% a year. Last year, more wind-powered electricity generation was newly installed around the world than coal-powered electricity. These developments all drive the divestment movement forward.2 But people's initiatives also aid the shift from fossil fuels. The website gofossilfree. org lists 281 divestors and local groups

alongside the large international bodies and governments. Almost a quarter of these new ethical investors are faith-based. So how do you get involved? In Auckland, our Diocesan Climate Change Action Group spearheads Anglican efforts. Reports on its activities, divestment guidelines and theological reflections are available at http://cherished-earth.org.nz On a larger scale, this Church's General Synod Standing Committee has appointed a Small Working Group (SWG) to monitor divestment across our three-tikanga church. Three months ago, the SWG surveyed church funds and saw encouraging steps toward divestment. Next, the SWG will assess the feasibility of reinvesting church money removed from fossil fuels into conservation or ecodiversity projects in Aotearoa New Zealand and Polynesia. Rod Oram is a finance and economics journalist and a member of the Auckland Diocesan Climate Change Action Group and General Synod's Climate Change SWG. rod.oram@nz2050.com Notes 1. The text of Laudato Si' is available at bit.ly/PopeSustainability. 2. A comprehensive list of institutions, churches, cities and other organisations that have committed to divesting is available at http://gofossilfree.org/ commitments

Children

– the heart of all we do. 10 Beatty Street, Otahuhu 1062 | p: 09 276 3729 | e: info@atwc.org.nz | www.atwc.org.nz Page 27

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SPIRITUALITY

Spiritual director Adrienne Thompson is smitten by her chosen vocation â&#x20AC;&#x201C; leading others into a closer walk with God. Spiritual direction changes lives, she says, but seldom with any call for divine fireworks or grand epiphanies...

Keeping pace with You don't have to grit your teeth and mutter.

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Jesus

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Shutterstock Joy Brown

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It's not about two people, but three.

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CLERGY KIDS

John Cowan unpacks what it's like to grow up with parents fixed on the kingdom of God and working as pillars of the church.

Weird, worried

n my years as a minister I sometimes worried if the homes of the ‘professionally godly’ actually reflected the abundant life of the gospel. When we preached one message but our lives declared another, the contradiction compromised our vocation.

Beware of asking which comes first: your vocation or your family?

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or wonderful

For a long time I informally surveyed people raised as PKs – that is, Preachers’ Kids (or Parsons’, Pastors’ or Priests’ Kids). My method is hardly scientific: when I meet PKs, I ask what it was like growing up in a manse or vicarage. Here's what some have told me: • “I grew up knowing the reason everything happens is because God says so. He was the reason we shifted every couple of years, the reason I went to 12 schools. I knew God talked to Dad and that God listened to Dad’s prayers. But I wondered, when is he going to listen to mine?”

wrong by forcing the gospel down our throats.” • “I was able to overhear all the problems that the church was having, so it made me a bit cynical. But I definitely got my sense of caring and social justice from my parents.” Yes, most PKs complained. But they also gave their parents a big tick. They grew up feeling loved and appreciating the value of their parents’ work. Many saw it as an advantage to grow up with passion-led parents – who both parented and ministered well. So good news for parents with a vocation: ministry can form a wonderful environment to raise a family. But there are pressures on children to keep in mind.

• “Every Sunday school teacher and youth group leader assumes that a PK will get all their spiritual needs met at home. In fact, I got very little input from anyone. I find, even as an adult, it is unusual for a PK to get a pastoral visit.”

Pressure to perform

• “They did right by modelling godliness and praying for us every day. They did

Many PKs felt they were on show. Sometimes quite literally: pushed into

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performing, singing and speaking at church from an early age. Admittedly, some kids loved the limelight and positive attention, but nearly all felt another more insidious pressure, even if it was never expressed: the belief that people in church leadership would be judged by their children's behaviour. 1 Timothy 3.4 is a whip for PKs: 'He (elders) must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him.' A survey on pastorcare.org reports that two thirds of church members expect ministers and their families to live by higher moral standards than they do. It is weird for children to feel that their behaviour affects their parents’ job security and it can also feel desperately unfair to suffer strict discipline just because "people are watching". To get round that problem I insisted on a clause in my job contracts: A church will have no higher expectations of the minister’s family than of their own.

Petty prejudice Religious stereotypes exert another kind of pressure on PKs: “Because I was a PK, people expected me to be either a goody-goody or the worst of kids. I had to handle rejection, just because of what my Dad was,” said one. Another teenage PK forbade her parents from letting on to her friends what they did for a living. One interesting pattern is that ministers' children are often money mad and sometimes very successful financially. Perhaps that is due to all the frugality and industry modelled to them, but one extremely wealthy PK told me he had resented his parents’ relative poverty and powerlessness. “It took a committee to decide on our curtains,” he recalled.

PKs often mentioned how busy their parents were. The pastorcare survey revealed: • 90% of clergy work more than 46 hours a week. • 80% believe pastoral ministry affected their families negatively. • 94% of clergy families feel the pressures of the pastor's ministry. One minister friend reported being at home in the evening for once, instead of out at a meeting. His young daughter did not know how to react, "Go out, Daddy, go out," she said. Even though ministry is a 24/7 vocation, that does not mean just ‘doing stuff.’ Ministry is to live a life that fulfills that call. That means honouring our commitments to our spouse and children and also being stewards of our strength and health.

Three-way split One senior clergyman I knew recommended working what he called a ‘United Nations' day. He divided his days into three – morning, afternoon and evening – and only worked two of them. With that, he managed a long and successful ministry, and was still usefully active in his 80s. I tried to follow his advice. If I had an evening engagement, I could be home with the kids after school without feeling guilty. I probably still worked longer hours than most in my congregation, but I did not feel I was short-changing my family. For many who minister, it is hard to maintain good boundaries between family and others in their care. There are constant interruptions: phone calls, extra people for meals or staying in the house. Life in a community can be great for kids, but beware of signalling that others are more important than family.

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Do and don'ts Here's some advice gleaned from adult PKs: • Don’t make your kids sermon examples. Respect their privacy. They feel like they are in a fishbowl already. • Don’t be too weird. The son of a Baptist pastor recalls he never saw his father out of a suit. He had a best suit for Sundays, an older one for his everyday suit, and his worn-out gardening suit. I doubt anyone still exclusively wears suits, but there are many flavours of weirdness! • Don’t let your kids' insights into church life grow into a bitter cynicism. They will hear your grizzles, but let them hear the joy and blessings of your calling, too. • If you are wounded, your children will be wounded too. • Don’t force them to be crowd pleasers. • Go to church when you are on holiday, otherwise they will think of church as ‘your job’. • Get involved in their world without your dog-collar on – have a life outside church. • Keep boundaries around church phone calls. • Allow your teenagers to go to another church. • Beware of asking which comes first: your vocation or your family? When you properly understand both, it should never be a conflict; they should enrich each other. John Cowan has been writing and speaking for The Parenting Place for nearly 20 years. Before that he worked as a minister and youth worker. john.cowan@theparentingplace.com

Run a Hot Tip event in your commmunity Our speakers present for 1 - 2 hours on a range of topics, including The strong-willed child, Parenting challenging boys and girls, The highly sensitive child, Growing great marriages & relationships and many more. Support and encourage the families in your local parish by hosting one of these inspiring events. Contact us for a full list of seminars.

To book an event or for more information contact Lorraine Owen | lorraine.owen@theparentingplace.com

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ANGLICAN TAONGA

SPRING 2015

MEMORIAL

Pathway to

t is not easy to commemorate the dead. Jacques Derrida's postmodern philosophy tackles part of what makes it so hard, in the double bind of giving a eulogy. He sees two impossible options: • not speaking – and giving offence to the dead, their relatives and friends; or • speaking – while feeling sure our words will fail to adequately honour a life. Derrida dwells on the power of speaking a dead person's name. As we voice the name, he says, we take part of that person into ourselves. We ingest it – literally making the person part of ourselves. Derrida's philosophy derives from reflection on his own friends' deaths – not for situations where mass deaths are remembered. Yet every casualty of war comes to ground in the loss of one man or woman's life. The recent trend of telling single life stories on Anzac Day drives home his point – that every death, every name is important. But on Anzac Day each year, fewer veterans or family members are there to remember the fallen in person. Most who attend have no direct relation to the names on the monuments.

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ANGLICAN TAONGA

SPRING 2015

Every death, every name is important. Poppies: Shutterstock Michael Baynes

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ANGLICAN TAONGA

SPRING 2015

MINISTRY

All manner of things Taonga editor Julanne ClarkeMorris visited Nelson this June to meet the region's faith community nurses and suss out their ministry.

One foot in the health system – one foot in the church.

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shall be well

arah met Dave on her parish nursing round. A very overweight man, Dave was a heavy smoker and drinker and lived in one of "the most dilapidated, unbelievable environments" Sarah had seen. But he was happy there. "He gave me such a hard time," she recalls with a laugh. "He called me 'Doc' and hassled me for wearing high heels." Dave's health was fine by him, except for his leg. Even medication wouldn't stop the pain. "Let's get it checked," said Sarah, "maybe we can find the problem." But Dave refused to see the doctor. So to ease his daily shuffle to the shop, Sarah found him a metal walking frame. It didn't last long. Dragging it across the concrete every day, Dave scraped a footlength off its hind legs. "Looks like you'll need a new frame," said

Sarah, "perhaps with wheels this time?" "All right, Doc," he replied. "You work at the hospital don't you? "How about you go down there and wait in a hallway. When some old lady puts hers down – you can nick it for me." *

Sarah didn't follow Dave's plan, but he did get a new frame. And Dave's story sets the scene on what parish nurses do. They use their skills – social, medical and spiritual – to help others live more fully, starting from where they are now. Sarah didn't stand apart from Dave, or try to judge him. She knows he is part of the body of Christ, and good relationships lead to healing. That was in place before Sarah offered medical advice. Then she waited for Dave to take his next step.

ANGLICAN TAONGA

SPRING 2015

I was meant to be there Multi-tasking: Jane checks Ivan's blood pressure as she catches up on his latest.

– God was in that.

Ivan Taylor takes Jane's hand, as Paul looks on. On the front line of care L-R Nurses: Elaine Tyrell, Val Sirrett, Jane Wulff, (back) Raewyn Parkes, Dianne MacDonald, and Rachael Westenra.

In time, thanks to Sarah, Dave made it through all the doctor's visits, scans, specialists and surgery he needed to fix that leg for good. *

Anglican parish nurses have worked in Aotearoa since the late 1990s, inspired by the Rev Granger Westberg's US movement, which set off in 1984. As fully trained, Christian, currently registered nurses, they offer care to church members and parish communities. While modern parish nursing is still new, its roots reach back to the mid 19thcentury. Florence Nightingale's nursing reforms evolved from what she had seen of Lutheran deaconesses nursing the poor in Germany.1 New Zealand's most famous nurse was driven by her Christian faith and invariably prayed with her patients. Sibylla Emily Maude – better known as Nurse Maude – grew up in a devout Christchurch Anglican family in the 1860s and 70s. She too was inspired to nurse the poor by deaconesses – this time Anglican ones, who later became the Community of the Sacred Name.2 Nurse Maude's pioneering work grew into the Royal District Nursing Service of New Zealand. So while the title is new, the bedrock of holistic modern nursing lies in faith community nursing. Today Nelson's parish nurses question whether 'holistic' applies to mainstream nursing.

"Holistic nursing doesn't really exist outside parish nursing, " says Dianne MacDonald, clinical nurse leader for Te Piki Oranga Maori health organisation. "... Maori nurses can include spirituality from Maori models of health, but in wider nursing practice a referral to the chaplain is all it takes to tick the spirituality box. "That is not spiritual care." Evidence from the Nursing Council supports a sceptical perspective. Every three years, to stay in practice, registered nurses must prove their aptitude across 50 medical, interpersonal and cultural skills known as "competencies." Not a single "competency" mentions spiritual health. "Spirituality is in the 'too hard' basket for most health professionals," says Rachael Westenra, parish nurse in Awatere and Marlborough. "Any mention of spirituality conjures up vague ideas about religion. There's a lack of understanding among nurses as to what spirituality means." "Some people pray to God with words, but others show gratitude for what gives them joy and peace – their garden, a good conversation, or a rainbow at the right moment." Raewyn Parkes is parish nurse in Blenheim, Picton and Spring Creek. She often prays with people she cares for. "Prayer is as natural to the work as any other health procedure I follow," she says. "But it is not about imposing the spiritual side. "It's about sensing when the time is

right." One parishioner used to say no to prayer, then changed her mind following a traumatic experience, "As I prayed, the tears welled up in her eyes. ‘I needed that,’ she said." For the nurses, God's healing presence is palpable. "There are so many times I think I was meant to be there – that God was in that," says Raewyn. "That doesn't happen in my clinical practice." Raewyn remembers a distress call from a young parish dad. His child had been born with a condition he didn't understand. Hospital staff were speaking a load of confusing jargon, and memories of a bad hospital experience had thrown his confidence. By the time he got through to Raewyn, he was frustrated and angry. So she quickly rejigged her schedule and went to his side. "Nathan looks pretty rough," says Raewyn, "He has tats and doesn't speak the most refined English. But he's a good dad." Raewyn stayed close through hours of diagnostic tests, quietly explaining each term and procedure. She spoke to the medical staff, but only once. "This is the baby's father," she said. "He is wondering about the long-term plan for his child's care, once they leave here today." Page 35

ANGLICAN TAONGA

SPRING 2015

SERVICE

Jane Wulff and Jo Grieg check out a new foot spa.

That was a game changer: staff swung into action, and after a few calls and some paperwork the family were under district nursing care. By day's end, Nathan could speak to a room full of doctors looking into his child's care. "He said that was his best experience of hospital care," Raewyn says. *

Elaine Tyrell has championed parish nursing around Aotearoa and in the Anglican Church. Nelson Cathedral's parish nurse from 1998-2003, Elaine and husband Charles Tyrell (then Dean of Nelson and himself a former nurse) helped found the New Zealand Faith Community Nursing

Rosemary Crow shares a light moment with Jane.

Association (NZFCNA). Today Elaine is national adviser to the association, which offers specialist FCN training through written modules and annual training seminars. In 2015, new models of dementia care and spiritual health are on the agenda, as well as peer reviews. Val Sirrett followed at Nelson Cathedral until 2009, when Jane Wulff became its current parish nurse, also taking on the Atawhai-Hira Anglican churches.

Care at home Jane Wulff sees Ivan Taylor and his son and caregiver, Paul, in their home every couple of weeks. As Jane measures Ivan's blood pressure, she chats with the two men. "That looks good today," she says brightly. "How are you feeling?" "My nerves are not great," says Ivan. Yesterday's visit to the doctor has tired him out. Ivan's Chronic Obstructive Respiratory Disease (Emphysema) means he has to take a gas tank everywhere with him so its plastic tubes can supply the oxygen he needs. Exertion makes it tougher to breathe. So horizons are shorter these these days for a man Nelson Cathedral's parish nurses: past and who sailed the oceans in the present: Elaine Tyrell, Val Sirrett and Jane Wulff. Page 36

British Navy before he fell in love with New Zealand. "It struck me and my shipmates as heaven on earth." Ivan immigrated, married Mary, and they had a family here. By the time he retired in Dunedin, he'd attained the job every kid dreams of – production manager at Cadbury's chocolate factory. Jane peppers such talk of family and former times with low-key health assessments: "Are you sleeping well?" ..."Did you find someone to help while Paul's away?" Ivan has perked up by the time Jane packs her things away. As usual their visit closes in prayer. *

Alongside the staple of home visits, Jane runs health promotion seminars (on stress, diabetes, arthritis, vision, hearing, WINZ, stroke, funerals, Alzheimer’s and victim support so far) as well as a foot clinic. She leads the cathedral pastoral team and keeps in touch with five congregations through worship and fellowship. "Jane's work on the pastoral team gives me real peace of mind," says Nelson's Dean, Nick Kirk (another former nurse) "With her here, I know the sickest members of the community are receiving good care. "And that frees me to engage with the wider community. "I still stay in touch, but I know that Jane is sensible and appropriate – and she can pray with them, too."

ANGLICAN TAONGA

SPRING 2015

When you sit and work at their feet, the power changes.

Physio Maureen Wagg leads the Tuesday walking group up Nelson Cathedral's steps. L-R: Maureen Wagg, Annika Ohlson Smith, Carol Hurd, Anne D'Herville, (behind) Maria Byrman, Jane Wulff, Roger and Gwen Bray.

Healthy living Cathedral parish nurses and physiotherapist Maureen Wagg set up a walking group 10 years ago to combine exercise with a midweek get-together. This ensures they win on physical and mental health. Only the foulest weather wards off this walking troupe on their hour-long Tuesday hikes round Nelson's city centre. Some walkers volunteer at Jane's monthly 'Living Alone' afternoon tea, too. This social space connects isolated people for conversation and homemade treats. "People love it. They linger, and never go home by finish time," says Jane. *

For five years, Nelson Cathedral parishioner Rosemary Crow has met monthly with Jane Wulff to pray for her nursing ministry. Rosemary is pleased to support Jane and place her work before the Lord. Rosemary says life can be fraught, but you wouldn't guess it, seated in her stylish home, where a tasteful morning tea greets Jane each time she comes. Ten years ago multiple strokes rained

down on Rosemary's husband Chris over a whole day. That took its toll, and Chris's long recovery has taken hard work. But neither Rosemary nor Chris are strangers to toil. Both are retired teachers who ran high school English and social science departments. They directed shows and travelled from Opunake to welcome the peace awards at Parihaka. "Rosemary's support and prayer is a vital part of my ministry," says Jane. "But it's also good for me to see how you are going." "Of course it is." says Rosemary, "We appreciate how you keep an eye on everyone." *

Feet are the last thing Rachael Westenra is interested in. But they have taught her about the soul of parish nursing. Parish nurses often run foot clinics: to build community, offer foot care, assess wider health needs and pamper people a little. Jo Grieg attends Jane Wulff's foot clinic at her church, St Peter's Atawhai. After her nail care is done, Jo relishes the bonus foot and calf massage. "By the time I walk out of the church, I

feel like I'm walking on air," she says. One couple told Rachael Westenra they felt part of the community only after coming to foot clinic. "It's the touch," she says. "It does something." But getting down on your knees does something too, adds Dianne MacDonald. "Often as health professionals you are above people â&#x20AC;&#x201C; standing over them in a bed, or above them because of all this knowledge you have," she says. "But when you sit on the floor and work at their feet, the power changes. "Jesus washed people's feet, and so do we." Notes 1. Louise Selanders. 'Nightingale, Florence,' from the Encyclopedia Britannica, URL: http://www.britannica. com/biography/Florence-Nightingale 2. For a time, Nurse Maude lived at the Community of the Sacred Name and ran a health clinic from a room there. Source: The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara - The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, Beryl Hughes, 'Maude, Sibylla Emily.' http://www.TeAra. govt.nz/en/biographies/2m42/maude-sibylla-emily Page 37

ANGLICAN TAONGA

SPRING 2015

ENVIRONMENT

Some landed

on good soil

Phillip Donnell suggests an earthier way to grow toward heaven – building up community through gardens.

What starts out as a garden, often develops into a community hub.

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hen the Holy Spirit descended in power at Pentecost, God’s message to the fledgling church was clear: let’s

get growing. And grow it did – in great numbers, as we see in the Book of Acts. But higher numbers aren't the only measure of growth. Back in the '80s, Al and Anne Gourley heeded God's message to grow, but in a different direction – from the ground up. It all started with the recession, when the Gourleys planted a vegetable garden at their Tauranga home to guard against running out of food. That launched them on a quest to help others do the same through building community gardens. But a long-term public site would take them years to find. It wasn't till 2008 that negotiations began

with Tauranga City, to set aside a section of council reserve for a garden. But once a plot was in hand, other locals caught the Gourleys’ vision. With fundraising, persistence and hard work, a community garden opened at Otumoetai Railway Reserve in Spring 2010. Now there's another at Mount Maunganui, owned by the Corrections Department and Bethlehem Community Church, while Let's Get Growing and their partner the Good Neighbour Trust are still scouting for new locations. The Otumoetai garden's one-day build saw more than 100 volunteers turn out with wheelbarrows, hammers and shovels. They built and filled 58 garden plots for families to rent, as well as making communal berry, fruit, herb and vegetable gardens. As a contemporary Kiwi version of the traditional English allotment, these gardens are financially self-sustaining. Gardeners rent plot space and eat what they produce.

ANGLICAN TAONGA

SPRING 2015

TIPS FOR GREEN GARDENING

We go there to meet God, creation and each other.

Kids and grown-ups muck in at A Rocha’s Te Kaakano Community Garden on the outskirts of Hamilton; Gardeners share the fruits of their harvest at a community potluck. Photos: Tania Ashman.

And they can almost guarantee good results. “We want people to enjoy what may be their first gardening experience," say Al and Anne, "...so the gardens are established with fertile soil, great irrigation, drainage, composting and mulching systems in place. "We provide everything they need – including access to workshops and garden mentors – though most learning and sharing takes place as we learn from each other." The gardens are deliberately trendy and smart – the kind of public space anyone would like to visit. Each garden has its own local flavour and personality, but shares the common goal of welcome to all – regardless of gardening skills. Places to talk and meeting spaces are built in, too, so what starts out as a garden often develops into a community hub. As well as producing low-cost, local vegetables, fruit, herbs and flowers, these

•

Keep it real – avoid pesticides and chemical fertilizers.

•

Compost vegetable waste and use earthworms

•

Plant a veggie garden to grow your own

•

Go native – trees, shrubs and grasses

•

Harvest rainwater with tanks and barrels

•

Water early in the day and add mulch to prevent evaporation

•

Drench plants directly on the roots

•

Help pollinating insects by planting flowers

•

Buy recycled planters and pots

gardens provide: • eco-friendly, socially just food systems • precious green spaces in urban environments • communities with cultures of generosity, co-operation, trust and achievement • enough food to share the surplus, or use it to develop community enterprises • gardening skills and chances to share knowledge across cultures • skills in organic practices and sustainable living • space to share art projects, community events, celebrations and workshops • fresh air and exercise without gym fees As one oft-quoted saying goes, “Flower gardens grow flowers, veggie gardens grow vegetables, community gardens grow people.” Gardening author Patricia Hynes1

believes community gardens can nourish the soul, too. That theory rings true for A Rocha’s Te Kaakano garden in Hamilton. “Many of us go there to meet God, creation, each other and experience healing,” says Tania, a gardener at Te Kaakano. A Maori proverb sums up its intention: "Manaaki whenua, manaaki tangata, haere whakamua – Care for the land, care for the people, move forward." Perhaps God is saying to your church: Let’s get growing – in more than one way? And maybe the results won't be as different as at first they may seem. Note 1. H. Patricia Hynes, 2006: A Handbook for Community Garden Development, p.viii.

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NEWS

Worldwide

http://anglicantaonga.org.nz

Taonga Online editor Brian Thomas gives a taste of the stories that have crossed his monitor in recent weeks.

The milk of human kindness Walrond, adds that Christians should be looking after farmers pastorally as well.

by angry farmers, who claimed they were paid less per litre of milk than it cost them to produce it.

Warwick Callaghan

SPARE A THOUGHT for dairy farmers worldwide as milk powder prices go through the floor. Better still, pray for them.

"People living in rural communities could simply go along to a dairy farmer and show their concern," he says.

The Arthur Rank Centre, which supports rural mission in the UK, has since released a prayer for the dairy industry, and is encouraging churches to support farmers by buying British milk.

That’s what the Church of England is urging its members as some farmers face bankruptcy – and redin-the-face frustration.

The prayer ends: "May we consumers never take our food for granted, and may we value and support those who work tirelessly to feed us."

Two cows were led through a supermarket in Stafford recently

The rural adviser to the Diocese of Bath and Wells, Rob

NZ dairy farmers face the same problems, of course, and deserve a regular mention on Sunday, too. Intercessors, take note. And pastoral visitors. Meanwhile, a Waikato dairy farmer is dispensing more than free milk to needy children. Warwick Callaghan has been putting an extra animal in his freezer every time he does one

for his family, and distributes the extra meat to local foodbanks. “No kids should be allowed to go to bed or school hungry,” Warwick says with passion. He is now challenging farmers all over New Zealand to follow his example, and says more than 30 animals have already been given to his “feed the kidz” programme. “I pray your heart is stirred and your spirit moved,” he tells others in the industry. If the message strikes home, contact Warwick on 027 673 7797 or by email: wdcallaghan.gmail.com.

Bright and beautiful to the end of mourners, including Sir Cliff Richard who led the tributes and sang Faithful One.

ENTERTAINER CILLA BLACK always gave the impression that at any moment she might knock on the door and say: “Can I borrow a cup of sugar, luv?” Such everyday charm – along with a smashing voice – accounted for her popularity as “Our Cilla” in over 50 years of showbiz. It also characterized her funeral in suburban Liverpool: a requiem mass taken by the auxiliary bishop

Cilla, 73, was a rare celebrity, remaining faithful to her husband and manager, Bobby Wills, whom she had married in St Mary’s in 1969. of Liverpool, the Rt Rev Thomas Williams. The bells of St Mary’s Church, Woolton, welcomed a procession

His death in 1999 shook Cilla to the core, and she struggled for years to regain her old breeziness.

An early pop hit, Anyone Who Had a Heart, would not have been out of place in the funeral, but Cilla showed class by being carried into church to Debussy’s Clair de Lune. And the opening hymn? All Things Bright and Beautiful, which is not a bad grace-note for any of us to aim for as we front up to our Maker.

Retirement reveals the forgotten God IS THERE LIFE after stipendiary ministry? Obviously so for the Rev Ron Hay, former vicar of Sumner-Redcliffs in Christchurch. And he’s $10,000 richer to show for it. Ron took early retirement in 2009 to write something worthwhile, and the fruit of five years’ work has just won the annual Ashton Wylie Charitable Trust award for books on spiritual matters. The title is Finding the Forgotten Page 40

God: Credible Faith for a Secular Age," and it doesn’t shy from hard questions such as why God would allow pain and evil in the world.

"I'm very conscious that New Zealand is a very secular country, and often a Christian voice doesn't get much of a hearing in the media,” Ron says.

"People have appreciated the fact that it's coming from a Kiwi point of view,” Ron told Philip Matthews of The Press.

“People have a stereotypical picture that to have a Christian faith is to believe in something superstitious or irrational. I wanted to make sense of Christianity for secular people."

The book comes in response to the rash of 'new atheists' such as Richard Dawkins, and is aimed at the sceptical or agnostic reader.

Ron has sold just over 1600 copies, mainly by slogging up

and down the country with a box of books under his arm. Give the man a break: order a copy for just $27.99 through the website findinggod.co.nz And if you want to know more about Ron, read Philip Matthews’ full interview at http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/ christchurch-life/70933534/ making-god-relevant-for-kiwis

ANGLICAN TAONGA

SPRING 2015

The art of turning lemons into lemonade FAILURES OF THE world, take heart. We have an exemplar, if not a patron saint.

The before and after are reproduced on this page, so you be the judge.

Her name is Cecilia Giménez, and she is famous as the worst art restorer on God’s earth.

Cecilia was, of course, devastated by all the criticism, but now her work is enjoying a turnaround not much short of the raising of Lazarus.

Cecilia took on the task of repairing a 1930 painting of Christ with crown of thorns in her local church in Spain in 2012. Sadly, her artistic reach exceeded her grasp – with a restoration that has been called “a sketch of a very hairy monkey in an ill-fitting tunic.”

According to the Guardian, tourists are flocking to Borja, a poor village north-east of Madrid, just to see the painting, and Cecilia Giménez has been transformed from the village villain to its saviour. “The restoration has put Borja on the world map,” she says,

“meaning I’ve done something for my village that nobody else was able to do.” The story gets better, though. A librettist with an eye for the main chance, Andrew Flack, has seized on Cecilia and her botched restoration as the centre-piece for a comic opera

entitled Behold the Man. The story that underpins the opera is universal, says Flack. “That a miracle can come from a disaster: that you can make lemons from lemonade. Or that you make a terrible mistake on a fresco and it turns into something beneficial.”

Shutterstock Photoseeker

Even better than retail therapy John Bingham, in the Daily Telegraph, reports that more than 10 million people visited cathedrals in England last year, while almost 37,000 attended Sunday or midweek services – up almost a quarter in a decade.

SOME OF ENGLAND’S oldest cathedrals have seized on the wisdom of “better late than never.”

Cathedral clergy say people are often drawn by the traditional music, the contemplative atmosphere and the fact that citycentre churches offer services at different times of the day and throughout the week. Well and good. But several

cathedrals are attracting latenight shoppers by opening late themselves. St Nicholas Cathedral in Newcastle upon Tyne has introduced a “night church” late on Fridays. It also regularly draws around 300 to late-night compline. Salisbury Cathedral is offering late-night classical concerts by candlelight, while Liverpool Cathedral is opening its tower late on Thursday evenings for those who want a pigeon’s view

of the city by night. And last Christmas Truro Cathedral went a step further by offering its own late-night shopping, including charity stalls, a Christmas giftshop, restaurant and community music groups to lure shoppers through the doors. Anglican Taonga has just the slogan for cathedral noticeboards: “Shop until you drop – into the late-night embrace of God.”

100 million Chinese can’t be wrong FOR A DECADE or two Africa has shamed the Christian West with its rampant growth. African bishops have even claimed to be rightful heirs to Anglican orthodoxy as the Western Church wrestles with stagnation and doctrinal revision. Well, move over, Africa. China is treading on African heels in the growth stakes, and looks set to become the most populous

Christian nation within 15 years. Guardian commentator Andrew Brown reports that China now has around 100 million Christians – considerably more than the Communist Party (87 million). And the cause of this phenomenal turnaround seems to be China’s transition to capitalism. When the Communists took

over in 1947, Chinese Christians numbered barely 4 million. But after the seeds of capitalism were sown in the 1980s, church membership also flourished. So much so that in eastern China the government has been removing crosses from churches in a symbol-minded attempt to curb outreach. Taonga is strangely warmed to learn that churchgoers have taken to the

streets in protest. Brown notes that most Christian growth has come through conversion, especially among educated and upwardly mobile classes. The question now is whether Chinese capitalism can be leavened by the radical, darewe-say socialist demands of the Gospel.

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SPRING 2015

FILM

Waiting on the harvest John Bluck gets a taste of life lived on the borders of death in Tangerines – a film that's as unexpected as it is profound.

his is a film from nowhere, full of people and places we’ve never heard of, yet it made the short list in last year’s Academy and Golden Globe awards. See it – especially if you sometimes wonder whether the work you do or the place you live in is important. The main character in this gem of a movie is an elderly carpenter named Ivo. His life revolves round making wooden fruit crates for his neighbour, Margus, who is salvaging his tangerine crop in an empty Estonian village, in the Georgian–Chechen border war zone. It’s a war we hardly heard of 20 years ago when it raged between Georgia and Ubkhazia. That brutal clash was fuelled by long-held ethnic hatred and Muslim-Christian antagonism. We get a taste of its brutality as we watch two wounded survivors of the conflict nursed back to health by Ivo – even as they threaten to kill each other. But there’s no killing allowed in Ivo’s home, only healing and reconciliation.

It's more than enough to work miracles.

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For this old man has been through the worst of times – as we discover at the very end of the film. He knows the only way is to forgive, and make the best of what little you have left. He has precious little, but it's more than enough to work miracles. And he does it without an ounce of sugared sentiment, even though the tangerines they eat are very sweet. I won’t give away any more of the story. Not much happens, yet enough to condense a lifetime’s worth of joy and suffering. All the reality you can cope with is packed into this little narrative. It’s all painted on a small canvas, over a square kilometre, played out by four characters. Only the occasional spilling over of the war interrupts this gentle domestic dance. The violent intrusions are limited, but shocking, in their sudden, senseless, ugly finality. Producer director Zaza Urushadze has made five films over his 25-year career working with both financial

and political constraints. The list of government ministries that underwrote this film must have been a diplomatic nightmare. But if ever a movie echoes the parable of a mustard seed producing abundance, or finding heaven in a grain of sand, Tangerine takes the pick. We don’t have provision for films in our calendar of saints and martyrs, high days and holy days, but this one would win a place. Something as filled with grace as this film, from somewhere we can't pronounce and people we’re never heard of, is a double blessing indeed. Bishop John Bluck is a writer living in Northland. blucksbooks@gmail.com

ANGLICAN TAONGA

SPRING 2015

F R O M T H E FA R S I D E

Shutterstock Audran Gosling

Imogen de la Bere asks why the English can't help themselves larking about with history.

Once again, from the top

ow we love an anniversary! Well, the Brits certainly do. This year we remembered the Great War with a daily radio serial that plots events on the Home Front. It's clever, because it acknowledges the horrific events over there by substituting prams for tanks. Chaps in protected occupations declare, “Eeh, by gum, our Angie isn’t half getting fresh with that Canadian soldier.” A welcome relief from the “aaaargh!! – thump” of the common soldier dying in the trenches. On a more cheerful note, we celebrated Magna Carta – with Morris dancers and people in medieval garb. Some towns also had medieval fare – an excuse to pass off organics as historically interesting. The Magna Carta gala was a costumed line-up of the great and the good on the plains of Runnymede – most famous these days for being flooded. As I work next door, I find the floods and the motorcades more or less equal in nuisance value. You can’t go there, and there’s lots of buzzing. We've also had Waterloo. This one is tricky, because it was a stonking victory over our traditional enemy, the French. But now they are our bestest friend. So to celebrate Waterloo is terribly impolite.

But under the covers we love it. So we salute Waterloo by glorifying the grim, blood-spattered and, above all, dirty soldiers. You can see them now in Somerset House, in its gallery of faux Waterloo heroes on horseback – luscious portraits photographed during the battle's annual re-enactment.1 But my favourite this year is Agincourt 600, because really, who cares? And yet there are dozens of jovial events: archery, jousts, banquets, exhibitions, guided walks, concerts, battlefield outings and theatrical performances – culminating in a huge service in Westminster Abbey. My friend John, who is Master of the Worshipful Company of Bowyers (yes, really), is in charge. He tells me that, after months of negotiating, he now has two Royals attending, when he feared he would have none. “Like buses,” he says, with Northern scorn. I recall the Duke Of Wellington’s remark after Waterloo: "Nothing except a battle lost can be half as melancholy as a battle won." We must commemorate. Last of the WWII 'dambusters' Lancaster bomber command, Les Munro, was as feted in the UK as in New Zealand. It was wonderful to do so and made us

It's terribly impolite. But under the covers we love it.

happy. It is essential to our survival to celebrate. And so it is essential to mythologise a little. We can only deal with the terror, trauma and triumph of our past by telling the story and having a bit of song and dance. So bring on the Dambusters Commemorative Morris Dancers. Imogen de la Bere is a writer and director, living in England. delaberi@googlemail.com 1. The Somerset exhibition is by photographer Sam Faulkner https://www.somersethouse.org.uk/visualarts/unseen-waterloo

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2015

LIFE

F E R E NC

• COM M

S IO N S C

COMMON LIFE MISSIONS CONFERENCE

6–9 October 2015 King’s College, Auckland ANGLICAN CHURCH IN AOTEAROA, NEW ZEALAND AND POLYNESIA

Grab your diary Block out the four days from October 6 and join church leaders from around the globe and hundreds of other Kiwis at ‘Mission Together’. Dr Chris Wright – one of the world’s leading mission equippers – will be the keynote speaker. And Dr Dickson Chilongani, Bishop of Central

Tanganyika, will be driving the Bible studies. There’ll also be hosts of workshops – and lots more besides. Mission Together will free us to eat, drink, breathe, sleep, learn and dream mission together – and free us to refocus on our core calling:

“Go out and train everyone you meet, far and near, in this way of life, marking them by baptism in the threefold name: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Then instruct them in the practice of all I have commanded you. I’ll be with you as you do this, day after day after day, right up to the end of the age.” Matt 28: 19-20 The Message

Who’s this conference for?

So how do I register?

Any more questions?

Everyone! We want you to come!

Easy! Go to www.clmc2015.org.nz

Flick an email to info@angmissions.org.nz – or call Metua or Linda on 04 473 5172 and they will be there to help you. See you at the conference.