Dear Friends,
Last Thursday evening the Reverend Peg Riley was farewelled from her role as Chaplain at St Margaret’s College. Peg held the role for 22½ years with dedication, great love and lots of joyful laughter. A wonderful, large congregation of colleagues, present and former students, family and friends gathered for a farewell service, at which our Deputy Vicar-General Mark Barlow preached, and a supper afterwards. I salute Peg’s ministry at St Margaret’s College and am delighted that she remains active in the Diocese in her new role in the Parish of Upper Riccarton-Yaldhurst.
The new Chaplain at St Margaret’s College, the Reverend Stephanie Clay, will be licensed and inducted into the role at a service at St Margaret’s College at 9.45 am Monday 26 July.
Integral to your Diocese actively responding to mental health challenges in our ministry units and in our local communities are a series of seminars and workshops on as aspects of mental health. I especially commend to you and invite you to register to participate in a two day workshop on Suicide Awareness, 9.30 am to 3 pm, Fridays 23 and 30 July at All Souls Merivale-St Albans. Details are elsewhere in this e-Life. I will be there and look forward to many joining me.
As the days draw by, more people are receiving the COVID vaccine and those of us (such as myself) who have not yet been vaccinated should be getting messages soon about how and when we can be vaccinated. I urge all readers to be vaccinated and to do so as an expression of love for our neighbour. If all are vaccinated then the safety of all in the Pandemic is secured. There is going to be enough vaccine for everyone through the months ahead. No one should hold back for fear of depriving another of the vaccine.
I continue to encourage all receiving the vaccine to make a donation to that someone elsewhere in the world can also receive the vaccine. A background to and Donations for the Get One, Give One scheme can be seen here.
It was a privilege to be in Nelson at the weekend in order to preach at the installation of the Reverend Doctor Graham O’Brien as Dean of Christ Church Cathedral, Nelson and Vicar of the Cathedral Parish. The same weekend, incidentally, the Reverend Watiri Maina was inducted as Vicar of the Victory Parish, Nelson city with the Reverend Spanky Moore as preacher at that service.
On Monday ten from the Diocese of Christchurch joined with participants from other Dioceses and Hui Amorangi in a day long meeting in Auckland with members of the Kooyoora organisation, from the Anglican Province of Victoria, Australia. Kooyoora means “mountain of light” and the organisation has been set up following the Australian Royal Commission into Abuse in order to assist with complaints and investigations, screening of people, training in prevention of abuse, and redress. There is much to be done in the light of the presentation, suffice to say that what we are currently doing and intending to do in the light of our own Royal Commission is very much at the beginning of a journey of change in the culture of safeguarding of ministry in our Diocese and national church.
This Sunday, Ordinary 16, the gospel is Mark 6:30-34, 53-56. Here I want to draw attention to only one matter, verse 31, where Jesus says to the disciples, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.” Most if not all readers here, lay and ordained, are busy in ministry and mission in our ministry units and local communities. What are the ways in which each of us are able to be with Jesus in a quiet place and able to get some rest?
Ngā mihi nui,
