Dear Friends,
Last Friday evening an important workshop in response to The Royal Commission on Abuse‘s final report was held at All Souls, Merivale-St Albans, led by Ken Clearwater. A further workshop will be led by Ken on Friday evening 23 August 2024 – details elsewhere in this e-Life. I was unable to attend last Friday night but will be attending on 23 August and look forward to a great turnout of clergy and laity from across the Diocese.
Preparations continue for a significant event for our Diocesan response to abuse in the church, as highlighted by the work of the Royal Commission, and now by the report: a formal Service of Lament at 7pm, Thursday 5 September, 2024 will be held in the Transitional Cathedral. This service is open to all and is the first part of our annual Diocesan Synod. It is important that a Diocesan service of this nature is representative of us as a whole Diocese. We will be publishing the words of the service before the service so that any who are concerned that attending this service will re-trigger their own trauma at being abused or having loved ones being abused will have opportunity to make a decision about attending or not. (For Synod members, clergy and laity reading this, we hope for a widespread attendance from across our Synod, but no member of Synod should feel compelled to participate in this service if they do not want to be there).
Please pray for the Reverend Jo Latham. Jo is undergoing chemotherapy and asks for prayer for healing from the cancer this therapy is intended to defeat. Many have been praying for Jo and on her behalf I ask that we continue praying for her healing.
Recently I have received resignations from two of our clergy. The Reverend Michael Brantley has resigned as Vicar of Avonhead, and the Reverend Kirstie McDonald has resigned as Priest-in-Charge of Woolston. I thank Michael and Kirstie for their respective contributions to Avonhead and to Woolston, and wish them well for the next chapter of their lives.
We now have 42 registrants for the Living Faith Diocesan Conference! Well done to those clergy who have appointed a Conference Champion to help with promotion, help people sign up, answer questions, and possibly arrange transport. If you haven’t yet nominated a parish champion, please do so soon and email their name and email address to Mark Chamberlain. Our vision is to see 500 people at the conference who will come away blessed and inspired. The best way to promote the conference is to register yourself and then say to others, “I’m registered. It’s going to great. Would you like to come too?” Register here.
Last week I was in Melbourne attending an ATLAS (Anglican Thought Leadership Around Science) consultation with bishops on science and faith, as part of the work of the Anglican Communion Science Commission which was launched at Lambeth 2022. I enjoyed conversations with Anglican bishops from Australia, Melanesia, and ACANZP on the relationship between faith, theology, and science. Our aim was to provide guidance to the work of the Commission. It was the third of these meetings held around the world over the past year or so. The consultation was facilitated by a team from the University of Auckland who are key partners in this work with the University of Oxford. Two bishops from Oceania (+Matt Brain, Bendigo, and +Ross Bay, Auckland) will share the results of the consultation with the Commission at a meeting in Virginia later in 2024.
Referring to science and faith in the context of Oceania leads to noting that climatic change to our planet continues. The challenge of becoming a well-informed church in response to climate change issues, with a corporate will to do something rather than nothing, faces us. Nowhere in our Anglican church experiences more directly the negative effects of climate church than the Diocese of Polynesia. This week, 8-11 August, members of our church are gathering in Suva, Fiji for the Moana 2 Water of Life Conference, which is focussing on “climate resilience”. I am very glad that the Reverend Jolyon White from our Diocese is part of the Tikanga Pakeha group participating in this conference. I look forward to his report on the conference when he returns.
For your diaries: this year’s late November Diocesan Ordination service, at which I expect to ordain some people to be deacons, will be at 10.30am, Saturday 23 November, in the Transitional Cathedral. This is one week earlier than our “usual” late November day each year.
This Sunday 11 August is Ordinary 19, and the Gospel is John 6:35, 41-51. Sometimes in NZ we bewail our “tall poppy syndrome”. We allegedly are too prone to cut successful or popular people down to size. Who do they think they are? They are nobody special! Well, the tall poppy syndrome is not peculiar to us. An instance occurred in Jesus’ own lifetime, faraway in Galilee (verses 41-42). Fortunately, Jesus is not put off by the complaining against him. He says a number of very important things in verses 44-51. At stake in what he says here is what the best, lasting life – “eternal life” – consists of and how we might participate in this life for ourselves. This is a passage rich in life-giving theology. What part of this passage speaks most inspirationally to us?
Arohanui,
+Peter.