Month: September 2024 (page 1 of 1)

From Archbishop David Moxon

The Tainui royal family are supporters of the Pai Mārire faith internally as a whānau. This draws in the Bible and a panentheist view of the elements and ecology. However, they don’t see this as contradictory with Christian faith. There is a cross on top of their cost of arms. And the first king said ‘ hold on love, lore and the faith ‘

So they have a policy of spreading their family around the Bible based faiths including Anglican , Catholic , Methodist , Presbyterian, Ringatu and Ratana. Having said this they usually send their children to Anglican schools because if their spirituality and standards . So they have this informal affinity with us. Archdeacon Ngira Simmons is the current kingitanga chief of staff .

They chose Din the other day because they thought he would be the most articulate in both languages for this historic occasion. The kawhau will be refered to for many years.

August 2024

By Justin Duckworth and Alan Jamieson, 2024

Comments by Richard Randerson

September 2024

The authors’ call to renew the Church in mission is timely. As a spur to such renewal they challenge the Church with the juxtaposition of Centre Church (CC) and Edge Church (EC), the former being the established congregationally-based churches, the latter being the emerging gatherings of disciples who are passionate (white hot) in their love of Christ and
their service of others. The dialogues can be mutually fruitful.

While they affirm CC in some places they more often describe it as “insipid, flabby, idolatrous and compromised”. Yet it is the CC which over centuries has maintained (and revised) the liturgies, music and theology that have inspired and sustained Jesus’ disciples from generation to generation and led major movements in spiritual growth and social change. Having served in different parishes over 60 years I do not agree with the assessment of CC as flabby and insipid. I have known too many members, the large majority
in fact, for whom faith is a living and enlivening centre of their lives 24/7. Is St Peter’s insipid and flabby? Or Central Baptist?

At the same time, having just read this week’s News for our Movement, I am greatly impressed by the extent and variety of what is happening in the Diocese of Wellington (and doubtless in other places as well), events which are out of kilter with the disparaging words about the Church in the book. These events inspire, the book discourages. There is a disjunction between the book and church life in reality.

Maybe back in the 50s, when society was much more homogeneous, there were more nominal members who fell away from about 1960. But I recall congregations from those days whose members were every bit as faithful and convinced Christians as those in today’s churches. Over the years I have also known church members who have left CC because the Gospel presented to them, in personal living and society, has been too challenging.

The white hot passion of EC is commendable but not necessarily broadly based in terms of theology and context. Alan Jamieson wrote an excellent book in 2000 entitled A Churchless Faith. As a Baptist minister and sociologist he had conducted research into why people were leaving EPC (evangelical, pentecostal and charismatic) churches, one of the reasons (as I
recall) being that they found the theology too narrow and simplistic. To be told, for example, it was God’s will that a child had died of cancer was totally unreal. Many are recruited into such churches while too young for broader thought.

We can be grateful that people like John Bluck who through his books and media work contextualises theology in an accessible manner, while in Wellington Scottie Reeve writes articles for The Post that weave theology into the context of daily life and society. The Postalso runs articles on theology in daily life and society by Lyndon Drake (tikanga Maori, on Matariki) and Otago theologians David Tombs and Andrew Shepherd.

In-tensional aims to renew the Church in mission, which is good, but in my view would have more chance of doing so if it included emphasis on the Church’s mission in blending Christian faith with society and remove the disparaging references to CC. They are in my experience untrue and would be a barrier to creative dialogue between CC and EC. Describing the Church as flabby and insipid is a turnoff for audiences who would regard
such a description as not merely inaccurate but also highly judgmental.

In 2010 I published a book Engagement 21. It was based on research I did with 100 representative clergy and laity across NZ on their experience of the Church in mission. It showed the need for much improvement in mission, but also contained 125 thumbnail sketches of projects parishes were engaged in across the whole spectrum of the Anglican five marks of mission.

Perhaps a second volume with positive and practical content might be in order?

Bishop Richard Randerson
Wellington