Dear Friends,
Last Wednesdayevening, it was a joy to be in the Transitional Cathedral to share in the annual Anglican-Catholic Ecumenical Ash Wednesday service, with Bishop Michael Gielen preaching. A very big thank you to Dean Ben Truman and Fr Simon Eccleton who, along with their respective cathedral staffs and choirs, prepared for and led the service. With the worldwide Catholic church, we continue to pray for the good health of Pope Francis.
Let us also pray for a cessation of violence in Syria, to Alawite-led rebellion, where responses by forces aligned with the new government, are resulting in the deaths of innocent Christians.
It was a privilege to be at Trinity Church, Darfield with the Reverend Alexa Evenden on Sunday morning for their 9.30am service and to share in fellowship after the service with the local congregation and later with local clergy and their spouses. For those readers who do not know, Trinity church is a remarkable, probably unique ecumenical building: it is jointly owned by the Malvern Co-operating (Presbyterian-Methodist) Parish and the Malvern Anglican Parish. There is a service in the church every Sunday morning, with each parish alternating responsibility for provision of services. Arrangements work seamlessly with much goodwill in co-operation and have endured faithfully since 1979.
This Saturday, in Auckland, Captain Monika Clark, National Director, Church Army NZ, will be formally farewelled from her national leadership role. We give thanks to God for Monika’s work in this role and pray for the Church Army as it seeks a new National Director. Many readers here know that Monika lives in Christchurch – we will continue to benefit from Monika’s work in evangelism and evangelism training since she will continue to work for the Church Army in a part-time role based here.
One of the things I am often saying as I move around the Diocese is that we are doing well in many ways: Regeneration of our Diocese is taking place as new generations of active members are being welcomed into our services and other aspects of church life. We have also seen a small uptick in annual attendance. There is great resilience in our smaller congregations. Yet, I quickly move onto to say, it is also the case that we are battling a significant high tide wave of secularisation which has been sweeping many people out of expression of Christian faith in active church participation. Thus I was very interested to read in this morning’s Press an article, which underlines my concern about what we are battling against. The heading for this article – on census figures for Christchurch city – is “Religion takes a back seat as secularism pulls ahead”. While I am glad the article includes constructive comments from one of our clergy, the Reverend John McLister, Vicar of Lyttelton and Port Chaplain, I don’t think the article fully represents the strength of active church life in Christchurch as it is experienced across all churches – noting, for instance, the wonderful turn out of 5000+ Christians for the Open Heaven prayer and praise event two weeks ago. Nevertheless, we Christians cannot brush the statistics away. We are in a spiritual battle as we seek what God wants: the growth of the body of Christ on earth.
Encouragingly, there are signs of revival in the Christian faith in the secularised world. The Other Cheek, a Sydney-based Christian blog, reproduces a report by Richard N. Ostling, on a new book by renowned New York Times columnist, Ross Douthat, tilted Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious. In the course of this report, which sees this book as a 21st century version of C. S. Lewis’ famous Mere Christianity, we read about significant Christian conversions of influential writers/broadcasters. I note this comment in Ostling’s report: “… prominent British-American historian Niall Ferguson, currently a fellow at Harvard and Stanford universities. He told Greg Sheridan of The Australian that lifelong atheism dissolved when he considered that all attempts to base a successful society on atheism have proven “catastrophic”.” This is a sharp reminder that as Kiwis move away from identifying themselves as Christian, there is a very large question of what that means for the society we are becoming as the tide of secularisation sweeps all before it. We have a Gospel to proclaim and proclaim it we must, for the sake of human life itself, not only for the next world, but also for this one.
This coming Sunday, 9 March is Lent 2. The Gospel reading is Luke 13:31-35. In Luke’s gospel, everything after Luke 9:51, including this passage with its lament for Jerusalem, is shaped by Jesus’ intention to enter Jerusalem and there fulfil God’s plan for our salvation through his suffering for us. Jesus is not deterred by information that Herod the Fox wants to kill him. If he is to be killed it must be in Jerusalem. Our Lenten journey takes us with Jesus to the cross. We will not suffer physical death here in Aotearoa New Zealand for our faith, but elsewhere in the world, horrifically in this past week in Syria, Christians are being killed for being Christian. But what should die within ourselves, if we are to be completely filled with the divine life of Christ?
Arohanui,
+Peter.