Title: Connections: Celebration, Wisdom and Commentary from Dunedin Methodist Parish

By Kenneth Russell

Arising from a New Zealand context and touching on universal issues, Connections offers 45 responses from the people of Dunedin Methodist Parish to the challenge of being church and living out the gospel in their community.

A comment from one member typifies the strong faith, humble attitude, realism and grace which the Parish brings to its work:

“My faith, such as it is, helps me to live as well as I can, and motivates me to do what I can to help others.”

Readers will find themselves laughing, surprised, angered and affirmed, but mostly, nodding in agreement and encouraged in their personal spiritual journey and in their Christian responses to the people around them.

The articles, selected from weekly contributions 2007–2013, are grouped into five broad categories, and cover diverse topics, including:

- Celebrating God’s Creation: What makes a mountain or the ocean a sacred, liminal space? The links between chaos, creation and compassion. The blessings of birds, forest and simplicity.
- Responding to the Gospel: Following Jesus simply. Raising children well. Resisting greed, giving, receiving and sharing. Remembering loved ones and dealing with loss. Getting people’s attention.
- New Ideas for Being Church: The value of ritual. Changing location brings new perspectives. What if Jesus returned today?
- Seeking Justice: Putting people ahead of money. Fighting poverty. Communicating through building relationships. Lessons from the Delhi Commonwealth Games.
- Working for Peace: Opposing violence against women. Peacemaking, power and politics. The cost and futility of war. Finding personal peace.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Philip Garside
• Release date: May 9, 2014
• ISBN: 9781927260241

Book preview

Connections

Celebration, Wisdom and Commentary

from Dunedin Methodist Parish

Edited by

Ken Russell and Colin Gibson

Copyright © 2014 Dunedin Methodist Parish

Smashwords edition

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

ISBN 978-1-927260-24-1

Philip Garside Publishing Ltd

PO Box 17160

Wellington 6147

New Zealand

[e-mail]        www.pgpl.co.nz

Front cover artwork:

 Youth @ Mornington member

 Celia Cannon, aged 10

Table of Contents

Title and Copyright

Preface

Celebrating God’s Creation

1—Chaos and Compassion

2—Easter in Taranaki

3—Winter Solstice

4—Earthquakes and Theology

5—The Ark Down-Under?

6—Flags on the Touch Line

7—Ocean: The Oceania Concept of Sacred Space

8—The Blessing of the Birds

9—Creation...

10—How our World was Made

Responding to the Gospel

11—Give Me the Child and I’ll Show You the Man

12—Doing Good

13—Hands of 500 Offering

14—Don’t Mess with the Driving Age!

15—Beer, Sport and Cars

16—Bert Sutcliffe and the Game of Cricket

17—In Memory of Didem Yamam

18—Sand Can, but Snow Can’t

19—RWC: Reason(ugby) With(orld) Compassion(up)

20—Be Thou my Vision

21—Attention

22—What Difference Does Love Make?

23—The Easter Bunny

24—Reciprocity: A Way for Survival

25—Anticipation

New Ideas for Being Church

26—Our Brother Judas

27—Buses, Billboards and Brooding

28—A little Japanese Tea Ceremony

29—The Quality of Mercy

30—University Chaplaincy

31—Ben Jones and Jesus

32—From the Prayer Diary of the Mouse of God

Seeking Justice

33—The Myth of Dependency

34—If I was an Indian...

35—Who Benefits?

36—A Living Wage: Some Thoughts

37—On Being Right

Working for Peace

38—Warbirds or Skylarks?

39—Planting the Tree of Peace

40—A Carter Eulogy

41—The Cost of War

42—The Women’s Tent

43—Long Walk to Peace

44—Ten Years of Annual Peace Lectures

45—Into the Unknown

About this book

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Preface

The Connections column in its present form had its origins in February 2007, when the Parish Council of the Dunedin Methodist Parish asked me to write a weekly column along the lines of what I had done on an ad hoc basis from 2003 to 2005 as Superintendent of the Parish: a weekly comment on current affairs, making connections between the life of the world and the gospel. The Council made it clear they wanted a column that offered broad brush strokes, articles not overtly religious but applying a liberal perspective to weekly events from the personal to the international.

After a year I proposed the column be written collaboratively, and I became the convener of a group of some ten contributors. Without interruption this core has remained stable with minimal losses and additions since that time. It is as the result of a request from within the membership of the Mornington Methodist Church congregation, and the generous gift of a sum of money, that this collection of articles is offered for publication.

It is appropriate here to reprint what might be called the mission statement for Connections, which I wrote for the Parish Bulletin of 23 February 2007. It remains, I believe, an accurate statement of what I and other contributors have sought to achieve with our weekly efforts.

Connections will not be an editorial, but hopefully will articulate something that the average parish member will feel is a useful tool in their day-to-day responsibility to forge a faith that is relevant. At the same time, we will keep an eye on the occasional suitability of columns for posting on the parish website. There is no shortage of evidence that in ways we could not possibly predict, our site attracts hits from a wide range of enquirers, world-wide, and as such has a potential to influence — some from the old school might prefer to say evangelise — a community so much wider than our mothers and fathers in this faith could ever have imagined.

I am sure I am not alone in having read with appreciation in Tuesday’s Otago Daily Times the very fine article by Donald Feist in which he interprets the issues often hidden in the fury of hostility heaped on Bishop Richard Randerson of Auckland for his claim of being an agnostic... his use of the word agnostic being that he cannot prove one way or another the existence of God as defined in traditional Christian doctrine. The disciple Thomas expressed the same agnosticism when questioning the resurrection, Lord, I believe, but help me in my unbelief. The level of hostility against the bishop has been intense, not only from the familiar rump within the church for whom nothing changes, ever, but a fury unleashed by an unholy alliance of conservative media journalists and populist talk-back hosts, whose only motive, it seems, is to defend their own pitifully inadequate grasp of what a relevant gospel for the 21st century might be.

The good thing about Donald Feist’s article is that he insists Bishop Randerson has only done what every preacher/teacher of integrity should do — not to coddle the faith in cotton wool so as to preserve it, but to struggle to make sense of it in the context of available contemporary knowledge, and in situations that prevail. I quote his actual words.

There are still a few people who are comfortable belonging to a monolithic, hierarchical and authoritarian religious organisation, but increasing numbers are no longer willing to be subservient to such an institution. The church is going to have to learn a new humility and a new openness to people as they are. A policy of asking to resign every priest or minister who tries to communicate deep things and ancient insights in a new way would mean that the church was betraying its true purpose of being a servant to people, and thus to God, and is at the same time choosing a quick road to irrelevance.

That just about sums it up for me. I launch this column on the understanding that this parish has long been committed to the prophetic responsibility of those who lead our community to stretch boundaries and probe imagination in the course of forging connections between Jesus faith and living the Jesus way.

As a postscript, ponder the thought on this first Sunday in Lent that it has ever been the lot of innovative thinkers, especially in theology, to suffer for their innovation, and even to die. Jesus, of all people knew that well, and any faith worth its salt will inevitably suffer the same fate.

Our contributors are: Laura Black, Elizabeth Brooke-Carr, George Davis, Colin Gibson, Greg Hughson, David Kitchingman, Trish Patrick, Donald Phillipps, Siosifa Pole, Ken Russell and Helen Watson White. We also acknowledge other valued contributions, among them those of Yvonne Dasler of Blenheim and the late Joan Robertson.

Ken Russell

Celebrating God’s Creation

1—Chaos and Compassion

Trish Patrick on creation, chaos and evolution

A while ago, a friend sent me some photos taken through the Hubble Telescope, pictures of the farthest reaches of space, thousands of light years away. Stunning images of stars in varying stages of creation and/or destruction. Billowing clouds of superheated highly toxic gases against a backdrop of deepest space. The colours and the shapes of the clouds formed by the gases were spectacular. Massive cumulus type clouds threatening in their immensity Yet paradoxically, possessing an illusion of delicacy reminiscent of butterfly wings, swirls and spirals.

Beauty and magnificence on a scale almost beyond comprehension.

Yet... out of cataclysmic violence and chaos of unimaginable power, potential exists for life to evolve. A creation event.

The universe however, does not readily offer up her mysteries. Surely there must be an initiating creative energy acting as a catalyst in this splendid chaos. Might this creative energy be God?

Meister Eckhart says, Whatever God does, the first outburst is always compassion. If this is so, then compassion and chaos are inextricably linked with the creative process. Two sides of the same coin.

Compassion birthing chaos. Chaos birthing compassion. In the fullness of time, the chaos redeemed in the evolution of life.

Chaos is ever present in our lives at a personal, family, community, national and global and cosmic level. (I’ve been known to create a little of my own, from time to time!) It can overwhelm, even paralyse us, but, always invites us to respond with compassion. Compassion to act in a life affirming way at a personal, family, community, national, global and cosmic level.

Marcus Gibson reminded us of this when commenting on Stuart Grant’s timely sermon about Job’s overwhelmingly chaotic dilemma, preached following the tsunami and earthquakes in Samoa and Sumatra. Chaos has the potential to birth the compassionate side of us, reminding us that the inner space of our being can be spacious indeed, creating room for the grace-filled Compassionate Life.

Trish Patrick

13 October 2009

2—Easter in Taranaki

Greg Hughson on sacred space and finding Jesus

Recently I travelled to Massey University near Palmerston North to be present at the opening of a new $1.2 million University Chaplaincy Centre Te Waiora on campus. I was a student at Massey for three years during the 1970s. During this time I was a grateful recipient of University Chaplaincy services, so it was a very special experience for me to return to Massey for this occasion. Sir Paul Reeves, in opening the new centre spoke about the significance of spiritual spaces. He was on his way that day to Taranaki to take part in an event to commemorate 150 years since the land wars began in Taranaki.

As a teenager growing up in Hawera I attended Methodist church Easter camps at Rahotu, a small rural township which nestles on the western slopes of Mt Taranaki. The Methodist church in Rahotu still stands. From within the church worshippers can look through a carefully placed window to the east, out past the cross on the altar table to Mt Taranaki in all her glory. At an early morning service on Easter Day 1970 I knelt with others at the altar rail and gave my life to Christ gazing out through the Church window at my mountain. It was a very special and sacred time.

Forty years later (this weekend) I will be back in Taranaki for Easter once again. My father Alan Hughson died just before Easter a year or so ago. It was his wish that his ashes be scattered on Mt Taranaki, the mountain under whose shadow and influence he lived for most of his 78 years. Along with members of our wider family we will gather on Easter Sunday afternoon 2010 to carry out Alan’s wishes. Rather than a grave, he has chosen his mountain, Mt Taranaki to be his final resting place. Rather than visit his grave, he wanted us to remember him each time we gaze upon