A DIY Murder Mystery

The Girls Brigade national conference had a great evening with our Murder Mystery Dinner on Saturday night. Bev and I had a ball, as did 112 others from around the country.
But the night before, at Mahurangi East Community Church they did the show by themselves. This wasthe first time in 14 events it was not managed by me personally but Ferelyth Roffey reports that it went very well. “We had no power cuts but we did set off the smoke detector which blared out before the main course and added to the enjoyment of the evening.”
She said that the diners listened to the personal statements in absolute silence, eyes riveted to the speaker so as not to miss a word. The script was excellent. As the suspects moved around the tables the volume of conversational/questioning rose exponentially. All reports indicate a thoroughly enjoyable evening.
Ferelyth says they chose their suspects, “on the basis of who was keen and who was available” not on the basis of acting ability. “The script is robust. A little hesitation and the odd bumble in reading probably added authenticity to their statements.” She felt that any group could give it a go. Her full report from Snell's Beach is here.

Ask me for the CD and your group is in business.

Girls’ Brigade NZ at Conference

I haven’t had much to do with Girls’ Brigade for most of my ministry so it’s going to be really interesting to be at their national conference on Saturday -- not that I’ll be doing much to lift up the standard of study or work for the organisation. Nor will any contribution of mine elevate their moral or ethical standards which I am sure are at the heart of their great movement.

Bev and I are going down to Hamilton to stage our Murder Mystery at their big dinner. Most of the cast will be female, of course, though at least the “Bishop” – Methodist Minister Gloria Zanders – has agreed that she will cross-dress on this occasion. I’m told that the two of us will compete for star status with Father Christmas. Oh, what a night it’ll be!

Since their foundation in 1893, Girls Brigade has become well known as a fun, interesting, challenging and relevant provider of activities, skills, care and Christian love for hundreds of thousands of young people. I hope our brief contribution to their conference will be seen as a kind of Thank You from the rest of us in the community.

Visit GBNZ at http://www.girlsbrigade.org.nz/

Focus on Paihia

On Wednesday evening the Paihia community gave enthusiastic support to a suggested programme to define a common vision for the town.

I can’t think of any time over the last couple of decades when more people met in one place to share their concerns and hopes for the town. There were 120 seats available but some people stood in both the plenary and group sessions during the two hours. It was very gratifying for the half dozen enthusiasts who called the meeting and suggested the programme.
Individuals listed their own ideas about what they liked, disliked or hated about Paihia and these were stuck up for everyone to read. They’ll also be transcribed and placed on the website in the next few days. Groups of about ten or so people then listed what they felt Paihia would look or feel like if they should arrive in the town in 2029.
It was hard for the groups to separate “look” and “feel” from concrete issues like “better street lights” but gradually the concept of a vision for the Paihia of the future came through. Groups reported very briefly but their full written reports are already on the website. Their comments reflect growing awareness of the link between tourists’ and residents’ needs, and a developing understanding that “business” and “residents” are not in competition with each other but can work together for a better Paihia.
In a brief final session there was no difficulty finding volunteers to attend a meeting to establish a working group to put the programme together. Another community consultation will be held July 14th.
The first meeting of half a dozen Focus Groups will be held that night and they will plan their work for the coming weeks. Each will work at its own theme and the working group will coordinate discussions and assist with the development of the Vision. It is expected that this will be complete by the end of November.
Those of us who took the initiative in calling this group are convinced the time is right, the economic climate demands some serious thinking and the political climate is more sympathetic than at many times in the past. The growing maturity of the community is becoming evident and there’s a will to work together to produce a significant result.
Great stuff!

Visit "Focus on Paihia" on http://www.paihianz.co.nz/ and add your comments

Or email us at focusonpaihia@xtra.co.nz

Rioteous humour

My birthday present for this year was two tickets to the play The Day they Kidnapped the Pope, staged at Theatre Pitt by Pilgrim Players.
It was an absolutely marvellous romp. The large and talented cast threw themselves into the story with enthusiasm and conviction and just the right blend of tongue-in-cheek slapstick and theological insight. The audience didn’t have to make any special effort to show their appreciation of religious jokes; they roared with laughter as the Jewish cab-driver held the Pope in his pantry for a ransom by which nobody in the world would be killed during a 24 hour period. Interfaith chess games and exploding bombs in the front yard added to the riotous spectacle.
The play ended with a successful 24 hours of total world peace; the Pope declared he’d just been taking a couple of day’s vacation with friends; the SWAT team was stood down. Our sides were aching from laughter. But, at the end, the world went back to killing people all over the place. Was nothing changed?
Well, personally, we could have been at a church meeting somewhere else. It wouldn’t have been as much fun and probably wouldn’t have considered world peace as even a remote possibility. For a couple of hours we were transported out of our everyday existence and into a madcap world of dedicated imagination and delicious humour. We were made to laugh; we were made to think.
Maybe church should be more like that.

Lights killed at mystery dinner

Last night, eighty of us were packed around tables at St Chad’s Anglican-Methodist Church, Huapai, for our Murder Mystery Dinner “Death by Cooperation”. The Bishop opened the meeting, the sudden death was discovered and, as the Detective Chief Inspector, I was woken up and commissioned to lead the table groups in solving the mystery.
As the soup was about to be served the lights went out. Many people thought it was part of the show. But after a few minutes of local men stumbling around in the dark to see what fuses had blown, it became apparent we had a serious problem. The power had failed at the pole fuse in the street. Nothing could be done because nobody present knew who the power supplier was.
However, within minutes some people had popped home or to the supermarket around the block for candles. The show proceeded according to schedule: everyone threw themselves into it, the suspects made their statements and answered questions at the tables and, eventually, in spite of the difficulty of reading clue cards and other resources by candlelight, the denouement revealed that one table solved the murder and the guilty party was arrested.
It was another hilarious evening, made all the more exciting by the difficult conditions in which it was held. It’s been a privilege to be a part of bringing so much enjoyment to so many people through so improbable a scenario as the merging of three congregations in a mythical small town. Next Friday, we’ll be with Beckenham Methodists where, hopefully, the power will be on for the whole evening.

“Death by Cooperation” is available as a complete kitset on CD ROM. You can do it yourself, or negotiate with Bev and me to stage it for you.

Anglican-Methodist Partnership?

Lesley had to step in at short notice to take our services for Wesley Sunday. She used some of the liturgy prepared to celebrate the national Covenant between Anglicans and Methodists in Auckland later the same day.

But she didn’t use the scriptures as a sort of biblical coathook on which to hang a double-denominational event of the 21st century. She turned a critical focus onto the words “the scandal of separateness” in the liturgy, saying she didn't care for the expression and suggesting that the real scandal was the separation of each of us from God’s Holy Spirit. Later, in pairs we shared the personal temptations that we each identified as part of that separation. With her developing sense of the flow of the whole of the worship it was a moving and creative experience.
Ironically, as I was today reflecting on a Methodist-Anglican conversation that hadn’t even taken place locally, I received a link to Anglican Adele Jones’ Sun day morning reflection in Christ Church, Russell. They weren’t into Anglican-Methodist covenant either, it seems, but her contribution obviously prompted much thought.
Perhaps both congregations experienced what really matters for Wesley day: lay people, without much formal theological education, lifting up the central concepts of the life in Christ with insight and passion.
And, yes, a small group of us did watch the film John Wesley last night and the moment when Thomas Maxfield, who was not ordained, mounted the pulpit to preach, spoke volumes to us all.

So I thank God for Lesley and Adele and all those lay people who speak a word in season every week in our small churches around the North.

The Te of Local Government

At our garage sale, where I was supposed to be getting rid of my stuff I bought a copy of Hoff’s The Te of Piglet. For an hour or two I have revelled in his exposition of the Taoist principle of Te – the virtue of smallness, as exemplified in AA Milne’s immortal Piglet. It was a great little read, especially for someone committed to small churches and Local Shared Ministry.
But, hey, it also speaks to me about district government. I think our Mayor has got it right when he says there is too much overlapping of local authorities in the north. But, for my money, local government should come right down to every one of the local communities. Every discrete community should be able to elect its own element of local government.
For everything else, I would leave it to the state. Parliament already makes a lot of the laws that District Councils then, if they wish, add into their own regulations. The state already administers our education, police, courts, health and welfare and other functions on a reasonably consistent basis from one end of the country to the other. Let them add a little more administration to take in local roads, water, wastewater and put the Councils out to grass.
We have far too much government in this country but we need more of it in small lively, empowered organisations at the local level and none at all, thanks very much, at district and regional level.

"Strangely Warmed?"

I suppose really devout Methodists will be getting ready to celebrate John Wesley’s "spiritual birthday" this weekend. It’s a little different for us who live in a uniting parish with people of many church traditions and none.

“At about a quarter before nine…” wrote Wesley of 24^th May 1738,, “I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate St… and felt my heart strangely warmed..”

Principal EW Hames used to say that Methodists have been taking their spiritual temperature ever since – and he didn’t really approve. Somewhere I read that Wesley himself wouldn’t have slavishly observed the anniversary of that experience. His life was not so very different after it from before it. I certainly don’t think he would have called it his “conversion”.

But the sense of personal assurance was important to him on that night long ago and it’s important for us, now. In all the ups and downs of life in a very small congregation I’m glad to have a “feeling” of belongingness within the fellowship and the heart of the Creator. That's what Wesley called "assurance"... and it's OK.

I guess on Sunday night we may even dig out the old Arthur Rank movie and give ourselves a little thrill. After all, it’s the exact date.

Email me if you’d like to join us.    colcom.press@clear.net.nz

“Topsy Town?”

Paihia, like Topsy, just “growed”. With no proper town plan to guide its layout or infrastructure, the little town just kind of happened. When the place was a beach, a motel, two stores and a few dozen houses that didn’t matter much but by the booming mid-1980s, a coherent plan was really needed. Two decades later, we still don’t have one.
Now a major community workshop on 17th June is going to be invited to do some dreaming and put in place a planning process in which the community can develop its own considered vision for the future. Over the next three months there’ll be focus groups that will canvass opinion and shape up policy around major areas. Then there’ll be a couple more large community gatherings to review and finalise our vision for Paihia.
This considered statement of the community’s view will be presented to the Council in early 2010. We will have done by ourselves what successive Councils have so far failed to do for us. And it’s going to be fun.

www.paihianz.co.nz/community

focusonpaihia@xtra.co.nz

Preaching for money?

Well, not exactly. But on the principle that the labourer is worth his or her hire, the national Presbyterian Parent of our Uniting Parish has updated its fees for ministers or students who help out by taking Sunday services.
Granted that the PCANZ does not authorise a fee for lay worship leaders, we can estimate that if our parish had invited ministers to take just our Sunday services over the seventeen years we have had Local Shared Ministry, at those rates we would have spent some $250,000.
Of course that amount would have been better than a half-time minister for that period at about $550,000. But the figure gives us one measure of the dedicated contribution of people in our LSM parish. And that’s only leading worship, never mind the myriad of other roles in pastoral care, administration, communication and community service - all faithfully offered up on a voluntary basis.