Happy New Year from all at St Andrew’s!
This year St Andrews on the Terrace is 180.
On 22 February 1840, our first members arrived on the Bengal Merchant, from Glasgow. The next day their minister Rev John MacFarlane, who travelled with them, held a service on the Pito-one Beach. The Iona Cross on the Petone Foreshore commemorates this church service.
This year we are going to remember and celebrate that occasion on
Sunday 23rd February at 2pm.
Come and join us
We will tell you much more about our history throughout the year. There are many treasures in this church – some we look at every Sunday. We will tell you about these too.
This Sunday at our Gathering we are going to look again at why our settlers left Scotland and their struggles in the first year. One of the first things they did was to form a committee (of course) to raise funds for a church. In the meantime, they used various buildings around the settlement. Bur on Sunday 7th January 1844, the first Presbyterian Church in NZ was opened on the beach (Lambton Quay). At Reflection time, Valerie Rhodes will give us a history of time and their minister. Rev Norman Wilkins will follow with a reflection. He will also conduct communion.
After morning tea, we will have a Congregational Conversation. It’s a busy morning – we hope to see you there.
Also, on Sunday, our Rainbow Room programme will start. The new schoolyear will have started and we always welcome the children to our Gathering each Sunday. We look forward to seeing you all.
Lois Robertson Convener 2020 Committee
St. Andrew’s has always stood by the vulnerable, however we still have work to do.
A few days ago Donald Trump said that we should not get concerned about climate change. He made a good point (I have to admit he does so now and again) when he said that we feared overpopulation in the 1960s, mass starvation in the 70s and running out of oil in the 90s, and that those calamities didn’t eventuate. He was right in as much as exactly what many of us feared didn’t happen. The world’s human population has continued to grow and mass starvation hasn’t happened but it has been avoided at the expense of the natural environment in that forests are being lost for farming and palm oil trees. We worried about peak-oil but then we started to extract oil from oil sands and offshore. I will add to that the fear of economic collapse and a Y2K computer failure. We simply cannot predict the future. I have to admit there may be some yet to be discovered technological solution to climate change. I also admit I am into catastrophizing and I laugh at myself when I remember thinking of getting a pony and little cart when carless days were imposed in the 70s. (we had a very big section). In hindsight I realise I don’t have what it takes to make friends with a horse
However our technological cleverness has often meant that we discovered how to avoid many of the calamities by committing damage on our Earth. We have been smart enough to discover ways to make our planet pay enormously to bail us out.
As the planet pays it exacts a price, and it is the most vulnerable who bear that price.
As we celebrate and look back over our parish’s history there is a lot more that we need to do for the vulnerable. I hope that these celebrations will energise us to continue the prophetic work of the past
Norman Wilkins
To view the full e-news click on this link: https://mailchi.mp/0cb78a0c7c2f/this-weeks-newsletter-from-st-andrews-on-the-terrace-3817785?e=3b85e40692
