E NEWS 6TH OCTOBER 2023
What a dramatic finale it was to General Assembly. The drama was, whilst walking to St. Kentigern’s Chapel on Sunday for the closing worship I accidentally tripped on the curb and fell face down on to the concrete. I was dazed and was bleeding in two places, I had cut my bottom lip and below my lip. Several people came to my help. As I was helped up my colleague the new Executive officer from UCANZ happened to drive by in his car and stopped to help. I was told to hop in so he could drive me down to the chapel. On our way the St John’s ambulance minister came and assessed me and cleaned up the blood on my face. He told me I needed to be monitored for the next 4 hours and should not be on my own. Easy to say when you are on your own and due to fly back to Wellington that afternoon. I told him that my family were out West Auckland and that I could drive myself there, this was not a good idea. So, Andrew Doubleday from UCANZ kindly offered to drive me there. It was a good opportunity for us to debrief over Assembly since I am one of the co-chairs of UCANZ.
When I arrived at my old church at St Andrew’s in Henderson where my family worship my sister took one look at me and said, “right we need to take you to the hospital, why did they not ring an ambulance where the accident happened?” So off we went to Waitakere Hospital Accident and Emergency a place I knew so well as it was the zone I lived and grew up in. I didn’t have to wait at all, I was taken directly to an assessment bay. I had to change into a hospital gown and an IV was inserted in my arm. Some of my family came to the hospital as soon as they heard I was in hospital. You can imagine what was going through my dazed mind, it was surreal. My nephew and his wife drove to St. Kentigern’s to pick up my hire car, then went to my motel in Botany to retrieve my luggage and check me out of the motel. We were unsure whether I was going to be admitted overnight so we just covered all our bases, so they returned my hire car to the airport as I was unfit to drive anyway. I had a CT scan and an X-ray to my wrist where I broke my fall. Thankfully nothing was broken I was given the all clear and discharged early evening with cuts and bruises and a sprained wrist.
I stayed with my sister that night and the wonderful thing was that my siblings and their children and grandchildren came over for supper and the children made such a racket but it was just what the doctor ordered. I had to change my flight for the next day. When I got back to Wellington I made an appointment to see my dentist the next day on Tuesday because my teeth were hurting where I hit my face. I was given the all clear, but on Wednesday evening one of my upper molars broke so I have just returned from the dentist to start a root canal for the broken tooth but the dentist discovered my tooth had split in two from the fall and was unsalvageable so has been extracted.
Not a good way to end my time at General Assembly. In retrospect after attending the induction of the new Moderator the Rt Rev Rose Luxford and being a commissioner on behalf of Central Presbytery I can say that I had a “lucky escape” that I did not become the next Moderator Elect. In all honesty I struggled with how conservative the PCANZ has become, there is no way that I could have led a church where the majority were conservative evangelicals.
In my E News last week I mentioned standing up as the minister of St. Andrew’s on the Terrace and stating that we were an inclusive rainbow church. I am sure that many people at Assembly were hoping that I would not be the next moderator as the name was still embargoed until Friday afternoon. Incidentally, the moderator elect for 2025 General Assembly is Rev. Peter Dunne from Invercargill.
On the final day of General Assembly an ex moderator wanted us to adopt a prayer of repentance making reference to the 1967 heresy trial but did not mention any names. It’s too long to mention here but in a nutshell what was written in the recommendation was different to what the mover of the recommendation was saying. I stood up and asked “who is repenting here? Are we as a church repenting for the way we treated this person or are you expecting this person to repent for his beliefs? There was much debate after which I stood up and said “let me name this person. I bring greetings from Sir Lloyd Geering to the General Assembly (I had met with him a week earlier and told him I was a commissioner), this year he celebrated 80 years of ordination and received a card from King Charles and Camilla for his 105th birthday. He is well. And by the grace of God I have been called to be his Pastor and what a blessing it is. No more witch-hunts. You couldn’t hear a pin drop, I think people were stunned to hear that Sir Lloyd was still alive and well. The friendlier amendment to the motion which was more bland removing reference to 1967 and basically repenting for all the times we have as a church treated people badly was passed.
The two main times that I stood up in Assembly was to speak for justice and inclusiveness and to represent or was it defend SAOTT and other like minded churches and people.
If I got anything positive out of General Assembly it was that it affirmed my call to be minister of SAOTT even more and I realised what an honour it is to be your minister because we represent everything that the majority of the PCANZ fear and judge.
Marilyn Wallace and I will be sharing our reflections on GA23 during family time and reflection time. I look forward to seeing you there on Sunday. Enjoy your weekend. Ka kite ano, Fei
You can read the full E-news here: https://mailchi.mp/54ff222d5807/this-weeks-newsletter-from-st-andrews-on-the-terrace-9402992
