The Gathering, which meets in a hall the South Canterbury town of Temuka has no leader, no service plan and just a couple of acoustic guitars.

About 30 people attend the non-denominational gathering regularly, the youngest was four and the oldest over 80.

Members discuss aspects of the Bible, with everyone having the opportunity to share their views.

Founded on the Bible verse 1 Corinthians 14.26, which talks about Christians getting together sharing hymns, words of instruction and revelation, to build up the church, it has drawn a dedicated group of worshippers.

In a reflection of first-century Christians' behaviour The Gathering shares lunch after their service too.

At the cost of $25 an hour (including power) for the pipe band hall rental, the new church has no other overheads other than blackcurrant juice and a little bread for communion.

In contrast, St Mary's Anglican in Timaru, the projected lighting and heating budget for this year is $11,604, to heat the spaces between the resplendent Oamaru stone walls and ornate arches, propped up by Welsh marble pillars.

Its heaters are turned on each week at 2.30 am in preparation for services, at a cost of about $30 an hour. The church's overall projected budget for 2019 is $212,169.

Presbyterian minister Reverend Brent Richardson sees The Gathering as one of many groups being innovative but predicts that as it grew and became more sophisticated it would likely need an administrator to cope with the workload.

"As it grows it requires money to keep going. The only way to avoid that is by remaining small."

Being purposefully stunted defeated the purpose of a church with its mission to share the gospel and increase its numbers, Richardson said.

Source

• stuff.co.nz
• Image: stuff.co.nz

The same survey shows that the perceived change in personal trust in churches in the same period to be greater than the participants' answers actually indicate.

The results indicate a score of 7 for reduced net trust. The perceived net reduced trust was scored 23.

The Colmar Brunton survey asked people how much they trust key groups such as government ministers, police, medical practitioners, churches, charities, small businesses, the media and bloggers.

The 2018 survey also scored charities as significantly less trustworthy than they were in 2016.

But when compared with 2016, New Zealanders are significantly more trusting of police, judges and courts, local government, government ministers and members of parliament.

Medical practitioners and police are perceived to be the most trustworthy.

The media, bloggers and online commentators are least trustworthy.

These results were obtained by a random survey of 1,000 New Zealanders aged 18 years and over.

They were interviewed online from 26 February to 4 March 2018.

In total, 472 respondents completed both the 2016 and 2018 surveys. The remaining respondents were new to the survey in 2018 and were randomly sourced from Colmar Brunton's online panel and invited to take part.

The data also points to differences in overall trust levels across age groups, with older people being more trusting.

Of those aged 60 or older, 62 percent reported a high level of trust generally in people, compared with 38 percent high trust in the 18-29 year old group and 44 percent for those aged 30 to 59.

"It is unclear if we observe this pattern because people trust more as they age," says researcher Dr Chapple, "or whether younger people today are generally less trusting than young people a generation ago. But overseas evidence suggests that trust levels may be falling in younger generations."

The survey was commissioned by the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies, and School of Government of Victoria University of Wellington.

Source

• victoria.ac.nz
• victoria.ac.nz
• Image: psychologytoday.com

The Immaculate Conception B.V.M. Catholic Church in Bristol Township, located 25 miles outside of Philadelphia, was purchased by the United American Muslim Society, based in Brooklyn, New York, for $1.775 million last Friday.

The real estate transaction was announced during weekend masses at Queen of the Universe Parish. The announcement was "positively received by parishioners," Continue reading

Tax refund site MyTax analysed more than 300,000 tax returns and found the average total donations claimed had fallen to $761, from the previous year's $841.

Joseph Bulbulia, of Victoria University and a member of the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study, said one of the reasons for a wider drop in donations was that people had less cash in their wallets.

"Many people donate spontaneously, when they are approached in the street by a collector. But people don't carry cash any more. It's hard to estimate how much it's affecting the hidden economy but estimates are that it's substantial.:

He said organised religion was another driver of charitable giving and as that declined in New Zealand, it could affect how much was donated.

"Also as people retire they tend to give less money to charity but tend to volunteer more. As the population ages we will probably see more volunteering and less donation." Continue reading

He said this is happening across all ethnicities.

Dunn said that while it was affecting all parishes, many were not aware it was happening, because the churches were still full.

New New Zealanders are replacing are those drifting away.

Census data showed the Catholic religion was the largest Christian denomination in 2013.

Almost half a million (492,105) people identified as Catholic.

That figure was down by 16,332 (about 3.3 percent) from 2006.

Almost one third the total number were born overseas, predominantly in the Philippines, England and Samoa.

Dunn is calling this trend "kiwi drift"

He said religion was no longer seen as a fundamental part of New Zealand culture.

He thinks 1960s propelled the separation from religion.

There was a change in society driven by television, student revolt, the sexual revolution and drugs.

Dunn says the trend is affecting every 'European' first-world country.

"I don't know what they'd call it in the USA, but there seems to be a developing disconnect in these cultures between Christianity and the mainstream culture."

Over the past 30 years, the number of New Zealand-born people attending church had been declining says Peter Lineham

He is a professor of history at Massey University.

"There's been dramatic declines in participation and involvement and adherence to all churches."

"It was slower to take effect in the Catholic Church."

Lineham agrees with Dunn that the trend is being masked by the new New Zealanders.

Migrants, he says tend to have a greater need for religion than those who have lived here for a long time.

He said there was no simple answer to the decline.

"The fact is that Kiwis in general dislike organisations, opt out of voluntary bodies, see relatively little use in organised religion."

"It's not that they've probably had any change in their level of believing in God, but they've certainly had a big change in their willingness to accept any organisational answer to those questions."

Lineham said as later generations of new migrants settled in New Zealand and became more westernised, they also might start attending church less.

Source

• radionz.co.nz
• Image: stuff.co.nz

Naturally, the venues where these three myths tend to be most deeply entrenched — the secular media, the academy, political circles and so on — are also places where the whole idea of Lenten sacrifice is sometimes a nonstarter. Yet they're remarkably widespread inside the church too, among people who really ought to know better. If Catholics perpetuate these ideas, it's hard to fault the outside world for being seduced by them.

Here are three popular fallacies, in the hope that Lent 2012 might mark the beginning of their expiration date.

1. Purple ecclesiology

"Purple ecclesiology" refers to the notion that the lead actors in the Catholic drama are the clergy, and in fact, the only activity that really counts as "Catholic" at all is that carried out by the church's clerical caste, especially its bishops. You can always spot purple ecclesiology at work when you hear someone say "the church" when what they really mean is "the hierarchy."

(I was once called by a producer from the BBC looking for leads on a segment they wanted to do about women in the Catholic church. I ticked off a series of high-profile Catholic laywomen they could ring up, to which the producer replied: "I'm sorry, I need someone from the church." She meant, of course, someone in a Roman collar — that's purple ecclesiology at work.)

The truth is that the number of ordained clergy in the Catholic church comes to roughly .04 percent of the total Catholic population of 1.2 billion. If they're the main act, then all one can say is that the Catholic show is wildly top-heavy with supporting cast.

The self-parodying nature of purple ecclesiology was once memorably captured by Cardinal John Henry Newman, who, asked for his opinion on the laity, replied, "Well, we'd look awfully silly without them." Read more

Sources

• John L Allen Jr in National Catholic Reporter
• Image: Quod Semper