It's a story most parishes could tell. Finding the funds to keep both church and community together can take a concerted effort as a Wairarapa parish can attest.

Keeping it together

Martinborough's First Church gets funding from a property the Presbyterian Church rents out.

As the income is insufficient, fundraising is necessary to balance the books - which is where the church community steps in.

It's pretty hand-to-mouth, says Sherryl Howie, former Sunday school teacher turned arch-fundraiser.

"[Churches] are a piece of history, that's for sure, they're definitely beautiful and hopefully we can retain that by doing some nice things, enjoying ourselves at the same time as raising some money" she says.

Bearing these facts in mind, they have an annual "Spring Fling" event that brings in good money. Other fundraising efforts are dotted throughout the year.

"We ... have a church fair and we sell books all the time ... I guess this happens all round the country" Howie says.

Spring Fling

Held at the town hall, this year's annual "Spring Fling" included dinner, musical entertainment and a fashion parade.

A local musician joined the events saying her "love for that church is just so strong that I want to be part of this" Howie recalls.

"This year, we sold the whole 150 tickets, we fed them and we did the fashion parade. Yeah, it was all pretty good" Howie says.

Tickets were limited to 50 when the event was first held "a couple of years ago" she notes.

"The following year people just said 'look, we want to come, we heard what a great thing this was', so the committee upped the number of tickets to be sold.

"It's not just about raising the funds, it's about bringing that community together to have a great time" she says.

Many of those who attended the Spring Fling had family connections to the church spanning multiple generations, she says.

Connecting past with present

One of this year's big success stories was an update of the Martinborough Cookbook. First published in 1972, the collection of recipes from the Martinborough area was reprinted in 1992.

Now a new generation wants copies.

"The local kids were starting to say things like ‘where can we get that book from? My nana was in that book, my aunty was in that book, I remember that book, my mother had it, where can we get these?'

"We reprinted the book as it was [but with a new foreword], just so that you could see your aunty or your mother or somebody in that book from way back" Howie says.

She hopes getting a younger generation involved in hosting events like Spring Fling will help keep the church and its community going in the future.

Source

• The Post

It's quite a challenge - there are over 60 places of worship in the Whanganui area and the club hopes to include most of these, aiming to document the exteriors and the inside details of all of them.

A recent highlight for the team was a weekend trip to Ohakune, Raetihi and Hiruharama Jerusalem to capture images of the local churches, many with outstanding heritage value. Read more

Harvey expressed his view in an article, Saving Grace that appeared in the Autumn 2012 edition of Heritage,

In the article Matt Philp described the fate of a number of churches, not only in the small country settlements but also in the bigger cities.

Philp began his article by saying that with "decaying fabric, dwindling congregations, lack of funds, a dearth of official help... without the concern of ardent supporters, our historic churches will simply disappear"

Harvey says, "Quite a lot of these little country churches that are part of our history are being lost forever. They are sold off as holiday homes and sometimes moved off site and the big tragedy of it is that everything inside the church goes - the pews, the plaques on the wall, the church furniture..."

He thinks that the onus is on local communities to save their churches. "If a community believes a church is a local icon - and most were in the early days - it has to raise the money and look after it and perhaps find another use for it."
Source

• Matt Philp - New Zealand Historic Places Trust
• Image: upload.wikimedia.org

The dispute dates from August, 2010 when contractors Naylor Love arrived to remove the altar. Continue Reading

The NZ Historic Places Trust recently registered Bishop's House in Ponsonby, and St Benedict's Church and presbytery, as Category 1 historic places, identifying them as places of outstanding heritage significance. Continue reading

The Hamilton East Community Trust (HECT) is still fighting to keep the pre-World War II Spanish mission-style convent standing, despite the church diocese gaining consent to demolish the 74-year-old building. The diocese says it cannot afford earthquake upgrading that the building needs, and wants to demolish it and instead build a two-storey diocesan centre on the site.

The trust has appealed the consent decision to the Environment Court.

Its proposal to the diocese to save the iconic building, including costings for strengthening, extension and refurbishment, put the likely bill at $4.1m.

Diocese working party member Peter Egan said the proposal wouldn't work. Read More

We have our own shrines and pilgrimages in New Zealand, and a combined pilgrimage-retreat that is fast catching on is the aptly named "Road Retreat", that alternates between visiting shrines and places of historic interest to the Catholic Church, one year in the North Island and the next year in the South.

This year the pilgrimage-retreat begins on November 17^th in Kerikeri and first visits Catholic and Anglican sites that are of so much interest to us all. For example, New Zealand's oldest church, Christ Church (Anglican), and Bishop Pompallier's burial place in Motuti. Joy Cowley, wih her deep knowledge of New Zealand Catholic history is the tour guide.

It is impossible to detail all the places visited. Suffice it to mention of the wonderful sites of Mother Aubert and James K Baxter on the Whanganui River, with its iconic church and community of Mother Aubert's sisters

The pilgrimage ends with the Home of Compassion and the historic Mount St. cemetery, where so many of our Catholic forebears are buried.

Anyone interested should certainly get in touch with Patricia Parsons, tel: 0274219064

Source:

• Michael Mahoney
• Image:

Dunedin diocese's general manager Stuart Young said parishioners were ultimately the ones who would bear the costs of increased insurance premiums, brought about by the Christchurch earthquakes.

"It is a tsunami about to hit us. We face a renewal of our policy at the end of the month... we are also in a position where our broker is negotiating with a new [insurance provider]," Mr Young said.

The diocese has about seven heritage churches in the city including St Joseph's Cathedral in city rise, and churches at Port Chalmers and Northeast Valley, with another eight spread around the region.

"We need to be sensible about what risk we take and look at a diocese-wide perspective. In the event of an earthquake we might not have insurance which will allow us to totally rebuild any [damaged] heritage churches," Mr Young said

Source

• Otago Daily Times
• Image: Wikimedia commons