Bishop Anne talks of some joyous occasions over the past month, reflecting also on our ongoing call to love and reconciliation.

Click here to watch the video

Video cover photo: Bishop Anne and Rev'd Ruth Doig at the Sam Wells Seminar, St Matthew's Church, August 2025. Other photos in the video are noted in the video descriptor.

Transcript:

It's been a good month full of really interesting things going on across our diocese, kind of lifegiving things. We've welcomed Chris and Kara Dodds and their three boys to Wakatipu: that was a tremendously joyful service and get together, just wonderful to have them as part of our Diocesan family. We had five rural chaplains commissioned the same weekend in Alexandra... one of whom is new to the diocese and four who already have ministry within the diocese but who are feeling called specifically to this particular outreach and grace. Stephen Gully is our new person and he is going to be helping to coordinate rural chaplaincy in central and perhaps even in the north. Then we've had Steve Mitchell and Jen Chamberlain and Craig and Sheila Smith all give themselves to this ministry as well.

We also have a ministry opening up: today we've sent out an advertisement for position of vicar at St. Peter's Caversham. So, please pray for whoever that is going to be. And if there's someone you think might be being nudged by God for that position, let them know about it.

On top of all that, there have been some things which have just been fun. I was sent some wonderful pictures from the fete at Holy Trinity in Invercargill. One of the lovely things about that fete which they pour a whole lot of work into, is that all the money is set aside for mission projects of various descriptions. So it's a great lifegiving community building connecting with the surrounding community activity.

The other one was that a group of 20 of us went off to Waipiata and we sang for 24 hours with some breaks to chat and to eat some amazing food...but mainly to record some more songs for the Scattered People at the Good Shepherd services. There are few things more enjoyable than simply getting together and singing, so that was a really fun couple of days.

All this, of course, is against a background of a world which is still pretty troubled: signs of hope in Israel and Palestine for which we need to give thanks and also continue to pray. But on a more widespread level, I read this morning a simple story about someone whose close friend had been singing Charlie Kirk's praises (this was the conservative influencer who was recently assassinated in the USA). The first woman had not been a fan of Charlie Kirks, but what she and her friend did was sit down and compare notes. They compared the information that each of them had been fed on the various internet platforms, and they found that there was almost no overlap: what the person who thought Charlie Kirk was wonderful had been receiving was completely different to the stuff that the other had been receiving.

This is a growing reality in our world now, because we're taught that love involves doing to others as you'd have them do to you, treating others as they treat us. I think we have been seriously called into this space under the umbrella of what I've been calling "becoming Communities of Reconciliation", because we should have such a strong desire to love the other, that we want to treat them the way we'd want to be treated. In other words, we would like to be given the benefit of the doubt. We would like someone to try and understand us before they condemn us. In this model, instead of condemning, digging in our heels and thinking "what fools" those other people might be, a model of sitting down and saying, "Help me understand why you think that way" demonstrates the way of love.

It doesn't mean we need to agree with each other. Neither of us needs to change the other one's mind, but simply reaching that level of understanding is reconciliation, is love and is a model in miniature of what our church should be: — a group of people who come from so many backgrounds with so many ideas, so many life experiences, and yet seek to offer each other respect, love, and understanding.

It's not an easy thing, but this is all part of what I believe we're being called to be and what the world needs us to be right now.

So, God bless you as we attempt to follow God's will and Jesus’ leading in this way.

+Anne