Readers share their views.

Ageing Church No Cause for Lament

To the editor

I have noted how the church has become older and there’s huge lament about that. Age has often become associated with passivity and tiredness; with decreased faculty. The church seems to buy into the veneration of youth as the ultimate mark of success. We need young people but not at the expense of discovering the value of age. We need both.

When I visit parishes I often hear a litany of lacks. One of which is usually young people. We just have older folk, I hear. Why is it, I think to myself, that it’s easier to articulate what we don’t have than it is to tell what we do have. By repeating we have no … we are in fact denigrating and disrespecting what we do have. Older folk. In abundance. Just like the rest of society and many other organisations.

How we understand our older folk is a mark of the church’s creativity. It’s easy to think we have to coddle older folk, that we are past our energetic best and that our task is to “look after them”. Yes to all those. But that’s not the whole truth. As we age we also come into our own. The challenge for an ageing church is to find ways to encourage the resource of age. To find ways to reflect together on the spirituality of growing older.

Ageing is the challenge of our times. It is not uncommon now to celebrate a 70th wedding anniversary or a 100th birthday. How might we take hold of the current reality and grow a church of vibrant ageing? How might we rediscover and articulate the ways God is a reality in the life lessons we have learned as we age? How can we share these discoveries with the church in an age of electronic communication like YouTube?

Why would we not want to grow a vibrant church of older folk?

I look forward to hearing how parishes are wrestling with a whole new way of understanding the reality of age. I look forward to the time when we will stand up and articulate clearly what we do have without lament. We are a smaller, older church than we once were. What then is there to say about what we do have, rather than a constant lament about what we often do not have in many congregations?

Arohanui, Rob Fergusson

Whanganui.

The importance of letters

To the editor

How important Touchstone is as a monthly dose of Methodist news and views. Long before enjoying – and writing for – Touchstone, I had been a reader of the Methodist Recorder, the newspaper of the Methodist community in Britain. It ranks among the best of the British religious press because it reports honestly and features a lively letters column.

My appreciation of the value of published media came way before any involvement with the Church. My generation, at school in the 1970s, had no concept of electronic social media to come. In those days, in the library of my school in Wimbledon, I found and devoured a weekly magazine The Listener, a BBC publication containing the radio schedules, political essays, literary reviews and letters. For me, the magazine made the connections between live politics and the underlying ideas. It formed my understanding of the importance of culture.

In my adult life, I continued to be a devotee of The Listener. I moved on to a teaching post in Ghana, West Africa, where although the postal service was not superb, my annual subscription to The Listener was secure, if a fortnight delayed. Fellow expatriates teased me about my weekly devotion to two-week-old news and views. Sadly, the publication faltered and folded, and I turned to the Guardian Weekly in its tissue-paper airmail edition.

Fast forward to 2009, and my family’s joyful emigration to Aotearoa New Zealand. And, joy of joys, despite its much smaller population, New Zealand boasted a quality cultural icon called … The New Zealand Listener brim-full of broadcasting information, the arts, literature and film, politics, psychology and sport. The economics of it are a mystery to me but the outcome is a big win for the chattering classes of this country.

A particular feature of the New Zealand Listener is three pages of readers’ letters, placed prominently from page 4 onwards. Of course, there are also fine writers on diverse topics to fill a satisfying magazine but the interactive nature of letters is what keeps a publication honest and real.

I can turn to the ‘Letters’ page of Touchstone to check the pulse of thinking Methodists. Letters remind us that there are readers out there with sensibilities and passion. Not all Methodists are temperate, thank goodness!

Adrian Skelton 

Memories Revived

To the editor

The article on Friendship House (Looking Back, Touchstone February) revived memories of a young adult group that met in Christchurch in the 1970s. In May 1971, Ruth Buhrkuhl, the social worker of the Christchurch Methodist Central Mission, formed a social club. Ruth was concerned that there was very little in the city to enable 25 – 35 year olds to get together. The annual subscription was $2 and for five years the committee arranged fortnightly meetings every Wednesday night formally at Friendship House and informally around the city. Extra funding was received from bottle drives!

An October 1973 newsletter recorded: “A highlight was the mock wedding of Zelda and Zeiza

Money. The slender bride elegantly wore a conventional gown of white which modestly covered

throat, wrists and ankles. The long white veil adorned her artistically dressed strawberry blond hair.

Her attendants added sophistication and glamour on the occasion and the little flower girl and page

boy stole the hearts of everyone there. The parents of the happy couple glowed with pride as their

offspring took their vows of love and fidelity, and proudly slashed the wedding cake in a display of

united strength”.

The event raised $50, sent to the 1974 Commonwealth Games fund. They wrote “This is a fine

example of the community spirit which is necessary to make the Friendly Games a success and a

credit to New Zealand”.

Four marriages of members followed.

Ruth and the committee members had great ideas. Holiday trips were arranged to New South Wales, Greymouth, Timaru, Hanmer, Arthurs Pass and Tekapo. Special events included a Lyttelton moonlight cruise, visits to Quail Island, the Sugar Loaf television building, our work places and a walk along the Bridle Path with the children from the Mission Papanui Children’s Home.

To further support the work of the Mission, we collected and delivered pine cones to needy older folk, attended and joined with the Sunday night Weybridge group where we were the first to hear the Wizard of Christchurch speaking in Friendship House. We ran the tea and coffee stall at the

Rehua Trade Trainee Hostel Fair and bought toys for the Mission Christmas hampers. We attended Godspell, Oliver (entry $1.70) and White Horse Inn ($1.20). We also enjoyed ten-pin bowling, a back to school party, sat in on the television production of “Opportunity Knocks”, attended square dancing and dancing halls, restaurants, drove in car rallies and had parties in members’ homes. Membership reached 50 and we advertised in the Christchurch Star. Occasional meetings are still held today.

We all appreciated and thoroughly enjoyed this outreach of the Christchurch Methodist Mission.

Diane Claughton

Christchurch