“It is with a full heart that I enter upon the Presidency of the Conference in this Centenary year of our New Zealand Church,” said Rev C H Laws at the opening of the Methodist Conference on 22 February 1922 in Auckland.

Conference was reported in full in the New Zealand Methodist Times which also included a special centenary supplement on 4 March 1922. Other newspapers throughout New Zealand reported not only Conference but also the unveiling of the memorial cairn at Whangaroa and laying of the foundation stone of the centenary memorial church at Kaeo. Newspaper reports also wrote about the individual celebrations that took place in different circuits.

This article outlines some of the records for researchers held in the Methodist Church of New Zealand Archives and online.

Planning for the centenary started around 1917 and included recommendations to preserve records and forward them to the Connexional Office. The 1918 Conference set up a Centenary Committee to look at ways to celebrate the Methodist mission in New Zealand. It was arranged that commemorative services would take place in every circuit in 1922 on the same day.

Fundraising was undertaken for a Thanksgiving Fund, to be distributed to the Supernumerary Fund, Theological College, Church Building and Loan Fund and other Methodist causes needing money in the 1920s. All this was outlined in a pink pamphlet called Our First Century which can be seen on our website www.methodist.org.nz/whakapapa/archives/methodist-history/special-interest-stories/

After Conference each parish received a copy of the Conference Address in which Conference asked “that you will give your prayerful thought to the following resolutions that aim FIRST at stimulating personal religion and the corporate welfare of the Church”. A copy of this pamphlet is also on our website.

Rev W J Williams, editor of the New Zealand Methodist Times, was commissioned to write a centenary history. It was not a success. E W Hames notes that not many of the 3000 copies printed were sold and the book ended up being remaindered. The copy held in the Methodist Archives reference book collection is in very good condition and does not look well-read. Copies are held in most main centre public libraries.

Within the Methodist Archives are several unattributed photographic collections connected to the 1922 centenary. They are very small photographs, possibly taken by amateur photographers rather than professionals.

One collection where we know the name of the photographer is George Spooner’s collection. From the contents, we can assume that he came on the boat SS Ngapuhi with approximately 230 people from Auckland. They disembarked and went to the site of the cairn where the Whangaroa Mission station used to be to join the celebration on 8 March.

Another collection held is that of Rev E E Sage. He was there at the centenary conference and the unveiling of the memorials at Kaeo and Whangaroa. Two talks or notes for sermons written by him are held. These are part of the Personal Papers and Historical Records Collection: www.methodist.org.nz/whakapapa/archives/archives-collection/

For first-hand accounts of the centenary, the Methodist newspaper is still the best source and these can be seen on the John Kinder Theological Library website https://kinderlibrary.recollect.co.nz/

It was a time of looking forward and looking back. Some saw the centenary celebrations as a time of rejuvenation, others pondered on how little progress had been made particularly with the Maori mission.

Rev C H Law’s presidential address at the opening of Conference included these contemporarily relevant words: “The chief question for us today is what Methodism is to b