The Ever-Widening Circles

Author: Marg Schrader 

Publisher: Philip Garside Publishing, 2023. 191 pages. Print $40; 

e-book $20. 

Reviewer: Garth Cant

This book deserves a diversity of readerships. It is personal; the story of the ever-unfolding life of one who has been a primary school teacher, and Methodist Deaconess in Australia; then wife, mother to eight children, minister, and Moderator of PCANZ. The author has packed love, excitement, compassion and adventure into her life. If you are Presbyterian, Methodist, or more widely ecumenical in New Zealand Marg’s story will delight you. If you are local church or have given up on your local or national church, this book will resonate in all sorts of ways. If you have lived for eight or more decades, or engage with parents or grandparents in that cohort, you will be in for shared adventures and new insights.

Parts move rapidly and are compulsive reading. For anyone who has been sexually or spiritually abused by a clergyman, church leader, or fellow Christian, chapters 11 and 13 explore the effects of sexual and spiritual abuse. If you are a minister, lay preacher or youth leader seeking to make church safe, inclusive, and wholesome, these chapters are essential reading.

The book covers a range of topics from the nurturing and mutuality of Marg working with Sister Judith Ann O’Sullivan and Sister Yvonne Munro to create The Still Point retreat centre; to the multiple challenges and opportunities when the author was Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand in 1995 and 1996.

Chapter titles include Moderator’s Memories, Dreams and Dream Therapy. One chapter is the keynote speech to the PCANZ Assembly, 2018. Highlights for this reviewer were L’Arche, and Old Age is Not For Wimps.

The theme “Ever-Widening Circles” takes us to where Marg is now. The book concludes with the author enjoying her life in Kapiti as it continues in new, quietly exciting, and convivial ways.