About Us

The Five Marks of Mission

  • To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom

  • To teach, baptise and nurture new believers

  • To respond to human need by loving service

  • To seek to transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and to pursue peace and reconciliation

  • To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and re-new the life of the earth

The Anglican Communion, the Anglican Church in Aotearoa New Zealand and Polynesia, Te Hahi Mihinare Ki Aotearoa Ki Niu Tireni, Ki Nga Moutere o Te Moana Nui a Kiwa, and the Diocese of Dunedin agree on the nature of mission as the Bible presents it and as we seek to witness to it today.  These 5 marks of mission are held in common with most Anglicans wordwide.

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Reading The Bible – Tākina te Kupu

The scriptures underpin all that we do. Tākina te Kupu, learning, reciting and teaching the Holy Bible, reveals the person of God as seen in Jesus Christ and expressed in the Holy Spirit. For us, reading the Bible includes: telling the stories; deepening faith and understanding of our place in God’s universe and; sharing our faith journeys, opening up our lives to what God continues to say to us.  It entails a commitment to reading the Bible, allowing it to speak to us in all that we do. Reading includes proclaiming and reflecting on the Bible in public worship and private prayer, as well as studying it with each other

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It’s amazing how often the Bible is panned as “an old book” or “old fairy tales” by writers of comments on websites. Actually it’s a whole series of books written over a period of nearly a thousand years, in many styles, by many people, for many reasons.

Some of it is history (but not in the way schools teach it), some is symbolic story-telling, some of it is poetry (some is even love poetry, and one chunk is quite risqué) some of it is rules and recommendations, some of it is spoken stories that got written down in a bit of a hurry when the leaders of faith-communities (sort of like church congregations) realized that the eye-witnesses of events were dying out. Much of it is written in weird styles, appropriate to their day – or sometimes deliberately weird even then – to help the people who saw themselves as God’s people, help them in their journeys through life and death.

The people who see themselves as the People of God – people privileged to be somehow connected to this God we can’t see – found inspiration and instruction in this vast collection, and eventually collected it together and called it by one name, “bible.” Then they called it “holy” because, well, it was so special to them (to us). But “bible” roughly means “library” so really it covers a vast range of experience. And then we all come along and interpret it in an enormous range of ways, and places and times, and we admit sometimes we do that really badly. But sometimes we don’t, and these writings inspire great acts and lives of courage or humility or dedication. And on the whole we just hope (and yes, pray) that it just inspires us to be a little more like the people we should be.

Praying – Inoia a Ihowā

We see prayer and worship as central to who we are as communities of faith. Inoia a Ihowā encourages us to keep praying to God as this is what strengthens us. This call to prayer whoever we are and whatever it is about, allows us to listen and speak to God as we become more aware of God’s pull upon our lives within our wider communities. In prayer we open ourselves up to this call. As the early disciples did, we ask Jesus to teach us how to pray, committing ourselves to deepening our prayer life together.

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There’s that strange, unprovable thing again. Some people thought the early Christians were drunk because they prayed in weird ways, moving their lips but making no sound, or moving their lips and making weird sounds. And so on.

Anglican Christians, perhaps because of that Celtic influence (see the article below) are often a bit restrained when praying, frequently following a book (or one of many) that has been formed by the experience of countless Christians over the centuries before us.

But that sort of prayer, all formal and structured, is only one way in which we communicate with the God who we believe (that word again) hears us. We can swing from the rafters with the best of them sometimes – sometimes (in a few places) we even swing smoke that rises to the rafters to remind us that prayers sort of spread out through the universe like the beat of a butterfly’s wing … yet we believe, too that they don’t just reverberate around a hollow universe, but somewhere out there and even right here a remarkable, loving, creating, hope-bringing God hears and responds to us (not always in the way we want, though!).

In short:

• Being open to God – listening, speaking about things that matter, holding everything that’s important in God’s presence, responding to God

• There are different ways to pray, Anglicans will use many of them.

• A New Zealand Prayer Book – He Karakia Mihinare o Aotearoa – “the book” used in NZ-Aotearoa settings to help God’s people pray.

Want to know or pray more?  Check out these links:

 

Living out the life of Jesus Christ – Arumia a Ihu

(Anglican Christian Faith – exploring faith, joining the church, lives that reflect all of this)

Living lives that reflect the life of Jesus Christ or Arumia a Ihu (Following Jesus) is the result of our reading of scriptures and prayer. As Jesus walked the earth over 2000 years ago, we continue to place our feet in Christ’s as we take part in God’s mission in Aotearoa – New Zealand. We want our life together to attract others into places of faith and belonging, where they too can encounter Jesus. This includes worship that moves us beyond our ordinary lives to encounter the Divine, but also sets us apart to care for our world and our communities. Alongside Christ we place ourselves with the most vulnerable in our world, seeking transformation that brings God’s kingdom on earth. We give ourselves as Christ did: generously to all and overflowing with love.

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Anglican Christian Faith: three words, so much hidden within our whakapapa, our kaupapa, our kōrero. Anglican? It just means “of England,” really. Which is probably not what we really want to convey, though the first missionaries came from that neck of the woods. The Scots and Americans prefer “episcopal,” which is not much better as it means, sort of, “bishoppy.” It is supposed to say something distinctive about us but to get the meaning of either “Anglican” or “Episcopal” we have to dig quite deep.

Perhaps “Anglican” these days can just be taken to mean that we have a way of doing things that is deeply grounded in our Celtic past, though now of course we acknowledge and incorporate the great taonga that Māoritanga has gifted us too. But yeah, our way of doing faith is deeply earthed in that part of the world that was inhabited by Angles: our whakapapa amongst the Angles, the Picts, the various Celts gave us a quite distinctive, sometimes rather reflective, rather ordered way of doing things, including worship and even governance, and we’ve often held on to it.

Christian? We say it so easily after two thousand years of calling ourselves that. Originally it was a nickname … like “All Blacks” or “Silver Ferns.” Perhaps it’s almost like a franchise name like, well, “Highlanders” or “Southern Steel,” I guess. “Christ” meant “anointed one,” and the early followers of Jesus of Nazareth believed he was the anointed King of his followers. Usually they preferred the word “Lord,” and by saying “Jesus is Lord” they were saying he was equal to God and therefore bigger than Caesar. By saying “king” or “anointed one” they were making clear he was serious stuff, especially in the context of the brutal dictators of the Roman Empire. It was a pretty big deal, and brave of those first followers to wear that nickname. The proof of the pudding was in the eating, and their experience of Jesus before and after he was killed, and they believed resurrected, seemed to them – and us – to prove the pudding.

And faith? It’s a complicated word. Faith, belief, knowledge … they’re all subtly different, but “faith” was a key word to those early, risk-taking followers of Jesus. One of them called faith “the assurance of things hoped for.” Believing in the unseen, the unprovable, but sometimes longed-for meanings to life beyond what we know. Believing them so much that we sort of do know them, but perhaps through the knowledge of the heart, rather than the brain? Which doesn’t mean brains aren’t useful in this business, but that sometimes we have to take a leap into the unprovable first.

We kind of like it when people join us on that strange, unprovable journey. We call this: Living out the Life of Jesus Christ

In short:

• Anglican – a form of Christian faith rooted in NZ-Aotearoa, within the influences of Māori and Pacific faith.

• Christian is the name given to people who call themselves followers of Christ.

• To be an Anglican Christian usually means being baptised and confirmed (ceremonies where promises are made/affirmed and water poured on people symbolising dying to an old life, being made clean and rising to a new life of faith)

• Faith – the ongoing life of a Christian – knowing God more, trusting, even when we may not know or understand everything, sharing God’s life and love and practical ways to people around us

A beginners Guide to the Anglican Church (St John’s Roslyn)

What is the Anglican Church and what do we believe? (Church of England Website)

The Creed with Crossed Fingers – working through the ancient statements of faith of the church and what they mean today

Some useful web based resources form the Diocese of Wellington:

How Anglicans Are Governed (Synod)

We Anglicans often use strange words. Most of them we’ve inherited or borrowed from ancient cultures. Perhaps we like them because they add a bit of gravitas, a sort of serious tone to remind us that some, not all, of what we’re on about, is rather important.

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Each of the Christian denominations has its own history and flavour, and that affects the way we manage and see ourselves. Since ancient times the Christian community has had big gatherings, like a parliament, which make binding decisions on the people it oversees. At one stage it was all bishops and important people like that, but in the last few hundred years, since our break from the Roman Catholic community, we decided to give ordinary clergy and those who aren’t clergy a say in the running of the church. So every year they gather at a parliament-sort-of-thing called a “synod,” which just means “gathering,” to make rules and policies and some public statements that express our beliefs about the way we and society should be going. We don’t wave big sticks any more, like we used to try to, but we do like to be as best we can a responsible and visible part of the wider community.

What all this means is that change can be a bit slow in our church community, but we try to get there in the end. It means that big egos can’t dominate, and that new ideas take time – sometimes seemingly endless time – to become reality. It means that, like an ocean liner, we take a long time to change, and sometimes we have to correct the changes, and that takes time too. But it means too that we wrestle with issues at a deep level, and that when we do eventually formulate a policy on any issue (some big ones have been changing attitudes to gender and sexuality, the environment, the big-picture ways we manage our properties and assets) we lock it in securely.

As it happens we’re also in some matters locked into Acts of Parliament, and that makes matters even more complicated. Basically, though, “synod,” or “synodical,” as a model of church leadership just makes sure we don’t blow too much with the wind, yet that we can co-operate and adjust in a changing world where it seems appropriate to us to do so.

Of course we happen to believe that there is a God guiding us in all these complex processes. Sometimes that’s quite hard to believe, when as individuals we don’t agree with outcomes. But that’s part of the deal with being part of a big and mixed up family.

In short:

• Anglican churches are organised in Dioceses (districts) led by a Bishop.

• The Anglican Church of NZ-Aotearoa and Polynesia incorporates seven Tikanga Pākehā dioceses, five Hui Amorangi ō Tikanga Māori and the Diocese of Pasifica.

• Synod is the annual meeting of the Anglican Church in a Diocese

• It consists of elected representatives (clergy and lay people) from Parishes, local churches and representatives from other Anglican organisations e.g. schools, social services

• Makes rules and policies that help to govern the church and sets future direction.

A more technical description of the Diocese of Dunedin…

The Anglican Church in Otago and Southland is made up of two main entities: The Diocese of Dunedin and the Dunedin Diocesan Trust Board.

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The Anglican Church in Otago and Southland is made up of two main entities: The Diocese of Dunedin and the Dunedin Diocesan Trust Board.

The Diocese of Dunedin is a registered charity CC31504 whose charitable purpose is: Proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Teaching, baptising and nurturing believers within Eucharistic communities of faith. Responding to human needs by loving service. Seeking to transform unjust structures of society, caring for God’s creation, and establishing the values of the Kingdom. It operates within the religious activities sector (education / training / research, health, community development, social services, arts / culture / heritage) with its beneficiaries being religious groups i.e., children / young people, older people, General public, Family / whanau). It was formally constituted in January 1869 (previously coming under the Diocese of Christchurch).

The Diocese of Dunedin structure includes 26 Parishes/  Deaneries and 6 Local Churches in the Otago and Southland provinces, as well as social service agencies in Dunedin and Invercargill, residential homes for older people, a psychogeriatric hospital, a girls’ secondary school and a university hall of residence. The Diocese of Dunedin operates under the Canons of the General Synod te Hinota Whanui (Anglican Church in NZ), specifically under Title F Canon IX Charities Act Requirements (see Rules document).

No parishes have status as individual charities (they are all covered by the Diocese of Dunedin charitable status): Parishes operate within the wider church structures i.e. having their own governance structures (Vestries) with an annual general meeting to appoint officers. They are governed by the Diocese of Dunedin Standing Orders, Standing Resolutions and Statutes of the Synod of the Diocese of Dunedin, in particular Statute 3: The Parishes, Regional Deaneries and Local Churches Amendment Statute 2019. The Synod also has a Standing Committee (The Diocese of Dunedin Diocesan Council) which meets regularly in between formal Synods, and a Diocese of Dunedin Trusts Board (comprised of Diocesan Council elected members) which oversees all appointments to the Boards of Diocesan entities (see below).

Parishes/Deaneries and Local Churches maintain their own accounts, although some use the Diocese of Dunedin Administration Office accounting services, and all church faith communities supply annual accounts for the consolidated Charities return. The Diocesan Office also provides payroll services for Clergy and other staff employed throughout the parishes.

The Diocese is currently configured into 4 Archdeaconries (Geographical areas) with overall oversight by the Bishop of Dunedin: Dunedin City (including South Otago); Oamaru and East Otago; Central Otago, and; Southland. Each Archdeaconry is led by an Archdeacon, usually an existing senior clergy or lay leader in a parish or deanery. (see https://www.calledsouth.org.nz/churches/ for more information).

The following Diocesan Entities are under the Diocese of Dunedin control and are regulated by Statute 17 “The Diocesan Institutions Statute”. They have their own separate Trust Deeds/Rules and charities numbers, with Trustees being appointed via the Diocese of Dunedin Trusts Board (Diocesan Council) for three-year terms:

Name Charities Commission Registration Number
Parata Anglican Charitable Trust CC22137
South Centre Anglican Care Trust CC37176
Home of St Barnabas Trust CC23044

The following Diocesan Organisations are independent entities that are controlled by their own Statutes, Deeds, Rules and/or under other arrangements. Some or all of their members are appointed by the Diocese of Dunedin Trusts Board (Diocesan Council). They also report to Synod each year.  Please note: Selwyn College – Te Maru Pūmanawa incorporated with the NZ Companies Business Office as a Charitable Trust on 30 March 2022 (incorporation number 50099251, NZ Business Number 9429050461837): it is currently controlled by Statute 19. St Hilda’s Collegiate School is governed in part by the Board of Trustees and in part by the St Hilda’s Collegiate School Incorporated Society. The school has a direct affiliation with the Diocese of Dunedin, deriving its Special Character from its close association with the Anglican Church as outlined in the 1979 Integration Agreement with the Minister of Education, the Rules of the St Hilda’s Collegiate School Incorporated Society and Statute 20, The St Hilda’s Collegiate School Statute. Leslie Groves Society of St John’s Roslyn (Charity Number CC3622) is under the control of St John’s Roslyn Parish (Diocese of Dunedin) who appoints their Board and voluntarily submits a report to Synod. North Otago Anglican Homes (NOAH) Trustees are appointed by the Vestries of St Lukes-Maheno and Waitaki-North Oamaru. See page 9 for a full description of Trustee appointment processes and also: https://www.calledsouth.org.nz/organisations/.

 

Name Charities Commission Registration Number
Anglican Family Care Incorporated CC24152
Dunedin Diocesan Trust Board CC36214
Earl Street Charitable Trust CC31963
Leslie Groves Society of St John’s Roslyn CC36222
North Otago Anglican Homes of the Aged CC24248
Selwyn College – Te Maru Pūmanawa 50099251
St Hilda’s Collegiate School Incorporated CC34519
St Paul’s Cathedral Foundation CC35974

 

The Dunedin Diocesan Trust Board (DDTB), registered charity number CC362214, has two main roles:

  1. Firstly, it manages two investment funds (the Income Fund and the Growth Fund) as trustee for diocesan institutions, e.g. social services, residential and community based services, educational institutions and so on. These bodies deposit funds with it. The total funds under management in the two Funds is currently over $41.3 million dollars.
  2. The second major responsibility of the Board is the legal ownership of all Diocesan properties: it acts a trustee for all Diocesan institutions including local churches and parishes, who are the beneficial owners, i.e. they make use of these resources for their mission and ministry. In this capacity, the Board arranges insurance of properties under the terms of Statute 9, The Insurance Board Statute 1939. It has also taken a leadership role in the assessment of properties for seismic stability.

The Board meets monthly, as does its subcommittee known as the Investment Committee. The Investment Committee monitors current investments to ensure the best returns possible and that they meet ethical business standards. This Board is incorporated according to the Canons of the General Synod te Hinota Whanui (Anglican Church in NZ) and is controlled by the Dunedin Diocesan Trust Board Amendment Statute 2022.

Summary of Trustee Appointments made through the Diocese of Dunedin Trusts Board (Diocesan Council) and Dunedin Diocesan Trust Board (DDTB):

 

Board Name + Length of terms No. appointed by Diocese of Dunedin Trusts Board (Diocesan Council) No. appointed by Dunedin Diocesan Trust Board (DDTB)

Selwyn College Board of Governors

3-year terms

Selwyn also appoint one from the Selwyn College Association (Alumni) for three years and the current Student President – I-year term. The College Warden also attends the Board of Governors.

Bishop

2 clergy

2 lay

Up to 4 “specialist” appointments

None

Anglican Family Care

2-year terms

Bishop

Up to 8

None

Dunedin Diocesan Trust Board

3-year terms

 

Up to 8

Numbered seats i.e. retire in rotation

None

Earl Street Charitable Trust

3-year terms

Earl Street also appoint two members  nominated from the Wakatipu Parish Vestry

2

 

2

 

St Hilda’s Collegiate School Board of Proprietors.

3-year terms

St Hilda’s also appoint representatives from the Parents and Friends (PFA) executive, Country reps and Old Girl’s Association reps.

Bishop

3

 

 

3

 

Parata Anglican Charitable Trust

3-year terms

No less than 6

3-year terms

None

Home of St Barnabas Trust

3-year terms

 

Up to 8

 

None

South Centre Anglican Care Trust

3-year terms

4-8

 

None

 

 

 

7n short:

• The Diocese of Dunedin is a registered charity

• It has 26 Parishes and 6 Local Churches, as well as a secondary school for girls, residential care for older people, social service agencies and a University College.

• The Diocese is split into 4 Archdeaconries (geographical areas)

•The Dunedin Diocesan Trust Board (DDTB) is a separate entity, which manages investments funds and hold all church properties in trust.

The Diocese of Dunedin Crest

The Diocesan Seal (based on an 1871 seal of Bishop Nevill) was authorised by Synod in 1921 and commissioned on 15 October 1931. An official certificate was issued in 1949 to Bishop Fitchett confirming the crest i.e., a Gules, a Saltire between four Mullets Argent surrounded by an open Bible”. Gules describes a darker shade of red, mullet means a straight sided star with “argent” being the white border to the star. The stars most likely refer to the Southern Cross. Saltire refers to the Saint Andrew’s Cross or the crux decussata, a heraldic symbol in the form of a diagonal cross. The word comes from the Middle French sautoir, Medieval Latin saltatorial.

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