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Photo (c) Jo Fielding. My badges of office just before I wore them for the first time. We have a fairly well developed authority structure in the Anglican Church in which people are given odd sounding titles and even odder articles of clothing so that people will know exactly who is boss. We all quickly learn whether a cathedral dean outranks a regional dean and the difference between a transitional deacon and an archdeacon. I could let you know the answers to these earth shatteringly important questions but then I'd have to shoot you, so I won't. And anyway, as anyone  who has spent time in our church knows, despite the airs and graces to which the holders of our various offices are sometimes tempted, the real power in the church actually lies elsewhere. Power is the ability to get people to do what you want them to do.People in power can do this with more ease than the rest of us because there is a whole system which enables them to make decisions with which others...

Opening Prayer E te Atua to matou Kai-hanga Ka tiaho te maramatanga me te ora, I au kupu korero, Ka timata au mahi, ka mau te tika me te aroha; Meatia kia u tonu ki a matou Tou aroha I roto I tenei huihunga. Whakakii a matou whakaaro a matou mahi katoa, E tou Wairua Tapu Amine. Introduction and Thanks Welcome, welcome thrice welcome as we gather here in St Matthews to celebrate our common life and plan together for our future. As we gather in this place, I am mindful of all who have carried the torch of faith before us, and who pass it to us today. In particular, we remember those of our number who have died in the past year, particularly Jim Brooks and Stan Mawhinney. It has been my privilege to journey amongst you for yet another year, and I am grateful for the strong team amongst whom I work at Peter Mann House. Alec Clark , has continued his work as ministry educator while accepting the additional duties of being Vicar General. I know from experience...

The origins of the title of this book by Justin Lewis-Anthony will be known to the film buffs amongst you; it is taken from Monty Python's The Life of Brian and in the long section of the book dealing with film, the author explains why, but more of that later. This profound little book happened across my path, in the way that books do, just when I needed to see it. I have been, quite understandably I think, somewhat exercised of questions of leadership of late and many books, articles,videos, well meaning conversations, and not very well meaning admonitions have splattergunned in my general direction a range of views on the subject. Just this week, for example, someone from the North Island somewhere has written a very long letter to all us bishops helpfully pointing out our joint and several lack of anything resembling leadership and telling us to do something about it. He was not clear on exactly what why or how we were to do this, but that's not something he has on his ...

copyright unknown I usually get up around 6:00 so this morning was no exception. What was different was breaking my routine to turn on the TV and watch Barack Obama be sworn in as the 44th president of The United States of America. It was a moving few minutes. Everyone else in Washington DC was togged up against the weather but the new president stood in his suitcoat, calm and strong and not shivering in the freezing noontime air. He then spoke to the crowd in an address which struck me for what I did not hear. I was listening for the carefully crafted phrase: the line which would be quoted back for decades to come. I was listening for the gem which some employed poet, one of a team working in an Illinois office somewhere over the past 6 months, had come up with and honed and refined and reshaped so that it would resound down through the television speakers of the world over the next few decades. It didn't come. Praise God, it didn't come. To be sure the speech was polished ...

Copyright 2008 New Zealand National Party Our new prime minister will be sworn in next week, so I am told, and despite myself I find I am beginning to respect the guy. He's moved a lot faster than politicians normally do in setting up his government. He's shrewdly got the Maori Party on board, hitting three birds with one stone: extending his somewhat slim majority; alleviating some of the public apprehension about the ACT party having their rabid fangs in the treasury's leg; and setting himself up nicely for a broad electoral appeal in 2011. Very neatly done. I respect that. But do I trust him? I don't know yet. I am dreading a return of the new right policies of the 1980s and 1990s which did such damage to so many layers of our social fabric and suspect that under his neatly brushed pate he has only three basic ideas: privatisation, privatisation and privatisation. We had the lowest voter turnout for years. Perhaps the election was such a foregone conclusion that peop...