Old Partnerships Made New

By Ven Dr Lyndon Drake

Lyndon (Ngāi Tahu) serves as Arch­deacon of Tāmaki Makaurau in the Māori Anglican bish­op­ric of Te Tai Tokerau. He is married to Miriam, and they have three children.

Way back in March 2018, I presen­ted a vision of Māori evan­gel­ists to the NZCMS AGM. I quoted Jesus’ words: ‘The harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask him to send more workers into his fields’ (Luke 10:2). As we have prayed and worked together, the Lord has sent workers into this field, and we are seeing the start of the harvest.

As I look back on nearly five years of the pro­gramme, I do so with enorm­ous grat­it­ude to NZCMS for embark­ing on this radical return to its roots. Mission in Aotearoa/New Zealand began with CMS mis­sion­ar­ies from England pro­claim­ing the good news of Jesus Christ here. Soon, they taught and empowered Māori evan­gel­ists to begin taking that same good news to their whānau and iwi around the country. Even­tu­ally, about 40% of the pop­u­la­tion was in weekly Chris­tian worship. This incred­ible story of Gospel trans­form­a­tion spread around the world.

Sadly, the story was (in Dr Alistair Reese’s words) a case of ‘mission interrupted,’ as the early missionaries’ work was severely harmed. Especially from the early 1860s onwards, the government became active in confiscation of land and invasion of territory.

The insti­tu­tion­al­isa­tion of the Church often led to the mar­gin­al­isa­tion of Māori leaders and language.

The Settler Church removed church build­ings and land from Māori control and impov­er­ished the Māori Church. Under­stand­able resent­ment about these changes led many Māori to form new reli­gious move­ments, or to reject Chris­tian­ity altogether.

Despite this, many Māori retained a strong alle­gi­ance to Chris­tian faith and worship. Min­istry among Māori com­munit­ies con­tin­ued, even though it became largely hidden from the dom­in­ant Pākehā church and was of neces­sity often under­taken by non-sti­pen­di­ary (unpaid) Māori min­is­ters. Even today, when I go onto a marae wearing my cler­ical collar, I am accor­ded respect and honour by Māori who might well not adhere to the Chris­tian faith.

This mission open­ness is helped by the vital import­ance that spir­itu­al­ity has among Māori com­munit­ies. The popular social work model created by Sir Mason Durie of ‘te Whare Tapa Whā,’ or ‘the House with Four Walls,’ expresses the essen­tial nature of spir­itu­al­ity as one of the four walls of the house. Sir Mason is himself a devout Anglican, as is his whole marae.

The com­bin­a­tion of the his­tor­ical memory of the place Chris­tian­ity once held in Māori culture, and the accept­ance of spir­itu­al­ity (of some form) as a given in Māori com­munit­ies, creates an opening for pro­clam­a­tion of the good news that is largely absent in the much more aggress­ively secular Pākehā culture of New Zealand.

When we con­sider the form­at­ive dom­in­ance of Māori culture in the wider New Zealand setting — think of the Air New Zealand safety video — we can see that Gospel renewal among Māori will benefit not only Māori, but all peoples of this land. If Māori return to the Christ, if the Gospel story is retold in a new way in our own gen­er­a­tion, we can find hope for Māori and other groups in our society alike. As Māori become Chris­tian, they wield out­sized cul­tural influ­ence, cre­at­ing a plaus­ib­il­ity for Gospel pro­clam­a­tion more widely.

Repent­ing for the acts of our ancestors

What is more, pro­clam­a­tion of the Gospel among Māori is a neces­sary act of repent­ance for the church in Aotearoa. Jeremiah (among a number of similar pas­sages) confesses:

We acknow­ledge our wicked­ness, O LORD,
the iniquity of our ancestors,
for we have sinned against you. (Jer 14.20)

If we long to see the favour of God on our Gospel efforts in this land, we should (like Jeremiah) acknowledge our collective failure from the past, and seek to actively repent of those failures by giving ourselves afresh to offering the good news of Jesus to Māori communities.

We can retell the broken story in our gen­er­a­tion, recog­nising that God loves this land and its people, and that some­thing won­der­ful took place in the past and can take place again.

Old part­ner­ships made new

So, how can we best do this? Much like the ori­ginal CMS mis­sion­ar­ies, NZCMS has entered into a part­ner­ship with Māori to enable and empower Māori evan­gel­ists to our Māori com­munit­ies. Māori are well-equipped to bring the Gospel to Māori, under­stand­ing the tikanga (pro­to­cols and cul­tural prac­tices) and reo (lan­guage). Māori min­is­ters are also widely trusted by Māori com­munit­ies, even those which have turned away from alle­gi­ance to Christianity.

Much as in Paul’s first letter to the Cor­inthian churches, even though Māori are mar­gin­al­ised in society, I believe that God has entrus­ted the Gospel message to Māori in par­tic­u­lar for the benefit of all the peoples of our land. As we trust God’s pattern of sending the unex­pec­ted mes­sen­gers, of entrust­ing the Gospel to those who are not the ‘winners’ of society, we will see good fruit from the proclamation.

I am con­stantly sur­prised, in a won­der­ful way, by the open­ness of Māori com­munit­ies to Māori evangelists.

My conviction is that by making Māori bearers of the Gospel in this land once again, and not merely seeing Māori as beneficiaries of the Gospel, we will see this openness turn into a remarkable harvest.

We have seen entire com­munit­ies commit them­selves to Christ, much like the house­hold con­ver­sions in the Book of Acts.

To see more fruit­ful­ness, we need to see more of what NZCMS has cour­ageously com­mit­ted to doing: provid­ing the support — in fin­ances, prayer, and mission com­pet­ency — to raise up a new gen­er­a­tion of Māori evan­gel­ists. When NZCMS agreed to begin the pro­gramme, we had a com­mit­ment to two roles. Since then, over­seas donors have funded four more. My plea is that we have the courage, con­vic­tion, and hope to see many more evan­gel­ists raised up and sup­por­ted. Cer­tainly, in south Auck­land alone, we could easily sustain min­istry by at least ten more. The north­ern part of Auck­land, while having a smaller Māori pop­u­la­tion, could easily sustain min­istry by another five ministers.

The model we have found works best is when an evan­gel­ist is able to commit them­selves to a par­tic­u­lar marae. For example, the Rev’d Keri-Ann Hoki­anga is working closely with Mataatua marae in Māngere, an urban marae for Te Arawa people. There are another four marae in Māngere within walking dis­tance, and dozens more across Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland. Most of these marae will welcome a servant-hearted evan­gel­ist, if they know who the person is in terms of whakapapa and com­mis­sion­ing by the Māori Anglican Church. My hope and plea is that you will commit your­self to prayer, and ask for the Lord’s guid­ance as to whether you can also give fin­an­cially to support this amazing work.