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From The Moderator
Nga mate haere, haere, haere,
Hoki atu ki te kainga o te Kaihanga!
Those who were privileged to serve alongside Mona Riini, Moderator of Te Aka Puaho, still grieve her sudden death on 18th September in Palmerston North, at the presentation of the award given in memory of her husband, Sonny, at the Nga Manu Korero competitions.
Mona embodied the spirit of the Treaty of Waitangi among us,she shared the wisdom of Maoritanga with us in powerful ways;
she challenged us with gentleness and love;
she listened with great care;
and she spoke with clarity and conviction.
It was a privilege to share in her tangi and funeral service. I was humbled to take the honour and gratitude of the whole Church to her family and Te Aka Puaho.
"Tino nui te aroha o te iwi kia koutou" ("Feel the great love of the people for you")
I was privileged also to express my own grief for the personal loss of her wise counsel, her prayerful encouragement and her strong faith in God.
The whole Church will feel the loss of her gifts. We need to ask ourselves what new challenges are created by this gap in our life as a Church.
I am very mindful that some of the great bicultural teachers upon whom we have relied for so long have died in the last few years; people like Mak Temara, Jim Irwin, Sonny Riini, Duncan Jamieson and Joe Te Maipi. And now Mona Riini. Who is picking up the mantle of these teachers? Who will challenge us as they did?
In the early 1990’s we put a lot into living out the spirit of the Treaty of Waitangi in the Church. In recent years I sense we have lost some of that momentum. If this is so, both Treaty partners are the poorer.
It is easy for those of us who are manuhiri to give our energy and commitment to other projects and priorities, as we have tended to do. But a drawing back from our commitment impacts heavily on our partner, Te Aka Puaho.
So I invite you to reflect on this partnership and to offer energy, time and resources to pick up something of the leadership of those who have led us in our bicultural life in the past.
And there’s another partnership that is changing as we each focus our own priorities. It is the ecumenical movement, our partnership with other churches, our commitment to unity. At its Annual Forum at the end of September the Conference of Churches in Aotearoa New Zealand resolved to explore new expressions of ecumenism in New Zealand to replace the Conference and ask member churches to concur in the winding up of the Conference in due course. This is not necessarily a negative thing. It will only be so if we do not give a new "birthing" to our unity in mission and witness.
