Hilary Pedersen: Call to keep Porangahau church doors open

Porangahau resident Hilary Pedersen is calling on others to step up and find a way to keep the doors of St Michael and All Angels Anglican Church in Porangahau open. PHOTO/DUNCAN BROWN

They say when one door closes another one opens.

I hope this will be the case for St Michael and All Angels Anglican Church in Porangahau.

But a school newsletter notice advising that a community carol service would be held in the historic venue on Christmas Eve ended ominously.

"The doors will be closed for the last time."

I wept.

Before I continue, this piece is emphatically NOT a finger-pointing diatribe. The small, dedicated group of women who have kept this community icon going for years are tired. They want out. Who and what will take their place?

So when I wept it was for the past, my memories and the role St Michael's has played in my own history. Please note this is not a church history lesson.

My parents Harry Dean and Muriel Clifton were married there in the thirties. My forties christening followed. In the fifties and fresh home from boarding school for the holidays my sister Pam and I would show off our superior choral skills and sing descants.

Somewhere in the early sixties local school teacher, taxi driver and later to be my husband Barry Pedersen started the church choir.

This was an ambitious undertaking and my mother was an enthusiastic participant.

"Your swooping again Muriel," her prospective son-in-law would admonish, stopping midway through a passage from Handel's Messiah.

Our wedding followed later and I walked through the open doors with a new name into a new life.

When my mother died aged 96 after a long life in Waipukurau there was only one place to bring her. She made her final departure from her favourite church to a haunting karanga led by my friend Marina Sciascia and her sisters. Where else but Porangahau?

So many names emerge.

Vicars: the Reverends Raymond Aires, Peter Mann, Ken McGechie. Then came the formidable presence of Hone te Kaa who moved from the Maori Pastorate "across the bridge" to St Michael's.

Community "giant" Tina Tipene was the familiar face behind the organ, succeeded eventually by her daughter-in-law and now long-time church custodian, Carol.

The Ladies Guild. This was the era of hats, the Church Bazaar and Nancy Canning. Add in her sisters-in-law Fan and Bertha along with Eileen Grosvenor, Margaret Hope, Doris Board, Eileen Robertshaw, Mary and Peggy Balfour, Dorothy Atchison and my mother, to name some. Handier to the church were Joan Scott, Vi Beattie and Nan Sidwell.

"The Bazaar", their feature event of the fifties and sixties, showcased a vast array of "Best Blooms" and other floral competitions including decorated sand saucers for us kids.

Cakes and the jumble sale were early sell-outs. The meat stall was dutifully "manned" by the husbands.

Other "giants" of St Michael's were Denys and Pat Hamilton. Arthur and Millie Longley were elderly figures and longtime residents of the old vicarage.

During my own years I have at various times been a fill-in organist, chairman of a long defunct Young Wives group and a vestry member earlier this century. As a writer I have published accounts of church history to my name.

This self-indulgent snapshot from the past begs the question, what of the future? Trite blandishments like "that was then" and "times have moved on" are obvious but unhelpful.

Services are sporadic, maintenance ongoing, the population thinner on the ground.

These days as in many small communities there is a reluctance to commit to another "load" so the onus falls on a willing few. And my hand hasn't gone up either.

This has nothing to do with my own "defection" to Catholicism some years back. In fact in another twist to my tale, St Michael's was the early venue of my attendances at Mass. Ecumenicalism – if there is such a word - was alive and well.

So, to finish with another trite blandishment, is the future of St Michael And All Angels Church in the too hard basket?

Are the memories that are soaked - along with the honey from past resident bees – into its walls all that will remain of an era that now has little place in present lives?

Come on community. Is it time to give this one more go? Can we embrace change and maintain some form of open door policy for the future?

This time I will put my hand up. Will you?

Hilary Pedersen is a Porangahau resident who has a lifelong association with St Michael and All Angels Anglican Church in Porangahau. Views expressed here are the writer's opinion and not the newspaper's. Email: editor@hbtoday.co.nz