- Friday 3 September 2010
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LETTER: Standing in the shadows
Have Your Say
Give us your thoughts on this story.
In reponse to the article in The Aucklander suggesting that ministry is booming in Flat Bush but not from St Paul's in the Park Church on Chapel Rd, below is the full quote of Peter Lineham used by Dr Andrew Butcher in his AENJournal article "Not a Western story: the Christian faith and migrant communities in New Zealand''.
Flatbush has suddenly sprung up in the last five years as an overflow from the huge growth of new housing in the Howick area, primarily accommodating Asian people. The little chapel [that gave Chapel Road its name] still stands, now a joint Anglican-Methodist church half way down the road that takes its name from it, but at the other end is the exotic Botany Downs shopping centre, a Truman-Show like phenomenon, looking like it has dropped as a unit from the sky, a whole plastic town centre modelled on traditional towns. The central focus of Chapel Road is the enormous, almost completed Buddhist Temple. On the other side of the road is a new co-educational Catholic School, reflecting a huge boom in Catholic education and in baptisms into the Catholic Church by Asians concerned at the violent tone of New Zealand. Other sites down the road have been purchased by Baptist churches, and doubtless the fine facilities of the new secular high school are rented out to a Pentecostal Church group on Sundays.
booming there as well, but not in the little chapel. There is a plan for Anglicans and Methodists to build a big new church, but they are struggling to find the money. Meanwhile the Presbyterians have made a separate move. Their old Pakuranga
congregation, famous for its evangelical and conservative tradition, has rebuilt just around the corner from Chapel Street and have attracted a large congregation including many Asian people with a formula that has something of the Pentecostal flavour mixed in.
To end the quote as and where The Aucklander did surely leaves readers with an
inaccurate understanding of what Peter Lineham wrote, even for 2005, and what was and is happening from St Paul's.
I trust my expression of concern may prompt you to correct an inaccurate quote and therefore report.
Rev'd Strett Nicolson
Missioner
St Paul's in the Park
