Benjamin pushes some buttons
Lloyd Ashton
| 29 May 2009
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Benjamin Brock-Smith, Auckland diocesan youth facilitator, was chosen to lead the presentation to the bishops.
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The Tikanga Youth Synod was held over four days at Mataatua Marae, in Mangere.
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The night before their meeting with the bishops, the youth crunched their presentation in the Mataatua wharekai.
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Late-evening view across the Mataatua wharekai as Youth Synod members hone their strategies.
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From left: Hinekura Hollis; Tapu Laulu; Sharlene Douglas-Huriwai and Kisa Amitunai.
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In front of the carvings in the Mataatua wharekai: Wade Aukett (left); Nathan Stewart and Kahu Miller.
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Hinekura Hollis concentrates on her PC during a late-night session at Youth Synod.
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Strategising: Ngira Simmonds and Michael Tamihere at Mataatua Marae.
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Tapu Laulu and Brendan Bryon-Kay respond to a Michael Tamihere quip.
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Clockwise, from left: Nathan Stewart; Benjamin Brock-Smith; Wade Aukett; Andy Spence; Charlie Baker; Brendan Bryon-Kay.
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Each tikanga spent some time in caucus with their bishops. Here's Sepi Hala'apiapi from Fiji, with Kisa Amitunai, from South Auckland.
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Andy Spence, from Christchurch, turns an ear to proceedings at Youth Synod.
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Anthony Tuala, a Diocese of Polynesia delegate from Samoa.
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Michael Tamihere - with Sharlene Douglas-Huriwai, and James Burke.
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Bishops Kito Pikaahu and Muru Walters respond to a caucus discussion.
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Bishop David Rice responds to a caucus presentation.
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Photo op: the youth synod gather with the bishops in the forecourt of Holy Trinity Cathedral.
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Debrief: Back at the marae, the synod discusses how the meeting with the bishops went.
When Benjamin Brock-Smith stood up this week in Auckland’s Holy Trinity Cathedral to address the bishops on behalf of the tikanga youth synod, he pointed to his paint-splattered boots.
“As youth,” he told the bishops, “we feel we’ve been construction workers building the three-tikanga church.”
Trouble is, he said, the 3T youth sometimes feel they’re the only workers on site.
What’s more, they feel the tools and gear they have aren’t up to the job.
The way things are, they feel that the works are only being held together by a “thin piece of Sellotape.” Instead of Sellotape, Benjamin suggested, what’s needed “are the strong ropes of the bishops and the whole church.”
As Michael Tamihere went on to point out, many youth at the synod have never known a time when there hasn’t been a three-tikanga church.
And so the youth of the church have taken the three-tikanga message at face value: you only had to look around at the 25 or so faces at the tikanga youth synod to see evidence of that – two thirds were brown.
But those young people have noticed that the rest of the church doesn’t necessarily see things the way they do.
“We sometimes feel,” Benjamin told the bishops, “as though we’re looking down the road and wondering – is anyone else on this road too? Is this where the church wants to go? Because we want to know we’re heading down the right track.”
Michael Tamihere told the bishops how the young people longed for deeper relationships. Both among themselves, where they are frustrated that their own partnerships are limited to occasional events; and in the church at large.
He likened the present constitutional arrangements to a tomo – in traditional Maori society, a marriage arranged to settle disputes between hapu or iwi, or to meet certain diplomatic or political ends.
“We need to move from partnership,” Michael said, “to relationship. It has to be natural – but it has to be intentional.”
Benjamin told the bishops that the youth sometimes feel that they’re the only ones bearing the burden of maintaining the three-tikanga relationship.
“We know that’s not true,” he said, “but that’s how it feels. We are not downhearted. We have a lot of hope for our life together. But we seem to come up against disinterest, apathy. We want the whole church to own this relationship – but other people don’t seem as interested as the constitution and the rhetoric might indicate.”
The youth gained a sympathetic hearing from the bishops.
David Rice, the American-born Bishop of Waiapu, told Benjamin that he could have scripted his presentation for him.
It wasn’t till after he’d spent six years in the Diocese of Christchurch, and another three as Dean of Dunedin, that he got the point of the three-tikanga arrangements. And once he “got it,” he said, “I was changed forever.”
Archbishop Jabez Bryce gently reminded the youth of the intractable difficulties the church faced in realising the fullness of the three-tikanga dream. He illustrated by speaking of the ordinands at the Diocese of Polynesia’s St John the Baptist Theological College in Suva.
They had no apparent difficulty absorbing the pan-diocesan, pan-tikanga message being taught at St John's, he said – but often when they returned to their islands “they revert to their cultures.” The pull of ethnic roots, culture and separate languages, he said, is powerful.
Archbishop David Moxon told the youth that the bishops, too, feel this challenge in their hearts.
“Our striving is for the kind of church you’ve talked about,” he said.
“It can be lonely work,” he said, “but it’s prophetic and true work.”
Other things to emerge from the Tikanga Youth Synod (TYS) include:
Another TYS is to be held early next year, before the General Synod, so the young people can develop their report and presentation to that forum.
A pilot group has been set up to make that next meeting happen. This group replaces and combines some of the responsibilities of the T3 executive (formerly the steering group of the Tikanga Youth Exchange and the Tikanga Youth Synod) and the Toru Advisory Group (TAG).
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