A massive number of us from the Diocese were at New Wine festival over the weekend. Tawa Anglican’s write about their experience below.

For Tawa Anglicans, the annual New Wine festival, held at Wairarapa College, has become a much-loved weekend of togetherness. This last week, we gathered, as we have done for years, on the Thursday afternoon before Anniversary Weekend, to pitch tents, erect clotheslines, magic up a few gazebos - in short, build a small city.

New Wine is for us a chance to be in one another’s company, to have the conversations you can’t have on a Sunday over coffee, to keep an eye on each other’s kids, and to participate in the cycle of teaching and worship that shapes each day. This year, about ten families and singles from Tawa made the trip over the Remutaka Hill to be there. It was also great to be joined by a number from St John’s Johnsonville, along with deputations from the Cathedral and St Michael’s Kelburn.

But another big plus of New Wine is that it links us in with the Christian family beyond Anglicanism. Here, we get exposure to other liturgies and ways of worshipping - a good thing in a world which so often takes difference as grounds for segregation.

A feature of the main sessions was the relationship between tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti. Piripi Blake, a veteran of previous New Wines, took the mic to explain concepts from te ao Māori, breaking down words like mauri and manuhiri in a series of occasional etymology lessons. Piripi also spoke about the early Māori response to the gospel, emphasising the importance of knowing our history. ‘Don’t let anyone else tell you your stories,’ he told us, sharing with his Christian audience a lesson hard learned by Māori. In Tawa, as elsewhere, recovering some of our stories would be hugely helpful for knowing how to be in the present. What do we do with the fact, for example, that the first Anglican church built in Tawa was on land gifted by Edward Gibbon Wakefield?

As backdrop to the festival, the Tararua Ranges held conference across the plain from us. In hot, hot weather, the drama within the sessions was more than matched by the spectacle of clouds forming and billowing above the mountains. Bishop Justin’s address on the Saturday emphasised the value of learning how to be God’s people in this place. The highest peak in the Tararuas, the Mitre, was clearly visible from where we camped, and as eloquent an affirmation of +Justin’s words as you could ask for.