On the 21st-23rd of July, a dozen Anglican Studies students made the journey to Palmerston North for our Doing Theology block weekend paper taught by Tom Noakes-Duncan and Joe McGarry.  Rev. Heidi Nayak tells us about it.

Some of our students had attended block weekends before, some were brand new to the programme, some were near the end of completing our Diploma of Anglican Studies, some were returning after a long time.  Together we grew as a learning community. 

It was a humbling experience being welcomed onto St. Michael’s Church & Marae by the tāngata whenua.  For some of our group, it was their first time being Tīkanga Pākehā Anglicans in a Tīkanga Māori Anglican Hāhi Mihinare church.  St. Michael’s is unique in that the wharenui is the church building.  We slept next to God’s altar; we prayed morning and night prayer together before God’s altar in a place that was a physical symbol of what it means to be at home in this land as Hāhi Mihinare. 

Through the expert teaching of the Rev. Dr. Joe McGarry, we were able to reflect on what it means to be a theologian and to think theologically in such a way that it empowers and informs our mission and ministry.  Joe invited us to re-examine our inherited assumptions together in a safe space.  Where do we get our theology?  How does Scripture function?  We read over some key New Testament texts together and teased out the questions they raise: who is God?  Who is Jesus?  Who (and what) is the Holy Spirit?  What does it mean to say that God is Trinity?  What does it mean to be ‘saved’?  Joe’s passion was contagious as he helped us to demystify and enliven theological words and concepts that too often seem dry. 

We joined the St. Michael’s congregation on Sunday morning, who invited us to lead the service.  We joined together in celebrating a bilingual Eucharist before we spent time fellowshipping with the congregation. 

Our journey will continue online with Dr. Tom Noakes-Duncan for the next two months as we dig down into these areas of theology more, and try on different interpretative lenses.  What impact does our cultural location as Anglicans in Aotearoa have as we seek to do theology in our particular context? 

As part of this journey of theological learning, our students will be participating in Anglican Studies Huddles, using the 3DM LifeShapes as tools for discerning what God wants us to hear from her and how to act on that in a concrete way. 

The Anglican Studies programme is designed to serve the discipleship goals of the Diocese of Wellington.  We believe in theological education as discipleship, not simply as an academic exercise.  Our programme is designed to work around your life – you can enrol in one-off papers or in the whole Diploma, and we have block weekend papers and Zoom-only papers available.  You can enrol for credit and write assignments, or for audit-only and just participate in the learning without writing assignments. 

Our final paper on offer this year is Being Church.  This is one of our bite-size 5-credit taster courses that will be taught entirely on Zoom in 10 1-hr lectures on Mondays at 7pm from September to November.  This will be taught by +Justin and Heidi Nayak.  Enrolments are open, new students are most welcome.  Got questions?  Contact us at anglicanstudies@anglicanmovement.nz