Churches combine to celebrate shared faith

March 29th, 2013
[by David Armstrong]

For the first time in many years, the St Peter Chanel Catholic Church and St Andrews Uniting Church communities conducted a combined service of worship this morning to remember Good Friday.

A feature of the service, held at the St Peter Chanel church, was a combined choir from the two communities singing the beautiful and reflective Easter cantata, "Wondrous Love" by Lloyd Larson.

About 100 worshippers attended the service, including about 40 in the choir, ably directed by conductor John Rimmer, in a programme developed by John and his wife Helen.

Apart from the opening and closing congregational hymns, the reflections on the events of the day were led by the two church leaders, Rev Peter Norman and Father Pat Maloney as they narrated the last days of Jesus, interspersed with appropriate songs from the cantata.

Father Pat introduced the service saying that combined worship by the two communities was well overdue and it was a real shame that it was not done more often. "We share 85 to 90 per cent of our beliefs, perhaps even more," he said, so the common faith should be celebrated rather than the small number of differences.

Recent closer relations between the two Motueka churches began to build from two years ago, when the St Andrews church hosted the recording of the popular Sunday television "Praise Be" programme (see our report here).

That programme required a choir larger and more commanding than the St Andrews choir could manage, but their combination with Andrea Hamilton's choir at St Peter Chanel was able to achieve a strong and proud result.

Since then there have been several events at which the churches have met together, but today's celebration was the first time in many years for a full, formal combined service to be conducted.

Peter Norman, who prepared the script of the narrations, said they intend to mount other combined services in future.

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