Our People

MICHAEL GODFREY. Vicar of Christ Church, Whangarei.

Autobiography is arrogance, narcissism even. To write about me is bad enough (I hear my eight children chorusing “it’s not all about you, dad!”): to write about myself and post it on the Ethernet is obscene. Out-there-egotistical. I apologize: my web-master wanted something, and this for better or worse is it.

Yeah, well. You’ve discovered already that I have eight kids. Six daughters from my first marriage live in Melbourne (one now safely married off). Two sons, from my second marriage (to Anne van Gend) live with us in Whangarei. Anne, with degrees in music, theology and education, is currently undertaking a Ph.D. in fantasy literature and faith at Victoria University, Wellington. She is also one of the Auckland Diocesan enablers team – we see each other occasionally.

I’m a kind of mongrel, like our dogs (one claims to be a labradoodle, but isn’t that just a designer mongrel? Maybe I’m a designer mongrel?). I’m a baby-boomer, I’m afraid: born in England, but my parents lived in Kenya at the time. I lived in Kenya and Ghana before settling as a terrified pom in the Kapiti region of New Zealand. My schooling was almost all in Wanganui, first at the Prep. School St. George’s, and subsequently at Wanganui Collegiate; these years seemingly ensured that I left school a hardened atheist. I figured if the world smoked enough dope and listened to enough Led Zeppelin all would be well. My school career highlight had been coxing a Maadi Cup crew to victory – and the crew did all the work. Oh – and I played Fleance in MacBeth! I failed most of my exams.

In the years that followed my atheism – as well as my commitment to marijuana – fell apart. I converted to Christianity and began the faith journey that continues today. It continues – it’s never static. I describe myself as 95% atheist, 5% Christian: this doesn’t mean, I hope, that I’m a wussy Christian. It means I find God and Incarnation and Resurrection and stuff all but impossible to believe – to believe rationally. But in 1979 God seized me and has never let me go, and the 5% wins out.

But what’s with this Vicaring business? What I’m not is a branch manager of some corporate structure. If I wanted to be that I would go back to working for radio networks. I am called to be a pastor and a shepherd, a teacher and proclaimer of faith, and a leader or worship. Fortunately there was a rider in my commissioning to that task: “with God’s help”. I make no claim to be “SuperVicar”, but hope I come close to being “best I can Vicar”. I am not available 24/7 (though my answer phone is), work out of home in preference to a church office (I “pray the office”, but that’s another matter, perhaps), and I rarely carry a mobile phone (they are both dangerous and illegal when driving, intrusive when praying, “pastoring” or studying, and plain rude at meetings, liturgies or even conversations).

I hope, however fallibly, I do walk alongside human beings as best I can in their journey. In that respect my job is countercultural: in my job time is not money, it is sacred. It is made sacred by prayer, and in “Praying the Office”, the ancient monastic rites of prayer, I hope my life becomes a vehicle of the sacred. That however doesn’t mean I don’t say naughty words when I drop a brick on my toe.

My non-pastoral background, apart from media stints in Radio New Zealand, the Australian ABC and some minor print media roles, has been largely academic. I gained a B.A. in English lit. and Religious Studies from Massey University in the early 1980s, and a B.D. from the Melbourne College of Divinity later in that decade. I returned to Massey to complete an M.A. (in literature: a preliminary minor thesis on the poetry of R.S. Thomas was followed by a major thesis on the search for resurrection in D.H. Lawrence) in the mid 1990s, and have just been awarded a Ph.D. in New Testament theology (on Paul, his emotional language, and his understanding of salvation) at the Australian Catholic University. For those to whom labels are useful, I’m a sort of liberal sacramental evangelical – with a fierce commitment to a Theology of the Cross and a doctrine of resurrection, to liturgical and sacramental symbolism, and to robust biblical preaching addressing both social justice and personalised and communal faith. There you have me – but not in a nutshell!

These things are, as Paul would say, as dross (he uses a stronger word!) if they do not serve in my task of proclaiming “Christ and him crucified”. That means relating to people anywhere, from the pub to ivory towers, from sports sideline to the solemn monastic cloisters. I hope I do. I was for 15 years a netball coach and umpire, until a recurring injury forced retirement. I remain a keen swimmer, hiker and kayaker, and despite having been a mediocre cricketer, coach a junior cricket team. I am a passionate armchair expert on rugby union (at which I was an abysmally bad player!) and could spend eternity watching test cricket. I read voraciously when I extract myself from my computer screen. My greatest enjoyments are “pod-surfing” (body surfing with a hand board) and driving, driving, driving.

I came to Whangarei after three glorious years (and 300,000 kms of driving!) as priest in charge of an outback Queensland parish. My parish centred on the remote rural community of Charleville, with ministries reaching as far as Birdsville in the west and Thargominda and Cunnamula in the south. I served there both as Anglican priest and inter denominational Police Chaplain.

They were halcyon days, in glorious surrounds, but the whispers of Papatuanuku and Ranginui beckoned. After nearly a quarter of a century I came home. When I left New Zealand Rob Muldoon was prime minister: much had changed. I had lived, trained and ministered in Melbourne, served as rector in Orange (Diocese of Bathurst) and Casino (Diocese of Grafton) in NSW, and as an associate priest in Semaphore/Port Adelaide. In 1991/2 I had made a brief return to the Parish of Wanganui, but that had turned to custard; now it was time to come home, perhaps for good. So far this faith community have put up with me.

Please forgive this wanton use of ether space! I hope in the end it’s not about me. I do the best I can as a priest and a pastor, admittedly spreading chaos, but hopefully rumouring resurrection-hope, wherever I go.

MICHAEL GODFREY. Vicar

SHEILA SWARBRICK. Vicar's Warden

DAVID WRIGHT: People's Warden

PICTURE TO FOLLOW!