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There's three of them across the table from me, young women in their distinctive Woodford House blazers, lapels twinkling with the multicoloured metallic souvenirs of busy and varied lives. They check that their phones are set to silent - these are Millennials and polite ones - and look at me with a kind of open and expectant curiosity. I don't think they have had a conversation with a bishop before, but they aren't particularly fazed. They share their names and a little of where they're from and a little more about where they hope to be next year. The ambition is impressive. "Tell me," I ask the one nearest me, "what exactly is a Service Prefect?" She looks at me steadily and smiles. "Excellent question," she replies. "I asked myself that exact same thing at the end of last year when Mrs Peterson invited me to do the job." And then she tells me what she has decided. About the working out of the school's Christian foun...

It was pouring with rain in Napier this morning and cold with it. I slept well in the guest flat beneath the Bishop's house where I was ensconced because my lack of a sleeping bag precluded my staying in the more spartan boarders' quarters at Napier Boys' High. It was good to sit up into the evening comparing episcopal experiences with David Rice, and then, this morning, to attend a workshop at the National Youth Forum The workshop I opted for was run by Justin Duckworth of Urban Vision . Justin delivered one of those addresses where you have an uneasy feeling that no matter what process of selection and choosing I may have thought I went through to be there, the real reason was that the Holy Spirit had grabbed me by the scruff of the neck, dumped me into the little plastic seat and said to me "Now my lad, just keep your trap shut, and your eyes and ears open. This is for you. Understand?" He talked about the non negotiables of Christianity: obedience to Jesus, a...

I've had a great day. The best day I can remember for a long while. I spent it in a largish greyish room with a large data projector that took a worrying half hour to show any pictures and twenty or so young people sitting around on chairs and lying on the floor. Oh yes, and a half dozen or so clergy and adult lay leaders. I talked to them about God, and somehow the thoughts and intuitions I had gathered up over the previous 24 hours shaped themselves into a coherent conversation about the Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit which ran all morning and into the early afternoon. These were an astonishing bunch of young people, and they had been well led as a group by Lynda Paterson and Peter Beck from Christchurch Cathedral, as well as the chaplains of Christ's and St. Margaret's colleges. As a group, they listened. They asked intelligent and perceptive questions. They made searching, and at times frank comments. They talked to each other with respect, enthusiasm and focus. ...

Sundays. I look forward to them. They usually start with a lengthy drive in the dark, followed by putting on my impressive clobber in a tiny vestry which somehow missed the last three of the church's restoration projects, and a service or two, then a pot luck lunch and a chat with some very nice people. Yesterday it was Oamaru . The various parishes of North Otago met in St. Mary's for a combined service. Although I have been to St. Mary's a few times I still managed to drive past it; it is not a building which dominates its surroundings in the way St. Luke's does at the other end of town and I was obviously daydreaming as I sailed right on by. Still, I arrived, changed, preached and celebrated, ate and talked. The church was full, and I think the congregation was fairly representative of our diocese. There were some children and some young adults, but mostly the congregation was of about my age, or perhaps, dare I say it, even slightly older. There was a great sense ...

Last Saturday evening it poured with rain when we had our annual new fire service at the Cathedral. Trevor, the dean, pointed me in the right direction, the choir was in extraordinary voice and everything went as smoothly and beautifully as it should. At the end of the service Clemency told me that we were to have a few extras at home that night: some young hitchhikers had found their way into the service and had nowhere to sleep. What with us not being short of space and everything, our place seemed a logical answer to their immediate need. It turns out they were students at a Discipleship Training Course being run by YWAM (Youth With A Mission) and Saturday was the first day of their Faith Week. When the course curriculum gets round to faith, the kids are not expected to exegete the main Pauline references nor to paraphrase the principle meanings of the Greek pisteuo . Instead they are given $20 each, dumped at some remote spot and told to return to base in a week, having depended...