Buildings

Buildings have been the overwhelming motif of year so far. Putting them up. Caring for them. Insuring them. Thinking about knocking them down. The problem we have in the Diocese of Dunedin is  a larger number of unreinforced masonry buildings than any other diocese in the country and a decreasing pool of people willing and able to look after them all. Although we weren't directly affected by earthquakes in the past year, we have, like everyone else in the country, been affected by the consequences of Christchurch's disaster in the form of increased insurance premiums and the prospect of seismic strengthening. Our insurers, EIG Ansvar, pulled out of the New Zealand Insurance market at the end of last year and now, nearly four months later, we are still in negotiation with brokers concerning what we are to do next. Over the past few months I have learned more about insurance than I ever really wanted to know, and I won't bore you with it all here other than to state the obvious: we are going to pay a lot more for a lot less from this point on.  We are legally obligated to insure some of our buildings (for example schools and hospitals) and our own statutes require us to insure the rest, at least in the meantime. As far as strengthening goes, it costs a lot to have an engineer take a look and tell us what needs to be done, and then a lot more to actually do it.

Our congregations are many, widely scattered and sometimes very small. Few if any of the members of our diocese were attracted to our church by the prospect of becoming custodians of heritage real estate, but having become part of a group meeting in some interesting pieces of old architecture, most have, up until now, borne their responsibilities diligently.  Over the past many years our buildings have been, for the large part, lovingly and fastidiously maintained. But now faced with the costs involved in strenghtening and insuring, some congregations are starting to blanch. They are asking, quite justifiably, whether these lovely old hunks of stone are really worth the trouble. In real terms, the costs of maintenance and refurbishing is completely beyond the resources of some of  our parishes.

There is no easy way ahead. The building in our care are often valued by communities far wider than our own. They are subject to interest from the Historic Places Trust  and various local bodies. Demolition is not an option, and given the by laws of some regions of our diocese, sale is not practicable either.

It is not all bad news of course. The debate about buildings has caused a much deeper and more wide ranging discussion about the Church: what is it apart from its places of worship? What are we called to be and do? I have been greatly heartened by the consensus that has emerged in every single place where this discussion has been held; that, the Church is a gathering of people, not a pile of bricks, and that we must not allow the issue of where we meet to distract us from the real business of living and proclaiming the Gospel. We are not about to abandon our historic places of worship but neither will we allow their concerns to destroy us.