Speaking Truth to Power

For over four decades, the Rev Dr Patricia Allan has advocated for the victims of abuse in the church, work which was recognised with the awarding of an ONZM in the New Year's Honours list this year.

Patricia is now 88, and calls herself an unlikely warrior or firebrand. In this podcast, she reflects deeply on her journey of advocacy, what it has cost, and how to ensure churches can be safe spaces.

Speaking Truth to Power may be an uncomfortable episode of For Pastors - but it is an important one.

Transcript

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0:05

Kia ora, I'm Vic Francis, and welcome to this episode of the For Pastors podcast. I'm combining my background as a journalist with decades of pastoring, national church leadership and practising as a supervisor and spiritual director to champion pastors and their holy calling in an uncertain world. Today, I interview 88-year-old Rev Dr Patricia Allan, honoured this year as an officer of the Order of New Zealand for her four decades championing the victims of sexual abuse within the church in Aotearoa. We're calling the episode Speaking Truth to Power, and it's an interview all of us need to hear, even if it might be a little uncomfortable at times. Patricia calls herself an unlikely warrior, and her story is inspirational and confronting in equal measures. I think you're gonna like her, and I think you're gonna benefit. Welcome today to For Pastors: Speaking Truth to Power. Patricia Allan, welcome to the For Pastors podcast.

Patricia Allan 1:32

Thank you.

Vic Francis 1:33

You have had a long and eventful life, which we're going to explore today, but how would you like to introduce yourself?

Patricia Allan 1:42

Yes, I thought a bit about that and looking back, I've been a committed follower of the way, follower of Jesus since I was quite young, young teenager, and looking back over my life just about every event has been prefaced with a sense of calling from God's Spirit. So that was into nursing. I was a nurse midwife tutor in 15 hospitals around New Zealand and in Edinburgh, Nazareth, Pakistan. Wow. Came back and got married quite suddenly, a mother of four children, so I was knee knee deep in nappies for quite a long time.

Vic Francis 2:22

Yeah.

Patricia Allan 2:22

And then I guess the second sense of calling was to ordination as an Anglican priest. We were Anglicans, I'd always been an Anglican, and that was quite a like all my other callings, quite sudden. We were in church, the minister was preaching about ordination and coming out of the church, I said to my husband, how would you like to be the husband of the next vicar of Hokitika? So there was that sense of calling and so I went through the selection process and training and all the rest of it. And I ended up as the vicar of Hokitika and then after several years I took an appointment in the Diocese of Christchurch as the mission coordinator.

Vic Francis 3:04

I think we can probably just stop the story there a little, because we'll come into that because it was in Christchurch that things started to happen. Um, this year in the New Year's Honours list, you received the officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, the ONZM, for, and I quote, "outstanding leadership for four decades advocating for justice for victims of sexual abuse and systemic changes in the New Zealand Anglican Church". We're gonna talk about that as the primary reason that we're having our chat today. But you did talk about ordination, which was a sense of call in Hokitika. You were one of the first women Anglican priests, or at least in that sense

Patricia Allan 3:48

Not the very first. I think the first were several years before.

Vic Francis 3:52

Yes. But nevertheless, a trailblazer in that. How difficult was that back then? To be a woman, to be ordained and to be in charge of a parish?

Patricia Allan 4:04

Looking back, quite difficult. There was a lot of opposition even to my going forward to seek ordination, so there were some difficult times.

Vic Francis 4:13

Did you have any particular encounters, I'm assuming probably with men, maybe with women, but did you have any encounters that were particularly, I don't know, aggressive in terms of you shouldn't be a minister?

Patricia Allan 4:28

Oh, yes.

Vic Francis 4:28

Oh yes.

Patricia Allan 4:30

When the vicar of Hokitika left, there was an interim priest who, I won't name him, he's now dead. He himself had been, I believe, a sexual abuser. But anyway, he married the young woman that he had the affair with and dah, dah dah. And we had become friendly with him and so we suggested that he come in the interim to Hokitika. And quite soon he turned against me, wouldn't talk to me and then gathered around him a group of women who actually wrote a letter of opposition to the bishop. So the bishop came over and tried to sort it out and so that when I got to the selection weekend, it was really touch and go as to whether I'd be accepted.

Vic Francis 5:15

Oh, wow. How do you remember back in those times, I think you were the vicar of Hokitika for three or four years. Are they good memories?

Patricia Allan 5:24

I loved it. I was prepared for ordination at the time of what I call the revolution. And my husband, who was in forestry, lost his job when the Forest Service was closed down, so that was difficult. He got some consultancy work and we set up our own business. We called it people and trees. And so alongside my voluntary work in the church, I was doing counselling and was counselling a number of women and men who had been sexually assaulted.

Vic Francis 5:55

And that perhaps leads us into, you moved to Christchurch and you're working in the diocese and somewhere in there you become aware of sexual abuse that's taking place within the church, and wider than just the Anglican church of course. How did that all, um, take place?

Patricia Allan 6:15

Let's go back step. I listened to Miriam Saphira and her research on the prevalence of sexual abuse as much more prevalent in our society than what we recognised at that time or even now. But I was at a pre-selection weekend, and it was a little retreat and I went for a walk with a woman, who I'll name, it was Louise Deans. And she said to me there's a pool of green slime beneath the surface of the diocese, and it's very evil. And I thought she was off her head. And she sort of broke down at the final session and left and cried. And then we had this huge selection weekend, and she was told by the person that set it up not to come, and it's obvious or became obvious that he was very frightened of what she might reveal even there. And so, because I'm pretty liberal, I assumed that she was having an affair with this man. And we started corresponding a bit and it became after a while realising it wasn't an affair. And then just before we were ordained, we met, at Arthur's Pass actually, and she wondered about reporting him to the bishop. And I said, well, there's no prizes in knowing who will win. He had already told her that he would lie. And so she decided then to warn other women around him and found it was this one and this one and this one.

Vic Francis 7:47

Yeah.

Patricia Allan 7:47

And so it became kind of known, but nobody really did anything about it. And then in 89 there was a big ordained women's conference in Hamilton and about a hundred of us there. And one of the workshops was on, uh, sexual harassment. And I went to it and it was very mild, really. There was no mention made of this particular man. And then the report came out from the conference that we wanted the archbishop to invite the first woman bishop from America to come. We wanted protocols done for sexual harassment, which was very common around those times, in a lot of institutions. And the first thing we knew was that a reporter called Mark Abernethy rang me and wanted a definition of sexual harassment. And did I mean that men groped women? I said, I wouldn't use that language. If you want a definition, you've got to ask Louise Deans. And so the next morning the journalist who had been with us at the conference rang me up and she said the front page of the Dominion says, "Laying on of hands irks women priests."

Vic Francis 9:04

Ah, gosh.

Patricia Allan 9:07

So I rang Louise and said, what have you told the media? And she said, I haven't told them anything. I said, well thank God for that. If you want to tell your story, which I didn't really know in full at that point, tell it to the archbishop and I will support you. Right. So, I guess ever since then part of my role has been, you know, supporting her and many others.

Vic Francis 9:29

Supporting her and many others. Yes. As this story started to circulate around and people began to talk about it, I guess you discovered that it was more prevalent.

Patricia Allan 9:39

Well, yes, but really my role was in how the church then dealt. What happened then was that the archbishop and then the bishop got really concerned, the current bishop at the time rang me up, he was so angry, wanted to know who, because they did interview Louise and she said the recently ordained mother of four in the South Island. She wasn't named. Well, that was me too.

Vic Francis 10:02

Could have been you or her, but yes, it was her.

Patricia Allan 10:05

And then he asked me to apologise to the archbishop, who was in Wellington. So I sent a letter and explaining to him what we meant by sexual harassment. So there's a whole lot of story around that. They didn't know how to deal with it, and they dealt with it very poorly. In the end, they got five complaints about this man. Yeah, it's a whole big story. Louise went on later, in 2000 she wrote a book called the Whistleblower, and that's become, for a while at St John's College, I think it was required reading. The church was totally unprepared for this kind of thing. And so in 92, I applied and got a St John's scholarship to go to America to see how they were dealing with this sort of stuff in the American churches. And also went for a training with Marie Fortune, who became a world leader really in helping faith communities to deal with these issues. And I just googled her again this morning and pastors might like to look at her. She's published a book called Faith Trust Institute or something. So I went to her and I also got involved in a situation in Melbourne and knew people there. It was a very similar kind of case to the one we had in Christchurch. So I realised that this was not just what we thought initially, just a totally one off thing. So I came back from America and the bishop asked me to do some workshops with him and a person from the Stop programmeme for clergy. And that was a very bad career move.

Vic Francis 11:45

Yes. What happened?

Patricia Allan 11:47

Well, I could see at the ordained women's conference that I was fairly competent. I never knew that 'cause I lived in Hokitika and the blinds would come down when people heard I was from the West Coast.

Vic Francis 11:58

Right? Yeah.

Patricia Allan 12:00

So I decided that the church needed women in leadership. And I went onto the standing committee of the diocese and the bishop wanted to set up an appointment that they initially called director of mission. Because he felt overloaded and needed help, he said in the standing committee. So I decided to apply. But in the application, they changed the title from director of mission to mission coordinator. And the bishop told me they had a lot of trouble appointing me, because of my connectedness with professional misconduct stuff. Because when I came back from America, I was interviewed a few times on the radio. It was a three year term. And after two and a half years, I believed I was doing a pretty good job, but I went to Australia and gave the keynote speech at an international conference on professional misconduct. And Marie Fortune was there from the States and she said she'd noticed all around the world that people that were involved in the sort of work I was were losing their jobs. And I thought, oh, that won't happen to me and I'm doing a good job. But within a month, the job had dis-established. They were very worried that I would take out a grievance against the church, which I decided not to do. And I had a year, if you like, in the wilderness because I'd been, as far as the diocese went, I said to the bishop at the time, you made me virtually unemployable in the diocese, and then I was invited by Durham Street Methodist Church, the inner city Methodist church, and had six wonderful years there as the pastor.

Vic Francis 13:46

Wow. That is quite a story. Your citation for the ONZM talks about four decades of contribution in this area, so that was the beginning of it. But obviously over those four decades you've continued to walk with women and you've continued to speak out.

Patricia Allan 14:04

When I, when I took on the job as mission coordinator, I wasn't aware that I was a firebrand or anything. Within about three or four weeks, I got a call from a woman, would I go and see her? And she told me about a high powered priest who had abused her. And I said, look, I can't do anything about that, what you need to do, and she chose someone to go with her to make a complaint. And that was dealt with.

Vic Francis 14:30

It's an incredible story. If we fast forward, people will know that ultimately there was a Royal Commission into abuse in care, not only in relation to religious institutions obviously, and in 2020, I think it was, there was an apology from the Anglican Church for all of those who had suffered in those times. That must have been an incredible moment.

Patricia Allan 14:55

Yes, it was. What happened when I was mission coordinator, I persuaded the bishop to call in mediators, not with the man who was involved, that's another whole story, because what it did was totally split the diocese. It was for or against.

Vic Francis 15:12

Mm-hmm.

Patricia Allan 15:12

It was a real crisis and there was this drama going on and I persuaded him to employ two mediators and to work with some of the victims and some of the hierarchy of the church. And outta that came the thought that there would be a public meeting in the cathedral and the archbishop, who was reported in the paper of saying things, well, a church is full of red blooded males like anywhere else, and it takes two to tango. And I heard the rape story and it wasn't really rape and ah, it was just awful. So we asked that he come down and have a diocesan service and make an apology. And then the dean at the time suggested in one of the mediations that a plaque went into the cathedral acknowledging bishops, priests, laymen, acknowledge the violence against women, and seek a future where men and women da, da, da can be together. And then about a month after the mediation, he rang me up and said, Patricia, I can't get buy in for the plaque.

Vic Francis 16:18

Wow.

Patricia Allan 16:19

Would I arrange a service at College House, which is where this man had been the principal. I said, I'm not doing that.

Vic Francis 16:26

Mm-hmm.

Patricia Allan 16:27

Well, when the Royal Commission came, I talked to the current bishop and I told him this, I said, you know, there was gonna be a litany of lament, there was gonna be a plaque put into the cathedral. Not a damn thing happened. And he said, did I believe it still could happen? And then while the Royal Commission was on, or just as it was finishing, he called a meeting, or a steering group or something to deal with the commission's report. And so he kindly invited me to be on that. Well, in the end there was a litany of lament. It's now on YouTube and there's now a plaque in the cathedral.

Vic Francis 17:08

Wow.

Patricia Allan 17:09

It felt satisfying, I must say.

Vic Francis 17:12

Satisfying. Yeah. This is, I think, a good point for us to take a break. And when we return, we'll look more at the theme for our podcast, which is Speaking Truth to Power, something that Patricia has done consistently for decades. So we'll be right back. Patricia Allan, welcome back to the For Pastors podcast. We're calling this episode Speaking Truth to Power, something that you have done on a consistent basis over many decades. As a woman, you have spoken truth to men. As an advocate, you've spoken truth on behalf of those who haven't had a voice. This is a podcast for pastors. What sort of power do you consider that clergy and pastors and leaders have?

Patricia Allan 18:56

Well, many would say they don't have any power. When I was doing workshops with clergy, I would say, you know, who has most power in our society? Men or women, the educated or the uneducated, the employed or the unemployed. All these factors. So, you know, people, especially ministers are in paid positions are in incredible positions of power. And then we've got the whole God thing, meaning clergy feel that they're speaking on God's behalf. And that's one of the tools that clergy can use when they're grooming women. You know, it's God's will. God's told me that you're special and all this sort of stuff. In fact, when I met with a group of women in the States who were victims of clergy assault, they reckon that all these fellows had come from the same university, all over the world, because the same sort of line of grooming.

Vic Francis 19:51

Yes. So there is almost a predictable process that you can see.

Patricia Allan 19:56

You can do. Yeah.

Vic Francis 19:57

So we have power as pastors. I've heard pastors say that too. I have no power, but I think when we sit down and really think about it, we would accept that we do have power. How should we handle that power?

Patricia Allan 20:09

Being aware of it, I guess would be the first thing. And seeking ways that it not be abused and perhaps not even using the God language.

Vic Francis 20:18

What are the sort of accountability structures or accountability processes or conversations that would be really helpful in this area?

Patricia Allan 20:29

I think people that are,, I was gonna say one man shows, are at enormous risk because who are they accountable to? Well, they would say they're accountable to the Lord. But there needs to be systems of accountability right through. I think now in the Christchurch diocese, clergy have to go every two years for boundaries type training, recognising where they've gone over the boundary. And we're all susceptible to that at one point or another, meeting our own needs rather than needs of a congregation. I think a personal awareness, supervision, spiritual direction, dealing with one's own needs and vulnerabilities.

Vic Francis 21:10

So important, isn't it? I know the tendency that we can have to delude ourselves as to our motives or as to the actions that we're doing. I remember talking about this in a pastoral setting, and the person saying, oh, I'm so glad that we are not like that. And I immediately thought who says we're not like that? We may well be like that if we don't have the accountability structures that you're talking about.

Patricia Allan 21:33

Yeah, and I think it's important for pastors and clergy to realise that we don't know the vulnerabilities of the people that we're dealing with. I remember being in a service where everyone was told to turn and give the person next to them a great big God hug. And I was so appalled. I said, I'm dealing with women that that would totally freak them out. For pastors these days is recognising that we don't know. And so if you're going to touch someone or hug someone, for goodness sake, at least ask them if that's okay and try to read what they're saying back.

Vic Francis 22:08

Of course, in our churches, we will have women and maybe some men, but primarily women who have been abused. How do we lead churches that are safe spaces for them?

Patricia Allan 22:21

Well, having very clear boundaries, I guess, in terms of things like how much is touching and hugging and all that sort of thing accepted, and in our diocese now is supposed to be notices going up that this is a safe place if you have any concerns, ring such and such a number. So it's making the possibility of making complaints if you're worried about somebody's behaviour clearer. B ut one of the problems, like in the initial situation that I dealt with, that the buck stopped in a way with the bishop. And the bishop's role was that they're the sort of leader of the clergy, but they're also the hirers and firers and they're also supposed to be giving pastoral care to both the abusers and the abused. And so there's this total confusion of roles. So in the research I did was a strong recommendation that that be clarified. And so now in the Anglican situation, I think totally outside the bishop's control is a system for dealing with complaints.

Vic Francis 23:25

Right, so there's an external system that people can go to to ensure that there's independence when one of these situations surface.

Patricia Allan 23:34

And one of the things that happened 40 years ago in the Christchurch diocese that was the offender was a good mate with all the leadership. And that's really hard. I mean, I think the same thing happened in the Arise church, didn't it? And so for other leaders that puts a huge pressure on them, you know, they've got this friend and there's complaints and we know that women can be a bit over the top, all this sort of stuff.

Vic Francis 23:57

So what about today? Hopefully things are better for all of the conversations and the hard things that you've done, but nobody would claim that it's solved or that it doesn't exist anymore. You have worked both within the Anglican Church and in a sense from outside the Anglican Church, because it's cost you a lot to do that. What should we be doing if we see something that we're even just uncomfortable about or something that doesn't resonate or ring true? Uh, what's our responsibility as pastors?

Patricia Allan 24:27

Well, the biblical thing is that you speak to the person directly. And I mean, that's another issue, isn't it? What the Bible tells us to do, you know, go to the person that's offended and if they don't agree, you take somebody else and so on and so forth. But one of the problems with the biblical passage is the seeking of forgiveness. And if you're dealing with an offender, of course they'll say, oh, yeah, I'm terribly sorry. I didn't mean that to happen. And so bishops and others in leadership have been, uh, very tricky. I mean, that's happened a lot in England. So you've got bishops and archbishops having to resign because they believed the offender and believed that he'd sorted things out and we're all loving and forgiving, and so they come back into the scene. So it is a very, very tricky area.

Vic Francis 25:18

Yeah. You talked about reliance on God in this process. How has being an advocate in this way changed perhaps your understanding of God or theology through these decades?

Patricia Allan 25:33

Hard to know how much is directly attributable to this work. I mean, I continue in old age to believe that God walks with me and that God's Spirit mostly guides my decision making. And I suppose getting the ONZM is kind of like a loving confirmation from God.

Vic Francis 25:55

Mm-hmm.

Patricia Allan 25:55

But I never felt as if I was a warrior, I just did what was standing in front of me really. I'm really not political, so I probably was stupid in many things. One of the stories I tell is that just after Louise Deans spoke and everything was opened up, there was huge drama. And I was involved in going to a meeting in Wellington, quite separately, mostly with bishops. And I'd already written to the archbishop and told him what we meant by sexual harassment. And so before the meeting started, I went round and everyone was sitting around and I went and shook everyone's hand. And one of the bishops, I shook his hand and said, how do you do, I have met you before. And then later, I think the next day, we had this meeting with the archbishop to deal with this crisis in the Christchurch diocese over this offender. Going into the meeting, this bishop was in the line in front of me and he stood round and he put his hands over my shoulders and came close to me and he said, tell me dear, when did we last meet?

Vic Francis 27:08

Wow.

Patricia Allan 27:10

When we got into this meeting, he had my letter and he said, invasion of body space. What do you mean by that? And I'm so stupid. I got up outta my seat and put my hands over his shoulders and said, tell me dear, when did we last meet? But that's not very political to act like that.

Vic Francis 27:29

No, indeed. Not political, but would you call yourself an activist?

Patricia Allan 27:36

Well, I never looked at myself as being an activist as such, but just trying to deal what with what was in front of me really.

Vic Francis 27:43

Yeah. So these things happen and you couldn't just turn a blind eye, I guess.

Patricia Allan 27:47

Mm-hmm.

Vic Francis 27:48

Yeah. Would you see that it's part of the way that God has led you, to be somebody who waves the flag in this area?

Patricia Allan 27:57

Well, I have in the past. You know, at 88 when I'm still talking about it, it's a bit of a worry, isn't it?

Vic Francis 28:03

It's, it's more and more how you're defined, even in this podcast, I suppose. So you didn't really weigh the risks before speaking out. It was just, these things came and almost naively, if I hear you rightly, as you saw a wrong and you spoke about it.

Patricia Allan 28:20

That's right. And supported the others that were putting in complaints.

Vic Francis 28:26

Well, thank you, Patricia, for your depth and your doggedness, I guess, in these areas. We'll take a short break now and when we return, we're going to talk about Patricia's personal journey and how her, my word, activism has shaped who she is. So we'll be right back. Welcome back, Patricia Allan in a For Pastors episode that we are calling Speaking Truth to Power. Patricia, you have referred to it a little, but how has this journey shaped the person who you are today?

Patricia Allan 29:31

One of the things that happened, when I lost my job, there was a huge sense of being in the wilderness, I guess for a year. I had spiritual direction and at one point the director said, did I think I was depressed? And I thought, well, maybe I was. And then I went and visited a woman who was depressed, lying in a darkened room on a bed and hardly able to speak, and I decided I wasn't actually depressed. It was a very, very difficult year of loss because it felt as if it affected my innermost being in terms of challenging who I was as a priest, as a woman. More recently, as I think I've told you, that you know, that my son committed suicide in December. Yeah. And so one of the things that's helped me is a book by Lucy Hone called Shall I Ever Get Over This or something, will I ever get over this? And one of the things that she does in the book is get you to look at the different losses in your life and what that has done in terms of strengthening resilience. And when I look back, I mean the loss of my job, I'm not comparing it with the loss of my son, but it was a huge loss. And so I guess in and through that, I've learned things that are now appropriate for the life of grieving and, um, celebrating and all the rest of it. Does that make sense or not?

Vic Francis 31:00

Yes, I think it does make sense and it's a very, uh, it's a terrible word really, but a very balanced and resolved nature that you're talking about. How do you make peace as you are later in your life with both the victories and the unfinished work and just the stuff of life as we talk about your son with heavy hearts.

Patricia Allan 31:19

Years ago, I remember, you know, trying to confront the question of why do bad things happen to good people? And I had members in the congregation at Durham Street that had some hard things happen. And I remember entitling the sermon Shit Happens, but Grace Abounds.

Vic Francis 31:35

But grace abounds. Is that something of your experience?

Patricia Allan 31:38

I mean that's the dilemma, isn't it? About good things happening to bad people and bad things happening to good people. It's a theological dilemma that we all face one way or another.

Vic Francis 31:50

And having seen a lot of very difficult things in life, both of your own life and in other people's lives, have you come to some sort of conclusion around that question?

Patricia Allan 32:02

Yes, I believe that the Spirit of God is at work in and around and with us. I think it was a it Fowler that talks about the stages of faith development or something, and a universality that comes as you get older. And it's a bit like that, a sort of sense of God's presence everywhere.

Vic Francis 32:21

How do you hope that future generations, or even the current generation of clergy, women especially, but maybe men as well, how do you hope that they will experience ministry in a different way than you have had to?

Patricia Allan 32:35

Seems to me that the way of Jesus is to just be alongside people and accepting people, whether they're prostitutes or fishermen or whatever. And it's the enormous privilege of pastoring, isn't it? That you can walk alongside a whole lot of different people. And I guess for pastors to recognise that we don't know everything, we can simply point people to trust in God. Each pastor brings their own personality, their own background, experience, skills, and all the rest of it. But what really scares me is the kind of Christian nationalism that's going on and is very potent in America, obviously, and you get this kind of desire for revenge and it seems to me totally opposite to the gospel.

Vic Francis 33:28

Patricia, we've exchanged emails and we've had various conversations before this podcast. And I loved at Easter, you sent me an email and said, we are Easter people, we're people of the resurrection and hallelujah is our song.

Patricia Allan 33:41

That's a Saint Augustine quote.

Vic Francis 33:43

Well, there you go.

Patricia Allan 33:45

And actually the dean at the cathedral took my son's funeral and he referenced it there, you know, in spite of this terrible thing that happened. We are an Easter people. And Hallelujah is our song.

Vic Francis 33:57

Hallelujah is our song. I love that because as I talk to you today as a lady who's 88 years old and has served and led and butted heads and all sorts of things, that that can be a conclusion that you can come to. So I find that incredibly encouraging. Patricia, on this podcast, for any of our guests, I always ask them a question about hope. We talk about the For Pastors podcast being to champion pastors and their holy calling in an uncertain world. And so what gives you hope?

Patricia Allan 34:31

I guess one of my mantras is, I've got a bit of brain fog, I can't remember her name, all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.

Vic Francis 34:42

Julian of Norwich.

Patricia Allan 34:44

Julian of Norwich, of course. Yeah. And that for me is one of the mantras and, uh, some of our family are going through a really, really difficult time at the moment. And so I try to say to them, you know, it's just one day at a time, just do what you can, beneath it all is the hope that we believe in resurrection. I don't mean necessarily life after death. I'm slightly agnostic about that. But I believe in resurrection here and now. Things can look really terrible and we see signs of new life.

Vic Francis 35:23

Patricia, would you pray for our pastors of New Zealand?

Patricia Allan 35:28

Yeah. Does that include all sorts?

Vic Francis 35:30

Well it includes me and I'm not an Anglican, so yeah I guess it includes those who feel a sense of call to pastoring. Yeah.

Patricia Allan 35:38

Gracious God, we thank you for the high calling of pastoring, shepherding, caring for the flock. Help us and every pastor to recognise that members of our flocks have got all sorts of backgrounds, all sorts of secrets, all sorts of worries. Help us not to believe that we've got all the answers. By your grace, give every pastor the sense that they're simply a conduit of God's grace and love. Thank you for this podcast. Thank you for Vic's clarity and real desire to cheer pastors on in this valuable and life-giving work. Be with those who are challenged with their own demons. Help them to find the right help, the right sustenance, the right depth of meaning. Thank you that we are the followers of Jesus, who knew all about condemnation and death, but also resurrection. In his name we pray. Amen.

Vic Francis 37:06

What a beautiful prayer. I wanna thank you, Patricia. Thank you for your long service as a nurse, a missionary, we didn't talk about that, but a parish priest, an academic of later times. F or caring deeply enough to speak even at your own cost. F or staying the course, for standing firm and for making the church a better and a safer place. For reinventing yourself, staying open to God's leading and having hallelujah as your song. And so we champion you, too, and your holy calling in this uncertain world. God bless you. It's been a great pleasure, Patricia Allan.

Patricia Allan 37:47

And mine too, Vic. Thank you. Hallelujah is our song.

Vic Francis 37:50

Hallelujah. I love it. Thank you for listening to this episode of the For Pastors podcast. You can find more about us in the podcast notes, and I'm back in a fortnight with something different again, an episode called Ministry, Money and Me. How do we as pastors, leaders, and full-time Christian workers handle our own financial resources and make sure we aren't headed for an impoverished retirement? I hope you'll join me. Bless you.