Onewa Christian Community – Community Wellbeing Initiative
A Vision for Impact in a Changing World
The vision of Onewa Christian Community (formerly St Andrew’s Birkenhead and St Aidan’s Northcote Presbyterian Churches) in Auckland is: ‘we aspire to be an active and innovative Christian community that provides leadership and builds partnerships in our fast-changing world.’ https://onewacc.org.nz
The congregation recognised their faith community’s ability to play a part in building wellbeing within their wider community which was experiencing stress on a number of fronts, including rising crime, the impacts of Covid disruption, pressures on housing availability and affordability, Auckland’s transport issues, impacts of the 2023 Auckland flood and Cyclone Gabrielle, urban renewal and zoning changes. All of these factors seemed to be contributing to increasing stress, distress and polarisation for the wider community.
Strengthening Community Through Collaboration
The congregation already has an active relationship with the local Highbury Community House which they partner with to provide a very successful Repair Café. https://onewacc.org.nz/successful-repair-cafes The congregation delivers mainly music and Thursday group, which welcomes people of diverse abilities. As they continued to reflect on their place in the community through a process of recognising the ‘real things we’ve been thinking about’, the congregation’s response was three-fold:
developing ‘restorative practices,’ promoting the principles of restorative practice/thinking in community settings,
providing free counselling services and
growing community facilitation skills from within their church community and locally.
With the support of grants from the Justice-Compassion Trust Aotearoa New Zealand, OCC was able to host the practicum for a counselling student who has completed 115 hours of free counselling for a wide range of people in the local community during 2023 and the first half of 2024.
Supporting Mental Health Through Free Counselling
The grants have also enabled OCC to hold a number of community conversations and events in order to promote and support ‘restorative thinking’ in the community. This began with an initial four-hour workshop titled ‘Better Conversations in Communities’ which discussed ideas for future workshops and events.
Participants at the Better Conversations in Communities workshop
Workshop Themes That Meet Real Community Needs
Drawing on the feedback from this event, topics for subsequent workshops and events have included: navigating difficult conversations, joyful movement (the experiences of young Trans people in dance and active movement), nonviolent communication, talking about emotions and cross-cultural communication and sensitivity. Attendance has ranged from 14 to more than 20 people and has included ministers from other churches, community leaders, local residents of all ages and Local Board members and council staff.
“We aspire to be an active and innovative Christian community that provides leadership and builds partnerships in our fast-changing world.”
There has been a very positive response to OCC’s initiative with a number of local people committed to supporting the initiative, a number of community organisations actively engaged, over 80 members of the public and more than 70 church members receiving emails about events. A small group is now working together to deliver events and Auckland North Community and Development has kindly taken on the event promotion and registration for workshops. https://ancad.org.nz
Now, to focus attention on the intended outcome of the project, workshops will be held under the title, ‘Building Compassionate Communities.’ Have a look at OCC’s website https://onewacc.org.nz and scroll down the page to read all about it.
Resources:
Have a look at OCC’s website (https://onewacc.org.nz) and scroll down the page to read their Better Conversations newsletter with updates and information.