St Faith’s is a meeting place on many levels, bringing together and welcoming

people of diverse ethnicities, denominations, political persuasions and professions

grand and modest.  Like any contemporary so-called mainstream congregation we

acknowledge our pasts and yet fix a hope-filled forward-looking gaze upon the horizon.

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For more than a century worshippers using their gifts and spiritual insights have been at work taking a fairly standard church building and adorning it in such a way as to make the descendants of its founding peoples and anyone who has come here since feel welcomed into a recognisable place set apart, perhaps even holy. Through the generations they have been unapologetic about the fusion of European art and history and the need for a new artistic language that is peculiarly Maori and modern Antipodean.

 

That isn't to suggest a haphazard, anything-will-do approach. Just as in Churches, Temples and Synagogues everywhere great care has been taken to determine the appropriateness and rededication of every piece or aspect before its inclusion.  Bringing all of these things together into what is arguably a seamless whole and then having the courage to unashamedly flaunt it is one of the privileges of being, by world standards anyway, a young church. Yet still ...

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To the Glory of God and no other.

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What a magnificent place in which to make our offering, given freely and humbly by the efforts of a whole community and passed down the generations.  ​​As the remnant of the first Christian church building in Rotorua, St Faith's has and will continue to hold a special place in the life of this city through the 21st Century and beyond.

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