"Christchurch teacher Melissa Parsons has done New Zealanders a huge service by writing a book outlining the often overlooked part played by churches in the aftermath of the Canterbury earthquakes. This is a superb book that leaves no stone unturned (if you’ll pardon the cliche and the pun) when it comes to telling the story of churches, and church people, from all denominations as they grappled with the immediate aftermath, the recovery and the rebuild.
And, yes, Baptists feature prominently in the book. The programmes, initiatives and community service of many of Christchurch’s Baptist churches are outlined in some detail, as well as the outstanding contribution by individual Baptists such as then police chaplain Jim Patrick, for example. Baptist churches from elsewhere in the country who partnered with those in Christchurch are also mentioned. In fact, says the author, Bapists were one of the most prominent denominations when it came to church partnerships.
As well as giving us the broad sweep of how churches, and denominations, responded, the book is particularly successful when it comes to telling the stories of ordinary church people who stepped up to help their fellow Cantabrians in times of crisis. By weaving the various threads together, Melissa Parsons tells a story about the importance of churches in times of crisis – a fact the media, in particular, would prefer to overlook. She shows us how churches managed to balance the response to urgent physical need, with the need to also address spiritual and emotional brokenness. And she tells the part churches have to play in the long term recovery.
The book gives us an extraordinary picture of the Church (with a big ‘C’) in action, of how denominations worked together to show how the Love of Jesus Christ is not just found inside church buildings, but out in the streets of a broken city."
– Duncan Pardon , Co-editor, New Zealand Baptist. (Review first published in Vol 130, No.6, July 2014, p19)
