On A Mission

Dreaming Big: City Missioner Michael Gorman with an artists impression of the new City Mission development.

04 Dec 2009

The City Mission's new multi-million dollar development is building new hope for those in need.

When a youngster approached a suit-clad man for money “to buy an apple pie”, little did he know he’d stopped in his tracks the City Missioner, the man who’s responsible for an annual social service budget of nearly $4 million.
“I showed him my empty pockets,” says Michael Gorman, demonstrating the fact again by inverting his trouser pockets. He turned away the lad, aware that people with far greater - and probably far more genuine - needs were at the Mission a few blocks away on Christchurch’s Hereford St. “We’re not mugs,” he says, referring to his staff as well as himself, a long career in the social services field making him astute at discerning opportunists from those in real need. Thankfully, Gorman is as careful a steward of the City Mission’s resources as he is of his own alms, making effective use of donated cash and goods to help the poor and marginalised.
“I’m very aware of the goodness of the people who help us and I do feel a tremendous obligation to make sure the money is well spent,” he says.

The City Mission has been part of the Christchurch landscape and the work of the Anglican Diocese for 90 years. It evolved out of Reverend Peter Revell’s “House of Help”, and now has staff of 68 and numerous volunteers, the Christchurch City Mission provides a dozen services to people affected by poverty or living on the edges of society. It’s become an icon of social justice that Anglicans should be very proud of, but also challenged to support. The most well known of the Mission’s activities are the men’s night shelter, which last year provided 683 men a bed for the night as well as dispensing more than 12,000 meals and suppers for shelter residents and those wanting company; the food bank, which distributes in excess of 35 food parcels a day; and the annual Christmas lunch.
“The Christmas lunch is an opportunity to bear witness in a world that has difficulty seeing Christ. Why would you condemn people to eating in their own little flats looking at themselves on a day that should be a great festival?” remarks Michael about their hallmark event. “Since November the women at Walsh House drop-in centre have been talking about it and what they might wear!” he adds, indicating it’s also an important occasion for those who attend.

Less well known is the Mission’s Home Detoxification Service, which helps addicts get off their “drug of choice”.
Although news media reports highlight the horrors of methamphetamine or ‘P’, Michael says alcohol is still the most harmful drug. “You hear about P – and it is awful and probably the most dramatic – but in fact the killer and the destroyer of homes is still alcohol. Drinking is out of control in this country, no doubt about it!” he says adamantly. “Our youth counsellor deals with kids who are addicted - kids at school, as young as 14 or 15 years old.”

He moves on to talk about the Gardens Project at Governor’s Bay, which he assumes will be unfamiliar to most people. Under the eye of a paid supervisor, clients, people on probation, and kids from Allenvale Special School tend the garden with the resulting vegetables used for meals at the men’s night shelter or for inclusion in the Mission’s food parcels to families.
Back at Hereford Street, there’s a budgeting advice service, a social worker, a medical clinic, a women’s drop-in centre, alcohol and drug services and, not unexpectedly, an opportunity shop. Nearby is Thorpe House, where anyone over the age of 17 who has been medically detoxed can stay for what is called ‘social detoxification’.
“If you are addicted, your life is usually in chaos. You can come and stay for a shortish period of time to get order into your chaotic life, a pattern into your day, to put some boundaries around you, to work out - in an atmosphere of safety - where you want to go from here… It’s a gentle programme in a safe environment,” says Michael.

Another garden project operates at Kia Marama, the sexual offenders unit based at Rolleston Prison. Oderings Nurseries supply the Mission with seeds, which the inmates then plant and grow with the harvest later collected for the Mission’s food bank.
“It’s a nice synchronicity, isn’t it? I like the idea of offenders paying back to those groups they have harmed,” remarks Michael, who recently popped out to Rolleston for a visit.

These sorts of projects – as well as the Mission’s core work - clearly illustrate that the Mission works with people from the fringes of society: offenders, outcasts, the homeless, addicts, and those dislocated from the rest of society through poverty, ill health, lack of social skills or mental illness: people most of us would have difficulty relating to let alone working with.
“We strive to be known so that anyone can approach us. There’s no boundary of any sort: no gender boundary - and I mean all the genders, not just male and female – class, ethnicity, and certainly no belief boundary. How could there be if we go back to a mission statement of the unconditional love of Christ?” challenges Michael.
“If we’re never going to show people unconditional love, to expose them to being treated with respect and dignity, then how can we expect them to change? They’ll continue on their toxic way, being vulgar, being violent because that’s how they get what they want; but we can show them there’s another way,” he explains.

Michael admits that it can be difficult to readily identify some people’s redeeming features, but he expects staff and volunteers to seek the Christ-like aspects in each person.
“I think it’s harder to find Christ in people who aren’t like us – that don’t behave as we do. I think that’s where the challenge is for us really,” he says.
“I don’t think the Mission’s in the business of only rewarding people’s good behaviour; we’re here to help people who need us and some of those people don’t have the ability to behave terribly well sometimes. At Walsh House [a drop-in centre for women], for example, the major work we do is model good behaviour so that people can perhaps pick up on that. It would be dreadful to be in the business of just rewarding the good.”

More than $10,000 a day is required to run the City Mission, and plans are well underway for an ambitious development project that will see a series of buildings – including reception – built across the road from where they are now located. One of the buildings to escape demolition or major renovation will be the Mission’s chapel, in which chaplain Michael Brown hosts monthly communion and where clients - in the company of Mission volunteers - can spend time in reflection and prayer.
Less than half of the estimated $10.5 million project cost has been pledged or donated to date, but Michael is optimistic that Anglicans and non-Anglicans alike will support the initiatives, which will improve facilities for clients, reduce operational costs such as heating, and allow staff better space and equipment to work more effectively and safely. The website www.cityatheart.co.nz has details of the project.
“No service will be closing down,” says Michael, who has planned for the Mission’s continued operation during construction.

The project shows that the Mission remains a relevant and much needed place.

“If you’re looking for rows of tumbledown houses with emaciated kids with extended stomachs scrambling over rubbish heaps looking for food, you won’t find that here in this country. But if you’re looking for families who are really struggling, battling mental illness, don’t have adequate housing, don’t have enough to eat, and with insufficient access to good medical treatment…if you’re talking about those sorts of things, then our fellow New Zealanders are suffering,” says Michael. “And how can we tolerate that?”

Words: Megan Blakie
Photos: Dave Wethey