Mayoral Prayer Breakfast honours locals

Huikakahu Kawe, Janice Kawe, Mary Dillon, Mayor Greg Brownless and James Muir

The theme for the 2018 Tauranga Mayoral Prayer Breakfast was Caring for one another in a spirit of reconciliation.

Held at the ASB Arena, this year's prayer breakfast introduced an inaugural Mayoral Citation of Community Service award for people from Tauranga Moana who have shown more than 25 years of community service.

The inaugural 2018 awards were presented to James Muir, Mary Dillon, and Huikakahu and Janice Kawe.
Tauranga Mayor Greg Brownless and Deputy Mayor Kelvin Clout invited David Dishroon and Graham Preston to coordinate this year's Mayoral Prayer Breakfast, with the purpose of inviting Tauranga Moana leaders who are community-minded to a formal breakfast that would focus attention on those who voluntarily serve the community with excellence.
As well as honouring these people, the gathering also focused on praying for the city's well-being and future prosperity.
The concept of a Mayoral Prayer Breakfast began after WW2 with American Christian men and women gathering together to share a rich bi-partisan fellowship.
This movement grew, and became known as the National Prayer Breakfast, where leaders continued to share in fellowship and joined together to pray for the well-being of leaders in their community, their city and the nation.
In 1995, Tauranga's Christian Businessmen endorsed by the Christian Ministers' Association initiated a similar concept in Tauranga. Subsequent mayors have all agreed to sponsor a Mayoral Prayer Breakfast to bring leaders together to seek God's blessing upon the city, while building a sense of community.
'The breakfast is more than a breakfast,” writes Graham Preston in this year's invitation.
'It represents many like-minded people who have a heart for Tauranga and the welfare for this great city. Many of these people regularly pray for guidance, wisdom and courage for the leadership, believing God has a plan for the city and the wider Bay of Plenty.
'As a coordinating committee, we are passionate about ‘our safe harbour' (the city of Tauranga) and seek its prosperity no matter the mix of cultures, faiths and peoples. We wish to honour and serve our Mayor, His Council and officers. We have adopted this year' theme: ‘caring for one another in a spirit of reconciliation'. '
'This was started in 1995, at Baycourt,” says David Dishroon. 'It was an initiative by then mayor Noel Pope. He sanctioned it and supported it and allowed us to serve him and help him in that way. I was a part of that team with Graham Preston in those days. This is our twenty-first mayoral prayer breakfast. Last year we weren't able to do it. So this is the first time in our current mayor's tenure as the mayor of our city to host this. We appreciate Mayor Brownless's generosity and availability.”
Over the last 23 years, there have been only two years where the event was not held.
The mayoral prayer breakfast began with an opening karakia and welcome by Shadrach Rolleston. Representatives from the Bethlehem College Kapa haka group sang a waiata, which was followed by an address from guest speaker Tommy Wilson, who leads Te Tuinga Whanau Support Service Trust.
'Once ‘te puna' time,” began Tommy, causing the audience to erupt in laughter, as he continued to share his thoughts.
'How do we right the wrongs of the past? It's called reconciliation and it starts firstly with ourselves. Caring for one another in the spirit of reconciliation is ripe and ready in our own back yard. Today we're here to honour three of our own who have taken up the mantel of mana and worn it like a well-woven korowai, each thread representing an act of kindness by caring for each other in the spirit of reconciliation.
'Today I'd like to honour my talented team at Te Tuinga Whanau. We have a staff of 28, and between us we have 60 years of experience. Many of us once were homeless, addicted, incarcerated and godless and we celebrate being able to sit at this table with you, this day.
'We started standing up for those who could not stand up on their own because they did not have a whare to do that three short years ago, but one house and three families, a house donated by the Tauranga Moana Trust.
'Today I can proudly say we have over 60 families and 100-plus tamariki sleeping safely tonight in our 30 properties across our Moana Tauranga and for that we thank Mayor Brownless and the team at Tauranga City Council who have been with us side by side from day one. And Terry Molloy, and not forgetting the 170 families we've helped transition into long term accommodation.
'This was truly what our forefathers had in mind when they named this place Tauranga, the safe anchorage.
'We have a saying at Te Tuinga – hands that serve are holier than lips that pray. And just like our bro Jesus it's all about sharing what we have with those who don't have enough. Most of all we give hope. Hope is the cornerstone commodity we use to reconnect them to themselves, their whanau, their hapu, their church and their sporting clubs. It's a wonderful feeling to see families reconnect, there is nothing like it. When you play a part in the act of caring for one another, you play a part in the act of reconciliation, not just for ourselves, not just for our community, but the planet itself. Hands that serve are holier than lips that pray.”
Mayor Greg Brownless addressed the audience next, before presenting the Mayoral Citation of Community Service awards.
'I could talk about the last year with housing development, with 1260 new consents, and commercial investment in the city,” says Greg, 'and our waterfront steps receiving an award, and a new spatial framework in the city centre, and new buildings here there and everywhere, investing $69 million in transport infrastructure, but I'm going to dispense with that, because in my opinion, and probably in your opinion, you don't actually pray for things, you pray for people.
'David Dishroon came to see me about the Mayoral Prayer Breakfast, about getting it going again, and together we came up with the theme ‘Caring for one another in a spirit of reconciliation'. In the spirit of caring for one another we thought it would also be a good idea to introduce the idea of the mayoral citation for community services.”
Mary Dillon was presented with the award for her 30 years of community service to Tauranga Moana. This includes being mayoress, and twenty years as an elected Tauranga City Councillor and chairing the Policy and Strategy Committee for many years. She has been recognised for her leadership and influence in the sphere of the environment, social policy and ensuring resources were available, enabling projects like Arndt House, the Art Gallery, and charitable trusts to be sustainable. Mary was also congratulated for being ‘a voice of reason and compassion'.
Jan and Huikakahu Kawe have been acknowledged for their service to Tauranga City Council, with Huikakahu being the chair of the Standing Committee for the past decade, and their work of bridging the tensions between the tangata whenua and pakeha including the divisive issues around the Treaty of Waitangi. The couple have served in local churches, Te Kohinga, the Christian Education Trust and many local Maraes, and are recognised for being ‘a voice of reconciliation, reason and compassion'.
James Muir was thanked for his ‘sacrificial voluntary service spanning over 25 years here in Tauranga Moana'. His citation acknowledged that he has ‘laid his (your) life down to serve and care for the hurting and needy within our city and assisting to bring reconciliation between couples and the Treaty partners'. Some of his areas of service include being co-ordinator of Te Kohinga, co-ordinator of the Prison Ministry, a committee member of Asian Outreach and his ministry to married couples and hurting individuals.
'James, you've been an inspiration to me personally,” says Graham Preston. 'Your integrity as a man, your commitment to me as a person, your commitment to the broken, and the lost and the hurting and the disadvantaged, to those who have suffered injustice - has been inspirational.”
On receiving the citations, the recipients then prayed for reconciliation, marriage, ethnic diversity community groups, social concerns, Tangata Whenua and families.
'We cannot cover all the things that are needing our prayers,” says David Dishroon in conclusion. 'The whole point of the mayoral prayer breakfast is not that we meet to pray once a year, but we go from here prayerfully into our community. The commission comes from Jesus himself when he said we are to go into the world and we're to be as salt and light to our community. We're not as a takeover, we're not here as dictators, we're here as servants, and we've held up in front of us models.
'As Mary Dillon pointed out to us, there are lots of servants and people that we could honour, but we chose these ones because we knew that they had a profile and that you could respond and could see the honour that was due to them. We appreciate their humble hearts and service. And that's our commission. Our commission is to go and make a difference in this community. To be salt and light in this community.
'There are two more things we are going to do to complete this morning together,” says David. 'Firstly we are going to sing the most treasured song of any country in the world and we need to protect it at all costs. We need to stand for this and continue to uphold this song that honours the God of nations. We're going to stand for that. And then we're going to have a closing prayer.
'Let us go out with joy and be led forth with peace and may the mountains that surround us reach out and praise the Lord. Let us act justly, love mercy and walk humbly. Let us acknowledge that unless the Lord builds the house, they that labour, labour in vain.”
The Bethlehem College Kapa haka group led the gathering in singing the National Anthem, and Graham Preston closed the event with prayer.
The breakfast was also attended by Western Bay of Plenty Mayor Garry Webber.

Mayor Greg Brownless with organiser David Dishroon

Iha Hira (at back), Sophie Pahl, Millie Bernard and Summar Todd – all Kapahaka students from Bethlehem College

Graham and Vicky Preston.

Ellis Mayne Bryers and Mary Dillon.

Mary Dillon, Graeme Elvin and Stuart Crosby.

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1 comment

Paying for someone else's prayers :

Posted on 07-11-2018 11:03 | By MMG

This is where your money is going, ratepayers. Someone else's tooth-fairy in the sky.


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