Happy birthday to us!
Volunteers at the Salisbury Street site in 1930 in one of the earliest known photographs of the new City Mission. City Missioner Percy Revell can be seen standing by the post.
When people reach their mid-90s they often start looking ahead and thinking about the big 100 to come.
Charities are no different and here at the Christchurch City Mission we are very aware we will celebrate a century of looking after people in 2029. Our beginnings as an organisation – a social welfare agency and charity – began in 1929 as the impact of the Great Depression was starting to hurt Christchurch more and more. Unemployment, hunger and homelessness were on the rise, and the city was worried.
There’s no click of the fingers and a charity suddenly pops into being. The need comes first and then the charity forms and evolves as answer. In our case, the first move towards what we would become came from the decision by the Anglican Bishop’s Evangelistic and Social Council to turn a church schoolroom into a meal room, where volunteers handed free bowls of stew at the opening to hungry jobseekers.
This was at St Luke’s Church in Manchester Street in June 1929. It was direct action to help a desperate social need, but the meal room closed at the beginning of September when demand for the meals fell away. However, the project planted a seed, a feeling that more help should continue to be done to help struggling people.
The Evangelistic Missioner of the time, Percy Revell, was inspired by a vision of a bigger and more permanent response to hardship, one that included social work and the very forward-thinking idea that direct contact and advice could do much to help as well as the basics of food and a bed. A house was rented at 114 Salisbury Street in September and two names were offered for it – St Martin’s House of Help and Church of England Mission House, and St Martins got the nod.
An official public opening of St Martin’s House of Help was held on November 7, 1929, and that’s probably as good a day as any to nominate as the City Mission’s birthday. Visitors from nearly all of Christchurch’s social organisations were present, along with the mayor, and the Christchurch Star newspaper reported how the new service would become the centre of the Church of England’s social welfare work in Christchurch, “but it will be open to those in need of help of all classes and creeds”. The newspaper continued … “Help would be offered with advice, fuel, second-hand clothing, new clothing. Food, when possible, would be given. In the case of homeless single men and women, lodgings would be provided.”
“Help would be offered with advice, fuel, second-hand clothing, new clothing. Food, when possible, would be given. In the case of homeless single men and women, lodgings would be provided.”
In this you can see the clear bones of today’s City Mission. In years to come, the St Martin’s name faded away in favour the City Mission name and the Evangelistic Missioner soon became known as the City Missioner.
Current City Missioner Corinne Haines says while many things have changed since 1929, when people reach a crisis in their lives the problems are much the same now. “Our approaches and answers might be more knowledgeable and targeted now, but the core compassion, kindness and love for others in our community remains the same. We have evolved to meet the needs of our community and will continue to do so for as long as we are needed,” she says.
Today we are 94 and begin our 95th year of service to Christchurch and Canterbury. We are bigger and more embedded in our community than ever before and sadly more needed than ever before.
The City Mission today. link to https://www.citymission.org.nz/news/you-wont-believe-how-much-we-do-to-change-peoples-lives