Archives Are Fun

Many people through successive generations have contributed to the creation of the Methodist Archive in Christchurch.

Marcia and the team she gathered with her worked for 26 voluntary years to garner, sort, record, store and recover these valuable records that offer insights into the worship and life of Methodism in Aotearoa-New Zealand. They built on the good work of the Archivists that went before them. Frequently Church Archives resource Parish histories or Family Trees. Marcia makes innovative use of the records. In this book ‘Archives are Fun’. Marcia has selected extracts and stories that reveal the ever changing minds and moods of a diverse Church through many decades. Often the humour of these ‘windows’ opens theological insights of the life, worship and witness of successive generations in both Connexional and congregational life. Marcia’s own insights and reflections provide stimulus to the reader’s own memory of people and events as well as stirring the Connexional memory of people, decisions and events. Thank you. Well done.

Future Archivists will continue to garner and save our current records and be as intrigued with our present as we are with the past. Thank you, Marcia, for opening up the old records and allowing them to speak of the sustaining faith of successive generations of the People called Methodist. Now, read on, and enjoy and reflect.