Central Hawke’s Bay Anglican Parish farewells retiring vicar

Joan Edmundson has recently retired as vicar of the Central Hawke’s Bay Anglican Parish. Photo / Paul Taylor

When Joan Edmundson first got the idea that she should be ordained into the Anglican Church, she put it down to stress and thought two weeks on a beach would make it go away.

“I was working as a lawyer and one day just before Christmas I got this thought in my head, ‘you shouldn’t be doing this, you should be ordained’.

“I thought it was stress and that a fortnight lying on a beach would make me feel better.

“So that’s what I did but the thought wouldn’t go away. The idea was becoming a nuisance and I decided it was easier just to go along with it.

“To my surprise I was taken seriously – I didn’t expect to be – and I went to St John’s College in Auckland to study a three-year theology degree.”

Now, just before Christmas, Joan has stepped into retirement.

Joan grew up in Christchurch and studied law at Canterbury straight after school. She worked as a lawyer, overseas and in New Zealand, for eight years but after a while came to realise that while she enjoyed it, it wasn’t something she wanted to do forever.

She says doing a three-year theology degree in her early 30s was “wonderful”.

“It was a real gift, having that time to think and to question things. With a bit of life experience under my belt I saw things differently, I remember thinking, ‘even if I’m not ordained, this experience is amazing’.”

While at St John’s College, Joan met John and Heather Flavell and says having them as part of her parish when she eventually came to Central Hawke’s Bay was lovely.

Joan was ordained and placed in the parish of Waimate, South Canterbury, a small town of 3000.

She says unlike being a lawyer, the role of a vicar is not defined.

“Academic training was all very well, and they tried to make it practical, but nothing prepares you for everyday parish life.

“Nobody gave us a course in plumbing. That would have been useful. Or told us what an unreinforced masonry structure was... that would have been handy as well.”

But the hardest part for Joan was the age gap. While she was still under 40, her parish had “a predominance of older people”.

“I was the vicar but most of my parishioners were old enough to be my parents or grandparents. That took some negotiating – with myself and the parish.

“I spent 10 years in Waimate and in that time we demolished and rebuilt the church hall. That took a lot of energy and was a lot to do for a first parish... but I didn’t know that.”

Job done, hall up and running, it was time for another parish, and Joan and her husband Andrew thought it would be good to have an adventure. They moved to Gisborne.

“Moving to Gisborne is as close to an adventure as you can get when you’re from South Canterbury.”

“It was lovely. The bicultural aspect was something you didn’t get in South Canterbury 30 years ago. In Tairāwhiti it’s in the air you breathe. The parish I was in had strong links to the early Anglican Church in this country. The first Anglican Synod was held in Tairāwhiti – in Māori.

Retired vicar Joan Edmundson outside the rebuilt and earthquake-strengthened St Mary’s Church, Waipukurau. Photo / Paul Taylor

“Being one of nature’s historians I was fascinated by Tairāwhiti’s past, and its present was wonderful. We decided to buy a house there – we felt we needed to get on the property market or we’d end up living in a tree.”

Now, having retired in November, Joan and Andrew are returning to that house.

“Going back will be fun, but we have loved being in Central Hawke’s Bay. It’s been exciting and it’s hard leaving.”

Joan has been the vicar of the CHB Anglican Parish for six years, including Covid where “all parish plans turned to custard”.

“It was a very destabilising time and then Cyclone Gabrielle shook us up from an already shaken base. So much happened that could have seen us isolated, but the parish worked against that. We have six churches with regular services and three more with ‘pop-up’ services. We see ourselves as a ‘community of different communities’ and we tried to use the strengths of each, across all.

“Where we could have splintered and each become insular, we didn’t.”

Above all, Joan says her time in CHB has been all about the people.

“It sounds cliche but one of the privileges of being clergy is you meet people in ordinary ways, then you’re there when ‘stuff happens’.

“It’s an extraordinary privilege, some of the things that have happened have been huge and it’s what we do. We are accepted into people’s lives, sometimes just for a season.”

Being retired will take a while to sink in, Joan says.

“After I had stood at the pulpit in St Mary’s and spoken my last as a vicar, I automatically went to sit back in the vicar’s seat and the Archbishop gestured to the seat in the congregation, next to my family. I just thought, ‘oh!’ It was lovely.”

Joan says she will take a year to unpack her “million boxes” and think about what to do next – maybe becoming a “reading granny” at the nearest primary school, “or exploring New Zealand without having to juggle annual leave”.