Baptist mission goes for new image

Ruby Duncan, Iosis chief executive, outside the Baptist Action City Mission in Mt Eden. Picture / Brett Phibbs

Auckland's Baptist Action City Mission is to lose its name and become the corporate-sounding "Iosis" in a bid to stem losses.

The mission ceases to exist in its present form next month and will be incorporated into a new Manurewa-based company called "Iosis".

If the name sounds familiar, it is because Ford used it for its latest concept car.

The mission, founded in the 1960s to serve the city's homeless and destitute, is likely to leave only a warehouse for donated clothing at its city base at the top of Mt Eden Rd.

Its manager, Bruce Edwards, and several other city staff will lose their jobs. Others may transfer to Baptist Action's family services centre in Manurewa, which will become the new company's base.

The agency's mental health service, Te Korowai Aroha, is also being spun off as a separate company, called Affinity, which will sever its legal ties with Baptist Action completely.

Iosis will remain wholly owned by Baptist Action, as will another new company that will run the Howick Home and Healthcare service for the elderly. Iosis and the Howick business will both be non-profit "charitable companies".

Iosis chief executive Ruby Duncan said the restructuring was driven by the mission's $140,000 annual loss.

"We want to retain the things that we do, which are basically the op-shops and the budgeting service. What we have to do is cut overheads so that we can do that."

But some of the mission's long-serving staff and volunteers are devastated at the proposal and contacted the Herald in the hope that the inner-city social services and the mission's name could be saved.

"All of them are against it except one person, who is being made redundant. He has been helping in the background to make all these changes," said one op-shop volunteer who declined to be named.

"We know that it's going to affect our shops badly. 'City Mission' rings a bell with a lot of people."

Another volunteer said the mission would lose donations for its foodbank. Under the new system, the needy will be given vouchers to buy food at supermarkets, but there will be no foodbank as such.

Two showers for the homeless will also close unless the Cityside Baptist Church, which shares the building, takes them over.

"There's a queue every day for them when they're open, from 8am till 1pm," a volunteer said.

Ms Duncan confirmed that the name "City Mission" would disappear. "Iosis" means the process by which base metal becomes gold.

"It's about life becoming all that it can be," she said. "Not everybody likes it. Some people hate it. But it was the name that got the most support.

"In the '60s and '70s, the central city was where a lot of social services were happening, but with the change in demographics and everything, the work moves out. For us, it has moved out to South Auckland as a real focus."

An acting City Missioner in the 1970s, Evan Baxter, said the mission was founded when the Mt Eden Baptist Church, which had been established on the site for many years, took on the goal of serving the homeless.

"One of the big emphases in those days was alcoholics. They had an alcoholics' hostel in Ponsonby Rd," he said.

"The City Mission was based around a worshipping congregation. On Sundays the City Mission church members cooked a dinner for the guys from the alcoholic hostel and anyone who came in off the street, and in the afternoons they had a 'tea service' for which different Baptist churches were rostered to come and cook the meal."