The flame of Anglican hope is burning brighter after a youth gathering in Suva.

More than 100 of the best, brightest and most committed young Anglicans in this province met there recently for the Tikanga Youth Exchange (TYE) – which is the once-every-two-year chance young Anglicans have to gather, fellowship, worship and be three tikanga together.

It was quite a time: “You wouldn’t find anyone,” Michael Tamihere says, “who didn’t come away feeling transformed by that experience.”

A high point of that six-day gathering was Michael’s induction (on Friday evening, December 10) at Suva’s Holy Trinity Cathedral, as the first Three Tikanga Youth Commissioner.

And one of Michael's goals is to keep the flames lit at events like the Suva TYE burning, steadily and constantly, between the big events.

A couple of days after his return to Auckland, Michael was reflecting on that.

“Everyone wants to be back in that space again,” he said.

“So let’s use all the means at our disposal to keep that space going.

“We’ve needed someone, and something, to occupy that space between the tikanga – to live out and hold that space together.”

The new office of Three Tikanga Youth Commissioner is that something, and the Rev Michael Tamihere (29) is that someone.

Paint-splattered boots

In May last year, when Benjamin Brock-Smith stood up in Auckland’s Holy Trinity Cathedral to address the assembled bishops on behalf of the 2009 Tikanga Youth Synod, he pointed to his paint-splattered boots.

“As youth,” he told the bishops, “we feel we’ve been construction workers building the three-tikanga church.”

Trouble is, he said, the 3T youth sometimes feel they’re the only workers onsite. What’s more, they feel their tools and gear aren’t up to the job.

As Michael went on to point out back then, many youth at their synod have never known a time when there hasn’t been a 3T church.

Never mind the rhetoric, either: Sometimes, the young people have felt like lab rats for the three-tikanga experiment – and sometimes they’ve felt like they’re in that lab on their own

One church?

Some might say that having a single youth commissioner means that in some ways the church is easing away from the three -tikanga arrangement.

After all, surely this is the church working as one?

Well, yes. But Michael, who is Ngati Porou, is also very clear that his appointment is not to the ‘one church’ of the days before the 1992 constitutional reforms.

Back then, he says, that one gathered church effectively excluded his own people.

And when he left his Kura Kaupapa Maori (total immersion Maori school) and really encountered the Pihopatanga and Tikanga Maori for the first time… well, it just fitted who he is, and he flourished.

Michael says it’s the young people who will be called upon to deliver the promise of the three-tikanga church.

“We are the ones sitting across the table from each other now. We are the ones who are going to become the General Synod, and the bishops.

“And when we do, it’s the relationships and the understanding that are being forged now that are going to count then.”

One of the challenges that the three-tikanga partnership brings, says Michael, “is that everyone’s space is often no one’s space.

“We still haven’t quite worked out how to exist there.

“And the challenge is this: how can three tikanga be a turangawaewae for everyone?”

Cagey about promises

Michael is wary of making big promises.

Better to under-promise and over-deliver, he reckons.

But if we look at the statute from last year's General Synod, setting up the Tikanga Toru Youth Commission and the new Three Tikanga Youth Commissioner, we see the commissioner is called to be:

• An instrument of communication and support;
• A resource for events and education;
• An advocate for youth ministry throughout the church.

So: We know Michael will play a big part in organising the big events like the TYE.

Like the Tikanga Youth Synod (which, like General Synod, makes decisions and frames policy for youth ministry).

Like Raukura, the 3T youth leadership training programme which was held, this year, in Suva, while folk were gathered for the TYE.

Tikanga Pakeha Youth Coordinator John Hebenton says Michael's commissioning was an historic moment for the church.

It's over 20 years since the young people of this church adopted a three-tikanga model for working together as one.

Until now youth from each tikanga have maintained a relationship by joining together for events like the TYE and Tikanga Youth Synods.

“We took another step in the journey by commissioning Michael,” John says.

Michael will be available to speak at synods, standing committees and at Runanga Whaiti. He’ll advocate for youth to the bishops, and he (along with his commission) will push to see that young people are taking part in top-level decision-making.

He expects to face tough questions from those he represents, too.

“I’ll be expecting individual young people, youth groups and diocesan youth councils to ask: ‘What can you do for us?’

“We have to be able to answer that.”

One of his first tasks is to organise and coordinate the next Tikanga Youth Synod, in Auckland early next year.

Complete overhaul

Michael’s appointment is the culmination of a complete overhaul of the way youth ministry was being done in the church.

Over the years, it had had grown like topsy, with perhaps half a dozen different groups carrying out different tasks.

There wasn’t much clarity, either, on financial, management and governance matters, and Michael says there were questions about the effectiveness of 3T youth ministry.

“There wasn’t much cohesion about the old set up,” says Michael, “and there was a lot of confusion.”

The General Synod Standing Committee took that reality on board – and set up a review group to look at three-tikanga youth ministry, from top to bottom.

The legislation passed at last year’s General Synod is the fruit of that review.

There’s now a specific statute that sets the terms of 3T youth ministry, there’s a youth commission, and a youth liaison bishop – David Rice, of Waiapu.

There are clear lines of accountability too. For example, under the new structure, the General Secretary, Michael Hughes, will be keeping his eye on budgetary matters.

Two years later...

Michael only took over the reins as Kauhautu of Te Maara, and Archdeacon of Kahui Rangatahi at the start of 2009.

So he was less than two years in that job when the old youth ministry structures were wound up – and he got the nod as the new commissioner.

That was something that Archbishop Brown Turei noted when the Youth Commission presented Michael to the last meeting of the General Synod Standing Committee – which was held at Christchurch on November 30, and December 1.

Archbishop Brown was fulsome in his praise of Michael and in his endorsement of him in his new 3T role.

But he was lamenting, too.

Because Tikanga Maori had previously had a 100% claim on Michael’s time and talents, and that was now gone.

The fact that that exclusive claim had evaporated, he said, put him in a mind of a certain television ad.

In the ad, a gumbooted farmer hops into his new ute – which is parked in a muddy spot, outside the farmhouse.

The farmer whistles for his dog, which springs into the air, expecting to land on the tray of that new ute.

But such is the new ute’s acceleration that the tray disappears from under the dog – which lands, face down, in a puddle.

At the same time the farmer’s wife, who is pegging out the washing, gets splattered by the mud throw up by the spinning wheels of the new ute.

Both the farmer’s wife, and the dog, are then heard to utter a word that can’t be used in this story.

That word wasn’t mentioned by Archbishop Brown, either.

But that same unprintable word, said Archbishop Brown, summed up how he felt about Michael’s loss to Tikanga Maori.

• Additional reporting by Kahu Miller