Otautahi Christchurch Ladies Tea
St Paul’s has, for a while now, had a Men’s Breakfast group, who gather every other month. In early June, one of our youngest members, 6-year-old Grace, asked her mother “the boys have their breakfast, why don’t the girls have something?” I’m church secretary, so her mum came to me and repeated what Grace had said. Well, I had been thinking the same thing. So, we ran with it. We did a quick survey that Sunday. After a planning meeting with Grace on Monday after school we had a plan, a Ladies Morning Tea.
The first tea was 12 July with a plan that we would meet during the months the men didn’t. That changed and our plan now is to meet on the 3rd Saturday of each month. While Grace, her mum Angela and I coordinate, we want a group led system. Admittedly, it may take a while to find our rhythm, we do have some things fixed – for example, start with a prayer — but we are being very flexible.
The idea for the tea is not just to get together, but also to learn about each other. For each meeting the three of us will come up with a question everyone will speak to. The first one we asked was ‘what bought you to St Paul’s?’ The answers were as varied and as similar as we would have expected. A prayer request form will be passed around during the social time. The gathering will end with prayer for the things on the list. We also decided to have a koha box, the money being donated to a charity at the end of the year.
We are still finding our way. We don’t want to have a leader as such, so topics will be discussed by the group at tea and finding that way will take a bit longer. One thing I really love about what we have done is that we have shown a 6-year-old, very shy, little girl, that she too has a voice and that adults will listen.
Judith Blatt, Angela Klein, Grace Klein
Otautahi Christchurch St Pauls
August 2025
