Speaker:- Margaret Lewis
Worship Leader:- Shirin Caldwell

A third space is neither home, school nor work but a space where people can be themselves, be with friends. A café, a bar, a museum, even a park. may be places where many of our most vulnerable communities do not feel welcome or feel they need to be out of sight. Similar to a church, Merge Community and Café is a space where all communities are welcome. Find out our Kaupapa, how it works and some of the impacts. Meet Margaret Lewis from Lifewise/Merge whose role is to help build capability and capacity within the many communities Merge works with. Also see below for how you could contribute.

Peace and Social Justice Project – Merge Café

The management committee has approved a new project with two parts:

Providing $25 meal cards for local people experiencing homelessness
Each card provides 5 free lunches. We are inviting the congregation to contribute towards the cost of these cards, with the PSJ offering matched funding of up to $250.  If you would like to contribute towards a meal card, please make your payment to the Auckland Unitarian Congregation Incorporated account: 02-0200-0156552-00,
Particulars: Your Name
Reference: Merge Café

Collecting food items for Merge Café
We are seeking donations of food items that can be used in the café, such as flour, oil, pasta, rice, lentils, tinned food, and any surplus fruit or vegetables you may have. Other suitable food items will be used to create small food parcels for their clients. Please place items in the plastic box on the left as you enter the church.

Neurodivergence. What does it mean – what are the challenges faced, and how can neurotypical individuals assist in mitigating these challenges and ensuring neurodivergent people are included, respected and accommodated?

Speakers:- Nikki Smith-Eklund (she/they) M Hum Rts
& Dr. Tof Eklund (they/them)
Worship Leader:- Rachel Mackintosh

Nikki Smith-Eklund & Tof Eklund © 23 November 2025

No text this week

Speaker:- Ruth Irwin
Worship Leader:- Viv Allen

Ruth Irwin is an author and Professor. She teaches courses on globalisation, climate change, philosophy, colonialism, and post-colonialism, education, policy and economics. She has written several books on climate change, philosophy and economics, edited 3 collections on philosophy and climate change, and public policy, and written over 60 peer reviewed book chapters and journal articles.

Isaiah speaks against rulers who write laws that crush the poor and enable injustice. In the 1970s, successive New Zealand Governments used such laws to legally justify the racial profiling and persecution of Pasifika peoples, especially through the Dawn Raids.

Speaker:- Rev. Alec Toleafoa
Worship Leader:- Ted Zorn

Read below, or download the PDF

Follow this shortcut to the bottom of the page for the various readings, videos, etc. shared in the service.

Alec Taleafua © 20 July 2025

“Woe to you who legislate evil—
who make laws that make misery for the poor,
that rob destitute people of dignity,
exploiting defenseless widows and taking advantage of homeless children.”

Isaiah 10:1–3 (The Message version)

Let me take you to a moment in time a moment in history.

To a family home in the inner-city suburb of Arch Hill, a group of young Pasifika and Maori gathered for a meeting, a meeting that would ignite a revolution in the way mainstream New Zealand treat Pasifika & Maori. A meeting that would give Pasifika communities a megaphone through which to articulate and amplify our stand against the everyday racial prejudice and discrimination we were experiencing at the time. And so the Polynesian Panther Party was born on 16^th June 1971.

Speaker:- Tenzin Chosang
Worship Leader:- Rachel Mackintosh

Speaker:- Ibrahim Omer
Worship Leader:- Rachel Mackintosh

Systematic Extremes of Poverty and Wealth

Speaker:- Ruth Irwin
Worship Leader:- Rachel Mackintosh

The rate of economic growth is set at 2-3%. Its a finely calibrated complex system of moving parts. As brand new money gushes out of private banks in the form of ex nihilo credit, it pools in “reservoirs of value.” This results in the rich getting extremely rich, and the poor losing the value of their labour to inflation. The economic growth model is exponential. It systematically produces extremes in wealth and poverty.

The engine of economic growth and climate change

Speaker:- Ruth Irwin
Worship Leader:- Rachel Mackintosh

“Banks create credit ‛ex nihilo’ which means ‛out of nothing’. This brand new credit is the engine that forces economic growth into the system. Technological efficiencies are all absorbed and exceeded by growth. That means that new technology does not result in a reduction in climate emissions. Instead, there is an exponential increase in resource consumption. Understanding the banking industry is vital to begin to unwind the economic growth model, and its production of climate change.”