Faith Bright Shining - Print

Faith Bright Shining: A personal memoir of faith and leadership: Stained Glass windows to kitchen tables

By Rosie Staite. 

Soft cover, 153pp
Colour throughout.
ISBN 9780473598082
Rosie Staite (2021).

[1 in stock 22 July 2023. Allow 10 days for delivery when this copy has sold.]

Click here to order the: PDF eBook

Description

Rosie Staite’s memoir of faith is a clear, insightful story of her work in the churches and out in the community. Her leadership was valued within Canterbury Anglican, Presbyterian and Methodist churches within a context of transition. So why didn’t she get ordained as a minister? Why did Rosie eventually leave church institutions behind?

Through all the surprising strands of her life, her faith in a loving God has been unwavering. Perhaps holiness is bigger than our boxes?

“The story is warm, engaging and humble. Rosie is both able to reflect deeply on her wide and varied life experience, and to live fully with faith and gratitude.” Rev. Dr Jenny Dawson

Foreword

Buckle up and get ready for an exciting ride with Rosie Staite as she takes us on her amazing journey with photographs, poetry, songs with choirs and music — the story of sacrificial ministry as a Lay Woman using her considerable creative talents.

She writes about her sometimes amusing, sometimes sad but more often joyful encounters with people on the fringes in small rural church communities as well as in urban settings.

Then we come face to face with church organisations and leaders, who need her talents to reach out to children and young people in struggling church communities, where she often received acclamation, but she also came up against barriers where change and innovation were not always welcome, and funds were scarce.

Rosie shares her personal life with us from student years, through marriages and raising her family, as well as coping with the pressure of often unreasonably heavy workloads. She has faced huge challenges often for little reward and inadequate funding. Through music teaching she augmented her income and in later years she became a sought-after Celebrant working with couples preparing for marriage. She arranged and officiated at funerals for so many, with or without church connections.

As the title suggests, it is the music that flows through Rosie’s life — Faith Bright Shining — lighting up the way for those she has taught and the choirs she has inspired — young and old. With music she has faced so many difficult times, but these experiences have shaped and allowed her to tell her story with hope and love, in spite of many setbacks and disappointments.

One of the photos in this memoir is of a wicker basket which once belonged to her mother, who lovingly filled it with food for Rosie’s family when the children were young. I remember her carrying it in from the car when she arrived for some special service in a little rural church — all sorts of carefully prepared things to engage both children and adults in some innovative worship. As she says of that basket “...It had carried love and busyness for so long...” but now in the last two years, the basket was emptied when Rosie has had to pull back from active singing and speaking.

That basket, she says, “had never been redundant until now. I am so thankful for all the memories.”

And so are we Rosie. Thank you for taking us with you on this
amazing journey. David Coles, Retired Bishop of Christchurch