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The Christchurch Civic
Creche Case |
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Even with some divine
intervention, Queenstown City Impact Church members have not been sitting in
the pews contemplating how to cater for growth – they're getting the job
done. While consultants prepare reports
and talk about buildings needed to cater for the resort's burgeoning
population, these go-getters have already built a $1.5 million, 400-seat
performance auditorium, to open in March. They are about to start building
an early childhood centre, with 20 of the 50 childcare spaces already snapped
up. Much of the funky 1300 square
metre, contemporary-style auditorium on 3.6ha at Hansen Rd in Frankton was
built by volunteers last year, battling through one of Queenstown's coldest
winters.A substantial amount of the money was donated by church members, the
rest of it commercially funded. Construction of a much-needed $1
million early childhood centre begins this month with the blessing of the
Government – a $975,000 grant from the Education Ministry – and Queenstown's
biggest childcare centre. "Our waiting list is horrific
at the moment, about 112–we're telling people it's taking about a year to get
in," Queenstown Childcare Centre manager Pam Maclean says. "We're insisting people ring
in every month or they get wiped off the list." Church pastors Rob and Michelle
McGrath say there's a need already to expand meeting facilities in their new
auditorium beyond the next stage of an additional 350 upstairs seats. Tentative conference bookings for
the venue are already coming in. Demand has been strong from
community groups wanting to hire space and their own growing children's
church. About half of the 200-strong congregation is under 25. So how do the achieve so much in
such a short time? "We pray a lot," Mr McGrath says with a grin. "We see a community need and
we want to meet it." Mr McGrath left a successful
Auckland corporate career as a national operations manager for a
multi-national engineering supply company nine years ago to follow his
passion for God and for people. A dynamic man, overflowing with a
zest for life, he's animated and witty on the church platform – there's no
chance of falling asleep during his sermons. His church band is loud and he's
proud of it. The company he worked for has
since been privatised and the two "kids" he trained were now doing
very nicely. But Rob McGrath has no regrets. "It's a different kind of
satisfaction. I enjoyed the cut and thrust of business but it's prepared me a
lot for what I'm doing here." "The corporate thing is
great, but ultimately the bottom line is it's self-centred – you benefit out
of it. This is bigger." "We're creating a legacy, a
vision for our grandchildren's day. I don't want my children to walk in my
shoes, but rather stand on my shoulders," Mr McGrath says. Queenstown is the McGrath's
"mission station". "I always knew we'd be called
somewhere to missions. Missionaries usually go to the nations whereas here
the nations come to us," Mrs McGrath says. "This place attracts heaps of
visitors, sometimes they come through in busloads of 20 or 30. We had a big
group of Australians come looking for an active church and we've had 40
people turn up by the coachload one Christmas Day." An early childhood centre has been
part of the church's vision for years. It swapped its valuable 0.13ha
lakefront Frankton site with a developer for a much larger rural spread
opposite the Queenstown Events Centre in 2002. In the meantime, Mr McGrath has
been serving up sermons instead of Speight's in a temporary former
pub-turned-church above the Frankton Arms Tavern. The congregation is laiden with
willing tradespeople, even a planner to aid in the resource consent process. "Ultimately I think God
brings in the right people at the right time when you're doing the right
thing for Him," Mr McGrath says. Who better for the job of heading
the childcare centre than high-profile Queenstown funny man, entertainer and
teacher Shaun Vining, who chucked in the well-paid security of his Queenstown
Primary School job to retrain this year and get behind the vision. The Queenstown Starry Eyed 2003
winner is well-known for his quick wit and many on-stage personas. He also has an unsolicited cult
following of children wherever he goes. Each school holidays he runs a
popular children's holiday programme at Queenstown School. "Yeah, I spend a lot of time
with kids and that's fortunate, 'cause I like them," he grins. He admits he's always had a heart for pre-schoolers, but as a
teenager at Central Southland College during the mid-1990s he was strongly
deterred from following his dream, "because I was a guy". The Christchurch Civic Creche abuse case, for which childcare worker
Peter Ellis has since received a people's pardon, had just broken out. "The Peter Ellis thing scared me right off. I was at school and
scared (to pursue early childhood teaching) – everyone told me not to do it
because I was a guy," he says. So he instead pursued primary teaching and loved it, especially in
Queenstown. Anyway, these days tight
procedures mean everything is so open and everything's dotted, crossed and
counter-crossed, he says. There's a huge need for childcare
in Queenstown and, with an estimated 220 babies predicted to be born for the
year ending June next year, it's growing. "In Queenstown you need to
ring up the night before you conceive and book in – it's getting that
ridiculous," Mr Vining says. "You could build seven or
eight childcare centres here and you still wouldn't make a dent in
Queenstown's need." With their first baby on the way,
he and wife Melissa, had to bite the bullet financially so he could take a
year off to retrain. "It was scary, it was a great
secure job and I was giving up a good scale teaching job, but it was safe. I prefer to be feeding children from
running water rather than a stagnant pond." "There's no mistaking what we
stand for – it's our goal to raise a 10-times better generation, spiritually,
physically and emotionally." Although the curriculum will
follow Te Whaarika it will be underpinned by the foundational pillars of the
church. "If you look at the problems
we're having with early-to-late teens in our community ... these kids don't
know where they sit, the culture's changing all the time – it's a whole new
MTV generation," he says. Mr Vining reckons it will take
three years to build up a decent culture in the new centre, but music and the
arts are sure to shine through. He already leads a growing children's church
programme and is already training up a children's church band for their own
special services in the new building. Until then, every Sunday you will
find Shaun Vining up front jiving in front of the main church band, where
he's happiest, a toddler on one shoulder and a 3-year-old swinging from the
other arm. |
