METHODIST CHURCH IN WELLINGTON

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 198, 19 May 1944, Page 4

METHODIST CHURCH IN WELLINGTON

Anniversary Services

The 104th anniversary of Methodism in Wellington is to be celebrated at Wesley Church, Taranaki Street, on Sunday. The celebration is held on the nearest Sunday to Wesley Day for convenience, the exact anniversary being January 22. The first Methodist family came to Wellington in December, 1840. aud services were held in a native chapel situated near the .present Manners' Street reserve, but it was on the January, 22 previous to that that the Rev. James Buller met' the first batch of immigrants in Port Nicholson, and four days later, on board the Aurora, preached the first distinctly Christian European service. Port Nicholson had been visited in the previous year by two Methodist missionaries, the Rev. J. Bumby and the Rev. J. Hobbs, and they had conducted a service for the Maoris on the spot where the memorial fountain stands on the Manners Street reserve. , , , A number of churches were built and either destroyed by fire or by earthquake before that erected in 1868 in Manners Street near the present intersection with Cuba Street. This also was destroyed by fire, in 1879. It was then that the Taranaki Street site was selected by the congregation which, remembering the fate of a .previous brick church in an earthquake, refused to rebuild on the old site, which by then had come within the brick area. The present Taranaki Street church was opened in March, 1880. The services on Sunday next will be conducted in the morning by the Rev. J. M. Bates. Karori, and in the evening by the present minister, the Rev. Ashleigh K. Petch. Special music will be sung bv the choir. On Wednesday, May 24. which is Wesley Day, there will be a tea in Weslev Hull at 6 p.m., and the Wesley Bible classes will present a pageant of the life of John Wesley at 7.30 p.m.