They came by sailing ship from the little Church of Christ in Cupar, Fife-shire, Scotland, to begin a new life in Otago.
From there, Andrew Bremner wrote to the British Millennial Harbinger, a religious newspaper, on October 8, 1857: ‘‘We sail from Gravesend on the 23rd by Palmyra. I intend, if spared, to write to you from New Zealand. There will be 22 of us connected together myself and family my brother and family and my father in law and family, besides John Taylor and David Colville making in all 25. James Buttars and family sailed on Sunday last to the same port, so if not too far scattered I think we shall have a little church in Otago.''
The population of Dunedin at this time totalled about 3000 and with the arrival of these and other ships during the intervening months the town would grow by a further 1000.
The ship Stathallan, carrying the Buttars family, arrived at Port Chalmers on January 8, 1858. The party travelled from Port Chalmers in a small boat, the James Daley, used for the purpose of carrying stores and passengers between that port and Dunedin. They were landed on the old wharf at the foot of Jetty St.
Buttars, a man in the prime of life, stepped ashore with three little girls clinging to his pockets, and watched the sailors as they carefully lifted the mattress from the boat on which lay a little delicate woman with a tiny baby boy only 11 days old.
But surely his God was with him - for as he stood in perplexity, a gentleman, James Kilgour, who happened to be on the jetty at the time and was watching the little group, came up, and although quite a stranger, offered to take the baby home to his wife who also had a little son three-weeks old.
The immigrant was overwhelmed at the magnitude of the offer, and gratefully accepted it. So the stranger himself carried the little South Pacific waif to his Christian wife and she nursed and fed him, from the same bottle that her own little baby used, until the sick mother was strong enough to take care of him. Such were the circumstances under which the pioneers of the Church of Christ landed in the city.
Within a few weeks, the others arrived on the Palmyra and not long afterwards they began meeting to break bread and honour their Lord. For a short time they met in the kitchen of a Mr Thomas Dick who was prominent in the town. Mr Dick's father was the first to be baptised by this group. This was attended to in a small shady pool in the Leith at the foot of Union St, where the bridge now stands, on a quiet sunny morning.
Within four years of their arrival, the group, although not great in number, which had been meeting in various venues, erected a chapel in Hanover St, one block north of the current Church of Christ building.
Gabriel Read had recently discovered gold near Lawrence, from which began a major gold rush and the subsequent rapid growth of Dunedin. Assisted by visits in the late 1860s by several eloquent evangelists, the church numbers grew too large for the little Hanover St building so that in 1871 a new chapel was erected, in Great King St, to hold 500. This building was where the Dunedin Police Station is now situated.
As the city grew so did the church. A grand facade was added and the building was enlarged in 1881 to hold 1000 and named the Tabernacle. At this time it was thought to be the largest Church of Christ in Australia or New Zealand, often exceeding the 1000 capacity. The expectations of Andrew Bremner (‘‘I think we shall have a little church in Otago''), penned 25 years previously would have been greatly exceeded.
At about this time, due to the growth of the city, some members who had moved into the new suburbs, started meeting in their own areas. In due course chapels were erected, with the approval of the Tabernacle, in South Dunedin, Mornington, Northeast Valley and Roslyn.
The assistance by some members of the city church is also recorded in the establishment of churches at Kaitangata, Oamaru, Hampden and Burnside. Later came the church at Ocean Grove and there were churches for a short time meeting in various places at Ravensbourne, Broad Bay, Caversham/Kew, and later, Mosgiel.
In the early years the church services were mainly conducted by elders and lay preachers. Some of the early visiting evangelists had been trained at American theological colleges, but many of those involved were self-taught.
Australian Churches of Christ had established a college by 1906 but those preachers who crossed the Tasman seldom stayed in New Zealand for lengthy periods. Also in the early days, of those who left New Zealand to train for ministry in the US, very few returned.
To help alleviate this problem, in 1925, the Otago Churches of Christ promoted the establishment of a New Zealand Bible college. A property was obtained on the site of what is now Dunedin North Intermediate and the Church of Christ College of the Bible was opened on July 10, 1927.
This was a year after the city church relocated to its new building in St Andrew St. The first Bible college principal appointed was A. L. Haddon, who had trained at the College of the Bible in Melbourne. Within four years, the college relocated to a more suitable building in Patmos Ave, known as Glen Leith.
One of the first graduates was R. S. Garfield Todd, who left for missionary service in Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. After 20 years of leadership in missionary work, he entered politics and became prime minister of Southern Rhodesia. He was knighted Sir Garfield Todd.
Since World War 2, numbers active in churches have declined. The result of this has been that most of the Otago Church of Christ properties have been put to some other use. When the suburban churches were wound up, some members of these congregations joined the church meeting at St Andrew St so that it seems to have come full circle doing the work that began 150 years ago, which continues to this day, not far from where it all began.
The Church of Christ Community celebrates 150 years in Otago on the first weekend in April 2008.
- R. J. (Jim) Bennett is the 150th anniversary convener for the Church of Christ Community.
