HOLY SMOKE!
Catherine Groenestein meets a fireman who’s also an archdeacon.
Archdeacon Trevor Harrison lives with uncertainty. As an ordained minister for 34 years and a volunteer fire fighter for 33 of them, the Taranaki man’s days are often disrupted by an emergency of the spiritual or physical sort.
‘‘One of my colleagues once said the call of the minister is to be interrupted, and it’s the same with the fire fighter.’’
He’s used to a life where even Christianity’s holiest days can be interrupted by a fire call, although he’s never abandoned his congregation mid-sermon, he says.
‘‘Being volunteers, it’s always understood that you have jobs to do that take priority. But I have taken off straight after a service to go to a fire callout and I’ve left services here when I wasn’t taking the service to go to a fire call.’’
Some years ago he was on a callout to a motor vehicle crash with his clerical collar under his firefighting garb.
‘‘The police sergeant said to me: you can’t wear your dog collar to motor vehicle accidents, it makes it look like you’re touting for business.’’
This Easter, as well as leading multiple church services, he spent part of Saturday afternoon with 30 firefighters from several brigades at a house fire started by an ember from burning rubbish.
His three children grew up accepting he could get called away at any time.
‘‘I remember my poor daughter. One year it was the third time we set out that she got her birthday treat, because the previous two occasions were interrupted by fire calls. I was taking her out and the fire pager went off, so I took her to the fire station and my wife or one of the other members took her home,’’ Harrison says.
‘‘It was my job in the family to teach my three children to drive and every one of them had at least one lesson interrupted by a fire call, which meant they were then kicked out of the car at the fire station and made to walk home, because they couldn’t drive themselves home as they were just learning.’’
Harrison first became a volunteer firefighter in Taupo¯ , where he was a young secondary school teacher ‘‘in another life’’.
‘‘I’d always felt the call to be working in the church, but being a teacher was part of the life experience I was instructed by the Bishop to go and get before I got ordained. You have to be at least 23 before you can be ordained, so I was a secondary school teacher for four years.’’
Teaching was a very similar calling to church work - being involved with people, he said.
‘‘You can’t be a school teacher unless you’re there to help the students develop as fully as they possibly can; you can’t just be there as a purveyor of knowledge. And in the church we’re seeking to bring the message of God to people to enable them to be the fullest people they can possibly be.’’
He was in his late 20s when he began three years at theological college in Auckland.
Two years after he was ordained he became vicar of Pa¯ tea, rejoined the fire service and had been in ever since.
He married his wife, Pip, at Pa¯ tea and they still have close friendships with others in the town’s volunteer fire brigade, and in the brigade ‘family’ around New Zealand.
Harrison joined Wellington’s volunteer support unit when he returned there to be vicar of Karori West for eight years, and the Napier Volunteer brigade during 14 years at St Augusta parish.
Seven years ago, he returned to Ha¯ wera as archdeacon of the St Mary’s Ha¯ wera parish, and became part of the Ha¯ wera Volunteer Fire Brigade.
‘‘We’ve just gone over the hundred callouts for the year already and it’s only the early days of April. It requires a lot of time and effort.
‘‘Fires are a rarity. There’s a whole new range of skills needed for motor vehicle crashes and extrication, and storm-related events. In February [during Cyclone Gita] we had about 40 calls in 12 hours, and these are volunteers doing all these calls.’’
Although the two roles look very different, Harrison says they’re not.
‘‘Both, when it comes to the essence of it, are about helping people and their needs. They both have that element to it.’’
And there’s plenty of crossover between his two lives.
‘‘I am part of a peer support group, have been for a long time, of firefighters caring for firefighters who have had to deal with traumatic situations of one thing or another, and I have conducted a number of funerals for fire service members, both present and former members, and have also done weddings and baptisms,’’ he says.
‘‘When we do a full brigade funeral, with full honours, it’s a very formal event. I find it easy enough to do because we sometimes do church services which are full of formal ritual, and it’s an honour to do it and to ensure it’s done well because that’s showing respect for the person who has passed away. ‘‘
He’s seen changes in society and working hours impact both his roles over the years. Fire brigades, as well as sports teams, service clubs and other organisations, were finding it harder to get volunteers, and church attendance had dropped.
‘‘A large section of our society has never heard the gospel message and don’t know the true meaning behind Christmas and Easter. We’re talking about easily second or third generations who have absolutely nothing to do with the church at all. That is one of the challenges to us, to present the message.’’
Changes to shop trading hours also reflected society’s changed attitudes, he said.
‘‘The holiest day in New Zealand is Anzac Day rather than Christmas or Easter. But even then, now they want to open the shop on the afternoon of Anzac Day. Why can’t you just leave it closed for that day? What drives it so much that you can’t plan enough to get an extra bottle of milk?’’
"In February [during Cyclone Gita] we had about 40 calls in 12 hours."