Making communion wafers are St Barnabas’ bread and butter
The St Barnabas Anglican Church wafer room could be the most unique bakery in the country.
Mixing flour and water and using specialised German machinery, a group of faithful Christchurch retirees churn out more than 200,000 communion wafers a year. They sell them to more than 150 Anglican churches across the country, and have been at it since the 1980s.
‘‘We fill over 1000 boxes each year, and there are 200 per box, of the people’s wafers,’’ Shirley-Anne Collins said, who took over operations with her husband Charles Collins about seven years ago.
‘‘We also make the larger priests’ ones, about 200 boxes a year, and there are 36 in those.’’
The business sells wafers as far afield as Stewart Island. Recently they sold two boxes to The Church of the Good Shepherd in Lake Tekapo, and regularly sell upwards of 50 boxes to Wellington Cathedral of St Paul. The group’s boxes of people’s wafers sell for $7.50 collected, or $9.30 posted. Priests’ wafers are slightly dearer.
About 30 volunteers are on the roster, varying in age from mid-60s to late-80s. Workers are in the wafer room ‘‘most days’’, Collins said, either packing boxes or baking the wafers on a specialised hot plate.
Once baked, the large wafers are humidified to make them maleable, before they are stacked into a bore machine, punching out more than 30 wafers at a time.
Wafers are blessed by a priest during a service, turning them into the ‘‘body of Christ’’. They are then consumed as part of mass, alongside wine, also blessed and deemed ‘‘the blood of Christ’’.
‘‘It’s very special that we do this,’’ Collins said.
‘‘We are retired and it’s a lovely way to be a part of the church community, and to have that sense of togetherness you get when working as part of a team.’’
Reverend Mark Chamberlain said what ‘‘modest profit’’ is made from the business is channelled back into the church.