A rural east Auckland church’s new reverend is a former truck driver, schoolteacher, prison and police chaplain, and rugby player and coach.
Maku Potae brings an extensive and varied CV to his new role, having recently taken over from Earle Howe as the reverend of St Thomas Church in Whitford.
Among his first tasks is visiting local residents to tell them about the church in Whitford-Maraetai Road and what it offers.
“I’ll take pamphlets and put them into letterboxes if no one’s home when I arrive,” Potae told the Times.
“It will read, ‘This is St Thomas and this is what we do’. We are the parish for the Whitford village and beyond.”
Potae hails from Kennedy Bay in Coromandel and was head boy and captain of the first XV rugby team at Whakatane High School.
He trained and worked as a school teacher in Waikato and then served as programmes and recreation services director at the Hamilton YMCA, which he describes as a “turning point” in his life.
“What we were doing for underprivileged young men right through to millionaires gave me a broader outlook on life.”
He was working at the YMCA when his mother died and Potae, then aged 28 years old, had a personal spiritual experience that led to him becoming a Christian.
He and his wife Kathy joined a church as he dedicated himself to his faith.
Potae was ordained four years later and became a deacon and then a priest.
He left the YMCA to become the head of physical education, housemaster and First XV coach at St Peter’s School in Cambridge, and was also the school’s chaplain.
He then worked as a church vicar before starting a career as a prison and police chaplain in Turangi, about 50km southwest of Taupo.
Potae eventually became the national director in charge of the prison chaplaincy service.
“I loved my time as chaplain,” he says.
“Providing spiritual counsel to young people, staff and parents at the school, and to police personnel and prison inmates, staff and their families was a challenging time.”
He and Kathy then moved to Auckland for family reasons and Potae got a job as a truck driver.
While attending a south Auckland church they bumped into their friend Earle Howe, who at the time was the reverend at St Thomas.
Howe invited them to attend a service at St Thomas, which they did.
“He stands up and tells the congregation who I was and said I’ve come to help him,” Potae says.
“On his retirement and with his encouragement, I’m sure, the parish asked if I’d take over as their chaplain.”
Potae says one of his goals is to invite more families and younger people, including those who are not Anglicans, to find out what the church does.
Another goal is to bring people closer to God, Potae says.
“I’m here to encourage people’s faith in God, so if we have six people [in the congregation] at the end of this and they are fully into exploring their faith and wanting this church to be alive and carry on, so be it.
“If people are here and they are excited about their faith, then they’ll be excited about sharing it with others.
“That is how you grow a church. It’s not by numbers, it’s by people.”
