Capital City Prayer Breakfast, Wellington

First, may I say thank you to Harvey and Sarah for their inspiring address. They have not just talked about The Father Factor. They have given us a telling demonstration of it: of the kind of relationship there can and should be between father and daughter, father and son - a relationship for which there can rarely be an adequate substitute.

There's an old saying that I'm sure Harvey will agree with, that one father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.

This morning's focus on fathers reflects a growing nationwide concern that so many children - and so many fathers - are missing out on this vital relationship, and that they, and all of us, are the poorer for it.

The number of children growing up without their fathers is quite frightening. And so are the consequences. It's easy to distort the picture and exaggerate the number and extent of our social ills that are the result of fatherlessness. It's true nonetheless that fatherless families are more likely to see these ills: educational underachievement, teenage offending, teenage pregnancy, substance abuse and other physical and mental health problems. Of course, these can happen in even the most complete of families, and there are many, many fatherless families where none of them occurs. That's an important point to make, because I know that some mothers, struggling on their own, with great success, see this emphasis on fathering as a criticism of them - which, of course, it is not.

But it remains true that father and mother have complementary, yet distinct, roles within the family. Each offers a different kind of emotional support, a different view of the world, a different way of doing and thinking and feeling, a different role model to follow. The combination of the two is the best assurance of a healthy happy family life, and most importantly, of well-adjusted children ready to play their own constructive part in society and in their own families.

This is why, somehow, we must teach greater sexual and financial responsibility, why we must do all we can to reduce the pressure on families, to help couples resolve their differences and stay together rather than take the short-term easier course of opting out. It is why we must somehow reduce the demands of work and financial necessity so that fathers have the time and energy for a fulfilling family life: because a fatherless family is not just one where father lives elsewhere; it is equally one where father lives in the house but has no time or inclination to make it a home.

And we must affirm over and over again what a privilege fatherhood is, and what a joy it can be. But that comes only through a commitment, not just of resources, but of time: time to listen and time to share; and a commitment of love, too, a love demonstrated in tangible, visible affection. Let us in our continuing prayers, ask for the words and the wisdom to say and do and give these things.

Because today, there are great contrasts in our society, a divide between the well-off and those barely getting by; a great wall between the happier and healthier and the sadder and sicker; a gulf between the well-educated and those for whom education has been a closed book.

But one of the truly encouraging developments in New Zealand at the moment, is that there are people - I'm sure there are many here this morning for instance, and I know there are many more slowly travelling in this direction on the Hikoi of Hope, and even more who are with those marchers in spirit - there are still hundreds, if not thousands, of New Zealanders who devote themselves to helping broken or dysfunctional families; to mending or preventing the damage that can be done in those families; New Zealanders who show not just in words, but in action, those qualities of goodness, truth, honesty and love that are so essential to family life, and to the life of the nation.

I would like to think that in our continuing prayers, we will remember these people, as well as those for whom they labour so wonderfully.

There are of course tens of thousands of good fathers in this country, doing all that they can to raise their children as happy, eager-to-learn, willing-to-contribute young New Zealanders, guiding them towards being people with a sense of direction in life, who will become credits to their parents, and even more importantly, who will become credits to themselves. In our continuing prayers, they should be remembered too.