24 April, 2026

Holy Trinity direction leaves couple lamenting ‘lack of clarity’ – and worshipping in Ponsonby

David and Margaret Allis are among the parishioners who have left Holy Trinity Church over the vicar’s conservative views on LGBTQ issues and women. They spoke to Rob Drent.

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“We like change, are happy with change, but [it needs to be] good change, healthy change”

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Leavers… Margaret and David Allis, who were part of the Holy Trinity community for nearly a decade, now attend Ponsonby Baptist Church

David Allis is setting up a national website where people can easily see where a church stands on contentious issues.
Based on similar sites overseas, it will use AI to look at the transparency provided on issues such as those related to the LGBTQ community and the role of women in the church.
The planned site, which he hopes will be in operation in six months, is one of his responses to a conservative shift at Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Devonport under vicar Chris Murphy.
Allis feels a series of philosophical shifts at the church were introduced without the necessary transparency.
His view was shared by many others. Figures are unclear, but up to 70 members may have left the church.

Some have laid complaints with the Auckland Diocese, which Allis feels have been handled poorly.
Allis believes the church complaints procedure, reset after the inquiry into abuse by state and faith-based institutions to handle certain kinds of complaints, is poorly suited to dealing with the divisions affecting Holy Trinity.
At a local level, Allis and his similarly disaffected wife Margaret thought about seeking a special general meeting of the church, but felt their concerns would be deflected by the parish hierarchy.
The Narrow Neck couple instead wrote letters to the Flagstaff (10 April) outlining their views.
When Murphy arrived at Holy Trinity at the end of 2023, the couple and others in the parish had no reason to believe the church would not continue under the broad and inclusive principles of previous vicar Charmaine Braadvedt. “I was naive,” David said last week.
He and Margaret felt Murphy either wasn’t open about his traditional views when he sought the job or had become more conservative subsequently and hadn’t been completely open about that development.
Under Braadvedt, Holy Trinity was inclusive, with two gay youth leaders. The church had moved with the times, different lifestyles were tolerated, and LGBTQ issues were not “a big deal”, David said.
The Allises had been in the Holy Trinity parish for nearly a decade, but Margaret’s family history dates back to the early 1970s, when her parents were members and she was in the church youth group.
They said some of the other unhappy members – including David Claridge, who also wrote to the Flagstaff – had been at the church their whole lives and their families before them.
Initially, Murphy “was nice to us – quite respectful”, David said.

But the tone of the church changed. Margaret felt it most acutely in the way other people were treated.
People who had been “pillars of the church” were sidelined. Women who were in leadership roles in their careers were not being treated with the respect they were used to.
The couple also didn’t like the way the church had begun to move away from community involvement and outreach: for example, its foodbank was outsourced to a third party, and pastoral care for those in need had dropped away.
By 2024, when David tried to get clarity on the church position on key issues, he said he began to run into resistance.
In late 2024, others had also begun to feel uneasy. A loose group of disaffected members had met but it wasn’t an “out to get Chris” movement.
Clarity was sought. Formal questions were put at the church AGM in 2025.
By then, people had begun to leave. The wider community became aware of dissatisfaction, with many people contacting the Flagstaff over “trouble at Holy Trinity”.
David is happy to debate. He has a theology degree from the Melbourne College of Divinity. He said Murphy may have seen that as a threat.

In the 1990s and early 2000s he was a minister at the Equippers Church in Auckland’s CBD. He ran a bible college and an alternative education programme for long-term truants. In 2004, the Allises set up a home church at Narrow Neck which ran for 12 years.
It was perhaps inevitable that the Allises liberal views would run up against Murphy’s conservative interpretation of how a minister and church should operate.
The couple feel Holy Trinity has gone from a values-based, broad church under Braadvedt to being narrow, divisive and simplistic.
The approach was that “people are sinful and the only hope is through Jesus”, said David.
It was a “heaven or hell” mentality, when real life was much more complicated.
The couple have six children, one of whom came out as gay when he was 12.
In navigating that, David sought understanding. He said he “read 30 books on the topic”.
Holy Trinity had appealed to the Allises as an accepting place. They were friends of Braadvedt, as well.
“Gay kids would not be welcomed now,” Margaret said.

Although in theory the church remained open to all, Murphy had said the bible did not countenance gay sex, which in practice meant the LGBTQ community was alienated.
In her letter to the Flagstaff, Margaret said: “While LGBTQ+ people are told they are welcome, the church effectively condemns same-sex relationships by barring those within them from leadership or marriage.”
With suicide high among young gay males, she said a natural consequence of a church not being totally open to all was that vulnerable young men were put at more risk of self-harm.
David used an analogy of a farmer sitting down to a breakfast of museli, eggs or bacon with his hen and pig. What he ate was of no real consequence to him and of some consequence to the hen but could have massive consequences for the pig.

The couple feels Murphy’s views on women in leadership were also at odds with the New Zealand Anglican Church’s history of gender equality – allowing the ordination of women since 1977 and electing a first woman bishop in 1990.
Holy Trinity’s direction was not in keeping with the modern Anglican way, David said. “Anglicans are not like that.”
He adds: “Focus on beliefs divides, focus on values unites.”
The couple’s values-based Christian beliefs form part of their wider life and work. Running a business making barcodes, they each earn a salary, but profits go to a charitable trust which donates to various projects outlined on the Better World (betterworld.nz) website.
David is working on an app that can identify cafes and restaurants which offer ethical coffee, free-range eggs and the like.

Some of those who have left Holy Trinity have gone to Belmont Baptist Church. But many are travelling out of Devonport for their religious observance, some to the Anglican Church at Northcote run by a former Holy Trinity youth leader.
The Allises have settled on Ponsonby Baptist Church. It has an ongoing relationship with a housing trust that aims to serve at-risk and low-income tenants.
“It’s a good example of a church doing good things,” David said.
Margaret said departure from Holy Trinity had been hard on those with relatives memorialised in the church remembrance garden.
Some parishioners were committed to the new vicar and others were “hanging in there”, but this did not mitigate some of the damage being done, Margaret said.
Common decencies appeared to have been ignored. The practice of sending emails to parishioners letting them know when a member died appeared to have been “ditched”, so some didn’t know Margaret’s father John Watson had died until after his funeral. He had been part of the church for 50 years, while Margaret’s mother Carol Watson had spent years managing the parish opportunity shop.
Margaret said Murphy seemed to adopt an almost missionary-style attitude toward Devonport.
But it wasn’t a deprived or undeveloped area – it was a beautiful church with a renovated hall and functioning congregation, she said David said that once the direction of the church became clear he had “many sleepless nights” working out what to do.

He still felt that people belonging to or considering belonging to a church deserved a level of clarity and transparency about where it stood on issues.
“People have a right to know and choose.”
The couple felt the direction the church was moving in was “proving harmful”.
While the Allises said they still had friends within Holy Trinity, the hardliners had labelled the leavers who had been outspoken as “persecuting Chris”.
David said he initially took Murphy at face value. But looking back, he didn’t know why Murphy didn’t take a job in his home country of England.
Margaret added that Murphy’s ideal job would be as a lecturer in a conservative Bible college.
David said they were not opposed to new blood coming to the church.
“We like change, are happy with change, but [it needs to be] good change, healthy change.”
Margaret said she had come to appreciate that the church community was much bigger than its buildings.
She still met church members for coffee or dinner and will chat when she “bumps into them in the supermarket”.