Oamaru Baptist Church’s 143rd Founding Anniversary celebration on 16 August featured the dedication of a beautiful, unique pulpit that catches the eye.
It’s a pulpit crafted from warm, richly grained timber and decorated with detailed Haitian carvings—vines, flourishes, and meaningful historical and sacred symbols—adding artistry and reverence.
To a visitor, it is a fine piece of church furniture that might seem archaic to the modern person. To the OBC congregation, however, it is a vessel of a “second life.”
This lectern began its story not in a carpenter’s workshop for the church, but as a bed headboard in Cap-Haïtien. Its journey from a place of physical rest to a platform for spiritual proclamation testifies to a legacy that spans oceans and decades.
A Pulpit Born from a Headboard
The sacred and the mundane collided when a music stand—tasked with holding a laptop during services—threatened to give way, prompting the church leadership to seek something more substantial.
The solution arrived in the form of a gift left by Robyn Couper, a beloved missionary nurse. After her passing, the church offered her personal headboard, which initially sat quietly in the church’s storeroom.
Bevan’s vision and the skilled hands of craftsmen Peter and Owen revealed the pulpit hidden within the furniture. The transformation was like architectural surgery. The wood was not a flat, cooperative canvas; the Caribbean climate and time had warped it.
Over six days of meticulous labour, Owen split and reshaped the timber, carefully navigating the delicate carvings to preserve the integrity of the original Haitian artistry.
This physical transformation carries profound symbolic significance. A headboard frames the vulnerability of sleep and the restoration of rest.
By reimagining it as a pulpit, the church has transformed an object associated with the night’s silence into a space where the “Word” can be spoken aloud.
The 33-Year Legacy of Robyn Couper
The wood’s story is inseparable from Robyn Couper’s. A nurse trained in Oamaru, Robyn’s life came full circle within the walls of the Oamaru Baptist Church—the very place where she was once baptised.
From this local foundation, she was called to Cap-Haïtien, Haiti’s second-largest city, where she served for thirty-three years.
Robyn was more than a nurse; she was a bridge. When the catastrophic earthquake of 2010 struck, she became the essential conduit for relief through the organisation Hearts and Hands for Haiti. Her fluency in Creole and her decades of deep-rooted relationships allowed aid to flow where it was needed most.
During the pulpit’s dedication, Peter read her favourite passage from her personal Bible: Psalm 139—a text that served as the North Star for her vocation.
“I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful; I know that full well… Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”
The church describes this pulpit as a “gift from her legacy,” a permanent memorial to a woman who dedicated her life to help a nation thousands of miles from her Waitaki home.
The Language of Haitian Craftsmanship
The carvings on the pulpit are not merely aesthetic flourishes; they are a “visual prayer” the Haitian people she served gifted to Robyn. Gifting a hand-carved wooden bed headboard to a missionary in Haiti is a profound gesture of extreme honour, deep hospitality, and community gratitude.
Because fine woodcarving is a traditional and cherished art form in Haiti, giving a functional piece of furniture for rest symbolises wishing the missionary comfort, safety, and a permanent place in the community’s heart.
The Christian Cross: Positioned at the centre and carved from a lighter-coloured wood, the cross represents the resurrected Jesus Christ, the Great Commission, the missionary’s calling, and the shared bond of faith that transcends borders.
The Fleur-de-lis: In this sacred context, the three petals symbolise the Holy Trinity and spiritual purity—a tribute to Robyn’s work, offered to God.
Leaves and Plant Life: Textured carvings of foliage flank the fleur-de-lis. In Haitian art, these represent fertility and growth. They serve as a permanent blessing, expressing the hope that the missionary’s spiritual labour would “bear much fruit” in the community.
Diamond Lattice and Scrolls: The intricate geometric patterns at the top signify high-status craftsmanship. These details indicate that the anonymous Haitian carvers poured their “finest effort” into the piece as a mark of deep respect for the woman who lived among them and carried out the Oamaru Baptist’s and New Zealand churches’ mission work.
The Mystery and Struggle of the Material
The pulpit has a final layer of mystery: the wood itself. While Peter and others in the church thought it was teak, the timber remains an unidentified species native to Haiti.
Its beauty is matched only by its resistance; the “six days of hard work” required to reshape it were a battle against the aged material’s warping and stubbornness.
During the dedication, this struggle with the timber took on a spiritual metaphor. The pastor and congregation reflected on the concept of the “Master Carver.”
Just as Owen and Peter struggled with the warped, difficult wood to reveal its new purpose, the Almighty Higher Power often searches for, moulds, and transforms the human spirit.
The Master Carver does not discard the warped material; He reshapes it. The struggle to align the panels mirrors the process of being “fearfully and wonderfully made”—a realisation that our flaws and the “warps” of our history are not obstacles to grace, but the very things that the Carver uses to create a masterpiece of service.
A Heritage Handed Down
Robyn Couper’s headboard—originally a gift of honour and physical rest crafted by skilled Haitian carvers—spent decades in Cap-Haïtien witnessing a missionary’s quiet service.
Years later, when Owen and Peter’s patient hands laboured for six days over its warped, stubborn wood, they refashioned it into a sacred pulpit for the congregation where Robyn began her Christian formation. It leaves us with a hauntingly beautiful question: What heritage are you holding in your hands?
In 2 Corinthians 4:7, the Apostle Paul exhorts us, “we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from.” God’s grace rarely depends on flawless, pristine materials; instead, He redeems what is worn, imperfect, or forgotten.
Just as time that once provided physical rest was transformed into a stand for spiritual proclamation, the fragile or unexpected pieces of our past can be remade for divine purposes.
Yes, like a piece of a warped old headboard, a sacred second life may be waiting to be carved from the history you have inherited, if only you ask God for the vision to see it and, in humility, submit to His handiwork.
When we yield our stories to God, the legacy handed down to us does not remain static; it becomes a living platform from which His faithfulness continues to speak.
It is our hope and prayer that each time we see the new church pulpit, we are reminded of God’s mission, His renewing spirit, and the repurposing of our lives for His glory and honour.
To God be all the glory!
This article is based on Peter Rodwell’s introductory speech and Jonan Castillon’s reflections and prayer during the dedication of the newly made mission heritage pulpit on 16 August 2026. This post was composed with the help of Google Gemini, with the author completing final fact-checking and writing independently.
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