Lane Matarae Tauroa

He was born in Russell, the son of Rev Matarae and Elizabeth Tauroa. He was educated at Wesley College for a year, then went to work in the railway workshop in Wellington. He graduated with a B.A. in Athropology from Auckland University in 1953 and completed a course of study at Trinity Methodist Theological College in 1954 in order to become a Methodist minister. In 1958 he was awarded an Ecumenical Fellowship by the Union Theological Seminary, New York. He went to New York for one year and studied Ecumenical Studies before going on to Colombia University where he studied sociology. On returning to New Zealand, Tauroa became a Pastor in the King Country Methodist Circuit; he lived in Te Kuiti. In 1963 he worked as a chaplain to students at Bandung in Indonesia under the sponsorship of the National Council of Churches and the Indonesian Council of Churches. He returned to New Zealand and was Methodist Minister in New Plymouth, was Prison Chaplain at Waikeira Youth Centre, and was Minister at Hawera Methodist Church and Mangere Methodist Church. He retired in 1985. He wrote reports for the Justice Department when he was a prison chaplain and wrote papers for the Whakawhanaungatanga o Nga Haahi National Council of Churches of which he was Secretary. He wrote articles for the Hawera Star. During his study leave in the United States he wrote about Māori in the All Blacks in the 1960s. His most recent writing venture is a history of the Northern Tribes - Whaingaroa which is unpublished.

Biographical sources

• Phone conversation with Lane Tauroa on 19 August 1998.
• Te Ao Hou 23 (1958): 57.
• Tauroa, Lane. “Some Impressions of Indonesia.” Te Ao Hou 50 (1965): 54.