Vicars Letter 31st January 2025

Rev. Guy Benton

Kia ora All Saints 

Welcome to our first newsletter of the new year. What a joy to email you all this week. It surprised me over the summer, but I missed our weekly connection. 

I have spent the summer with some of our family from America here; what a time to connect with distant family and explore our beautiful patch of God's kingdom, Summer and I hope that you were able to find some goodness amongst the weather, life trials, and strains and our own ability to calm down. 

During the summer, I found myself being drawn back to the prophetic image of the dry bones in the book of Ezekiah 37; I am drawn to the image and power of calling on the spirit of God that breathes life into the corpses. I sense that for us here at All Saints, this is a year of calling on the spirit of God to breathe life into the corpses, it's one thing to watch dry bones turn to corpses, but it's another thing to see them come to life. 

As we continue to lean into our core values of Jesus-centered, Missional Living, and Authentic Community, this year, we focus on being Jesus-centered, with a real focus on prayer as we walk this out together. My heart pounds at the hope and dream of learning to pray together, struggling to pray together, seeing God move through prayer together, hearing the stories of praying for others, and being surprised by what God is doing through our prayers. 

Let us also continue to live missionary and strive to be an authentic, Christ-centered community day after day together. 

I will share more about where we hope to head on our Launch on Sunday, Feb 16th, 2025. 

By way of a few updates for you as we begin the year, We still have two more summer series services together, the 2nd and 9th of Feb; partly, this has to do with when Waitangi Day falls and our hope to gather everyone back together post the holidays. 

Our house church leaders are excited to be gathering our deeper discipleship groups together this year as we look to start our rhythm of gathering together for Central Gatherings and pushing out into our house churches for deeper discipleship. Alongside that, we have a number of missional communities that are catching wind and strengthening and continuing to pray for their leaders, teams, and people they are connecting with. 

We have some exciting news: our dear friend Martha Meister, whom some of you will remember from years gone by when her family lived here, is going to be starting with us in the office for 6 months; she will pick up an adjusted admin role as well as spearheading or children's coordinator role which we have been fortunate to have regular givers give towards, it's not too late to chip in regularly for the Childrens Coordinator role wages if you are keen. We will have an introduction email come out in the not-too-distant future. 

Youth groups are starting soon. Again, we are working closely with the team, and we are excited to announce the team shortly. 

Don't forget that Lent is coming up fast. We plan on creating space for people who aren't already in discipleship groups to gather together and work through the Lenten study together. Watch this space for an opportunity to join. 

I look forward to gathering with you and sharing the word of God this Sunday.