Kia ora All Saints Whanau. 

Guy here this week. 

This Sunday marks the start of a new church year. One that begins with a daunting reading from Luke but offers us a phenomenal perspective of Hope. Every Advent, we typically look at four themes: Hope, Joy, Love, and Peace; these are all major pieces in the story and the power of God coming in Jesus to earth. 

Summer and I have been talking, praying, and hoping that as a community this Advent, we would find ourselves in and embrace a season of hopeful expectation. Those few weeks at the start of a new church year, we ponder the coming of God in Jesus and the impact that has, and is having on, the world and all of God's people. 

I look forward to unpacking the first week of Advent with you all this week at our Central Gatherings. We will be exploring the Gospel reading from Luke 21:25-36. 

This is a reminder that we are in the room each week for 9am and 10:30am gatherings until Christmas. 

After Christmas, we will switch to combined Gatherings at 10am over the Summer for a shortened, more stripped-back service. 

Pop the Christmas service times in your calendar, and invite your family and friends. Pop your name into the Christmas serving roster if you are here. 

 Kia ora All Saints Whānau,
 
I have felt so proud of All Saints this past week. Led by Ian, Ginny, and Diana we put our hands up to respond to a need for love and hospitality for people coming into Wellington for the Hīkoi mō Te Tiriti.
 
We didn’t know how many people we might need to accommodate, who they would be, or even if they would come. Nonetheless, we gathered mattresses, prepared our space, discussed how to be loving hosts, and we waited. At one point it seemed some people might come in quite late Monday night and need a place to sleep, but we still didn’t know for sure. Diana gathered food just in case (for an unknown number of people) and we waited. We thought maybe somebody would need to open up the church in the middle of the night but we still weren’t sure. We said yes, and we waited. In the end nobody ended up sleeping at All Saints. Yet that lack of certainty and absence of a clear plan didn’t stop us from preparing and waiting.
 
This Sunday is what’s celebrated in the church calendar as the Feast of Christ the King. This is a day where we remember that Jesus lived, not by brute force like the rulers of his day, but by gentleness, peace, and in caring for those who needed him. The following Sunday marks the beginning of Advent, where we enter into a season of waiting for Jesus, that gentle ruler of the world who came to be with us as a tiny and vulnerable baby, born in the humblest of circumstances.
 
As God’s people, we are asked to live much of our lives in a season of waiting on the Lord. We wait in the small moments of our individual lives. We wait collectively as a people yearning for the return of our King and Saviour to bring about a new heaven and a new earth in the final moment of redemption for our broken world. As a church we are also called to wait. We must live together in a hopeful waiting for the moments the Holy Spirit stirs us to act, to love, to share the hope of the gospel with our hurt and broken world.
 
Family, we are not meant to boast in the things that we do for the Lord, but I want to draw our attention to what I witnessed happening among us this past week so that we can learn together how to exist in this space of waiting; ready to love, care and serve even when we don’t know when or how or even if we will be called upon. So well done whānau. There is a culture of readiness for the gospel that God is bringing about at All Saints. Let us keep praying that God would use us in any way necessary for the Glory of the Kingdom God.
 
Ngā mihi nui,
Summer

Kia ora All Saints whānau

Guy here this week. I have been asked a lot recently about how All Saints is going. It's a strange question to answer because, on the one hand, I know I have an innate response to overinflate the positive so that it comes across really well, but also, God is good, and All Saints is wonderful, but it means I have to also look at and ask the question of what's not going well. 

I have recently, for the first time in 4 years, written a Co-Vicars report, and naturally, I took the ones that Andy had written as a template. Going forward, this will likely change, but for this year, it felt right. One of the things I didn't expect to happen was, as I re-read last year's report, there were a number of things we committed to aiming at and attempting to achieve. Some we did and did well, others we didnt get close to and require a look at our commitment to, or lack of, following through on them. 

What I do know to be true is that our commitment to one another, to seeing God move, and our want for deeper levels of discipleship are key and core. 

I hope that you will take time to read our Co-vicar's report and celebrate with us the blessings that are flowing here and the struggles we have had. 

A reminder that this Sunday we have our November AGM 10am combined service with Lunch and AGM to follow. 

Cassandra is being ordained on Nov 23rd at St Pauls Cathedral 2pm. See the newsletter for more details. 

If you want to join the Hikoi this Tuesday and you want people to go with, please sing out. There is a group from All Saints heading along. 

Continue to pray for your friends who don't know Jesus, and let us be bold this Advent and Christmas season to share the Good News of Jesus.

Kia ora All Saints, 

​Mindfulness is a concept that is talked about quite a lot at the moment, and rightfully so. The practice of mindfulness has been linked to improved mental health outcomes for a large variety of issues. The best definition of mindfulness I have is the practice of noticing what is happening while it’s happening; the art of staying in the moment. Mindfulness is critical to our physical and mental wellbeing because without it we miss what God is doing in and around us. If our minds are constantly ruminating in the past or projecting to the future, we will struggle to feel a stir of the Holy Spirit or notice a need around us. We will also be unable to respond to the world from a place of peace like Jesus called us to. 

Despite me talking about mindfulness quite a lot in my practice and understanding all the reasons why it’s something we should strive for I struggle to stay mindful myself. Our world makes it difficult, really; there’s just so much going on all the time. But every once in a while God nudges me towards a noticing and reminds me that he’s there with me. That happened on my run the other day. I was struck by the beauty around me in ways that I often overlook. Mindfulness also guides us towards noticing the not so beautiful as well. It helps us to open our eyes to the suffering of the world and reminds us of our desperate need for Jesus. 

In our lives, and I imagine for many of you, things seem to be gearing up for a bit of crazy business. The end of the year and Christmas always seems to bring that. Yet if we’re not careful, that business will prevent us from sitting in the miracle of Jesus’ birth. We are only a few weeks away from the start of Advent, which as you all know is a season where we aim to sit in hope and expectation of Jesus’ coming. But I want to encourage you to not wait until the first Sunday of Advent to begin those practices of hope and expectation. Let’s start it now. Let’s take a breath before our schedules ramp up and centre ourselves on the bigger picture – what this is really all about. Let’s look around at the world and notice the beauty and allow that beauty to stir in us a renewed sense of Hope for the restoration that comes with Jesus. And let’s open our eyes to the suffering as well. Not in a way that crumbles us, but in a way that reminds us that we all have a deep and desperate need for a Saviour and the Church has a job to do in the world. 

Ngā Mihi Nui, 
Summer