Vicars Letter 20th June 2025

Rev Guy Benton

Kia ora All Saints

We have just made our way through our season of Lent, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost, making our way to Trinity Sunday last week. I think this has been a powerful season to see how our God has continued to make way for us to have relationships and connections, make way for us to have liberation and freedom from the bondage of sin, and created a way for us to have life and continued restoration and healing in him through Jesus and the power of the Spirit. 

As New Zealand has its time of celebrating Matariki, let us spend time together this Friday - for our working bee - celebrating, caring for, and tending to the resources we have been blessed with here at All Saints; as we do that, let us be reminded that before anything else God is with us! We can often find ourselves weighed down with anxiety or stress about what we are going to do with our resources, or lack of them, or the burden of them all. In the book of Haggai, God speaks to his people who are anxious and worrying about providing. I love that he doesn't come to them through the prophet Haggai and say, "You haven't done enough; you aren't trusting me enough; be better." Instead, he comes and simply says, "I am with you"

Let us stand in that place, recognizing that God is with us, and live our lives from that place. 

We have James and Julia Coleman with us this Sunday for both Central Gatherings; they will be speaking to us about some practicalities of prayer, and they have asked if people could bring a notebook and pen with them this Sunday. Julia and James are some of our most trusted friends in the arena of practical prayer, and we are excited to have them with us. They will be preaching and teaching from the passages Habbakuk 2: 1-3 and John 10: 7-29 if you are keen to read ahead. 

It is also our friend Jonathan and Fiona Bayliss's last Sunday with us here at All Saints before they move on to their new adventure. They have been a part of this parish for many, many years, and so we will be sad to see them go, but let us gather this Sunday at the 10:30 Central Gathering to pray them out. 

Don't forget that tomorrow's Working Bee (Friday 20th) is from 2-5pm with Fish and Chips to follow. 

We look forward to seeing you all there. 

Love in Christ