Vicars Letter 21st November 2025

Rev Guy Benton

Kia ora, All Saints

My heart has been sitting a little wearier than normal this week. There is a chance its that there are a bunch of things swirling in my wider family circles that feel hard, Friends who are having a hard time, The world is in a tough position, I'm in a season of personal growth which is always powerful and beautiful but brutal at the same time, I hazard a guess too that there is something in our annual calendar as we near the end of the year towards the Christmas season and the summer season that we start to feel weary. But amid the weary, we sense hope, even if it's just in the Sun, or a break from work, or a holiday to a faraway place, we are starting to wake up with hope. 

I love that at the same time as I experience these feelings, we also head into Advent together as we walk towards the greatest hope there is in Jesus! 

Advent is that beautiful season of walking alongside one another as we prepare to celebrate the great hope of God coming to us in the flesh as Jesus. 

I was reading a book the other day titled The Intimacy Deficit by Ed Shaw. There is this beautiful moment where we is unpacking intimacy with God and the real idea that we have now more than ever unfiltered access to Christ through his Spirit, which takes on a whole different level when coupled against that statement we have all made at some stage of, if only I was around when Jesus was around what would it have been like to have been with him. Don't get me wrong, it would have been AMAZING!!! But think for a second. In those spaces of our lives when it's really hard! The MRI chamber, your bed late at night, at your family's house in the midst of conflict or relational reconciliation, the living, breathing, incarnate Jesus wouldn't be able to be there all the time. Yet now he is! Always, living and working through the Spirit. Now it's not lost on me that a physical person is powerful, but that's what we are all for, for one another! to hold, to support, to challenge, to encourage, cry with and laugh with. The Spirit is at work more now than ever in our lives. Are we up for it?! John 14:16

As we walk towards Christmas together through Advent, let us walk with one another as we gather weekly to keep our eyes fixed on the incarnate Jesus, but let us not forget that the beauty of the Gospel is that Christ is still alive amongst us today. Hallelujah. 

A reminder that we now have our Christmas gatherings up on our website for you to check out and invite your friends and family to. If you are able to help out at all with Christmas Gatherings, please reach out to Cassandra. 

From Nov 23rd to Dec 21st, we have central gatherings every week until Christmas, at 9 am and 10:30 am. Each year, we gather back together for the season of Advent and Christmas. 

Dec 7th, we have a number of young people being baptised at our 10:30 Central Gathering. We would love as many of you as possible to come. 

Much love,