Vicar's Letter - 3 Apr 2022

Kia ora All Saints whānau,

Repentance and Fruitfulness are the key themes we take away from our reading and 'Sentinels' study for this week. That sounds daunting!
It is another week coming to a close and we are still hearing about cases popping up all around our community. It is another week and still we see harrowing images from wars around the world. It is another week and we see another scandal from a leader in the church and an actor at the OSCARS.

Repentance and frutifulness sounds daunting but is so needed. We need God, we need to hear his voice, we need his peace and love to reign, we need to listen to God in how we respond and we need God to do the work at reconciliation. Our response as Gendy points out in the study is to '"change our mind to the mind of God" and then live that out so that God can produce fruit.

This week we are in house churches again and then next week we return to gathering together for Palm Sunday.  In these house church we hope that this is exactly what is happening. We are aligning our minds to Christ and we are helping each other to live out our faith in God. That's why we have set aside the 5th Sunday (May  29th) as a day where we want to take our house churches outside the church walls. To make relationships with people and to grow God's kingdom. This is hopefully another step in encouraging us to be aligned to God's voice and will. 

With Easter coming up this is another call to repentance and fruitfulness. As we all journey through this story (some of us will be doing that at the Anglican Youth Movement Easter Gathering) may we find Christ again; may we stop enough to hear and see the Easter story and remind ourselves of the saving power of God, through Jesus and by his Spirit. Be sure to join us on Good Friday as we hold stations of the Cross with the Catholics and at our 9am and 10.30am Services on Easter Sunday.

We continue to uphold you all in prayer and we are looking forward to being in the room all together once again next week. 

Kia pai ō rā whakatā
Andrew Spence on behalf of the Co-Vicars