Half Time: 6 months into our first year as a church

It's been 6 months since we became a church, and to celebrate we took this Sunday to reflect on where we've been and where we're heading. You can listen to the talk here, but I wanted to jot down a bit of a list too for those who like to read and consider. #introvertsunite

In Matthew 7, to land the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said to "build your house on the rock." As a church that is unashamedly pursuing Jesus, this is exactly what we have been trying to do. We don't want Central Vineyard to be a flash-in-the-pan – we want it to have longevity and health, and so we have spent the first part of this year digging particular foundations that this "Rock" would have us build on:

• We wanted to get back to the roots of what church is: a gathering of witnesses (rather than a service to attend).
• We wanted to be a church where everyone knows their own story is important and powerful. We continue to hear great stories every week as we have learned to keep asking people the question, "What's your story?"
• We wanted to be a church that would bless our city, so we have created our missional expressions together in collaboration. We have launched our first mission expression, Forward.

How is it all going? Well, pretty good actually. Our church has grown substantially over these first 6 months while still holding tightly to these foundational values we have wanted to live out. It's grown so much that we have moments of feeling like the structure we have in place around it all is a bit strained, so we have some exciting developments:

• We have been able to give Amber Osborn (operations administrator) and Emma Breetvelt (children and family ministry co-ordinator) small part-time salaries for their work in our church team.
• We have decided that having to finish our Sunday gatherings so promptly at 11:30am (due to having to pack up and hand over to the next hall booking) is now robbing us of moments with God and with each other, so we are prayerfully looking for a new building premises.
• We are seeing the fulfilment of several prophetic words that have been given to us over the last two years.

Where to next? Well we want another foundation at Central Vineyard to be that everyone knows they are gifted by the Holy Spirit to contribute, bless and play their part in what God is doing. So we have a new journey ahead which is called "Gifted", a series that will explore what it is to be natural, ordinary people of a supernatural, extraordinary God.

Just a note on this; on Sunday we opened up some space for people to listen to God at the end of our gathering and several words were given and emailed in afterwards – it seems our series has already begun!

Watching the church that was in our hearts for the last couple of years form into the Central Vineyard we have today is one of the most exciting things I have ever had the privilege of seeing in my life. Gab and I love where this is all going and we will continue to prayerfully go wherever God's presence is leading us as a family, and keep our hand to digging good foundations for the future. 

Aroha nui,

Dan

Engage: A radical manifesto - pt 4

This week you're going to look at Matthew 6:1 - 7:12 where Jesus redefines what it is to be practicing our spirituality.

Jesus is redefining our piety (AKA our spiritual lives put into practice or "our outside life match our inside life") and urges us to do this with simplicity, in secrecy for the audience of just God, and to be secure and grounded in God.

ENGAGE

Engage in the discipline of fasting. Jesus teaches on the discipline of fasting as one of the outworkings of our spiritual life. "Fasting" is not black-mailing God on a hunger-strike - it's intentionally choosing to strip away our allegiances to other gods in our life by saying "No!" to them for a period of time so we learn not to let them rule us.

Here's some ways you could fast this week:

• choose not to eat for a day, replacing each meal time with times of prayer
• delete your Facebook, Instagram and Twitter apps off your phone for the week and load the "Pray-As-You-Go" app to use in their place
• choose to say "no" to a social gathering this week (e.g. Friday night drinks or a certain coffee date of the week) and stay in quietly at home to engage in solitude for the evening

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Engage: A radical manifesto - pt 3

This week you're going to look at the last two-thirds of Matthew chapter 5 where Jesus is radically redefining what it is to be human.

"Sin" is often viewed as lines to cross or not-cross. Jesus takes these lines and points out that ultimately our intentions, motivations and character matters just as much as whether we cross/don't cross them. In doing this, Jesus redefines sin as anything that de-humanises ourselves or others. It's quite confronting, but it is all part of this radical picture He is painting: one of what being a fully-alive human, as God has made us to be, is all about.

ENGAGE

Engage in the discipline of confession. This week as you make space to engage with the Scripture reading, be prepared to notice the areas of your own life where you are coming up short in meeting the standard Jesus is laying out here.  When you notice these shortcomings, confess them in any of these three ways:

1. to God in prayer (use the prayer below if you need some help)
2. to a friend you trust who you can pray with
3. to a person you can get help from if it is something that is quite damaging to you
    

PRAYER OF CONFESSION

Dear Heavenly Father, I lower my head before you and confess that I have too often forgotten that I am yours. Sometimes I carry on my life as if there was no God and I fall short of being a credible witness to You. For these things I ask your forgiveness and I also ask for your strength. Give me a clear mind and open heart so I may witness to You in our world. Remind me to be who You would have me to be regardless of what I am doing or who I am with. Hold me to You and build my relationship with You and with those You have given me on this earth. 

In the name of Jesus, amen.

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Engage: A radical manifesto - pt 2

This week you're going to look at the opening several verses of The Sermon on the Mount known as "The Beatitudes". This is Jesus' radical proclamation of hope, describing a portrait of what God is doing now in this broken world.

ENGAGE

Each of the Beatitudes help us to see a portrait of hope. Currently in the world there is plenty of suffering and hopelessness, but these Beatitudes tell us how God is acting in fixing those. Slowly read through Matthew 5:1-11 and consider each Beatitudes carefully.  Which of these are you drawn to at the moment?

Engage in the discipline of prayer and pray for those who need this blessing. This might be for others in the world, or it may be closer to home such as your friends or family – or it may even be for yourself. Pray for "God's Kingdom to come" and for these things we see in the Beatitudes (such as comfort, mercy, peace etc) to happen.

Engage in the discipline of action by meeting the needs of those areas you have identified. Did you notice a relationship that needs peacemaking? Or maybe a person who needs comfort? You might be the answer to that prayer you just prayed...

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Engage: A radical manifesto - pt 1

To start our journey through the Sermon on the Mount, you need to grasp the whole thing in one go. It will take you about 20 minutes to either read or listen to Matthew 5, 6 and 7.

So, here's what we suggest trying at least three times this week:

WITHDRAW

Make space by choosing a discipline of withdrawing: Commit to making a time of solitude or silence in your busy day. The goal is to make some space where you can be fully present to God and the text you are about to engage with, so do whatever you need to do to achieve that; maybe that means getting up a little earlier, or during your day finding a comfy chair or taking a walk to a cafe or park, or in the evening you could flick off the TV/close your laptop for a bit.

ENGAGE

Fill the space by choosing a discipline of engaging: When you've made that space for yourself, grab your own Bible or use the links below to read/listen to the whole of the Sermon on the Mount. The goal is to just take in the whole thing.

Message series: "A radical manifesto"

Today we find ourselves in a culture that screams various messages at us all day, everyday. 

"Be this _____!"
"Ah, it's sweet - do that ______!" 
"You're not this _______!"
"________ is the most important thing you can seek."
"Who do you think you are to believe that ________?"

What would it look like to let the radical core-teachings of Jesus, told as a sermon on the side of a mountain, inform the way we would look at this world? What kind of people would we be in the midst of this world as a result?

Welcome to our message series for July; a journey of looking at the sermon that redefined everything – and continues to do so today.

Beyond Lights and Lampstands

We've been saying this a fair bit lately, but because we are a church plant we can't say it enough: nearly everything we're doing is being created as we go.

It's with a huge sense of pride that I get to write this blog today to fill you all in on some of the latest things we have created together, as a result of our journey through Lights and Lampstands.

Firstly, together we have found what we are compassionate about
As a collective we got together, prayed and asked the question: "What are we compassionate about in our city?" As a result of the conversation and brainstorming that evening, we ended up with three areas:

1. Local Poverty - this includes the homeless, the hungry, the rough sleepers and the isolated individuals of all ages in our city.
2. Mental Health - the rising health issue in our culture and generation.
3. Political Disengagement - this isn't about supporting a particular party, but the fact that people are apathetic in engaging with their local government, politicians and voting.

Secondly, we found some missional expressions
"Faith without deeds is dead" taunts James in his New Testament letter, and so it is with being a lampstand in this city. Just being compassionate is not enough, it must move us to action. And so here are the things we are going to start doing as a result of those three areas of compassion:

1. A collective "pass it on" rhythm - we want to support the various agencies and groups that are already doing a great job working with local poverty in our city, so at Central Vineyard we are going to start a monthly collection where we collect the suitable items for a certain group and then "pass it on" to them.
2. A conversation at ANI - we want to discuss with the school about how they are seeing to the mental wellbeing of the students and ask what we could do to serve them to improve mental health in the school.
3. Begin meeting local government - we want to start to introduce ourselves and meet with the local government around us and ask how we can serve the areas of brokenness they see in the city that they are trying to address.

There are more ideas than that too, but this is where we are starting for now...

Thirdly, now it needs you
Being a part of Central Vineyard means you play your part in serving our city.  These expressions will just be invisible ideas unless people embody them and get them activated. So here's what we would love you to do:

1. Pray and read through that list again.
2. Ask Jesus to show you which you have compassion towards.
3. Get amongst it as these expressions start to get started.

We're so excited to be able to articulate the expressions we are starting to live towards, and we want to express a big "thank you" to those who came to the Light and Lampstands evenings to help us discover all of this – we could't have done it without you!

Message series: "Worth-ship"

We are starting a new series this month called "Worth-ship", exploring what worship is and how we do it together.

There's a lot of excitement amongst our church for this one and we're looking forward to where this journey will take us. So don't miss out on participating in this with us, come along on Sundays to our gathering and come ready!

Oh! Also, to help us get more comfortable with the songs we sing together at church we've made a Spotify playlist for you to use during your week to encounter God. 

Important news: New giving details for Central Vineyard as of March 31st

If you're part of our family, here's some important family news.

Since we began our journey of planting this church we have been looked after with all the big legal things by our movement, the Vineyard Churches of Aotearoa NZ. We were given a bank account to use, people have helped us set up all the administrative things we have needed and we have had support with anything big that came along. 

At the end of this month we will be transferring from this umbrella support and begin using our own administrative and financial systems that we have now got ready for ourselves. 

This means as of March 31st we will be changing bank accounts from the Vineyard NZ bank account to our own one that we have had setup. So, if you have been giving with an automatic payment to Central Vineyard, here are the new account details for you to change in your internet banking as of April 1st:

Name: Central Vineyard Church Charitable Trust
Bank Account: 03-1322-0203315-000

If you don't give financially to Central Vineyard yet and would like to, please head to this page on our website to see the details on giving and if you're curious you could listen to this talk by Dan earlier this year on what we believe about our resources and generosity.

If you have any administrative questions, you can ask Amber Osborn by emailing her amber@centralvineyard.org

Thank you for your support of this church, the money you generously give enables Central Vineyard to thrive and play our part in all that God is doing in our community and the world, today.

A theology of light and lampstands

Wait, so what's this for?

'Light' envelopes the narrative of the Scriptures. First, light springs forth as the first created thing in Genesis 1:3 and then, like a flashing beacon helping us keep our bearings, it flashes some two hundred more times, before the final beacon flashes in Revelation 22 where God himself is now the light and He has obliterated all darkness.

This narrative of the theme of 'light' forms a grounding theology for how we are to understand what it is to be a missional person; what it is to be a person who lives outward.

Let's start at the very beginning, shall we?

The creation story that opens up the Bible is a story of God bringing order and purpose to what was previously just black chaos. He takes darkness, and creates it's antitheses: light. God goes on to create a perfect creation, a creation that is found perfect not because of an absence of darkness, but because of the complete presence of God's shalom. In this creation He places a tree called the "The tree of life", but we'll come back to that in a little while...

Now, read just a little further and we see it doesn't stay this way. Mankind disobeys God and brings upon itself the result of the disruption of God's shalom, the chaos and curse of death and darkness again making itself felt. But immediately God sets about making it right again.

Let's fast forward a little bit, to where God has chosen a group of people to be His "light" to the world, a motley-bunch called the Israelites who are stumbling and grumbling their way through the desert at the time. God speaks to them one day and tells them He is no longer going to just be leading them from infront, but now dwelling with them, and so they are to build him a house called The Tabernacle. This God-house is to have some furniture in it and like a lot of things we encounter in the Bible, these things have more than one function. A lot of these pieces of furniture are to not just do what they do, but to also be symbols of things that are important.

So, in Exodus 25:31-40, God tells the Israelites the kind of lampstand that is to be in this God-house; and it's very detailed. To help you out, here is what it looked like:

This lampstand tells three key stories to the people of God, reminding them of three important truths:

1. A lampstand holds light: God is the original source of light and it is what defeats darkness
2. It's shaped the way it is to represent the 'Tree of Life' that was placed in the Garden of Eden: life in it's fullest comes from God
3. The light was to reflect out: this presence and life was to shine, not just stay here and be contained

And so off it all went. The Tabernacle was built and found in amongst the various activity of the God-house was this lampstand – the symbol of God's presence, life and mission – for many years until an interesting thing happens in the book of Psalms.

In Psalm 132:17 it says that "my annointed one will be a light for my people." Interesting. Now it's not about a piece of furniture being the place of light, but a shift is taking place to a person. But it doesn't stop there...

In Isaiah 60 we find another bright flash of the light imagery being used:

““Arise, Jerusalem! Let your light shine for all to see.
For the glory of the Lord rises to shine on you.
Darkness as black as night covers all the nations of the earth,
but the glory of the Lord rises and appears over you.
All nations will come to your light;
mighty kings will come to see your radiance.
“Look and see, for everyone is coming home!”

Something big is coming. It involves an anointed one like David was, and it will change everything. We fast forward a little further and we discover the culmination of all of these things. It happens in the form of Jesus, the One who comes as the new temple, the new God-house, the new lampstand, the new tree of life and then some. In John 8, Jesus declares one of His seven "I am..." statements about himself. The one He uses here?

“I am the light of the world.”

With these seven words, Jesus declares that He is the embodiment of all that the weirdly-over-detailed-lampstand from earlier was representing: He is now the place of God's presence, God's life and God's mission. Job done, the end.

Oh wait, no it isn't. 

Jesus turns to His followers and He tells them that they too are the light of the world. Now, I don't know about you, but suddenly that one is a biggie. We like Jesus being the light of the world – the place of God's presence, life and mission – but us? Really?

It goes on a little further.

In the last book of the Bible, John is seeing a wild vision of what is going on in God's future-age, and for the first three chapters Jesus sends seven letters to seven churches. Before He starts writing them in chapters 2 and 3, in Revelation 1:20, He refers to them as something:

“This is the meaning of the mystery of the seven stars you saw in my right hand and the seven gold lampstands: The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.”

Lampstands. Jesus calls these new communities in these cities lampstands; Churches are the place of God's presence, the place of God's life and the place of God's mission.

And this is where we sit today.

We have a world that is full of thousands of communities that are doing these three things, churches that are lampstands in their cities, towns and villages. Light, which is the antithesis of darkness, shines from the faithful people of these communities, until the day when Jesus completes His work of making all things new – so new that there is no need for even the sun. 

We are the lampstands in our time and place of history – the people of God's presence, the people of His life and the people of His mission – and you're invited to play your part.

To finish, a poem:

“She rises
stretching across the vast expanse of land and sea, confidently assured of her duty:
emitting warmth, colour and light—the essentials to human life
with no definite boundary.

She turns
revealing all: ashamed not of her grandeur or form;
afraid not of facing toward what we deem
dim and dark.

She turns
revealing all: by her boundless beams of light we see more
of the world—its beauty and flaws, and beauty in the flaws
and of ourselves too.

The cold of yesterday burns away, and we bask.

Few of us.

Backs turned and heads bowed
under a harsh false light that contrasts What We Want and What We Have Now
we worship our plans towards no-things we avow ‘sacred’
and our vision of her gets clouded.

She falls
despising her rays and hiding them away
draining the world of its colour until—
darkness.

Oh! What a loss to the world when she does not shine.

But then! — She rises again, stretching across the vast expanse of land and sea:
not craving validation like human forms of divine creativity;
not shining only when she sees
our eyes rest upon her.

And she turns again
revealing her mass and grandeur, as if our attention did not matter to her;
as if the pleasure of one — The Creator — who has no need for suns
was enough.”

— poem by Hayley Morrison