Engage: Gifted - practicing everyday prophecy

THIS WEEK

1. Set a side a section of your journal/get a new one.

2. Ask God daily for words for Christians you know and write down everything you see with as much detail as you can.

3. See. Pray. Wait. 

4. At the end of the week allow whatever is still brewing and has life to be shared with the person it's for.

5. Practice giving the word in a strengthening, encouraging and comforting way with a few of these helpful phrases…

• “I believe God is saying...”
• “I get a sense that you...”
• “I see ... and I feel it could mean...” or “It appears to represent...”
• “I see a picture of... and I don’t have a direct revelation of what it means but I sense that...”
• “Test this with God in prayer, see if it holds any weight with you and the Spirit”
• “Does this word align with what God and others are saying in your life?”

Message series: "Gifted"

One of the core values for a Vineyard church is that "everyone gets to play" - meaning that everyone can use the gifts of the Holy Spirit to play their part in what God is doing in this world. We are natural, ordinary people of a supernatural, extraordinary God.

At Central Vineyard we feel called to go on a journey, for the next couple of months, to explore together what it is to be these kind of people. We're going to teach about it on Sunday at our gatherings, we're going to practice it and we're going to have our Engage blogs adding a little extra to your week.

It's going to be a lot of fun!

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.