La Dordogne

Rape seed oil growing in La Dordogne

Our oldest daughter Sophie has been helping teach English in a French school in Bergerac for 8 months. It was wonderful to visit her on her home patch in France. She is joining us as tour guide and translator for a week in the south of France.

Awesome medieval village of Sarlat

Like in London, I have been struck by the history of the region.  We have seen structures that date back well into the middle ages, some of them back to Roman times.

The valley of La Vezere dates back even further with prehistoric archaeological sites yielding fossils of Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal Man.  I know those who believe in a young earth will have arguments to refute the ages of these sites, but they claim to be inhabited for 400,000 years.  We visited some of these sites, including a reconstruction of some of the most sophisticated cave paintings in the world copied onto a new cave constructed so the drawings can be viewed by the public while the original drawings are preserved in a controlled atmosphere. It was freaky to think of the ancient artists living in that same site thousands of years ago. They developed tools, art, and even a burial ritual for their dead.

The famous drawings of Lascaux attributed to Cro-Magnon man

We also visited some caves which had been inhabited more recently from the 8th to the end of the 16th Century. These caves had houses built on the cliff face making a troglodyte (cave dweller's) city.

La Roque Saint Christopher - Troglodyte Fortress and City

 They were a secure defence point for the area. We are aware of current tensions and threats, but this has reminded me that violence and war have been a part of human history for a long time. Here it was Viking raiding parties, later Normans and others.

It became the last stand for the Huguenotes who were French Protestants.  Persecuted and even massacred by the Catholics, they fled for their lives and this became a fortress for many hundreds.

Sue among some of their cranes

This and a village we visited on our way to the Loire Valley have made me grateful for the peace and relative tolerance we enjoy in New Zealand.

More on that village and the Loire Valley next time.

Blessings,

Martin.

Time and Space - Greenwich

Yesterday, while still on holiday in London, we took a city river cruise down the Thames to Greenwich.  This is 0 longitude, the prime meridian.  At the observatory we learned of the importance of finding an accurate way to keep time at sea, so that sailors could accurately determine their position and avoid shipwreck.

Greenwich Time

I was impressed by the passion of those early scientists and astronomers who dedicated their lives to the quest. One man, John Harrison took four attempts over decades before he developed a clock that was accurate at sea. In the 1700s sea traffic ruled. Safe navigation was vital if lives were to be saved and the world explored. Greenwich has a museum which celebrates the work that went into developing accurate timepieces.

This made me think about the things that we can achieve if we are passionate and committed to the long haul, even when things don't work out at first.  Harrison learnt from his failures and tried again.  Putting a man on the moon took similar commitment and focus.

This has encouraged me in one of my quests for 2016 which is to explore the role of passion in aiding our motivation and perseverance/endurance.  From my Christian perspective the saving of lives is ultimately achieved as people know where they are in Christ for eternity, not just knowing where they are in time and in longitude. How passionate are we about this work and what resources are we prepared to commit?

The Prime Meridian - 0 deg longitude

This also had me reflecting on finding our place in the world. Knowing that I have Christ to trust in is my Harrison chronometer. That wherever I am I know that I am a child of God, secure for eternity.

Martin and Sue.

Dubai - Ancient and Modern

On our way to London Sue and I were grateful to have a couple of days stopover in Dubai. This modern, bustling city is a monument to middle east oil money, yet it also has a depth of history in trading of herbs and spices, gold and pearls. Above all it sits in the context of Islam, albeit a wealthy, liberal Islam which is trying to build bridges with the West.

Our camel ride

Women in Burkha, the call to prayer from many mosques and frequent reminders about dressing modestly made Islam obvious.
We enjoyed swimming in the Gulf  (interesting Muslim women had their own separate beach where they could swim without men). We also did a touristy desert safari in four wheel drive vehicles over massive sand dunes, watched an exhibition of falconry, had a short camel ride and experienced a bedouin type meal.
This time highlighted the harsh desert environment and the importance of water and cool shelter. Falcons can only live here in the cooler six months. Today water is provided by desalination plants.
I wonder if the sheer challenges to survive in this environment have led to a drive to have the biggest and the best of everything.  We saw the Burj Khalifa  the tallest building in the world.
Guess what the rectangular shaped building below is going to be?

It will be the world's largest photo frame. Samsung are installing lasers that will create an enormous digital photo. The oil wealth has transformed this region but it has also led to obscene excess. Ice cream at the restaurant at the top of the tower hotel below that costs $1,500 a serving. 22 carat gold dresses. Lamborghini and Ferrari at every turn.

Burj Al Arab - not the hotel we stayed in.

Gold necklaces in Old 

I guess the challenge we all face is "How will we use the wealth God has given us?"

The old city of Dubai was famous as the place pearl divers and pearl merchants sold their wares as well as spice traders and gold merchants. We saw this Iranian safron in the old quarter.

First Sunday in London

Our fascinating Tower of London tour

Sue and I have reached London on our way to Cambridge for my study leave.  On our first Sunday we experienced some contrasts of English worship.  In the morning we joined in with The Well Community Church, (see http://www.thewellcc.org.uk/) a small suburban charismatic evangelical church plant in Camberwell near Peckham (where we have a little airbnb room).  The Well is linked in with 3DM missional community.  They have found this very helpful in training their congregation with intentional discipleship and sharing their faith with their neighbours in appropriate ways.  At East Taieri, Seb is part of the first 3DM huddle in NZ exploring what we can learn from this kind of missional community approach for East Taieri.  They only meet all together for Sunday worship two or three times a month.  At other times, they meet in their missional communities which each have a particular focus: reaching out to their neighbours, working with a local foodbank, ... one sets up a tent for healing prayer and invites people to stop if they want prayer.

The service we attended at The Well was like a mix of ET and Elim, with a strong Bethel theology coming through which emphasised that God wants to bless us and give us good things, and the only thing holding us back is us not asking for them.


By contrast, in the afternoon, we attended evensong at St Paul's Cathedral. The sovereignty of God exuded from magnificence of the cathedral and the sung liturgy.
Interestingly Sue and I felt God was continuing to speak to us through this service about asking Him for what we need.  One of my reflections as we travel is that there is so much that we don't know or is out of our control, we simply have to trust God!

The cathedral had many many visitors and few regular worshippers.  While The Well had mostly regular worshippers.  Both had their liturgy that would need explaining for people who were unchurched.  The Well did this in a relaxed, talk you through style that encouraged you to be a part of what was happening, right from the tea and coffee before (and during) the service, and the friendly welcome from many people who talked to us, through to interaction with others during the service, through to a birthday celebration for Julie (who is married to the pastor of the Well) with cake and wine at the end of the service.  The Cathedral service helped new people through by a written order of service which told us when to stand and when to sit.  However, despite having so many visitors and a magnificent space, I didn't really feel personally welcomed and part of the worshipping community.  Some of the language, and most of the beautiful music was new or inaccessible for me or newcomers.

Altogether a great day in which we met with God in very different settings.

Blessings,
Martin.

What's Ahead for 2016? East Taieri Church

What is Ahead in 2016? East Taieri Church

I realise the following is mainly of interest for people involved in East Taieri Church.  These are some highlights from our strategic plan and operational goals.

Our theme for the year is “Engage”.  Our theme series will be in Feb/March “Engaging the Vision” – helping us all engage with God; engage with our Fresh Vision; engage with one another; and engage with people in the community.

Evangelism Push (especially early in the year Feb/March):

·         We will run three business breakfasts at Aurora Café.

·         We will gather those gifted and passionate about evangelism and develop a way to train 10 people in evangelism using “What’s the Story?”

·         We will set up Journey to Easter - Stations of the Cross display in the Hub leading up to Easter and invite the community to experience it.

·         We will be a part of the Easter distribution of Hope booklets to letterboxes.

·         We will challenge everyone and all ministries to be feeding people into Alpha.  Imagine if everyone invited one person to Alpha in 2016.

·         We will engage with Sugar and Spice families once a term, including running a parenting event.

·         Heather Moore, our new children and families fresh expressions worker, begins 1^st Feb.  Her half-time role is not responsible for Sunday children’s ministries, but is outward looking.  It is focused on developing relationships with children and families who don’t come to church.

Worship:

·         We want to review the 10am service and see growth in this service.

·         We will review the connecting times such as morning tea, with a view to building closer community and improved incorporation of new people.

·         We will continue to explore fresh expressions of church.

Discipleship and Spiritual Growth:

·         We will start 3 new life groups and have 3 networking nights on “Making Good Disciples”

·         We will experiment with a café discussion setting for Christians who aren’t engaging with church and people wanting to explore deeper issues of faith.

·         Through an EPIC culture we will be intentional about mentoring and discipling young people.

·         We will use the results of the Reveal Spiritual Growth Research in our ministries. We want to give people a place to belong and a pathway that guides them on their journey toward intimacy with Christ.  We will catalyse their spiritual growth by helping them understand the Bible in greater depth, by challenging them to apply the Scriptures with specific next steps, and by modelling how we are taking those steps ourselves.

·         Seb, Leeanne and Jo will help us identify our spiritual gifts and where God is calling us to serve through our ET developed “Wired2Serve” course.

·         Our new Youth Intern Nathaniel Stock will join the Youth East Taieri team.

Community Ministries:

·         From April 2016 around 45 Syrian refugees will arrive in Dunedin with other ethnicities to follow.  We will work alongside the Red Cross and others to assist their settlement.

·         We are going to focus on parenting and family support and development in 2016.  This year we will run the parenting course (and other parenting events) instead of the marriage course.

·         We will explore the need for and feasibility of a community hub.

·         Our funding manager will implement a consistent funding sourcing and reporting programme.

·         We will enhance well-being and connectedness of seniors through a mid-winter lunch.

·         FUEL will have one large community event for Fairfield.

Communications:

·         We will build on our new website, develop a communication plan and prioritise what material is printed.

Mission Facilities:

·         We will carry out a feasibility study for a café and continue to use “third spaces” to engage people on kingdom of God matters.

·         We will decide on our commitment to the East Taieri site and prioritise our building needs.

Wider Ministry:

·         I will be on study leave at Cambridge University for term two studying the role of the Bible in Spiritual Growth, with a particular emphasis on fresh expressions settings.

·         Seb will MC the South Island Ministry Conference with our speaker Rod Thompson on “Engaging Contemporary Culture in Biblically Faithful Ways.”

·         A Youth East Taieri mission team will go to Vanuatu in July.

Above all, as we engage our vision statement we will focus on two key things:

   1.      Responding to God’s grace and

   2.      passionately living out our faith. 

Please pray for God’s refreshing grace, and God’s empowering passion – so we will see a thriving church and thriving communities.

Highlights from 2015

One of the helpful disciplines I have adopted is to give thanks to God for some highlights from the ministry year at East Taieri Church.  I find it encouraging to list the highlights and at the risk of being unintelligible to those outside of the church I post them below:

Some Highlights from 2015 – East Taieri Church

·         Our theme for the year was Streams in the Desert.  I was delighted that over 300 study guides were printed and five new small groups formed for this series.  

·         We said farewell to our Parish Manager Ed Ablett-Hampson when he moved to Wellington.  Leeanne McKinlay has stepped up to the full-time Parish Manager role and Jo Thorn to the 15 hrs/wk Admin Officer role, while Louise Jamieson in her 15 hrs/wk Finance officer role faithfully keeps our finances secure while helping answer our many financial questions.  They are all thriving in those roles.

·         We transitioned to a church council leadership structure with a new property and finance committee, freeing the R4M members for practical tasks.  Many projects have been completed, including replacing the church data projectors; installing the heat pump underfloor hot water system (making our facilities cozy in winter); a new sound desk for the church; a short throw projector for Oak, renting the Fairfield Manse and exploring subdividing this from the church title…

·         We have a new sound desk at East Taieri, produced an operating manual and held two training sessions.

·         120 people attended our South Island Ministry Conference with Digby and Jane Wilkinson.  We received some of the most positive feedback ever.

·         The flooding of the Hub was a major challenge.  A lot of hard work (and insurance money) has seen this restored to an excellent state.

·         New Vision 2015 was our vision clarifying process for both church and community.  Many people were involved with this, participating in prayer forums, commenting on wording and experiencing the vision through “chilli challenges”.

·         We launched our new vision wording and our new website at the well-attended Annual Meeting in October. 

We will be a thriving church, responding to God’s grace and passionately living out our faith, wherever we live, work and play.

Together we will work alongside others to develop thriving communities, where people feel connected, known, loved and valued.

·         Alpha continued to gain momentum.  We held the Alpha dinner at Aurora café.  Five people making commitments to Christ.  One couple who attended our World Vision Event were invited to Alpha and came.

·         Rodger Larsen-Hewitt has grown into his role as a youth worker, among other things, launching Challenge (a new programme for Year 9 students).  We celebrated his Praxis graduation.  Carolyn Drinkwater has thrived in her Taieri chaplaincy and led one of the most moving Camp Sundays ever.  This December we said farewell to Outram Oasis. The Maungatua parish have provided volunteers and resouced Oasis for nearly 15 years, but some key volunteers were stepping back and felt it was time for it to go into recess for now.  We hope to continue with chaplaincy at Outram School. 

·         Jeremy Selfe led us through the first year of EPIC (our new Sunday evening youth discipleship focus).  This has been a great success.  We are serious developing intergenerational discipleship, and want to see more young people experiencing this, and this discipleship culture spreading throughout East Taieri Church.

·         A new youth ministry intern has been appointed for 2016 – Nathanael Stock.

·         John Cleland has stepped onto church council as an associate elder, exploring becoming an elder.

·         The role of the Pastoral Care Team is getting established and some pastoral care guidelines were published. Seb Murrihy, Pam Grant, Joy Davis, Pam Crosbie and Lorraine Christian form the leadership team and work with a large number of visitors and pastoral folks. 

·         We have had a large number of newcomers, keeping Pam Grant and her welcoming team busy.

·         Turning Point Christian Counselling celebrated their 10 year anniversary.

·         A questionnaire was developed for Sugar & Spice parents, giving us some insights into what would be helpful for them in 2016, working toward a fresh expression.

·         We ran another Business Breakfast at Aurora Café beginning a new series of outreach breakfasts and building our partnership with Aurora Café.

·         Joy Davis completed the work on the pilot combined referral process for health and social services in Mosgiel. 

·         Under Joy’s leadership as pastor of the 2pm congregation, several of their services are gifted to reaching a wider group of people.

·         The monthly Taieri church leaders’ prayer meeting is going well, finishing the year with a pot luck tea at Macaulay’s.  We re-established a combined Good Friday service.  TCMA has settled into its new role meeting twice a year.

·         We ran the Marriage Course at Mosgiel Presbyterian, and combined some 2pm services with them, building our cooperation with Mosgiel.

·         Heather Moore has been appointed as our new children and families worker for fresh expressions.  This half-time role is not responsible for Sunday children’s ministries, but is outward looking.  It is focused on developing relationships with children and families who don’t come to church.  Heather will start on 1^st Feb, 2016.

·         John Whelan has begun work as our Funding Manager.  This has great potential for growing our funding base as well as freeing up Jeremy, Joy, Leeanne and my time in raising funds to resource Youth East Taieri and Community East Taieri.

·         Global missions featured strongly with the GM team raising funds for printing children’s ministry literature for Malawi (Youngs); Erica, Carl, Heidi, Rene and Andre Aarsen and Rodger Larsen-Hewitt all going on mission trips; the Fleck’s profiling Radical Grace; and the formation of the Vanuatu Youth Mission team for 2016.

·         The Mission Facilities Group has renewed its work under Elaine Scurr’s leadership and is serious about making progress with new facilities that will serve our mission.

·         Seb, Leeanne and Jo launched the new “Wired2Serve” course giving us an ET way of identifying people’s gifts and helping them find the place of service God has for them.

·         The senior pastor’s prayer breakfast continues strongly with 12-14 people attending.

·         We have run creative Power Station prayer forums, though attendance has still been fairly low.

·         Jeremy and Seb preached on Christmas Eve, leaving Martin to preach on Christmas Day and at the RSA Christmas lunch.  Interestingly more people than ever before put their names on the Christmas Eve clipboards, including 7 people to clean toilets!

·         We already have a strong team in place for Stations of the Cross for Easter 2016.

·         There are many more highlights including: Baptisms, lots of testimonies, the One Service and celebrating volunteers, SHFT lunch and AGM, and the many visits, services, conversations that make up the ministry moments of 2015.

The Significance of Community Engagement

My last post highlighed that East Taieri Church sponsors an occasional Business Breakfast at Aurora Café in downtown Mosgiel.  This week we had 32 people attend plus a few walk in off the street for coffee.  There was a real buzz in the air.  Breakfast was delicious.  A range of ages attended, including a young person from Youth East Taieri, who helped with sound, and two YET staff.  I think the prize for inviting the most people would go to Joy Davis our community facilitator.

At the breakfast, I gave some background as I welcomed people by saying: You might be wondering why East Taieri Church is sponsoring this business breakfast.  Our vision is to make a holistic contribution to our community.  In addition to helping people discover more about Jesus and grow spiritually, we are a church who works alongside others to develop thriving communities, which includes thriving businesses.  We hope this breakfast will make a positive contribution to your business or career.

Our speakers from Capable NZ gave interesting input for career and business development.

At the end I prayed thanking God for the food and the people there, and asking God’s blessing on them all.  The formal part finished by 7.50am.  Did anyone come to know Jesus as a result?  Not yet!  But there were good conversations and we were definitely working alongside others to develop thriving communities.  If you are local, join us Feb 25^th for our next Business Breakfast with Dunedin City Counsellor Mike Lord who will speak about issues facing our region and his personal reflections on being a Christian in the community today.

If some of those words I used above sound familiar to East Taieri people, they come from our recently renewed vision statement which says:

We will be a thriving church, responding to God’s grace and passionately living out our faith, wherever we live, work and play.

Together we will work alongside others to develop thriving communities where people feel connected known, loved and valued.

I think the move of churches to have serious engagement with their communities is significant.  As I think back over the way God has moved in New Zealand, I remember some insights from a conversation with Murray Robertson about three significant periods where the number of baptisms in NZ rose dramatically for a time.  One was the evangelistic crusades by Billy Graham and others in the late 50s and 60s.  Another was the charismatic renewal of the 70s and 80s.  A third was during the 90s with the the rise of church programmes such as Alpha, Network, 40 Days of Purpose, etc.  Interestingly churches who were blessed in one period weren’t necessarily open to what God was doing in the next.  For example, people who came to Christ through Billy Graham, weren’t necessarily open to the work of the Holy Spirit in renewal, saying “All we need to do is preach the gospel in big crusades”.  Those blessed in renewal were sometimes suspicious of programmes.  “All we need is for the Spirit of God to move…” And of course, those who benefitted from programmes can become locked into that mindset, looking for the next programme which will be the solution to our problems.

Could it be that the next move of the Spirit that will bring significant growth in the kingdom of God is through Christians working alongside others to develop thriving communities?  Engaging people in the community in biblically faithful ways.  God is already at work there.  We just need to join in.  These are the settings where our fresh expresssions of church are being born.

When God’s people were in exile in Babylon they often though about God taking them back to Jerusalem so life would be like the good old days.  It’s like us thinking, take us back to the days of the renewal, or the days of the big crusades.  Now, in my experience and understanding, preaching the gospel is still crucial.  The work of the Holy Spirit remains indispensable.  Programmes like Alpha continue to bear fruit.  But I believe Christians today need to confidently engage people in their workplaces, schools, neighbourhoods and community groups.  God’s word came to the exiles through the prophet Jeremiah (29:7) “Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile.  Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”  In lots of ways we are in an exile situation today, but the Lord is still with us and can make a difference in our cities and towns.

May God bless all the community engagement that occurs whether one to one spontaneous conversations or organised events and programmes.

Martin.