Together will be a significant moment as we unite as six Locations to powerfully encounter the Living God! This is a Sunday not to be missed. Mark the date in your calendar. Registrations will open later this month. Check out this video from Mel for more information.
Today we are in our third week of learning skills that we need to study the Bible well. We learn about using Bible maps and looking at the background of the book of the Bible we are reading from.
We continue our series on the skills needed to study the Bible well. Today, we are looking at how the Old and New Testaments are distinct from one another and why each part is important in understanding God's big plan for His creation. We learn the difference between Old Testament commands and New Testament commands and how they relate to us as followers of Jesus today.
Today we dive into a nine week Bible series where we will be learning skills to help us study and read the Bible. We start with reading verses in context. We will learn that reading only one verse might trip us up and give a different meaning to the verse than God intended. We can combat this by reading the verses before and after to give more context to the verse.
With Waitangi Day this coming week, we are learning about God’s original design for unity, what we are seeing in our context and country now, and our hope for God’s perfect eternity.
Kia ora! Kids Zone is back this week and we are excited as we look forward to everything God has in store for our kids this year. This week we are recapping our Bible series from 2023, recapping some of the main time periods, along with themes, and key events through Bible history. Over term one, we will be digging deeper into our Bibles, and we don't want to leave anyone behind. It will be a fun lesson to kick the year off.
In addition to the pastors and other staff, The Street has an eldership board that carries out a combination of governance and shepherding for our church.
Elders are volunteers who provide spiritual oversight for the overall church, as well as being available at our local services to support the local leaders and be available to the congregation.
Now that we are meeting in even more multiple locations, we want to ensure we have a local eldership presence at each of our locations.
We want to propose Andrew Smaill and Peter Martin as potential elders. We are giving the church three weeks to pray and provide feedback before the elders decide whether they will join the eldership.
Andrew attends our Night Location, and Peter is part of our East Location.
If you have any feedback to provide, please contact elders.chair@thestreet.org.nz. Your email will go to the chair of our eldership board, Matt Conway.
The apostle Paul was a man who knew what it was like to be pushed and pulled by different circumstances and yet it was this movement that led hm to a profound conclusion:
“But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere” (2 Corinthians 2:14).
Paul knew that while he was being pushed around by circumstances, God was at work spreading the message of Jesus through his ministry. As we emerged from the most significant Covid restrictions in the early part of this year, there is a sense in which we have been pushed around. And yet our confidence is in how God has worked through the very circumstances we would never have chosen and has done so for his own purposes and glory.
It was therefore important for us to learn everything we could about the church from what we had been through. Times of trouble often lead people to turn in or shrink back and we were determined to do neither. We were concerned at how much Covid revealed a lack of depth in discipleship and in connection with one another. Rather than try to bring back everything we did pre-Covid, we felt that the future needed to be focused on the main things like a simple devotion to Jesus, a commitment to discipleship, a determination to share the Gospel more broadly, and a deepening of our service of the poor and marginalised in our city.
Covid also brought about an opportunity to progress our multi-site strategy more quickly than we could have previously imagined. The local gatherings that began as a response to vaccine passes gained traction and afforded deeper connection among people and greater accessibility to people in the local community. By the end of the year, there was a determination to keep these going alongside a great need to develop and establish strong and sustainable local leadership.
2022 was a year that we would not have designed for ourselves and it did not pass without significant challenges. Yet there is a sense that it was a year we needed because it enabled God to bring about a direction that we would not have thought possible. As he continues to build his church and use us to spread the aroma of him everywhere, may he grant us the faith to keep trusting him in the midst of uncertainty and change.
Much love,
Simon & Jenny Gill
Senior Pastors
We are delighted to inform you of some pastoral roles that we have available. Please find more details below on these roles and get in touch with the office if you would like more information or if you would like to have a conversation with someone about these roles.
Children's Pastor Role:
We are actively searching for a passionate and caring individual to join Emma Roche in supporting our Children's Ministry. This part-time position will play a significant role in shaping the spiritual growth of our children across all of our Locations. If you have a heart for children and a calling to guide them in their faith journey, we encourage you to prayerfully consider applying for this position. Applications for the Children's Pastor role will be open until the 14th of August.
Part-Time Location Pastors:
In line with our multi-location direction, we are appointing part-time Location Pastors for our East, Hutt, Porirua, and Mt Vic locations. If you sense that God is leading you to serve and lead the people of your Location, we would love to hear from you. The role involves being the primary leader of your Location and leading the location leadership team. This role will be under the guidance and support of our Senior Pastor, Simon Gill. These roles can be fulfilled on either a voluntary or paid basis. Applications for the part-time Location Pastors will remain open until the positions are filled.
We believe that each of these roles is an opportunity to serve and grow within our church family, and we are excited to see how God will work through these new additions to our team.
If you feel called to apply for any of these positions or desire more information about the roles, please contact the church office. We will be more than happy to provide you with the necessary details and, if needed, connect you with someone for a conversation about any of these opportunities.
