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All worship, no musicA night of worship—without any music! The focus will be on experiencing a full Communion worship service with no music or written liturgy. Can it be done? Come and find out!

8 July, 5.30pm

All worship all musicLove worshipping using music? Or conversely, do you find it difficult to connect through music and often wonder what all this singing songs to God is about? Then this is the night for you. Ben will lead us in song, but also teach some practical ways to help our hearts and mind to focus on God.

15 July, 5.30pm

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David Trott is our Director of Traditional MusicHe is a Fellow of the Curwen Memorial College in London and has been playing the organ since his legs were long enough to reach the pedals! His first office was sub organist at Prittlewell when he was just 12 and by 16 he was the Director of Music at Hadleigh.

David played the organ at a number of London Churches including All Saints Margaret Street and St Mary Aldermary before going to Johannesburn where he was at both Cathedrals.

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Worship.

Worship is a huge thing.

We look forward to worship every week.

When the music includes one of our favourites, we say, “The worship was great!”

When the music stinks, we yawn and wonder why the worship wasn’t very good.

We leave churches because of the “worship style”.

Worship is a huge thing.

Have you ever wondered if we’re more concerned with what worship does FOR us and less concerned with the Object of our worship?

It seems like it’s more about what we GET not what we GIVE

It would be like taking a gift to a friends’ birthday party, but keeping it for ourselves.

Worship is all about GIVING our lives (again) to God.

Worship is not about the feelings we receive when we sing.

Worship is not about convincing God to bless us.

Worship is not about whether or not the guitar is too loud.

Worship is not about what’s happening on the stage.

Worship is not about entertainment, lighting or sound.

Worship is not about us at all

It’s not about us.

It’s about him.

And we enter through the gateway of the cross.

At the cross we surrender… love… cry… dream… give up… shut up… kneel… confess…

We look at God and place Him above all else.

Because he is worth it!

Life gets crazy and painful.

No one can deny that.

Job stress… divorce… death… addictions… parenting… loneliness…

No one is asking you to pretend that those things aren’t affecting you.

Don’t pretend.

You’re just being invited to bring that stuff to the cross and to simply gaze at Jesus.

And as you look at him, allow your response to be

Worship.

www.worshiphousemedia.com

Gathered to worship

Pentecost Service, May 2012

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The journey God has been on for much longer than we have, spelled out in the big story of scripture. Does our journey as a church align with the big story of Scripture? God is always looking for a people who will honour him above all, who have been rescued by him and will change the world for him. Save us and save the world in the process. In this respect the Church has never existed for itself.

So what is next? So what are we going to focus on this year and for a while to come?

Whether you are a new Christian, growing or mature in your faith there are three consistent things that people want from their church:

• Help in developing their relationship with Jesus Christ. • Understanding the Bible in greater depth.• Consistent modelling and reinforcement of how to grow

spiritually.• Challenge to take the next step on their faith journey.These results were found when 250,000 people were surveyed across 1,000 diverse churches of different denominations, sizes and locations—these four desires were consistently the top four. Much of this places the emphasis on the discipleship—missional continuum.

So what does this mean for Karori Anglican Churches? To help us get to grips with this, here are three items: A whistle, vanilla ice-cream and a sharp chisel.

A WhistleThe Church as Coach. People want the church to be their coach so that they can grow in their faith and stretch themselves in how they serve God, to be equipped so we can do it ourselves.

This has lead to us planning some ‘Coaching Sundays’ which we will run quarterly. The first of which is on 24th June. We will do church differently that Sunday with break off workshops on different topics (see further information in this edition of Connect.)

I have come to a conclusion. As long as Sundays remain unaffected by what we say the priorities, are these priorities will be seen as optional extras. When we start changing what we do on a Sunday—for example, people know that we are serious about serving our community when we changed the way we did our 5th Sundays. The advantage of having Coaching Sundays is that it also takes seriously the many pressures that people live with.

Vanilla Ice-creamIf I started an ice-cream shop, the one flavour I would have to stock in order to be successful would be vanilla. Vanilla accounts for 80% of all ice-cream sales worldwide. Without it you are a failure.

Here is a very simple and important truth. The Bible is our Vanilla. You know that I am a great lover of chocolate but I intend to feed this church on lots of Vanilla going forward. On those conversational Sundays in February it was clear to me that just because the Bible is read in church it does not mean that people hear it. So going forward how are we going to serve up vanilla?

• Different ways of reading the Bible on a Sunday during our worship services.

• Challenge—read it for 20 minutes a day for 5 days a week.• Church wide preaching and small group initiatives are

going to have the Bible as a major focus.• Teaching you to feed yourself from it. Knowledge is not

enough. Be transformed by it.

ChiselAs a woodworker I have learnt the importance of sharpening chisels properly and frequently. Using blunt tools requires more effort and gives poor results!

A number of years ago I bought a new bench saw table and somehow ended up installing the blade back to front. The result was smoke, wood burn but not much cutting going on. Sharp instruments are important to do the job well, whether its cutting grass where you can spend ten minutes cutting, and five minutes sharpening.

The sharpness of the chisel represents the disciples edge. How do we as a church help you to keep your edge?

We will rebrand home-cell groups to in future call them Growth groups. Names are important. We will be gathering the leaders to look at specific ways and practises that will keep our edge sharpened.

These groups are significant for the early and intermediate stages of spiritual growth but they are less effective for growing into greater maturity. For this reason we will be challenging some groups, and encouraging the formation of new groups that will have a definite missional focus and will require greater accountability to one another. Obedience to the call of Christ will be key to these groups. It is in this context that the rabbi system, that I have been trialling will fit. These will be called Life Groups as they are meant to reflect the commitment of your whole life.

Research has shown that new people coming into the church and new people coming to faith benefit the most from being presented with a clear pathway. Presenting too many alternatives just confuses. So in future we are going to bring a greater discipline and focus to this process. Key ingredients to this will be:

• Alpha• DNA• Experiencing God• Spiritual GiftsSome of this can be offered as part of our Coaching Sundays.

Every church is going somewhere. We want to get there on purpose, and need a whistle, vanilla ice-cream and a sharp chisel for the next stage of our journey together.

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CoaChing Sunday

Piano Fundraising updateFunds raised to date (by the end of April) $14863.94

To be added to this is the $18K from Vestry, provided we get to a total of $40K (including the $18K) by October.

Some wonderful upcoming fund raising events will include Devonshire Teas, a Midwinter Christmas Party, a Vintage Bus Tour, a Fish and Chip movie evening, a Car boot sale, a Cake Stall (now booked for 30 June) and Sausage Sizzles.

Piano keys are still available for purchase (see Scott or Tom Snaddon), as are ticktets for the quilt raffle.

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ANZAC memories & High Tea Exodus By Robyn McLay