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Gratis: Winter Appeal


BLANKETS AND JACKETS FOR WINTER

"For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in” - Matthew 25:35

As we head into winter, there are a number of our Gratis street whānau feeling the cold. Can you help? Here are some ways to do so:


1. Donate blankets/jackets

Bring along any quality blankets or jackets to church on any Sunday all of July. We’ll have a drop-off point by the Welcome table as you arrive. Alternatively, drop them off at Community Hall from Monday-Thursday.

or…

2. Donate financially

If you don’t have any quality items you would like to pass on, we will grab some items on your behalf if you donate below.

Donate now

All that we receive will be passed on to those who need it during our Monday night Gratis Street feeds, and if you are interested in helping in any way in this appeal or with Gratis Street, email here.

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TABLES: Church-wide lunch banquets on 18 Sep

Tables is a practice of hospitality - powerful spaces where we can make room to see strangers become friends.

On Sunday 18th September, instead of our usual Sunday Gatherings, we will be meeting all over the city around Tables for a Sunday Lunch Banquet. We look forward to welcoming you for lunch!

Sign up to attend is essential as there are some hefty logistics to play out in organising all of this, so please do so here.

Sunday 18 September, 12pm-2.30pm all across the city.

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NEW MESSAGE SERIES: Wholly following Christ

A series exploring a beautiful and balanced vision of the Christian life

“I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” – Jesus

In this season of reorder, we want to ask a key and important question: how do we holistically follow Jesus in the abundant life he modelled and taught? What is Christ’s vision of a deep, considered and beautiful life for us to embrace and enjoy — and how do we?

For the rest of 2022 (until Advent) we will be exploring six key facets of life with God:
• The Spirit-empowered life
• The Word-anchored life
• The Compassionate life
• The Consecrated life
• The Incarnational life
• The Prayer-filled life

Starts this Sunday, 10am at Epsom Gathering. We’d love to see you as we start this new journey together 💎

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Update: Regathering this weekend

This Easter weekend is our regathering weekend!

After such a long season scattered and apart, we are so excited to be regrouping as a church, and invite you to join us this weekend at two great environments to connect with the Easter event – together!

Tonight is our Maundy Thursday Contemplative Service, 8-9pm at Community Hall. This special evening is helping us to enter the drama of Easter through a liturgy of Scriptures and story, songs and silence, candles and quietening down. Come and begin the Easter weekend deeply tonight! Here are the details (though signup isn’t required now, it would help to know if you are coming!)

Then, on Sunday is our Ressurection Sunday Gathering, 10am at Epsom Girls Grammar Hall. This morning gathering will be our own resurrection of sorts: our first Sunday back, starting a season of being all together in one location and time so we can regroup and reconnect as a church. Youth, New Lynn and 4pm gathering people, this is for you too! We want to take the next several Sundays to be one church gathering so we can reenvision and enjoy God’s renewal work amongst us together again. If you haven’t visited our EGGS gathering location before, we’d love to see you, here are the details.

As we have now moved to the Orange Alert level, registrations are no longer required, but at the gatherings, we will be following public health advice and our heart is to do all that we can to look after the vulnerable amongst our church whānau, so:

  • be prepared to spread out a little and make a bit of space

  • we encourage masks to be worn inside (our team and volunteers all will be, except for when up the front)

  • if you are unwell or have any coldlike symptoms, please stay at home

We can not wait to see you this weekend, and if you are heading away, then we want to wish you safe travels and hope that your soul is filled as you head out of the city for a rest and a holiday. We look forward to seeing you next weekend as we gather again at EGGS (or a weekend soon after!)

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Update: We are regathering Sunday 17th April

Central Vineyard, it has been 33 Sundays since we last gathered together on a Sunday.

UPDATE 13th April : Registration no longer required

Oh, how we have missed you all! They have several long months of waiting out the storm of the pandemic and working within public health measures, but finally, after such a long time, the time to regather is in sight!

As you probably know, our government recently announced changes to increase the gathering limits and the ending of vaccine passports. Even though we are still in the current red traffic light setting, the increased limits now mean we have been able to plan for gathering again as the wave of Omicron comes down in our city and we learn to live with it.

So, we want to issue a wonderful invitation today: with Easter only a few weeks away, and seeing as it is the highlight of the Christian calendar of the year, we would love to invite you to regather with us on Resurrection Sunday, April 17th, 10am at Epsom Girls Grammar. As the global church celebrates Jesus’ resurrection we’ll also be celebrating our own resurrection of sorts - the one of getting to be together again!

This gathering will begin a season for us of being regrouped as a church in one location - for several weeks we are going to only have just the one location running at Epsom – so 4pm and New Lynn people, we would love to see you at Epsom for this re-entry together! This is so we can all get eyes on one another, connect, regroup and re-envision.

We’ll have all the information for our refreshed gathering at EGGS out in the coming weeks, but for now, can you head to our homepage centralvineyard.org and easily find the links to book your spot for Easter and the week after? It will help us so much with our planning!

Also, until then, we are continuing to release our Sunday Epistles and encourage you to get together in your Circle on Sunday (or during the week) to connect. We also have a terrific Easter Holy Week planned for you to richly connect with the Easter event, but more on that soon…

We have missed you, and we absolutely can not wait to see you and experience God's work among us again!

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Lent at CV: Fasting and Prayer for Peace

Kia ora e te whānau,

Tomorrow the global church begins the church calendar season of Lent. These 40 days ahead are a period to prepare our hearts and lives accordingly for the Easter event, which is the central event of our faith; the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus. Lent is used to lengthen us, to cause us to wait, and to enter the waiting. It is a time to engage in suffering and chaos faithfully, not distant from it, but being with God in it. Historically it has been a 40 day fast with no food, or a time to give up a pleasure of some kind intentionally.

We have three things we want to pass on to you as we enter this season together.

Global call to peace

This year amongst the disorder of current global events we are joining the wider global church in a call to seeking peace. Pope Francis recently said:

And now, I would like to appeal to everyone, believers and non-believers alike. Jesus taught us that the diabolical evil of violence is answered with the weapons of God, with prayer and fasting. I invite everyone to make March 2, Ash Wednesday, a day of fasting for peace. I encourage believers in a special way to devote themselves intensely to prayer and fasting on that day.
— Pope Francis

This call has been picked up by the global church, across many denominations, and tomorrow we invite you to join the chorus of prayer around our globe praying for peace.

1. As you begin Lent, consider what you can fast for the next 40 days (btw you get Sunday’s off…)

2. For Ash Wednesday, join us in fasting from food, and praying intentionally for peace.

3. In particular, pray for Ukraine. You could use this prayer below:

God of peace and justice,
we pray for the people of Ukraine today.
We pray for peace and the laying down of weapons.
We pray for all those who fear for tomorrow,
that your Spirit of comfort would draw near to them.
We pray for those with power over war or peace,
for wisdom, discernment and compassion to guide their decisions.
Above all, we pray for all your precious children, at risk and in fear,
that you would hold and protect them.
We pray in the name of Jesus, the Prince of Peace.

Amen
— Archbishop Justin Welby and Archbishop Stephen Cottrell

Prayer room

We have prepared some special prayer cards for this season in our 24/7 Prayer Room. Book a time to come to the prayer room to be with God through this Lent season.

As well as coming to the prayer room at any time of day, we would love to invite you to Wednesday Morning Communion as they sit in this Lent season. Sign up here

Lent for families

In New Zealand, most people live in warm, stable, cosy homes with access to food, family, friends, and support. Most of us are lucky enough to feel safe and secure every day. But there are many people in New Zealand who struggle with these things daily. Even thinking of those in the Ukraine today, most of the people there have had all their stability taken away in the space of just a few hours.

So as we make our way from Ash Wednesday to Palm Sunday, Lent can be a significant way for families to connect, share, read and pray together. It can be an opportunity to encourage compassion, as you not only “give up” something during Lent, but also “give out” to those in need. If you choose to give up something for Lent, here are a few ways to connect as a family over the weeks leading to Easter.

As a family you could give something up you enjoy for example, your favourite lollies, chocolate, drinks, toys etc. You could aim to serve each other over the next 40 days (Sophie gave a few great example in last Sunday’s kids email). You could practice being present – spend some time together as a family without an electronic device in the room e.g. play a game together, go for a walk together. Get to know Jesus by reading the Bible or a devotional together. Bless each other and the community by gifting a small something or a kind word. Lastly, you could pray together over this time, ask God for strength to continue with whatever you are giving up and for compassion for those who have less than us.

Shrove Tuesday – start your journey for Lent today!
If you love pancakes, then Shrove Tuesday (the day before Lent) is the day for you! Make some pancakes as a family! Shrove means confess so the day before Lent was used to confess and be forgiven before Lent began. Shrove Tuesday was also the last chance for people to use up their butter and eggs before giving them up for the Lent season, so many people chose to make pancakes!


In Jesus' Way of love, grace and peace,

– Team CV


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Update: Red Light / Omicron at CV

Kia ora e te whānau!

On 25th January we posted an update shortly after the arrival of Omicron and the announcement of Aotearoa moving to Red Light. In it, we highlighted several key things we were prioritising as a community in the time ahead and now that a few of those weeks have passed, and the Omicron Outbreak has developed further with Phase 2 beginning, we wanted to update you all on some developments in those areas and clarify a few things from questions we have received.

1. We just wanted to clarify why we’re not doing Sunday gatherings in Red Light at the moment. All summer we were excited to be preparing to gather again in Orange Light settings, where our growing plan was to run a combination of vaccine pass gatherings and an open gathering. But the return to Red Light came, and with it, we returned to a setting that has always been difficult for us to operate our large gatherings as a church.

Like so much of life, it is a messy time for all churches to navigate, with every church tackling re-gathering in their own ways and contexts. Some are running services again while others are breaking into small groups. We have other friends leading churches running services and when we compare notes we all learn quickly that there is no one way to do this! But essentially, what makes it possible for a church to safely gather sustainably in accordance with Red Light public health protocols in place is all to do with the total size of their community, the use of available resources and what facilities are at hand.

In Red Light, for us to be open for all on Sunday, we are of a total size that would require us to run around 4 or 5 vaccine passport gatherings and 2 open gatherings across the city on a Sunday. While the Grey Lynn gathering could remain at Community Hall, the others (Epsom and New Lynn) are in facilities that we hire and require weekly setup and pack-down and to run multiple gatherings would mean far longer hires in our facilities, creating an unsustainable and significant budgetary expense for us, for gatherings that are only able to have limited numbers in them each time. More importantly though to us, everything we do requires a volunteer team to make happen, and with the coming wave of Omicron, we have conservatively predicted that there will be an impact on our volunteer teams and wanted to make sure you as our church have a thriving and sustainable way of being gathered as a church together in this time, not a more exhausting one.

Previously, our decision on if we gather or not has always been about a theological conviction to look after the vulnerable amongst us, but with the Traffic Light systems bringing a new way of navigating that, our decision making behind the scenes became also about stewarding the combination of places we use, the ways to group people, our financial resources and our volunteer energy. Essentially we cannot currently justify our Sunday gatherings at Red. Unfortunately, the scaling isn’t viable at the moment to get us through this wave in good shape to the other side when we can.

This brings us to the opportunities at this time. There is still something here for us to do:

2. We’re doubling-down on Community, so, we’re encouraging deepening our life in Circles over these next couple of weeks. Hopefully, you heard Dan kick off the latest series on Sunday introducing this (if not, click here). In the season ahead, we sense God calling us to become an alternative family together, one deeply connected where no person is alone, and so, we’re asking everyone to reconsider their life in Circles. Your Circle might meet during the week, or during this Red Light season, you could meet on Sunday instead. Now, in previous lockdown situations we have had “Home Gatherings” on Sundays, but what we are asking you to do is not that – it’s about being in a Circle, and for this season, it might be on Sunday or midweek, but it doesn’t need to be both. What we are looking for though is a deepening of practicing community in small groups, and we’re taking February to establish this. We are especially excited for this season for our Grey Lynn and New Lynn gatherings, where this focussed establishment of Circles is needed for these newer gatherings to deepen further in community.

If leading a Circle is something you might like to do, then we have two Circle Leaders Training evenings coming up on Feb 28 and March 2. You can check out the details and sign up here.

3. 24/7 Prayer Room is now open and we are praying. Over the last several weeks we have prepared a beautiful space for us all to pray in together, a space that is always open. As a church we are responding to our theme of “reordering our lives under God” by building a house of prayer, a consecrated space with consecrated words that we might become consecrated people. So, come and be with Jesus at anytime, all you need to do is schedule yourself in here and book your hour slot.

We also have a midweek early morning Communion gathering happening there, and our worship leaders are preparing moments for us to worship in this time ahead too. So, there are ways to get together to worship ahead!

4. Friendly Neighbours covers the city. A few weeks ago, as we started to put plans in place to prepare for home isolation across our church and city, we put the call out to become a Friendly Neighbour. Nearly 50 of you have signed up, which is amazing, as together you all represent a spread across all of Tāmaki Makaurau. Now, as a greater number of isolations begin, we are ready for any neighbouring that we need to do, whether it’s a check-in, a grocery collection or a pickup of something important.

***

So that’s our main update and clarification; for now while we aren’t doing our usual Sunday Gatherings in Red Light, we’re using this time to deepen community, pray without ceasing and support one another. If any of this raises any questions or further queries, please, get in touch with us or ask for some more details or help to engage.

We love you, we miss your presence, and as we start to see some of you coming and going at the Prayer Room, or for coffee, or in meeting up, our hearts are joyful! We long for the day we all get to see each other in one place and one time, but for now, this is our moment to deepen these other things, and we’re sure we’ll be better off for it when we do get together in the future.

Grace and peace,

Alisha, Dan, Gabrielle and Rob

CV Co-leaders

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New message series: Community

Spiritual formation occurs primarily in the context of community ... It is a simple but profound biblical reality that we both grow and thrive together or we do not grow much at all.
— Dr. Joseph H. Hellerman

As we begin 2022 and continue to lean into God’s reordering work in our lives we want to start the year with a fresh exploration of life in Jesus’ vision of Christian community. What is it actually meant to look like? How do we practice true community? What will it take? What must we grow past? What will be the benefits? Tune in to the Sunday Epistles for the next four weeks to come on the journey.

We’ll be covering:

  • Jesus’ vision for community

  • Knowing and naming your stage and season of community

  • Common idealistic ideas and assumptions that kill community

  • How community works at Central Vineyard and how to deepen it

Alongside this series, while we are not currently gathering in Red Light setting, this is a great opportunity to literally practice what we are preaching and to experience exploring this topic with others. Get together in your Circle on Sunday to share a brunch or meal, watch the Sunday Epistle videos, and kick it around together – and if you need to get connected into a Circle, this is the month to do so!

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Sign-ups open now: 24/7 Prayer Room, Morning Communion and The Prayer Course

On February 14th we will be opening our 24/7 Prayer Room upstairs at Community House and as we get prepared you can too by signing up for your prayer slots now. As Dan shared in the recent Sunday Epistle, the invitation is to replace the hour you would normally spend at a gathering on Sunday with an hour during the week in the Prayer Room and you can book in here.

As well as a place to be with Jesus by yourself, our 24/7 Prayer Room will host some communal weekly rhythms as we pray together, one of which is the return of our mid-week early-morning led communion. Numbers are limited, so if you would like to be there you'll need to sign up for that too, just select the Morning Communion option when you're signing up.

In this season, prayer is something we will all do some growing in, but if you feel a bit out of your depth, we're here to help with that journey too. Our Prayer Room will help you grow in prayer with stations and resources, but also, in March we are running The Prayer Course, an eight-week course to help you grow in prayer.

As we together continue to seek the reordering of our lives in the Way of Jesus, come, let us pray.

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