Our future: a co-led whānau

Central Vineyard was planted with a ministry philosophy of celebrating united-diversity. Simply, we see in the letters of the New Testament that communities were encouraged to be united together around their cause of Christ, but each person is to play their unique part with their unique gifting. Like a good sport team, or a body, or a menu at a restaurant - diversity is good, and when it’s unified, it’s even better. Maybe a helpful image is this: a flotilla. When a dozen of us first met to pray about the new church God was calling us to plant, one of our team had a picture of a flotilla heading down a river – a diverse bunch of unique boats all heading in the same direction together. This picture has been an important vision for us,

In starting this church, Dan and Gabrielle have been the planting-leaders. They gathered a team and through these leaders, released all kinds of ministry in all kinds of direction. The result has been that Central Vineyard has become a diverse place to belong and minster, but as leaders they can only hold so much, and Central Vineyard has out-grown their ability to hold all of it by themselves.

During this year we have felt that we were no longer a “church-plant” but to become a “church-in-formation”, realising that we are now to grow up together into a healthy and flourishing community. To do this we want to honour diversity. No one leader can lead Central Vineyard fully into its future, it has taken a team so far, and will take a team to go on.

As the planting-leaders, Dan and Gabrielle have been the ones responsible for stewarding our journey together, and while they have always done this with a team of leaders around them, we feel a more intentional move needed to be made. It was time to make room for more and share the responsibility. To bring further safety and structure, we have restructured Central Vineyard leadership to itself reflect unified-diversity and will now be co-led by two couples - the Sheeds and the Wisemans - each couple gifted with their own unique gifts but united in responsibility to care for the journey of our whole whānau.

As we walk into the future, we do it together, and we think that’s a pretty beautiful way to do this.

Dan, Gabrielle, Rob and Alisha

Monuments: Central Vineyard's Third Birthday

On November 4th Central Vineyard turns three years old! We want to lean into this monumental-moment by celebrating our journey this year with creativity and by practicing gratitude and having a big party. We don’t want anyone to miss this special moment of our year, so get it in your calendar as a gathering not to miss – and don’t make any lunch plans because we’ve got that covered! 

Sunday November 4th, Epsom Girls Grammar, 10am

Halftime: June at Central Vineyard

Halftime is our agenda for June at Central Vineyard. Together, we are pausing to look at the founding core values that we have embodied in our story so far, and also what we hope the future will look like as we embody the new things God is doing with us together.

We're going to be sharing five key talks at our Sunday gatherings, as well as spending the month praying together, fasting together and owning together what the future holds.

Also as we go through this month we want to hear your voice on what God is saying and what you are noticing. Head to this page to send those in.

Together, we're looking back at the old and hoping for a vibrant future of Central Vineyard being all that it is called to be.

Begins Sunday, June 3rd

Isaiah 55 Prayer Station Prints

"Receiving"

"Watching Over"

"Removing"

"Persevering"

"Giving Away"

Complete set

Isaiah 55 Prayer Station A3 prints / Pre-orders available

Designed by Leah Surynt

Due to popular request, we're doing a print run of Leah's work from the Prayer Week Isaiah 55 station, with proceeds covering the cost of print and donation to our Gratis Free Store.

Pre-orders close Wednesday March 14, so that prints will be available for collection from Sunday March 18.

Please secure your pre-order by paying your order to:

Central Vineyard Church Charitable Trust
Bank Account: 03-1322-0203315-000

Reference: "Prints"

Community Hall

17 Mercury Lane, rendered

We’ve had a vision for a place in Auckland City that blessed our city and helped us live out life together. We wanted that place to be a space of prayer, connection and hospitality.

Good news: we have it.

We have just signed a lease for 17 Mercury Lane, right in the heart of Auckland City. God has been all over this process and we are so excited by all that He has done making the path straight and answering our prayers - especially #prayforElliot.

The place is perfect for our vision and ticks so many boxes from your feedback to our survey. We’re going to leave a lot of it as a large fluid space for you to do what you see in it.

Remember, this is not our office nor a place for our Sunday gatherings, it’s our Community Hall – a space for us to do mission and life in together: Gratis is going to grow further here; worship nights will fill the room with beauty and creativity; movies, docos and things you make will be shown; your parties, seminars, art installations and any other gatherings can be held here; prayer, creativity and care will take place in our dedicated rooms but the rest will be a blank canvas for you to do what you see...

...all for the cause of blessing the city as people of prayer, connection and hospitality.
 
So we’re going to spend the summer break painting it, building a simple fitout and beginning to create our prayer room. If you want to make a special contribution to the Community Hall project, or give us a hand, let us know.
 
What a wild way to finish 2017 and start 2018!

🎉

P.S. Anyone got an old piano they wouldn’t mind donating? One that you wouldn’t mind being painted...

Message Series: The Heart of Matters

One of the key truths running through the Scriptures is this: what's on the inside determines what happens on the outside.

As a church community there are a heap of things we do: There are practices we do together, liturgies we repeat and ways-of-doing-things the way we do.

For all of these things we do there is a why, there is a value, there is an inner-reason.

There is a heart to the matter.

In this new series at Central Vineyard we are exploring eight important kingdom values and how we embody them together. We have some new speakers from in our family contributing, bringing us the value they are most passionate about by exploring the Scriptures and celebrating our stories.

Message series: "In Jesus, amen."

Prayer. A word that conjures up all kinds of responses, ideas and feelings.

For some, it's everything. A well-worn path. For others, it's complicated. A frustrating practice.

There is a moment in the the gospel of Luke where Jesus has been praying, yet again. The disciples have observed his vibrant prayer life for many months now and seen him do all kinds of spectacular things as a result. Frustrated with their own, they come to him with a request:

"Lord, teach us to pray."

This question is the heart of our new series. We want to look at the prayer life of Jesus and let Him mess with our own ideas and practices of prayer. Seeing as the normal Christian life is with our new identity "in Christ", we want to experience what it is to pray as He showed us is possible.

As Jesus did, let's do.

"In Jesus, amen."

 

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RESOURCES FOR THIS SERIES

SERIES COMPANION

8 week booklet + prayer exercises
Available at our Sunday gatherings

AUDIO COMPANIONS

Instrumental music for free prayer
Click cover to listen/download

Guided reading of Luke 11 (Part 1/3)
Click cover to listen/download

Guided prayer of examen
Click cover to listen/download

WALLPAPERS

Phone Wallpaper
Click image to download

Widescreen Wallpaper
Click image to download

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A big thanks to the people who made all of this happen:

Design by
Leah Surynt

Series companion by
Written and compiled by Dan Sheed and Emma Breetvelt

Audio companions by
Produced and written by Strahan Coleman
Voice by Shana Lang
Music by Rhys Machell
Recorded and mixed by Vivek Gabriel.
Prayer of Examen sourced from igntianspirituality.com

We've got guests coming!

For the last two Sundays of July we have guest speakers coming to share at our Central Vineyard gatherings.

On July 23 we have Scottie Reeve. Scottie leads Blueprint Church in Wellington and recently wrote 21 Elephants: Leaving Religion for the reckless Way of Jesus.

On July 30 we have Sam Harvey coming up from his new-home in Napier, where he has just relocated his family to plant a new Vineyard church. Sam used to be at Grace Vineyard in Christchurch.

We're looking forward to having them, don't be missin' out!

Special Sunday: Half Time

It's school holidays at the moment, which means it's halfway through 2017. Yikes.

As a milestone in our year, we use this halfway point as a moment to look back with gratitude on what has happened so far and look forward to what is ahead.

We want to share a bit about what's been important so far, we want to tell you about a couple of big things coming up that we are really excited about, and we want to do something for the first time in the life of our family: bless and commission some of our leaders, Alisha and Rob Wiseman.

It's such a good occasion we have ordered in some epic donuts for a mini-party afterwards.

It's one of those special family moments not to miss, we'd love you to be there and celebrate Half Time.

_

Oh! And P.S. We took ownership of one of these bad boys this week, so don't let the cold put you off:
 

Message series: "Stories"

At Central Vineyard we value listening to several key voices.

One is the voice of God through His Spirit.
Another is the voice of God through the Scriptures.
The other is the voice of each other as we witness through our stories.

We value hearing every person's story and believe every story is a treasure – because stories are glimpses of truth and reality. We also wonder what would happen if every person valued their own story.

For June, we're going to look at the power of stories and how we can become better story-tellers of the hope we are living in Jesus.