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.
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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
