What went down on Sunday morning at St D's

Sang some nice songs

Exchanged the Peace :)

Notices

Rosters

Jill advertised the call for people to put their names down on the rosters for Morning Tea and Sunday School. Most, if not all slots were filled by the end of morning tea. This roster runs until the end of the year.  Good work team!

Cafe opening

Alison commented on how wonderful it was to see half the crowd down at the Trade School Kitchen Cafe community opening were St. D'ers.

Apparently there is a short story about the opening also on RNZ's Checkpoint news programme.

Also, Alison shared a lovely circular story about a gift she was given years ago to do with her work at Rimutaka prison.

It was a chopping board, made from the wood left over from the demolition of a Ward at Arohata Women's prison. This seemed to come together in a lovely way, as she presented this as an appropriate gift to the new cafe kitchen.  The cafe works with women coming out of Arohata, with new skills and as a platform to re-connect with the community.

Alison described the chopping board as being selvaged from destruction, sanded smooth and then polished. It need to to be cared for, and nurtured for the beauty to be brought to life. A nice metaphor for the work the cafe are ideally carrying out.  The chef accepted it gracefully and with a tear in their eye.

4th Sundays

There was talk around the new initiative of community church, where we have church in people's homes around our community.  The first try for this will be next Sunday at these venues:

• Maisies house (Traditional Anglican gathering)
• The Calverts (Silverstream, anyone welcome, but a special call for parent's of grown up families to share coffees and what it's like once the kids leave home)
• Bertram Grove BBQ - anyone welcome. Low key gathering for neighbours and friends in arguably the best grove in the world ;)
• Dunwoodies Family Friendly - Come and share what this could look like for families on the 4th Sundays
• Drew-Crawshaw Guerrilla Gardeners - take part in using gardening for social change and transformation. Check out the Ted Talk for more info on what this looks like.

More information on locations will be on this website on the Upcoming Events section.

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Message

Alison talked about the idols we have in our lives that may get in the way of having Jesus work fully through us.

The readings were from Exodus and Romans.

Alison spoke to the fact that we often create centers of focus for us to feel safe and secure. These may often take the place of God and Jesus role in our lives. This is a very normal human trait, but one that is healthy to examine every so often.

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Prayers

Hannah lead some very thoughtful intersession, emphasising how it is often through the destruction of old things that new growth appears. Like the chopping board story above I suppose.

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Blessings to everyone who wasn't able to make it to the service, and apologies to everyone who did make it and has issue with my version of events laid out above :)