Rechurch has Launched!

Needless to say, it has been a busy month leading up to the launch of Rechurch! It feels great to have launched and to be meeting weekly. Routine is slowly setting in...just in time for our baby to get here! I've officially neglected the blog and hope to keep you a little more updated in the next few months.

Launch Sunday was amazing! Thanks for all of your well wishes, prayers, emails, and support! It was a bit like a dream to have made it to that point and to see our hard work over the last few years pay off! We had a great turnout, around 80 people, and we felt like people really started to connect with the church and each other.

Some exciting points:

- The cinemas are turning out to be a fantastic venue! People enjoy coming in to such a comfortable atmosphere!

- We are seeing lots of people who are unchurched and de-churched give church a chance! This is our goal.

- Our attendance has been steadily above what we had during preview services.

Some Challenges:

- It's hard to get people to fill the seats each week. Though attendeance isn't bad, many people who are committed to coming, just aren't committed to coming weekly yet.

- We need more volunteers! We start setting up before 6am each Sunday and have a very rushed pack down in order to be out of the cinemas on time. We need more people to jump in and help.

In addition to meeting weekly, Joe preached on community this week and we will begin two different Bible Studies. One more of an introduction and exploration for faith and one is a more in depth Bible Study.

We are also trying out "Meet and Eat" to introduce and connect people in the church with each other to help facilitate community outside the church.

Below are a couple of pictures from Launch! Check back in soon to hear about our new and finished offices and to hear about when this little baby is born!

Offices

There are so many new developments happening weekly with Rechurch that it is hard to keep everyone updated with it! We have had a lot of exciting things happening, but one of the things we are most excited about right now are our new (to us) offices.

For almost three years now, we haven’t really had an office. We have worked out of the spare bedroom, our kitchen, coffee shops, and our colleagues’ houses. Working from home has been a challenge at times because of the distractions and the constant shuffling of space when it needed to be used for something else. Perhaps the biggest issue, however, was that it is so difficult to shut off from “work mode.” Since we worked from home, there was always another email to respond to or task that we could work on – our minds never shifted gears from “work” to “home”. Needless to say, Amy and I, along with the rest of the staff from rechurch, have been looking forward in eager anticipation for the day when we would have an office. Now that day has come, and we finally have an office! (Well, we almost have an office).

On Friday we got approved to move into an old house as the official rechurch office. We had been praying about finding one in a great location and for it to be a good price. It seems that God answered those two prayer requests, because it is in the prime location, directly across the street from the mall where our church meets and on a main road. The cost was also better than we could expect. There is just one small caveat – the building is run down and looks pretty terrible on the inside (so maybe it isn’t that small of a caveat, actually).

For the last few days we have been in the office, trying to renovate it and get it up to a workable quality. We have been cleaning, sanding, jib-stopping (spackling) and painting. Several people from the church have joined in and tonight we hope to finish painting. The next step will be to fix some broken floor boards, and then sand and refinish some of the hardwood floors that have been covered by carpet for many years. We will still have to rip out an old, unusable fireplace and completely renovate a defunct bathroom as time and funds allow.

Even with all the work still to be done, we are so thankful that our prayers for an office have been answered. We look forward to rechurch using this building for effective ministry for years to come.

NYE 09

Happy New Year! New Zealand is the first place in the world to celebrate the new year and we had a great time doing so this year.

As you may know, rechurch decided to throw a huge community New Year's Eve party this year. We could not have done so without the help of the wonderful mission team that was here from Wadsworth, Ohio. We had a fantastic night and consider the evening a HUGE success. We were able to hire out a sports hall and a park right next to each other to have both indoor and outdoor activities.

We were prepared to make a fun evening with all kinds of entertaining activities ranging from bouncy castles, face painting, a giant Twister board, live music, candy floss (cotton candy) and poporn machines, Nintendo Wii, Playstation 2, movies, sausages, an ice cream truck, family games, sports games, relay races and more.

We had no clue what to expect but had advertised a good amount in order to prepare for the event. We didn't want to push rechurch, but we did want people to see rechurch as a church that cares for the community and as a church who is able to have a good time. Every family who came received a rechurch bag with information about the event and also about rechurch. We prayed that the people who came would ask questions or be interested in rechurch, but that it would be on their terms.

We are excited to report that we had over 300 people show up to our Family Friendly New Year's Eve party! We had a beautiful evening and a great time! We received heaps of great feedback from families who attended, and even an email from a family the next day saying how great the party was. We had many conversations with families about what rechurch is and are hopeful to see some of them at our next preview service. We feel that God totally blessed the event and are so excited about how great it went. We have already started planning for NYE10 as many people were asking for the party to happen again next year!

Enjoy some pictures from the evening:

A young boy grabbing a sausage after having his face painted

Hamish and Amy in front of the bouncy castles

Playstation 2 was a hit and was busy all night long

Playing Giant Twister

The mission team, rechurch staff, and a few other rechurch people after ringing in the New Year and cleaning up from a great party

Hope your 2010 is off to a great start as well!!

The Past Few Weeks...

The past couple of weeks have been full on but very awesome! We have been picking up a lot of momentum at church and in the community. I apologise for not keeping up better with the blog, but as a baby is on the way, I will not make any promises to do better! Below are a few quick updates about what’s been happening with us and Rechurch:

Christmas Service:

We had a wonderful Christmas service with many new faces and many ‘regulars’ in attendance. This was an encouragement to us as we had expected a lower turnout this time of year as summer break had just begun and many people are traveling for the summer holidays. We had a fun service and a great time with the people who came.

Venue Update:

After months of asking for prayer and praying about where to go for a long term venue, God has opened up and given us our number one choice! We are so excited and think that this is nothing less than a miracle! Rechurch will be meeting in Reading Cinemas once we go to weekly services. This venue is just upstairs in the same complex where we are currently meeting. We already have advertising in the cinemas as well as relationships with many people in that shopping complex. We found out two days before our Christmas service about getting this venue, it was the best Christmas present that we could have asked for! We call it a miracle because we had been talking with the management in the cinemas since July and were getting consistent lack of interest and ‘no’ for an answer. We decided to give it one last shot pitching them a ridiculously low price (one third of what they were asking!!) in a written proposal. After over a month and a half of waiting to hear back, they emailed us last week and told us they would be happy to meet our requests and have us start meeting there when we are ready…for the low price we offered! Thank you for praying with us to get this venue

Holiday:

Joe and I took off for a few days around Christmas for a bit of a holiday break. Most of our friends were going to visit family or had family coming in, so we decided to take that chance to get away. We drove north of Christchurch to stay just outside of the Abel Tasman National Park. It was a great getaway for us and a good time to relax and reflect on the last (crazy) year. We hiked, kayacked, swam, and relaxed. It was good to have that time away to get ready for this week…

Mission Team:

This week we have a group of fourteen adults visiting Rechurch from Ohio. The church that they are with supports Rechurch and has come out to help us and to see whats happening. We have heaps of activities planned, one of the main ones being on New Year’s Eve. Rechurch is hosting a family friendly New Years Eve party for the community. We have lots of fun things planned (bouncy houses, cotton candy machines, giant twister, live music, free sausages etc…) and are hoping that this is a huge outreach for the church. The team will be helping to get that ready and promote the event as well as helping with many other community events to help get Rechurch’s name even better known in Christchurch.

I will post another blog once the team is gone about the trip and about how our NYE09 event goes. Please pray for this event.

If you made if this far, you are a legend, that was a lot to update you on, but there is a lot happening here which is great! Thanks for keeping up with all that’s going on!

I'm lovin' it!

I realise that it has been a while since I have posted something fun about life in New Zealand. Most of our updates lately have been about Rechurch, but I thought today's events would make for a perfect glimpse into other parts of New Zealand life and culture.

Being such a small country out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, New Zealand wants to be known. Sure we have the best rugby team (the All Blacks) and beauty that is hard to find anywhere else in the world, but other than that and the recent Lord of the Rings and Narnia, how else is New Zealand going to get recognised in the world?

We have found that many Kiwis and organisations in New Zealand have taken it upon themselves to beat world records and make it in the Guinness Book of World Records. Now, you might think this sounds typical, but we find the records that kiwis are trying to beat are so funny.

Last month there was a "Largest Mattress Domino Competition" where people were to bring out their mattresses and stand them in a line like a domino chain. Also last month was an attempt to have the "Longest Line Dance"- we had intentions to go to this but it was rainy and cold that day! Everyone in Christchurch was invited to a local park where we would learn dance moves and then perform them in a line to create the record.

This morning however, even though cold and rainy, the four of us on staff decided to be a part of a new world record. Today, in Christchurch, New Zealand the world record was set for the largest scrambled egg ever! McDonalds set up a tent in Cathedral square and scrambled up thousands of eggs and then gave away free breakfast to anyone who showed up. We have staff meetings on Tuesday mornings so we met early to go down to the city to be a part of this momentous occasion...and to get free breakfast.

Enjoy the pictures below of our experience:

Disgustingly large amount of scrambled eggs, I am glad I am not still in my first trimester or I would have had to leave.

Yes, this is a normal sized garden rake, they also had huge snow shovels to scoop the eggs.

As you can imagine, Joe was definitely lovin' it. The rest of us were quite disgusted by the eggs, Joe may have had seconds...and finished mine...and didn't find anything gross about the massive amounts of eggs! Also, notice the winter coats in the picture. Today is officially the first day of summer in New Zealand, based on today's weather, it's not looking promising!

What's a McDonald's party without Ronald?

Preview Service # 3

We have officially completed three of our five preview services for Rechurch. Our third service was held last Sunday and we are all very excited about how it went.

As a church staff, we were all a bit apprehensive about Sunday. Between our first service and this one, we have come up against many obstacles and road blocks, nothing huge, just many things that have been discouraging to us. We spent many hours preparing, extended many invitations, to both new people and people that we have been talking to for months, spent a lot of time in prayer, and knew we just needed to trust that God would do what only he can do, work in the hearts of people.

Sunday morning came around and set up went very smoothly. About ten minutes before the service was to start, people started pouring in- both people that we knew and people that were just responding to our advertisements. Our attendance was up 50% from the last two services and the 'buzz' that accompanied the morning was incredible.

Rechurch felt like a community on Sunday morning. It was exciting to see people connecting with one another. The service was a great one and people stuck around to hang out afterwards.

We made an appeal for people who are interested to join our launch team. Please pray that people respond to this appeal and join us at the launch team meeting this Sunday night. Our launch team is the group of people who are joining in our vision to officially launch Rechurch in February.

Thank you for your prayers for Rechurch. We are so excited to see how God is working in our lives, in our friends lives, and in Christchurch, New Zealand!

Faith Exploration Event

Tomorrow night Rechurch is hosting a Faith Exploration Event. Actually we aren’t quite sure what to call it, but we feel like this best describes what we are doing.

Each of us has come across people who are interested in what Rechurch is doing but doesn’t think that church is for them. Others have said they would like to check out what’s happening but have to work on Sunday mornings and therefore can’t make it to church.

We have decided to try something different in order to try to possibly reach out to this group of people. Tomorrow night (Sunday 15 Nov) we are able to use one of the rooms at our venue to host this event. We will be watching a Rob Bell Nooma Video and having an open time of discussion afterwards.

We’ll have some appetizers that the Fox and Ferret offers and hope to have a relaxed atmosphere where people feel comfortable talking and sharing questions and thoughts about faith. We also hope that this opens more doors with the people we have invited. Maybe they will come to our next preview service (22 Nov) or maybe this will open up our personal conversations more.

Will you please join us in praying for the people we have invited to this event? Please pray for openness on their part and for us to be able to clearly communicate God’s love to these people, our friends.