One of the great treats in following Jesus are the incredible people you meet along the way, who give over their lives to grow his Kingdom. Last year I had the honor of meeting Fraser and Dale for the first time. They had just planted their church in Hamilton and were sharing some of the stories of suffering, grace, and Gods presence in the community they are working in.

I was amazed at Fraser’s passion not only to see his community changed but to see other people take up the call to be God’s message to our communities. His dream is to see churches planted and established throughout New Zealand and connected through the LinkNZ community. It’s a great dream. One we are part of at Edge.

The Hardy’s will be at both services on Sunday. They will be praying in some new elders, so we are looking forward to what they have to share!

Strahan.

This last Sunday at the 6- Jay (the man!) spoke on church leadership and the assumptions we have that aren’t necessarily biblical. Jay spent the first half of his message laying the historical foundation for how both the Catholic and Protestant churches came to be organised around either a priest or pastor. As he went through a survey of 500 000 pastors he pointed out the enormous and unrealistic pressure that we put upon them. I very much agree with this, and myself have fallen victim to expecting too much out of church leaders in the past.

The only time the word pastor is used in the NT is in Ephesians 4:11 where the context is plural. Jay described how the first churches were led by teams of elders rather than a ‘hired gun’. Edge Kingsland follows this model. I still feel that we can easily put pressure on the main guy at the front to bring whatever we might need.

The history of God’s people is that of the people nominating a mediator, someone to “do the work”, whereas as Christians we each have been selected by the Father through Christ to be his sons and daughters. The priesthood is now for all believers.

Jay emphasized leadership, and leadership for all to do our own work of deciding to pursue Christ and his anointing and to not be lazy and defer to a preacher or pastor the hard work of following Jesus. Maybe in our culture where we have specialized every difficult and arduous task to professionals, we have done the same in our spirituality. We are told in Scripture to delight ourselves in the Lord- why should we let someone else have our fun. Lets pursue Jesus today (and be like Jay) haha.

James K.

The prophet Ezekiel wrote about a vision he had about a valley of dry bones: “ This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put my breath in you and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord”.

This was the key passage around which Cindy Ruakere shared with us on Sunday. It was another amazing time when Holy Spirit engaged with us again in amazing and intimate ways; putting flesh on our dry, life wary bones, reviving purpose and hope within us and bringing freedom to our crippled and arthritic journeys.

On Monday as I woke up to another week I recalled how Adam was made. The bible says “Then the Lord formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7). So as I got out of bed and cleared my congested throat I was reminded that from the very beginning God breathed us to life. I imagine him getting down on his hands and knees, down close and breathing into Adam.

Two of my sons have grown up with asthma. I have spent long nights watching over my boys as they struggle for one of the few free things in life – air. So I have experienced the preciousness of that gift. Breath is life. Our very breath is a gift from God. As we breathe in, as we breathe out, we acknowledge our God. We acknowledge his gift of life.

Holy Spirit come, continue to breath life into these bones.