St Barnabas, Fendalton

In the end is our beginning. Just out of camera shot, but so critical to what we’ve just had read to us from the Book of Acts, is the stoning of Stephen and the subsequent scattering of the church. That event was in so many ways a lynchpin for what else followed. What the church needed next was encouragement. And so, Barnabas is sent. And this is what we’re told: He saw what the grace of God had d...

What we know of Barnabas from the New Testament shows that he was constantly affirming and motivating others. There was no variation in tempo with him, no blowing hot and cold…

The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has written a wonderful book called The Power of Reconciliation. He says reconciliation has four parts: incarnation, crucifixion, new life, and completion. In other words, it makes Christ visible, requires sacrifice, must be lived out and grown into, and will be completed at the end of all things when perfect justice rules the earth. Reconciliation require...

Acts 2 shows us people waiting on God’s promised Spirit. When the Spirit came it was far more than they could ever have imagined! We can trust God to keep his promises.

At the end of a rather memorable service, we all departed, smiling, and bemused by an unexpected and unprecedented visitor.  Sometimes the Holy Spirit does a very similar thing. He works in ways we don’t expect, sometimes don’t like, often find uncomfortable, outside our predetermined, even permitted, conceptions of how he should work.

Tune in to hear guest preacher, Grant Norsworthy - More Than Music Mentor and Grammy-nominated producer of The Blessing Aotearoa - speak at our Lifestreams service on 12 May 2024.

All we do, we must do in love, because he first loved us. Love should be the fuel that drives us.

I like – well, don’t like - but tend to agree with the reading of this gospel that the warning about God’s pruning activity is not an idea we can apply to others (and it is always so much easier to apply sermons to other people than to ourselves!) but a message to all. No matter how pious we may feel we are, no matter how theological we think we are, no matter how ‘good’ we act, none of that is a...

We are called to cling to Christ so He can work through us to do good in our community and world.

The belief that Jesus rose from the dead with a physical body has been well debated over the years…

We decided the equivalent to Palm Sunday today would be a Santa parade…

Well, we have today two Greeks, or at least two people with Greek names, Philip and my namesake, Andrew. Philip has an encounter with ‘some Greeks’, who say "Sir, we wish to see Jesus."   A slight but important tangent is that these are  Greeks , and therefore signify that Jesus’ reign and rule, locally felt in Jerusalem as he rode in on his donkey, will be felt in the entire world.    F...

Here are some numbers for you. 438. That was roughly the number of people I was talking to at Medbury School on Tuesday – all their students, most of their staff, where we celebrated their Harvest service. The boys and their families had provided non-perishable food, which was stacked neatly on the stage; the choristers sang a song in which they named many fruits and vegetables, and we were warm,...

Jesus offers bread, and the Bread of life. 

An image of what is to come on the cross, and the restoration of a place of worship and prayer.

It's all downhill from here...And Peter is none too sure about Jesus' call to downward mobility. How about you?

Sometimes things don’t quite go the way we expect! We meet in the readings today three characters who discovered that what they had thought about how God worked was about to be radically changed. We have reached the halfway point of Mark’s gospel, and not just literally. Today’s gospel passage is the hinge on which the gospel turns. Mark’s gospel, which begins with “the good news of Jesus Christ”,...

Cassandra orients us to the beginning of the season of Lent in the liturgical calendar. She explores the ways in which the church over time has learnt to keep company with Jesus in the wilderness.

A little dose of the wilderness is not such a bad thing, now and then…

Using three key passages of Scripture we work to establish a Theology of Children’s Ministry. We gain an understanding of why we do what we do in the context of our church services and how to lead our children in their spiritual growth.

What heals a man with leprosy – Jesus’ touch or his words? And what is the place for touch in a post-Covid, risk-averse world?

Kōrerotia tō kōrero. Tell your story.

Sermon given at our 9.30am service, Sunday 4 February 2024

I want to tell you about three men and a baby. The first man is Philip. We read about him in today’s gospel. The second man is Thomas Aquinas. It is his saint’s day today. The third man is called Ethan. And the baby is also called Ethan, the newly baptised among us today!

Listen as we explore what ‘Trust’ means, what it looks like and where we find ourselves in the two-way connection of trust between God and ourselves. What are the building blocks of Trust? How does God fulfil our trust? What does it mean to truly work on sustaining our trust in Him and overcoming the blockers we put in the way.