Episode 25 - A Trial for the Church of New Zealand

The Christmas season is upon us. I put up my tree last weekend and I’m not even sorry about it. It’s definitely nice to have something to look forward to and celebrate. Last night I got to have a little thanksgiving dinner with some of the amazing young people in our church. Even though we don’t celebrate thanksgiving here in New Zealand it’s always good to be thankful. Especially when we are going through hard times. This has personally been the hardest year of my life but I still have so much to be thankful for.

If you’ve listened to this podcast long enough you will know by now that a passion of mine is encouraging Christians to live their faith outside of Sunday. Outside of a 4-song worship set and a 30 minute sermon. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I love going to church! But if that’s the extent of the pursuit of our relationship with Jesus; if the only time that we worship is in church, the only time we read the bible is in church and the only time we listen to a sermon is in church, then we aren’t building our faith. We are spectators, not participants.

And for the church of New Zealand, we are about to go through a trial, a new season. It’s now more important than ever that we build our faith outside of Sunday.

If you are a Kiwi you will already be aware that this Sunday is the last time any church with 100 or more members will be able to meet without some kind of separation or segregation of the congregation. The new traffic light, COVID alert system will start from the 3rd of December. At the lowest alert level - green - only groups of 100 will be allowed to meet at places of worship. If the alert moves up to orange, churches will be capped at 50 attendees. And if it changes to red, that number goes down to 25, up until yesterday however that number was all the way down to 10. The government announced the move up to 25 just today. Now, we don’t know yet what alert level we will be at when this new system comes into play on the 3rd but whatever it is, church is going to look different. Now, if a church decides to require proof of vaccination, then at the green level there is no limit to the number of vaccinated people at a place of worship. Our church has decided to not require proof of vaccination so we will be capped at 100 church attendees in green, 50 in orange and 25 in red. So, for the next 6 weeks at least, the elders of my church have decided that we will be doing church online but together. We are being encouraged to meet in homes and have church together there. That’s what the church I belong to has decided to do for now, every church in New Zealand will have their own decision to make on how they will handle these new mandates.

So yea, it’s a bit of a bummer. But I don’t want to bring you a word of doom and gloom. I want us to look up. To see the possibility. And in that thanksgiving spirit let’s see these challenges facing us and choose to be thankful through it all. Today I want to encourage you. And as always, our encouragement comes from the Word of God. I’m going to read a passage of scripture for us now and then we are going to look a little deeper and see what the Word has for us today.

2 Corinthians 2:14-17

14 But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere. 15 For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those

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