Rethinking Sundays: How St David’s took up the invitation presented by lockdown house-church

During last year’s lockdown, St David’s Naenae-Epuni began a rhythm of house church gatherings. We caught up with Priest in Charge Martin Robinson to talk about the impact of home gatherings and how they have been affected by the latest COVID-19 outbreak.

Tell us about the pattern that developed last year?
In the 2020 outbreak, our people were open to being put into smaller groups for Zoom catch ups, prayer, worship, and pastoral support. Just about everyone in our church whānau became part of a group that met each week via Zoom, and each group had identified leaders that held the group together.

The central ‘pillars’ of the network of groups are the call to deeper devotions to Jesus, call to deeper love of one another, and call to love neighbour. From there, the structure of each group looked different depending on the needs of members.

What’s happened since?
As we emerged from the 2020 lockdown, most of these groups were keen to continue. They had found that their group had momentum and enabled close relationship and connection. So we moved to continuing house church gatherings on 2nd and 4th Sundays of the month, with a larger community gathering on the 1st, 3rd and 5th Sundays in our main church building.

Most of these original groups have kept going. Some are more relational, others more missional. For example, the house church based around the Trade School Kitchen whānau learn together using some of the 3DM discipleship material and what it means to support people within their particular space of ministry. Whether the group is more relational or more missional in focus, the hope is that together they will dream about ways that God is calling them into deeper intimacy and into God’s work of community transformation.

What do you think has been the impact of the St David’s house churches?
It’s been great that the groups contain new folks who have joined our community. This model seems to be really good at cementing relationships. Each group has a different feel and meets different needs.

During this latest lockdown, some of our newer Christians have told us how much they need the gathered church during this time. It’s a crucial part of their spirituality. We’re looking forward to being back together in a variety of gatherings, but for now, we’re glad that the house-church model has stayed in place to support the changing needs of our communities over the changes in lockdown levels. We’re still hoping to build on this going forward and develop more leadership.