Dear Whānau,

Christ is risen! We hope and pray that you have experienced the nearness of Christ over the Easter weekend. This year the words of John 20:19 are so real – “On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!”

This year many of us have sat in anxious social isolation, in our locked rooms. But our Easter story reminds us that Jesus is not in lockdown – that He breaks through the walls that divide to bring peace. For me (+Justin), this Easter has brought the gift of not always fronting a service – and so being able to let my life soak in the Easter journey once again. We hope that this season has brought you the space to do this too.

As we live into this Easter season of resurrection, we want to re-affirm and encourage us to hold to our three postures of identity that shape our lives as the good news of the resurrected Christ within our Movement. Our common lives have been shaped by three key priorities and even in these challenging and unusual times, these three priorities remain the same:

We are family

We choose to belong to one another. It has been so wonderful to see the huge response to connection through Movement Online. This is the way that we are able to still celebrate together and share the good news of God from all the different local faith communities to which we belong. Please continue to make sure that every parishioner is subscribed.

We are disciples

The call to coordinate our local faith communities into small house church discipleship groups has never been so important. As we take part in live or videoed services of worship, we should also maximise the gift that this moment of being small is. Small really is beautiful. This mindset will be a key way in which we maintain healthy and good relationships as the body of Christ.

Our hope is that each member of our Anglican family has a small discipleship or house church group to join in with – if not, please get in touch with your local parish leader or via our website or Facebook page so that we can connect you, or set you up to run your own group. It can be very easy to do, for example:

• With a couple of other people, make plans to watch the Sunday Diocesan service online or on Freeview 200, and afterwards sit down with a coffee and ring each other to share what you thought about the sermon or scripture. Follow up with further Godly phone conversations over the week to hear each other’s prayer needs.

• If you’re more tech savvy, why not set up a small group to connect once a week to share an online sermon, and then frame up a discussion around what God might be saying to each of you and what you might do about it, and pray together.

Keep an eye out for more resources coming on to our website in forthcoming weeks.

We prioritise the last, the lost and the least

For many of you, this may well be the moment that God is calling you into leadership; leadership in your house church, among your neighbours and among your communities. In this season people  are finding themselves leading when they didn’t lead before. This is the moment of truly being the salt and the light. Be confident in God’s provision for you.   

Finally, there is one particular phrase that binds a bishop to their people: “well beloved in Christ”. Those are the words that shape the formal greetings of a bishop to their people. Living into each of these three postures and priorities is a way in which we experience being well-beloved in Christ.

Let us remember that Jesus came to give us life in all its fullness. Let us therefore be expectant and hopeful in this new season. In the joy of the resurrection, we can come out of this season into a new world, stronger as the body of Christ than we were when our realities changed. Already we are so deeply encouraged and proud when we talk to people about what’s happening within our whānau.

Well beloved in Christ, we are yours faithfully

+Justin and +Eleanor