10th Anniversary Celebration

The row of my teens at the combined youth event- it was such an awesome night! 

Guest speaker: Clint Ussher- feel free to pray for him and his wife Jamie as they are planning to church plant in Christchurch, NZ

This weekend is the celebration of the Wesleyan Methodist Church of New Zealand (WMCNZ) 10th anniversary as a movement... it has been quite exciting, celebrating the past and looking forward. In just 10 years it went from one church and through planting and churches joining is now up to 23 churches, with a church plant planned in Christ Church. AH, it is so awesome I get to be a part of this movement!!

Tonight was the combined youth group night- churches from all over Auckland- Tongan, Fijian and Samoan brought "items" which were action-songs (aka awesome cultural dances to music) and the Pakeha (Eurpoean) churches brought some worship and Clint Ussher (and Australian living in New Jersey who is will be planting a church in NZ in 2012) came and spoke. It was powerful!

He talked about having a "whatever" attitude; he created a working definition of "whatever" taken from 1 Samuel when Jonathan was speaking to his armor bearer about going to pursue the enemy army without any real assurance that God would help them. The armor bearer's response was not one of resistance but instead, he said "whatever you wanna do, I am game for" (my translation). Clint related that to us, that God is looking for ordinary people to follow God with a "whatever" attitude, that whatever God wants from them we would freely give. Our lives, ambitions, goals, that we would fully surrender to God. It really resonated with me, my co-leader and my teens. Really pumped to see the conversations that will come from this night. ThankyouLord.