Napier Baptist

This week is my last week as Pastor of Napier Baptist Church. It is and will be a hard week - goodbyes to people you love and care about are hard. I'm sure there'll be hugs, laughter, memories, tears and thankfulness to God to what God's done amongst us over these last 4 and a bit years. I'm sure it'd be easier to slip away quietly without having to do all the hard stuff of saying good bye, but we wouldn't have it any other way...

Not long after resigning someone said to me "you'll know you're ready to go when you pack up your books." It's probably saying something that I got to the point of having to pack up my books. Now, it's time to go.

Speaking of being "tough as nails" at Easter (see post below), go and have a read of Stu's story of how for pastors, the show must always go on...

The following is a reflection for Good Friday from my favourite preacher William Willimon:

Here's a clip for Mike and our youth...

Hat tip Stu

Ignatius from travis hawkins on Vimeo.

Paul Windsor is organising a preaching forum for experienced and emerging preachers. He's got a group of preachers (both old hands and up and comers) to give presentations on topics relating to preaching in the Kiwi context. He's got so short on speakers that he's roped me into this! The details are below (you can click on it to enlarge the image). If you're from Napier Baptist and you're interested in going to this even, please let me know. If we get a group of 5 of us we can get a discount...

I'm now catching up on 2 months of posting! So, here's some photos of the Christmas Dinner we held at Napier Baptist on Christmas Day. We put it on so that we could share Christmas with people who would otherwise be alone on Christmas Day. This was the 2nd year we've done this and it was nice to see some familiar faces return. It was also nice to share meals with people who pop in and out of our church throughout the year for various reasons. We put a real emphasis on removing any sense of "us" and "them" so that the focus was on all of us sharing a meal and time together. This year we had people from other churches and organisations who thought it was a great idea and wanted to join us and help and any who wanted to help were welcome to (from doctors to mental health patients). It was great for about 80-90 of us to share a Christmas meal and time together.

Last year we agreed as a church to make some raised bed gardens out the back of our church in an area that was a dead space. We intend to grow seedlings and vegetables to give away to those in need or wanting to grow their own vegetables at home. I was amazed at the response of our people. Someon donated wood to build the gardens, another donated as much soil as we needed, another had sold a car and donated $500 towards costs, another donated polythene to line the beds, and others donated their time and energy in creating the gardens:

The Building:

The Soil:

Things Coming Together:

The Finished Product - including irrigation:


When I first posted the idea of a Community Garden, Sheree posted a comment about having grown up in Maraenui and recently becoming a Christian. She saw on the Harry Findlay on the news highlighting the gardening initiative in Maraenui and was moved. Sheree got in touch with me via e-mail and we talked about what we were up to. She then spoke at her church (Windsor Community Church in Invercargill) about the initiative and our Community Garden. She left a box at the back of her church and encouraged people to put seeds and other things that might help our project. When I got back from my holiday at the end of January this parcel awaited me:

When I opened it up, its contents of seeds, trough and food vouchers spilled out along with the desire to keep up to date with being involved! What an amazing gift from some amazing people! Thank you very much Sheree and thank you Windsor Community Church for your gracious gifts and for wanting to partner with us. I am amazed at Jesus' ability to unite people in Napier and Invercargill together to make God's Kingdom Visible. I never expected this would happen via a simple blog. Since then, I've had a local councillor who encouraged us in our Community Garden project pop in to see how things are going. She was touched by the story and she is going to print it in the local community newspaper. I got her to contact Sheree and she agreed to allowing the story to print. Today I had another news reporter contact me and she wants to print the story in her newspaper too! It's great for the church to be getting some good press...

I'm back after a long break in blogging. Part of that has been due to a long holiday and part of that is due to change. The change part is that after 4 years at Napier Baptist I announced my resignation as Senior Pastor to the church 2 Sundays ago to take up the role of Director of Community Life at Laidlaw College (formerly Bible College of New Zealand). It is heart-breaking to be leaving Napier Baptist. We love the church and they love us and things are going very well. But, we feel that God has opened an exciting door of opportunity at Laidlaw College for us to walk through. It's come earlier than we expected and if we could write our own script we would have liked longer at Napier Baptist as there's more that we'd like to be part of. We will carry with us the sense of loss of not sharing further in the life of this brilliant church. However, Jesus is the Lord and Saviour of the church and not me and I reckon he's got things in hand...

I'm excited about the role at Laidlaw with its focus upon shaping the commuity life of the College to be congruent with its vision of equipping men and women to renew their communities
with a faith that is as intelligent as it is courageous. They have a brave 'whole of life' vision at the College and want to form intelligent, articulate, discerning and mature graduates who have integrated their learning and can make a renewing difference in ministry, mission or marketplace. The role brings together my 2 great passions of theological study and pastoral ministry. In saying all that I have to be honest and say I'm more than a little freaked out by it all but I guess Jesus has that in hand too...