Just so we are really reading together, this is the Lead Pastor, mostly communicating in the First-Person.
This story actually begins a lot further back than you may expect; well back and beyond the beginnings of two thousand and eighteen. We shall have to pick a date. The year is AD 2013. In a land far, far away, from the dominant continents on planet Earth. There is a growing internal combustion pressing within and toward the writing of something of ultimate value inside the man.
I am not sure you ever intentionally walk away from an All Blacks context. This is Rugby Union. Of course, this is not entirely true, but it is generally more after you have been fully whet through with this experience. And it has rung you like an off-the-hook telephone without voice-mail. That simile was much simpler when I was a boy. Back on track. No matter what you may have to potentially change in the fleeting, you would always do your best to fit that in, like a snuggly. Then the unexpected happens. The curtain gets drawn for the final time. And you lose the Rugby World Cup on drop-goals.
Not really. But, an unexpected ending would provide a new beginning, with a fresh and purposeful opportunity. And it was so.
Relatively speaking, the first 2013 draft would be more mustard seed of the greater substance of 2018, and the written flourishing of this future potential. This is not the same as saying it was insignificant. 150K wordcount and change, thank you very much. But still, this shape was setting the stage for the abundance of time to grow into a greater something.
Fast forward thousands upon hours and oodles of words; this document has developed, and so has the future shape.
It had been becoming progressively clearer if this document was ever going to obtain the type of gravitational-into-life as desired, it would likely be first activated through the concreteness of community, with which to platform. This took some time to clarify. I had broached the church planting subject in the previous couple years; put out feelers, but no connections and no doors had opened, so we continued to plod-the-hustle; forward; leaning into the breeze; if only it would blow through our hair; those that resolutely remained for this future Lead.
And, into the third, this year would prove more than charming in person.
In 2018, we committed to taking the leap. I say, we, because this is always a family affair. The providential time was now. I have personally described it like thus: I was prepared to boundingly wail off the edge of the existential cliff, with my parachute packed for landing. And if the parachute didn’t open as expected, I was content to live the always sure providences of God, and bodily kiss terra-firma.
I have on my wall these words from Jim Elliot: “When it comes time to die, make sure that all you have to do is die.” This was not the time to waver between two opinions. The King whanau was church planting. Through this period, there was a hoped-for locational context, quantifiably encouraging the timing of the leap. Only future days will confirm whether this connection has future consequence. We wait. No matter, in 2019, the local church life-movement, RELOVUTIONARY, will have communal living oxygen through human company.
This story is organic and unfolding. It is an adventure of the Gospel-centred missional kind. There will be much more to share as this finds greater expression; as we truly enter AD 2019.
I have been asked if I received a specific call from God. My initial response was in the form of, “Now what do you mean?” There has been no audible voice. No cloud-writing in the sky. No email signed from God. While my door is definitely open to God doing the distinctive, from a human frame of reference, I am more inclined by the persistence of this angle, and the trajectory of this journey, into my existential. I do not have God in a box. He has surprised me many times in the most recent before, which means I will do my best to live my small part of this plan, trusting Him to do the humanly-speaking, heavy lifting, throughout.
This means we are praying Christ will deem fit to build His Church through this RELOVUTIONARY impress. This is the only way God-glorifying-good can come about. Up to me, think vapour, and chasing after wind.
And God may be calling-you-out or drawing-you-in to play a part. Don’t expect this in the form of correspondence about to self-destruct in five seconds. If your online travels have created more of an internal alert; if you want to be part of something joyfully serious, do make contact. Consider your life and times. Everybody hungers to live with an undiluted compelling intensity. Let me suggest there is nothing that demands this life and these times like God’s calling, in Jesus Christ, of every fibre of your being.
We hope and pray the future history of RELOVUTIONARY will be more like one glorious His-Story!
Today, this is still a tale to be told. We ask you to stay the course. Onward we go as we seize the day.
Kia Ora Aotearoa and Hello World!
For the Fame of His Name