Marilyn’s birthday today; yes I remembered. Marilyn always says that she never married a Pastor, but after nearly thirty years in ministry she has been an amazing support and encouragement. We have had an incredible journey and are thankful for the wonderful church God has given to us.

We would like to thank you all for your support again this year; it has been huge with the building of our new Junior College Campus. We always feel so encouraged and privileged to be your Pastors.
We are so blessed with tremendous Elders who are so supportive and have always been there to encourage the vision of the church.
Thank you to our staff for putting in so much creative energy into our programmes and pastoral care, and making the church such a fun place to work.

We have again put on a special Christmas Production for you this year and will hold two services on Christmas morning at East. I trust that you can attend and join with us as we celebrate our Lord’s birth.
Have a wonderful Christmas.
May God richly bless you,
Luke and Marilyn

We have a new series starting this week called Forgotten Virtues. In the latest North/South magazine there is an article about the huge demand by parents for special character schools like ours. Parents want their children to be taught in an environment where biblical values are taught and lived. We are going to look at some of these values over the next five Sundays.

On Saturday night we celebrate our volunteers. We have hundreds of members who sacrificially give their time every week to serve in the church. They are awesome and as staff we want to let them know how special they are by giving them a great night out. This year all of our campuses will join together including a couple of bus-loads from the North. Pray the weather is nice as we are outdoors.

Tonight we farewell two of our Elders as Jon Gundy and Phil Gaze come off the team, and we welcome onto the team Shane Suili. Shane and his wife Kuini are part of our South congregation. Jon and Bridget are off to the Netherlands for an extended time with Jon’s work Mainfreight. We wish you guys God’s blessing as you travel. What a great adventure.

Marilyn and I were in the South congregation on Sunday. Boyd and Sharon have built a vibrant, exciting congregation that continues to grow. We met up again yesterday with our property guys to see how we can create some more seating as the current capacity of the chapel is close to full. It is a lovely historic building so we need to be sensitive in what we do, but the existing mezzanine gives us scope for some extra seats. It’s a good problem to have.

On Tuesday we held our Elder’s Meeting. We have a great team of dedicated guys over our congregations; Phil Gaze (Chairman), Aubrey Christmas, Jon Gundy, John Roberts, Danie Vermeulen, Roger Carnachan; and I really appreciate the support and wisdom they bring. I would hate to lead the church without them. http://www.elimchristiancentre.org.nz/leaders.html

Tonight we have Introduction to Elim in the East. We have 52 so far registered for this. We hold these sessions about three times a year in each congregation, to introduce new members into our values and the way we lead our church. It then helps new members to find a pathway to become involved and meet others.

This weekend Jeff and Melva Beacham are our guests in the East. Jeff is based in the USA but a Kiwi and has been a great friend of the church for over twenty years. Jeff has had a brush with death due to cancer in 2009. He is still in that battle, so come and be enriched as Jeff shares from his faith and life experiences.