Thought For The Week 23 May 2021

Welcome to our services this Pentecost Sunday. May the Holy Spirit enrich our worship today and bring fresh power from heaven to fuel our lives and witness for the Lord.

This weekend I am in Dunedin attending the National Assessment  Weekend (NAW) with a ministry candidate from Christchurch, Josh Olds. Josh currently works for the Alpine Presbytery developing a new church plant in the Prestons subdivision in Christchurch. We will be showing a short video soon of his work in a series of short videos put together highlighting the new mission initiatives underway in our presbytery.

NAW assesses candidates for ordained ministry and I attend as the Candidate Convener for Alpine. This role involves me in the initial application and assessment of candidates for both nationally and locally ordained ministers. The weekend is a rigorous process of discernment of the gifts, character and calling on each candidate and my role is to provide pastoral support to our candidate.

I have been the Candidate Convener for Alpine since 2014 and have recently handed this role over to someone else. In that time, I have been involved with at least 13  candidates, both NOM and LOM, all of whom are still in ministry except 1 who retired. I’ve had 1 applicant that didn’t make it through national assessment and 1 who didn’t get through the local process. I’m rather proud of that record! It has been an absolute joy to serve our national church in this way and walk part of the journey with our new ministers.

Nga mihi,

Brent