This year has been one marked by consolidation. Having had some years of volatility, we entered 2024 with clarity on the way we wanted to go about making disciples, a new Vision statement, and new Location Pastors for Porirua, Hutt, East and West. We believed we were heading in the right direction but with significant work to do.

“He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ. To this end I strenuously contend with all the energy that Christ so powerfully works in me.” Colossians 1:28-29

These verses were used as a backdrop for our first leaders’ orientation where we gathered the Board, staff, pastors and local leaders from across the whole church. They describe the dual pursuit of working strenuously to make progress towards our goals and seeking God for the enabling and empowering that only He can bring.

This pursuit of God can be seen in our progress in a couple of areas. We’ve loved seeing a growing intentionality with and dependence on prayer. We completed a dedicated prayer room at the start of the year which is accessible 24/7 by our church community and other churches around the city. We also developed a relationship with 24/7 by joining with their Pentecost Prayer Initiative in May and hosting 24/7 New Zealand’s first public gathering in September. There has also been a pronounced emphasis on the glory of God throughout the year whether it be themes of our whole-of-church Together gatherings or the series we did on following Jesus wholeheartedly. All of these point to the critical nature of prayer and worship in our desperate need for God to move in power.

On the work side, we made some important additions to the team as we welcomed Emma Roche and Josiah Nevell to lead the Night and Mt Vic Locations, respectively. We are grateful to Melissa Rowan who led Night in the interim and pray that God blesses her as she heads back to teaching. We also welcomed Pete Crosson as the new Youth Pastor, Piper Clare as an Associate Youth Pastor and Anna Watson as our Life Groups Pastor. These new leaders are vital for investing in the disciple-making culture for both our young people and wider church. A key part of Anna’s role has been to begin implementing our new disciple-making rhythms for Life Groups which will help to both strengthen and multiply followers of Jesus.

Finally, 2024 saw the launch of a new Emerging Leaders program. This reflects a commitment to invest in the next generation of leaders for this church, new churches we may plant, and the wider church across the country.

2024 has been a year of consolidation that provides a good platform to begin looking ahead to where God is leading us. We continue to be amazed at the people God has gathered at this church and for all that people contribute in terms of their time, talents and treasure. May the Lord continue to enable us to strenuously contend for the things he cares about.

Much love,
Simon & Jenny Gill
Senior Pastors

As we reflect on another year at The Street, a picture from Exodus continues to encourage us. When Israel left slavery in Egypt, they found themselves in an impossible situation. Unable to go back because of the Pharaoh’s mighty army bearing down on them and unable to go forward because of the Red Sea, no one in the world could help them. In this environment of great fear among the people, Moses addressed the people:

“Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance of the LORD” (Exodus 14:13).

And as they stood they got to see God make a way for them to move forward through what had previously been impossible. No wonder the response of the people was “Who among the gods is like you, LORD? Who is like you—majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders?” (Exodus 15:11).

For all the hard work and effort that has gone into this year, we found ourselves in an impossible situation. Traction with services in local communities but no obvious way of seeing them led or supported. And yet as we cried out to God, he provided seemingly out of nothing. It is evident that God drew people into leadership roles and had been preparing them behind the scenes. By the end of the year, we had grown from three to six locations, pioneered a new model of location leadership and pivoted a staff team to support the growing number of locations. This shift was evident in the two whole church gatherings that we held in the year. At the first we shared the need for God to call people to leadership roles and by the second ‘Together’ in November, we commissioned seven new people into Location Pastor or Associate Location Pastor roles. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance of the Lord.

As a church of six locations, it has been important to widen our pool of input from churches across the world who are further along in a church planting journey. We have been grateful for the input of Exponential in Australia, the Resource Church movement from the UK, and the opportunity to be a part of a cohort of churches in Aotearoa New Zealand on church planting. While these relationships have been helpful for the skills and strategies that we have learned, an overriding takeaway has been the relentless need to seek the LORD together in prayer as only he can build his church.

As a church of six locations, it has also been important to have crystal clarity on the core issues of mission, vision and values. In looking at our timeless purpose expressed in our mission statement—“Helping People Become Total Followers of Jesus Christ”—it was evident we needed to have a common understanding of what constitutes a total follower of Jesus Christ. By returning to the core principles of the Great Commandments and the Great Commission, we settled on four words and phrases that will shape every area of our church in years to come. We are striving to become a church of Upwards - We Love the Lord, Inwards - We Love One Another, Outwards - We Love the Lost, and Onwards - We Multiply. We believe that as we pursue the simple and repeatable rhythms that underpin these phrases, we will grow towards our fresh vision of who we must become: A disciple-making movement transforming Wellington and the world with the good news of Jesus Christ.

We are so grateful to God that he has not called us to follow Jesus in isolation. Instead, we are on this journey as one church made up of a diverse group of people who love Jesus and who are using the gifts and resources to help build up the body towards maturity. To everyone who has prayed, led, served, encouraged, and given, we are so grateful for the part you play. May we continue to give all that we have for the sake of the glory of God and his fame in our city and beyond.

Much love,
Simon & Jenny Gill
Senior Pastors

The apostle Paul was a man who knew what it was like to be pushed and pulled by different circumstances and yet it was this movement that led hm to a profound conclusion:

“But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere” (2 Corinthians 2:14).

Paul knew that while he was being pushed around by circumstances, God was at work spreading the message of Jesus through his ministry. As we emerged from the most significant Covid restrictions in the early part of this year, there is a sense in which we have been pushed around. And yet our confidence is in how God has worked through the very circumstances we would never have chosen and has done so for his own purposes and glory.

It was therefore important for us to learn everything we could about the church from what we had been through. Times of trouble often lead people to turn in or shrink back and we were determined to do neither. We were concerned at how much Covid revealed a lack of depth in discipleship and in connection with one another. Rather than try to bring back everything we did pre-Covid, we felt that the future needed to be focused on the main things like a simple devotion to Jesus, a commitment to discipleship, a determination to share the Gospel more broadly, and a deepening of our service of the poor and marginalised in our city.

Covid also brought about an opportunity to progress our multi-site strategy more quickly than we could have previously imagined. The local gatherings that began as a response to vaccine passes gained traction and afforded deeper connection among people and greater accessibility to people in the local community. By the end of the year, there was a determination to keep these going alongside a great need to develop and establish strong and sustainable local leadership.

2022 was a year that we would not have designed for ourselves and it did not pass without significant challenges. Yet there is a sense that it was a year we needed because it enabled God to bring about a direction that we would not have thought possible. As he continues to build his church and use us to spread the aroma of him everywhere, may he grant us the faith to keep trusting him in the midst of uncertainty and change.

Much love,

Simon & Jenny Gill
Senior Pastors

2021 was a year of challenges, learning and exploring new ways to be the Church. Our Annual Report is now available - have a read of our highlights, stats and financials.

What a year 2020 was! Our Annual Report is now available - have a read of our highlights, stats and financials.