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well kia ora welcome to church my name is cameron i'm the pastor here at village baptist and i'm so glad that you've joined us for this afternoon service today we've got a bit of a special service lined up as we are joined by abel and malo of christians against poverty to hear about what they're doing why they do it and the difference they're making in new zealand but before we go through and we hear from them just a couple of notices from me coming up on the 14th of february that's just two sundays away we've got two special events taking place that i want you to be aware of the first is our tasting sea breakfast and this is a breakfast for anyone who is new to church or wants to find out more about village baptist this is the place for you you get a free breakfast you get to meet all the leaders in church life you need to ask any questions that might be on your mind it runs from 8 30 to 9 30 on the sunday morning so you can have breakfast and then come through for the church service so that's sunday the 14th of february from 8 30 to 9 30 please let us know if you want to come along so we can make sure there's enough food for you and during that same service we've got a baptism service and we have at least three people lined up to get baptized which we are really excited about but if you're a christian and you haven't been baptized before i'd encourage you to really think through that because this is a special moment in our christian journey and i'd hate for you to miss out on what god has for you so think about it if god might be calling you to be baptized this coming sunday service on the 14th of february but as we head through the service would you join with me in prayer heavenly father we thank you that while the bible tells us that the thief comes to steal kill and destroy what we're told by jesus is that he came to give life and life to the full so god we pray that today we might experience the fullness of the life you have on offer and that we might feel led in the ways that you have for us to bring and share that life to others around us so come close to us and lead us we pray in jesus name amen [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] be all else to me [Music] [Music] says [Music] and down with the lord thou my grace and i will [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] my [Music] which is [Music] away [Music] my treasured [Music] [Music] [Music] is one may i reach heaven's joys of bright heaven sun god on my own heart whatever [Music] [Music] still be my vision oh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] good morning village baptist thank you so much uh pastor cam and then obviously al for the introduction uh so as uh yeah as al said and i explained in my uh mihi uh my name is abel and i'm the church partnership uh relations manager for uh christians against poverty we're based up in auckland and i've actually come along with my colleague um everyone knows him as mallor so no this is not a pacific takeover as you can see we're wearing you know you probably were these were these samoan guys in their atari well this is traditional samoan attire and we thought would honour our upbringing by um wearing it we don't normally uh wear this but things as we're uh in the beautiful space well why not we wear our summery skirts you might think um so this is this is us we work for christians against poverty we're not some pacific island organization that have come to take over the hawke's bay um but thank you so much for the warm welcome i spoke to jenny at the back i think she's with the kids at the moment but what a wonderful warm welcome we received this morning so really really want to um just honor again cam and owl and the team and and especially the the church family here at village baptist [Music] right this is new i normally come with a clicker um but apparently it's not going to work here and uh hamish uh we don't even have this in auckland yeah we don't use this sort of stuff in auckland we just got all paper uh so i will try my best to kind of use this ipad and also my notes at the same time but i think where i will start is just to explain a little bit about myself and i explained a little bit about myself and my pepeha as you can see at the back there i have a beautiful wife whom i'm going to take this little chocolate bar because we celebrated 18 years last last week on monday 18 years of marriage thank you very much been together for 21 years married for 18 years last monday like i said and we have five beautiful children shalisa is the eldest she's in high school 16 years of age our only boy azaria takes after his mum so i can't claim to his handsomeness and then we have twin girls italia and kylie and little baby um isabella they're named after my mother um and i was just telling my law like you know waking up in the morning um to the snoring of another man inside the same room is not quite the same as waking up to to my wife and my little baby kind of waking me up so i'm really missing them at the moment um there's nothing that's not about you brother but anyway i'm a samoan as i've explained but i was born in auckland uh new zealand and grew up in the central suburbs has anybody been to auckland before has anybody lived there before right okay so i grew up in greylin again central suburbs of auckland and at the time you know going to school with no shoes kids going to school with no lunch sometimes they'll wear the same clothes you know days on end that was like normal you know i wouldn't even think anything about it in fact i'll never ever forget my very first day at primary school and i think i explained the story um to some of you um when i was last down here but i'll never forget my first day of primary school um i remember that five-year-old first first time and mom packed my lunch egg sandwich sliced carrots and an apple and um i got lunch time opened up my bag there was nothing there and i was like man i'm sure mum i'm sure she packed up this morning so i started crying to the teacher and um i looked down at the mat where all the kids were eating and i see this this boy named penny he was eating an egg sandwich munching on some carrots you know kind of smiling with this red apple and i'm like mate that looks exactly like you know so he stole my lunch mate but the reason why i um explain this story is because um i guess that was sort of my first insight as to what poverty you know looked like and there were so many other kids exactly like penny so explain a little bit more about my life growing up after intermediate things changed a little bit at home dad got made redundant they both had cars so that they can both go to work but i remember that they both had to sell those cars because you know we needed to make ends meet i hated having to walk um twice a week to the local food town as it was called back then and lugging these you know shopping bags i'm home embarrassed because all the kids driving past in their cars and here's me and my sister like you know with these shopping bags um moving forward so like when or after high school after high school things changed even more and we actually lost our house so if any of you who have been to auckland again we lived in the central suburbs of greylin um in greylin and we had and my grandparents had bought a house there and we lost it so it was the family home it's probably worth about 1.9 million today maybe a little bit more than that but we'd lost this house and that was just due to a whole heap of things but i firmly believe that these um i guess events in my life the reason that god brought me here to cap and so when i first explored cap and i wanted to see what they were all about i remember having a look at some youtube videos of testimonies of clients that they had um that had worked with cap to help them you know with their unmanageable debt and i saw these families that were heavily weighed down with debt and i saw them like free you know once they paid all of their debt and i and i saw videos of of relationships that were completely broken but then repaired and restored but the the the clincher for me was watching a story of a single mother two girls and she didn't want anything to do with jesus she knew that it was a christian organization a couple of years into her journey um and she'd become debt-free she'd met the pastor of the church that um was running a cab debt center and he was like hey why don't you come along to the carnival this weekend we've got a carnival on and heaps of food and she's like you guys are just wanting me to come to church you know much things as there's food for the kids you know okay cool uh and then that's it so she goes along and she's like you know waiting for that moment where somebody is going to come and preach the gospel to her but none none of that but what happened was she just felt i guess she was overcome with something when after the carnival they had a little bit of a service and and in the past there was an article and she was like hiding right up in the corner and she explains the story that like as soon as the pastor you know called um for people to come up and give her life she stood up bored her eyes out and then started running down and gave her life and i thought whoa here's an organization that like you know helped her practically come out of debt um but more than that introduced jesus into a life of a single mother with two kids i mean broken families and broken households are difficult enough as they as they are without jesus you know but jesus entered into this situation and um it's a wonderful story she's now in melbourne um but i just knew like you know that this was the place for me and so that really changed the way that i thought about poverty and about how we're called to care for people that story really taught me that we don't really know what's going on behind people's smiles behind their exteriors that are that say hey everything's okay that there are a lot of hurting and broken situations that only jesus can heal and that only he can restore and that the church this group of people that we are his hands and that we are his feats called to minister to people in our communities so this morning um i'm really going to be sharing with you stories about courageous people who have been helped by the local church and christians against poverty and i'm going to share stories of churches reaching out to people in transformational ways and as i share my prayer is that our hearts would be moved of compassion that the holy spirit will stir in us a desire to see beyond people's strong exteriors but to also understand their struggle and to respond with mercy and to respond with love so let's start by looking at a story that jesus shares in luke 10. my lord have you got lieutenant open in your app because i forgot my phone down there sorry [Laughter] but i'll explain the story and it's a it's a well-known story it's a well-known parable so in jesus time jericho was an oasis situated near the jordan river it was a wealthy bustling busy city the road between jerusalem and jericho was heavily trafficked with salespeople worshipers and tradesmen it was a 15 kilometer 1 000 meter descent through dry desert land and it was known among the locals as the way of blood so if you had to return to jericho along this dangerous path that you're looking up over here you'd be thinking about things like the new the need for food or or water and proper clothing to survive the harsh sun and the harsh heat but you would also be thinking about the need to protect yourself stay in groups keep moving keep moving as you come across these narrow passes that were often lined with caves where robbers would be hiding so with that picture in mind just imagine that you're along this road and as you carefully approach a narrow pass you see a heap slumped on the side of the road up ahead as a priest a holy man he moves out of the way to avoid the body behind him you see a levite who moves closer and then he looks but he also steps over and he continues along but jesus doesn't say why they didn't stop it may have been because you know they didn't want to become ritually unclean by touching someone who was left for dead on the ground it may also have been a strong sense of self-preservation because stopping here would have meant risking their own life because there will be robbers again they'll be sitting in the shadows waiting to ambush their next victim but then suddenly you notice a samaritan someone who was considered an enemy to the jews as you may know and as jesus tells the story he says that the samaritan was moved by compassion for this jewish man who had been beaten stripped of his clothes and left for dead on the side of the road and whenever i read this parable i'm struck by the samaritan's extravagant care for this young man the samaritan ignores absolute all danger to himself he kneels down he takes care of the man's immediate physical needs and then he enters into his pain and enters into a suffering and then he brings a healing touch he cleans the man's wounds up bandages him up he also puts his own cloak around him and then he loads them up onto a donkey and then he finds the nearest place for him to rest on this dangerous road he gives two days wages so that the man is fed for cared for and then he also promises the innkeeper that he will cover all of his costs for further help in terms of his recovery so by responding when he did in the way that he did he saved this man's life and who was being a neighbor to this man jesus asks was it the levite was it the holy man it was the one who showed mercy and the one who showed him love it was the one who showed him compassion it was the samaritan who was again the enemy of the jew but what does this mean for you what does this mean for for me what what does this mean for us today well the reality is poverty robs people it strips people of dignity it rips them out of community there are families across new zealand there are families across aotearoa even right here in this community who have been left by the roadside of aotearoa battered beaten down by poverty often caused by debt or generational cycles that seem absolutely impossible to break they may be people that we know or see every day but often it's people that we don't see and it's actually people that we assume are okay it's people like catherine malu kath and marlo who both put on a brave face when they went to work yet they struggled to feed their kids on sixty dollars a week for food and home became a place of resentment for them actually just seeing your souls i've heard this story many times and um i guess it brings back memories of you know myself and my wife and i'm not going to explain anymore but i really really um can relate to catherine marlow's story but it's also emma another cap client who was struggling to find work living out of a little garage with her young son no one to turn to for help and she felt like an absolute failure she felt like a bad mom and it's here beautiful mum trapped in an endless cycle of debt and repayments and credits his phone calls and she wondered if life was even worth living and their situations look a little something like this imagine that after paying your bills you have just sixty dollars a week or eight dollars fifty a day to feed your family of five and that's the amount that many cap clients that are trying to survive on when they make that first call for help but if that's all you have well then what happens if one of the kids gets sick and then the prescription costs 15 and it's a cold week in the middle of winter so you keep the heater on that little bit longer now you have to choose between feeding your children or keeping your house warm so what do you do you skip a meal and soon that becomes a pattern and cap clients tell us that this was their norm two out of three skipped meals on a regular basis there's absolutely no extra for basics like car maintenance there's nothing for school clothes school shoes school fees so you choose to borrow a little bit extra just to put food on the table you borrow a little bit extra so that you can fix your car so that you can even get to work in the first place and then the interest compounds quickly and then the repayments make the weeks the days hard you're tired you're hungry you begin to lose your temper and then you fight more you argue in front of the kids things that we weren't designed for your sense of belonging shifts and then you withdraw from people because if you don't have money for petrol or you can't bring a dish to the family family party or the family gathering what are you gonna do you stay home you stay hidden you stay isolated and over time your identity is shaped by loneliness a feeling of failure helplessness fear perhaps even depression and there is that shame from that social stigma that says that you're not trying hard enough and this is this is really really hard to hear but one in four clients they tell us that they considered or attempted to end their lives just because of debt one client described it like this it is the stuff that breaks you so you know if we look back at luke 4 the parable of the good samaritan a few chapters before that jesus shares about the good um samaritan so just a few chapters before that he announces his public ministry by reading from the prophet isaiah and i'm just going to read that for you it's up on the on the screen there and this is what he says he says that this is who i am and this is why i am here i am here with good news for the poor i am here to bind up the wounds i am here to heal the broken hearts i am here to set the prisoners to set the captives free jesus's actions were always moved and guided by compassion just like we read and just like you heard from the parable of the good samaritan this morning his heart was always turned towards the lost the hungry and the poor and today there is an enemy who wants to rob people who wants people to be defined by their struggle to be defined by their situations and trapped in poverty but jesus came jesus gave his life and jesus rose again to release people that were bound by pain hopelessness and into a life of fullness freedom and joy exactly like the story that i shared about the single mother and two kids her name was christina a life of nothingness into a life of fullness and a life of joy and he has called his church he empowers each and every one of us to tend to to enter into people's pain and to respond with compassion and to bring freedom and transformation into their lives and the fact is here in new zealand you know the government can and they do help social service agencies have a massive role to fill but we we as a church our best place to take care of people both practically and spiritually and this is where cap christians against poverty come in over the past 11 years christians against poverty have partnered with hundreds of local churches throughout new zealand acting as a bridge into the community helping people love their neighbors who have been left on the roadside of aotearoa and today we offer a couple of ministries to help people get out and stay out of poverty but more than that they are ministries that are built on a model of compassionate holistic care that welcome people into the community and introduce them to the transforming love of jesus in 2008 we began with cap debt help and i'm just going to explain a little bit about cap debt help this is a ministry that helps again people like catherine marlowe the story that i shared this morning about christina and her two little girls this is the the ministry that helped them out of unmanageable debt and we have not had a cap debt center here in the hawke's bay for a little over two years and so we know that there's a need um here in the hawke's bay we know that there's a need here in havelock north why do i know that because we're receiving phone calls from clients and i feel that last year 2020 which was an unusual year for us in terms of covert and the lockdowns i feel that and i anticipate that it's probably exacerbated situations across new zealand and there'll be no doubt the same will be here in in in the hawkes bay so cap that help we started that in 2008 and it reaches people who are in poverty because of unmanageable debt as i explained and this is also the help that catherine my law received that emma sia all of these people had received there's a whole team of us at head office and there are also people from local churches who visit clients in their homes after they've made that first call for help they get to know the families they get to take care of those immediate practical needs like filling up their empty cupboards with food um and they also get to pray with families and they get to say that you're a good mom christina you're a great dad my law you're doing an amazing job kath and so they gather all of their debts and bills and then they send it up to us up in auckland up at head office and that's where we have a team that advocate on behalf of over 500 cap client families each and every day so we have a team that negotiate with creditors to lower their interest or to completely wipe off their debt um and then we also build livable budgets so that the clients can begin to pay back their debts at a rate that they can actually afford at the same time have a reasonable you know living there where they can actually have food on the table the cap team worked together with people throughout their two to four year on average uh journey out of debt supporting them through all of their life changes and the church well they provide that holistic care they invite people along to church you know fix their cars babysit all the while wrapping you know these clients uh and their families up in love and support so cap we also work um you know it's not just the debt help um ministry that we have we also work to prevent poverty with a top of the cliff approach called cat money course so are we running this course here at the minute no yeah so um cap money there are a lot of churches there's over 150 churches across new zealand that are running it and again it's it's more a poverty prevention tool with that top of the hill um top of the cliff approach so it's a three session money management course that is run by churches for anyone um in the community for families for the church even uh and over the past nine years there have been i think we checked over last year about 15 000 people have actually completed this cap money course so it's a really great way where a lot of our clients that go through like listing and like catherine malo that have come out of debt and then this is a great tool for them to sort of you know help find um help manage their finances then on in but what i love about the cap services and what i love about working together with the church is that together we provide this platform of hope you know there are a lot of people that are hiding behind you know like we explained behind behind the scenes um but we come along and we give them that hope and it starts with some somebody you know showing up and saying that that we're here to help you that that you're not alone anymore so um after the service uh i think if you had a look at the back um because i was supposed to bring i didn't bring my phone up i didn't bring a book up that i was supposed to bring up um but we have a book um that we're giving away after this it's a story on our founder john kirkby it's a wonderful um you know transformational story when i first read it i was pretty blown away um here's a man that was living in the uk he had everything he had businesses he had homes but he lost everything in a financial collapse in the uk and he ended up living in a in a one-bedroom apartment with his two daughters um broken marriage um but in that time what happened was he met this pastor who entered i guess into his situation invited him along to church he gave his life um and then god really spoke to him and said you know what you've got all this understanding and all this knowledge and acumen about finances etc etc and why don't you start up a you know an organization he basically started up christians against poverty so it's a wonderful story about our founder john kirkby um if you're keen to grab a copy of that we'll be um you know giving them away um all i need is you're probably wondering what those forms are on on the seat if i can just get you to fill out um just your details so that i can go back to head office and say that you know john and kath took a copy of the book they'll be greatly appreciated but if you want a free copy just fill out your name and phone number please um but what i wanted to do now and we didn't plan this we only planned this last night is because my law is actually here with me to help support um i actually want him to come up and and share his story so what we'll do is we'll play uh catherine marlow's story and then i'd love it if you can come up and share please brother um so this is captain marlo's story [Music] i made a lot of poor choices there to be honest looking back trying to keep up with the fads and the joneses and i was trying to keep up with latest phones and mag wheels for my for my car and things of the like but there was a time where we used to go to the casino a lot to try and chase after the jackpot and whatnot and thinking hey this is going to be our answer and we just used one credit card to pay another creditor and it was endless nights of analysing of juggling of warring and there was constant phone calls we got sick of the phone calls we just paid what they wanted felt like we were the only people that they were setting the debts to more often than not we'd have 60 dollars there and how we were going to spend that 60 on food that was just the way that it was we accepted the fact that 60 was normal to buy food for five kids i had approached him on a couple occasions to try and get more involved with our finances and i'm not sure if it was a responsibility thing or denial but he sort of shut shut me down and so i started to resent him i didn't so much take it out on malu but i did find myself in a stressed situation that i started to lash out on the kids i believe they were quite fearful of me because of my stress and how i bottle it up all inside and unfortunately they were they were the they were the victims of my resentment towards my husband there was a friend of ours she was sharing that they were having a fifth birthday for their daughter and she was so excited and she said i've got savings i've got savings and i said how did you get there how did you be able to save on your thai budget and she said i'm with cap and we've been with them for six months and i thought wow i need that we need that i run the client services the first phone call was i was a bit hesitant to ring on the receiving end of that phone call was a willing person that understood exactly what it was needing and it was like god was throwing me a lifeline from that first phone call the day that nyari came to our house i was a bit reluctant but i was ready i was over the stress i was over the struggle god's peace came with no when she walked through the door the one thing that i felt with her was that she wasn't judging us for a while while living she wasn't judging us that we used to gamble she wasn't judging us that we overspent here we were paying one credit card off to pay another credit card you know she she just sat there and she took all the information in and from that day on we were so much lighter so much better there was hope for us we were drawing closer to one another in terms of our relationship our love for each other she brought back hope in our family when nirei came with our budget the one thing that stood out for me was the food budget i actually said too she's got it wrong it's too much for food and she sort of looked at me and thought no that's what a family of your size actually needs we were so used to making do with sixty dollars it was the first time that we actually put ourselves our kids as top of the list the creditors were the top of the list yeah the credit cards were the top of the list but actually our kits were the priority our relationship has just grown from strength to strength from that point it's got better because i'm no longer worrying about dead i could see our love developing for one another because of what cap has enabled us to do to take that burden off in terms of the financial burden and just focus more on our marriage cap was sending us financial statements at the bottom of the financial statement you'd see the time frame i'll just constantly count down the days of when um we were going to be debt-free so april 2015 we were debt-free be free set free the best news we've ever got there's nothing holding us back anymore well every testimony of what god has done through cap for that ministry and there is hope you know there is light at the end of the tunnel my children are so important to us and to generations to come and the amazing work that kat does has changed our lives it's changed our world it's changed the people that we are we're no longer struggling we're no longer in bondage we can do that to our family can you imagine other families in this nation that we call home [Music] and thank you for caring about us thank you for caring about us [Music] so when we came to this church abe was talking about pastor cam so he was talking highly of this person i was like man who is this guy is he like jesus or something and so anyway when we came here i was taking photos i was like man god's doing some amazing work in this community and then i heard this voice i turned around i saw pastor kim i was like i know this guy so we actually went to church together his previous church and he actually pastored my kids and so man just seeing what god's doing in his life and using them powerfully in this area because the bible the bible says you know faith with the little right and he obviously bless you a little more so you've under definitely a good leadership and so thank you cam for having us come here and um i guess talk about the mahi that we do for myself so the five children you see there five kids is faith hope trinity grace and emmanuel faith is that's her third year now at university i hope she finished school with epsom girls in auckland so she's entering university this year and through this ministry we're breaking chains and we're taking our family to a whole new level that's that's a milestone no one in my family's been to university no one in my wife's family has been to university again it's accredited to cap obviously god but through that cap ministry it's enabled us to have this kind of mindset with in terms of stewardship of money and just setting the kids up for for a better future um so coming out of debt it's been six years now that we've been out of debt my family and i and one of the interesting things that we've discovered is we want to give back to the local community and hence the reason why we go up and down new zealand just talking about the good things that the lord has done in the hope that the church will partner with our ministry and that they will also set up debt centers i'm not too sure if there's one in this area but it'll be awesome if this church has one i can see it's a probably an affluent i guess community but you can also house one to help others other surrounding communities that are find themselves in that kind of situation there in auckland south auckland which cam knows is a lot of dysfunctional families and part of which of the the function of dysfunctional families is because there's never enough money they don't know how to manage their their financial side of things properly and this kind of stuff hasn't been taught to them from an education level from a schooling perspective and so this is where we've come into the play of to give people tools you think of like myself i'm a center manager in auckland for our church life church and so i run a little small team and we go out into the community to help people so the jehovah's witness they stand at the door and they knock but they stand at the door our services we have the opportunity to go inside the house sit with them assess their situation and trying to find practical ways to help them but at the same time the opening for the gospel comes through that way so we've seen many people come to churches i can see there's some empty chairs here that may be an opportunity to reach out to your local community to expand the the church membership as well but again it said it's left at the powers that be i would love to see this church open up a center manager to reach out to people it may not be for this area maybe for other areas out there but it's to give people hope so if cap could do this for my family and we're just one of many can you imagine what impact that will have in this community or even the surrounding areas of hawke's bay but thank you abe for this opportunity um again all praises and honor and glory goes back to god for sending this awesome ministry to this nation um now we'll see now it's it's 12 years and we're seeing like rapid growth in terms of people getting involved but not only that it's it's bringing souls to the kingdom and it's so practical especially using the arm of financial literacy so yeah that's me guys um [Applause] thanks hey mom thanks brother i really really appreciate that so i don't normally get anybody to come up and talk but seeing as i'm here with the man himself um you know it only just makes sense to sort of like hear from my law and um you know i've been blown away and i and i continue to be blown away every time i i hear their story or why i watch the video on their family and like he explained a couple of girls at university now and he just shared this morning i did enjoy waking up to your snoring bro so but it was even better that he goes hey i just got a text from uh hope that's the second girl uh he made it to university and i'm thinking wow that's so cool so my kids are still in high school and you know for a lot of us you know that's what we really want for our children to you know set them up for a better future in that and um so yeah i think thanks a lot again also for um uh sharing um and as marlo mentioned you know we've been 12 years now and in new zealand here in aotearoa and in that time christians against poverty you know together with local churches across across new zealand you know more than 73 it's about 74 million dollars of bills and debt have actually been repaid by clients or completely written off 1565 people have gone completely debt-free but this is what's really good about that is that 93 of people that become debt-free they stay debt-free so along their two to four year journey and also with that cat money ministry that i talked about that top of the cliff approach um you know these people uh have picked up skills and and disciplines throughout their um two to four year journey just like kath and my law six years they've been debt free and they're still going strong and they're still able to provide for their family and they're not in debt and they don't owe money um which is which is amazing and and it just shows that with a little bit of help you know and and some disciplines that go along the way you know people can can overcome and stay stay in that position um and along the way as well we don't pay a dollar cap does not pay a dollar it is the client it is kath and my law and those families that that do all the hard work we don't we don't pay a dollar now i think one of the best statistics or numbers that i am i'm grateful for um is that as my law said this is a wonderful way for us to go into people's homes this is this is a ministry that people are saying you know come into my vulnerability come into my space of um you know hardship they're opening up their doors and invite inviting us in and so over the last 12 years 1323 people have given their lives to christ because of christians against poverty but more importantly because of the local church now i want to say that again 1 323 people have given their lives you know but think about this as well that's we're just counting individuals but there are so many um and people you know uh in and around that person that are affected by there are families you look at catherine marlow and their and their five children it's not just the one person there are so many others that are actually impacted by that so that number is not quite accurate if you know what i mean but every day people are being set free from bondage of debt and poverty and stepping into our life field of freedom and joy and this is the power of the church you and me giving our time our resources our extravagant compassion for our neighbors who need it the most so how can you respond today well as we've sort of touched on we are really wanting a center here in the hawke's bay and and just having a look at village baptists online some it has some beautiful people here that you know can really step into a space like this um but i'm really trying not to sort of like come on guys just really wanting to see an opportunity there's an opportunity for us to be able to reach out to these people that need it the most as i've explained but that has gained us the power of of us of of us being god's hands and feet so again how can you respond today well first of all if you have seen yourself in these stories if you can see yourself in the situation obviously if you're struggling you know we're going to be here for a little while after after the service so by all means come and talk to us at the back um we will have an information for you and and we can obviously help help you out um as much as we can but secondly if you've been thinking you know i want to help our neighbors right here in um havelock north again we're really really hoping that um you know we can open a death center here so if you really feel like um you know god's maybe whispering maybe this might be a ministry that you could possibly see yourself um you know working within um i'd love to hear hear from from you guys out the back um but again ellen and camera here as well you know it's it's it's not something that you okay i'll go do that and then think it's something that's really really going to be easy or something um but you know we've obviously been um working at this for a little while now we've been talking about it and you know praying i you would not believe it but the prayers that that the 50-plus people up at head office have that we continuously pray for for our churches every thursday we get together but then you know as individual teams as well within the greater organization we're praying every day um for our churches and that um and not just you know with cap ministry but just with ministry in general you know i firmly believe that i'm going off script here i firmly believe that we're we're in a time you know where the church where the church really needs to step up in so many areas of society you know we we see the brokenness across not just our nation we see it across the world look at the look at america at the moment you know the beacon of hope um for the western world but we look at where they are and um they're very divided and i feel that like you know in so many ways we as the church need to step up and and and and bring together that division and and bring together that you know that the fractured uh nature of of our country because you might not see it but i firmly believe that you know the i can go on and on and on but i believe that we're called for a purpose so we're going to wrap up um what i'm going to ask you now is that you would have seen those forms on your seats and um so we have a um an army of more than 4 000 uh life changers and these are people that that give generously uh to the work of cap so this week there are going to be probably about 80 people um that will make that first brave call this is the number of people that call us every week um but there are going to be about 80 odd people that are going to give us a call and they will want to begin their journeys out of debt so these are mums and these are dads that are living in desperate situations as we've obviously heard some of the testimonies today and when you give you know you will receive um they will receive free help and support for as long as it takes them to get out of debt so i said on average three to four years but we will walk alongside people for as long as it takes them to get out of debt so whether it's five dollars a week a cost of a coffee 20 a month you know it will make a life-changing difference and again you will join an army of thousands of people generous people that are giving um to the cause of cap it takes three of us giving 33 a month for one family to receive the full free support that they need to work their way towards their debt-free day and there's probably one or maybe even two of you that can possibly give maybe a hundred dollars a month and journey alongside one precious family so my question is you know will you give today and every time we come to churches you know give first to village baptists give first to your local church we are about praying for our churches to grow we are about our churches to prosper um and so first of and foremost but i'm just asking if you have that ability to be able to generously give towards the work of cap you know come and see us fill that form out and and we'll be happily i'm happy to take that away with us to to auckland um so as you consider your response um but especially to do with uh running a cat ministry here in in the hawke's bay here at village baptists um i guess i just want us to take a moment just reflect on what we've uh talked about today and then i'll close us off of prayer i can see some hungry people out in the audience but just think about it and and then i'd love to close us off with prayer before i close the sofa again i just really want to thank you so much for your hospitality and you're welcome for ma lo and i really enjoyed this morning and hope we can um catch up outside um after the service uh we'll give you our cards as well if you don't want to speak to us because we're wearing skirts then you can call us um on our numbers on our cards and that after this but i would like to just close us off in prayer let us pray dear heavenly father we just want to honor you lord in the highest we want to give you the praises father god because you so thoroughly deserve to be praised and to be worshiped in the highest because you are our creator you are the giver of life the architect of the universe father god and we are just truly grateful lord for this opportunity that my lord and i have been afforded to come here and speak to the village baptist family but also just to share share some of the testimonies of the impact that you are making father god through christians against poverty but also through local churches across alterador and so we want to thank you for another blessed opportunity that you've given us that we may be here in the beautiful hawke's bay speaking to um you know the village baptist family and and as you know some of them make um a decision as some of them think about whether they want to get into uh a cap ministry whether they want to become um supporters and generously give father god i just really pray lord that um that your spirit moved within us father god that all the decisions that we make uh are spirit anointed that it's not something that we are just going to to do because somebody says it's it's not a decision that we're going to make because we feel that we need to but we really believe father god that it needs to be spirit anointed and so we pray father god that if there are individuals in within this whanau that are wanting to take up that uh challenge father god in running a cat ministry here father god i just really pray lord that um you let your voice be known father god i just really pray a blessing upon cam the family and especially the village baptist whanau that you continue to work within this beautiful work that you that we see that we witness father god and and we just pray lord that you continue to grow the the work here at uh village baptist father god may your blessings may your covering be upon them father god may your anointing be upon them lord may you be with them father god through the 2021 season that we are entering father god um whatever it is that you have destined for them father god we just pray that you blessed and abundance lord and we pray this in jesus name amen [Music] [Music] [Applause] the fountain i drink from oh he is oh he [Music] you is good [Music] yeah oh he is oh he is oh you are good you are [Music] [Music] um [Music] never [Music] never gonna [Music] never gonna let me [Music] one more time [Music] [Music] you're never gonna let me down you are good [Music] you are good [Music] good lord you are good you are good [Music] well that brings us to the end of the service today i'd encourage you that if you feel god speaking to you or leading you through the message you heard today to be involved in christians against poverty in some way i'd encourage you not to ignore that to find out what ways you can partner with christians against poverty be that through volunteering or financial support they're making an incredible difference in new zealand and we look forward as a church to partnering with him in the years ahead but whatever your week holds may you go on to with the blessings of the father the son and the holy spirit amen