Hi Life Church family,

M3 2026 has real significance in my heart. Every year is special, but I feel this year is significant.

Let me take a moment to explain it... We have titled our year ‘Together’ as we felt God emphasise for us afresh that we are ‘one church in three locations’, and that gives us a collective strength that would not be achievable on our own. The order God gave us was Mission, Mercy, Momentum when it came to our focus on giving. Mission that introduces people to the good news of the gospel, Mercy that meets the needs of God’s people and our communities (and opens the heart to Mission), and Momentum that comes as a result of keeping the priorities in order!

When we began planting campuses, we saw how it widened our collective impact and how much better we were together than if we went it alone. Together we have collective faith and resources to take great strides forward for the Kingdom of God. I want to talk about faith for a moment. This year for our Selwyn Campus we are beginning our building project by lodging a consent. This means stepping out on our journey to invest an estimated $5.5m and to establish a home that will see Kingdom impact beyond this generation. Is this blind faith? No, it’s informed faith. Sometimes we make faith decisions that require us to step into something with no certainty of the outcomes, but informed faith means we do not enter this season of building blindly.

The faithfulness of each campus over many years has informed our faith that we CAN achieve this faith target of a building together. Over the past seven years we have built two community buildings - one at La Vida and one at QE2, as well as upgraded La Vida facilities and land purchased for Selwyn’s future home at a combined cost of $3.3m. This has been achieved through people’s faithfulness to Jesus by giving through M3. And looking more historically, The La Vida Centre was opened in 2006 after a long journey of faithful obedience and God’s provision. The bricks and mortar of buildings are not the goal, they are centres of mission and mercy. And our church history serves as a signpost to this generation – our church family has done it before, and we can do it again. Your faithfulness and God’s goodness inform our faith decision to GO FOR IT this year.

Our faith is in God, and He has always worked through the faithfulness and generosity of Kingdom-focused people. I know for many of you this truly requires faith year after year and we will never be able to express our gratitude to every person who has said ‘yes’ in faith to the Lord.

We are excited by everything we can achieve together in Mission, Mercy and Momentum for the expansion of God’s Kingdom because of our annual thanksgiving faith offering season.

All our love and gratitude,
Carl and Ange.