About us
Celebrating God ~ Serving Together.
Ashburton Anglicans celebrate our faith in God as one parish with two churches. Together we serve the Ashburton and Tinwald communities and people in the surrounding rural area.
St Stephen’s is in the Ashburton CBD, and its large church, hall and parish office facilities are the hub of parish life. St Andrew’s Tinwald is a worship satellite in a strongly residential community.
We are seeking opportunities to grow as God’s people, and to serve our diverse community.
Our Mission
As people who worship God, we pray and work for the coming of God’s kingdom, on Earth as in heaven.
We are guided in our common life by the Anglican Church’s internationally-adopted Five Marks of Mission:
To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom
To teach, baptise and nurture new believers
To respond to human need by loving service
To transform unjust structures of society, challenge violence of every kind and pursue peace and reconciliation
To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation, and sustain and renew the life of the earth
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Our church life through to April 2025 is guided by a Mission Action Plan (MAP) which recommits ourselves to being a church in growth.
The three goals identified in the MAP are:
To increase spiritual growth – through quality worship, and small group opportunities.
To improve pastoral care – by building stronger relationships between church members, and forming and training an active pastoral care team.
To grow annual attendance at worship - by 5% by the end of 2024, primarily by inviting others to “come and see”.
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Anyone is welcome at worship and social events in the parish.
People are invited to become “friends” of the parish if they wish to receive publicity about services and events.
All the baptised are full members of God’s world-wide Church.
To become a full member of Ashburton Parish, with speaking and voting rights at meetings etc, people must be: baptised, regularly attend worship, and have specifically asked to be on the parish roll. People cannot be a full member of another church at the same time.
