This week, Baptists from faith communities across Aotearoa are gathering to help shape our future. Here's a snapshot of what went down at the Baptist National Hui 2023 on Friday night and day 3 of our gathering (Saturday, 4 November).
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Celebration Night!!!
Our newly registered leaders!
Worship and Word
Cliff Thompson from The Render Gathering delivered the Word from Matthew 28:18-20, encouraging us to go boldly after what God has called us to. When we are lost-people-centric, this becomes a powerful scripture. Following Jesus' command to go requires stepping out of the familiar, making ourselves available, working with people, and getting our hands dirty. MAKE CAKE.
Arotahi
We gain as well as give when we partner with our Baptist family overseas. We have a unique gift to give as a bi-cultural people.
The Arotahi team pleaded for another generation to continue our relationship with the community in Bangladesh. We're already part of a rich story that goes back multiple generations, and we can't walk away from it. In these faith communities, there is a yearning for continued relationship with New Zealand Baptists because we've walked so long together in this story.
Baptists being Baptists
Big Bite 3: A mechanism to ensure our people and places are safe
For more information about this Big Bite and the way forward we discussed, click here.
Big Bite 4: An alignment of our assets for gospel renewal
We discussed the potential of our assets to help solve significant issues and bring gospel renewal in our local communities. For more information on this Big Bite, click here.
Communion
Thank you, Baptist whānau, for coming together in the shaping of our future. A future, we were reminded, that our God shapes, a future we join him in. We hope these discussions will overflow into your local faith communities so we can all be a part of the shaping and resulting fruit of the following steps we take as a movement.
There will be follow-up articles detailing the discussions that came out of our Hui on the Baptist NZ app and website.
Photos: By Morgan Dews
