The most significant all-together gathering each year for Baptist churches in New Zealand is our annual National Hui (aka Assembly), this year being held at Manukau City Baptist Church, 2-4 November. Each local Baptist church around the motu can send delegates as their representatives as we worship God, celebrate, and engage together on issues to do with the life and work of the Baptist ‘tribe’ of Christians in Aotearoa New Zealand.
This year the Hui theme is Baptists shaping our future | ngau nui, ngau roa, hei ngao matariki. Whether it's the next steps on our treaty journey, our young people, the constitution that shapes us, our posture in engaging with difficult conversations, stewarding our assets, ensuring our people and places are safe, or determining our hand-carved mission… it’s time to take some big bites to ensure gospel renewal of people and places in Aotearoa and beyond. The main sessions at Hui have pre-reading to help get Hui delegates up to speed, as well as to keep the ‘Team of 40,000’ Baptists informed on what is happening on their behalf at Hui. Below is the pre-hui read for:
Arotahi (New Zealand Baptist Missionary Society)
Kelly Enright is Engagement and Communications Manager for Arotahi (NZBMS).
Arotahi – the morning after
At Friday evening of National Baptist Hui 2022, we launched Arotahi! We called it an “evening with a mission”, and it feels fitting that at Hui 2023, we would gather on Saturday morning to take a look at what happened next; the morning after Friday. For those of you present with us last year, it was a pretty momentous occasion where, together, we turned an exciting page in our 137-year-old story.
Well, it’s nearly been 138 years – and we think it’s time to check in on the steps we have made together. Where has God been hand–carving paths for us to walk? Who is walking those paths and how do we fit into that? What ever happened with some of those exciting, new mission endeavours we spoke about last year?
On Saturday morning, we’ll be providing you with an Arotahi Partner Impact Report that will include each of our global partners. We’ll hear stories of impact and transformation from our brothers and sisters in Aotearoa all the way to Bangladesh – after all, it is so important for us to know the stories we are a part of. As we fly around the globe together and are inspired by what God is doing in the neighbourhoods of the world, we will ask you to look afresh at your commitment to, and partnership in our collective Baptist mission.
We’ll be sharing a bit more about our recent Council for International Development member status, our New Zealand government approved Overseas Donor status, and some hand–carved global partnerships that are underway. We also have a bunch of exciting updates on some intergenerational projects – think short-term global experience teams, overseas skilled placements, and brand new missional resources for our Baptist kids!
We look forward to each of you bringing along your own stories, your own fingerprint to this conversation – and even more so, we look forward to where God will lead us all next as Arotahi. See ya Saturday!
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Hui Programme
The Hui programme is online here.
Other Pre-Hui Reads
A posture of humility for difficult conversations (pre-Hui read: Big Bite 1) by Christa McKirland
A new way of making decisions together (pre-Hui read: Big Bite 2) by Peter Crow and Wayne Schache
A mechanism to ensure our people and places are safe (pre-Hui read: Big Bite 3) by Geraldine Crudge
An alignment of our assets for gospel renewal (pre-Hui read: Big Bite 4) by Charles Hewlett and Wayne Schache
A Baptist way to make decisions (pre-Hui read: Big Bites 1-4) by John Tucker
He Koronga Maatou – We have a dream (pre-Hui read: Baptist Māori) by Luke Kaa-Morgan
He Rito: The future of the church (pre-Hui read: Our young people) by Ethan Miller
Photo: Hui 2023 artwork
