Growing and Going: Hukanui Plants a Church in Whatawhata

Hukanui Bible Church in Hamilton has recently commissioned and sent a team to plant a new church in Whatawhata.

Pastor Dan Pettersen says church planting has long been part of the vision.

“On my first day at Hukanui one of the elders was giving me a tour—the church was about to start a building project—and he said to me, ‘we’re a grow and go church, we don’t intend to become a megachurch, once we finish these extensions we’ll be looking to plant somewhere.’

“A few years later we were in an elders meeting looking at what it means to be a grow and go church. As we read Acts 26—where Paul recounts being called to the Gentiles during his conversion experience on the road to Damascus, we were reminded that there was about 14 years between Paul’s conversion and his being sent out with Barnabas from the church at Antioch.

“In Acts 13 we see the Holy Spirit says to the prophets and teachers of the church, ‘separate to me Paul and Barnabas for the work to which I have called them’, and so we observed this was the pattern of Scripture—that the Holy Spirit will call someone to come and do this work, and then He will let us know. Either God is putting it on someone now, or He will do so in the future. So we prayed for God to be at work.

“Some time later I got a phone call on a Sunday afternoon from a guy wanting to catch up for coffee, and he said, ‘I might bring a couple of others with me’. It turns out a group had also been thinking about what it means to grow and go, praying together regularly. They said they felt like God might be leading them to consider church planting. As elders we realised this was God at work and began to work from there.”

Dave Gow was one of those praying about what it means to “grow and go”:

“I’d heard the vision for being a grow and go church which I was excited about. During the covid season and as our church building came together we were meeting for church in four locations—so we got a taste of what a smaller church would be like. When we came back together it became really clear: the church was full and it was time to think about planting.

“Just over two years ago three of us started meeting weekly to pray. And after six months we approached the elders to share our thoughts about planting, and they said, ‘well, we have been thinking through the same thing from our end—if God’s going to have us go, then he’ll be raising up people.’”

As prayer continued, a leadership team of four men (Ernie Pene, Dave Gow, Sam Crosbie, Brian White) and their families was formed. A few Sundays ago, Hukanui commissioned the team, and they held their first service in a local community centre on Sunday afternoon.

“About 40 of us were there on Sunday (including kids and some from Hukanui who had come for the first service). The majority of us live in Whatawhata—it was great to see our local friends come along to check it out.

“I’ve been so encouraged by God’s clear leading and provision the whole way through. Right from the start, God’s clearly been working in the lives of many—not just us but the elders and where they were at. Things like this have happened the whole way through.

“A big hurdle has been where do we meet… the community hall is new, but it is such a busy hall that it’s regularly booked out, and they initially wouldn’t let us have a regular Sunday morning slot. Eventually we decided that we wanted to go ahead—and we set our start date as the last Sunday in Feb. The very next week, we heard back from the hall to say we had a regular Sunday afternoon booking and confirmation that we can do an evening meal! God’s provision throughout this has been so encouraging.”