When Grace Church’s Lead Pastor Dave Bosma saw how much people from CCCNZ churches in Nelson enjoyed coming together for a Regional Summit in 2025, he wanted to keep that momentum going.
There are three CCCNZ churches in the wider Nelson region: Grace Church, Hope Community Church and Tasman Church. Despite being a smaller number of churches, they send a large number of people along to a local event like a Summit.
When Dave found out CCCNZ wasn’t going to run one in Nelson in 2026, he began to think about what it might look like to organise the event locally, floating the idea with his fellow Nelson pastors Daryl Bay from Hope Community Church, and Simon Cheong and Johann Vorster from Tasman Church—and they responded positively.
“Daryl thought about it for a bit and then came back to me and said he and his eldership really liked the idea.”
And that started things moving.
“Daryl started putting wheels on it. He’s very good at organising things and bringing people together, and he's got a great staff team out there at Hope who helped him.”
Associate Pastor Mark Fryer is one of the team at Hope and says it was a team effort to pull the day together, with all three churches working in partnership.
“Hope Community Church, Grace Church, and Tasman Church really are sister churches with one another and have long, long histories. And so to be able to come together is an opportunity to build on those connections we've had historically—I just love seeing people get together like that.”
More than 120 people came together on Saturday 1 August for the event, meeting at Grace Church for worship, hearing the Word preached, and taking the chance to attend elective seminars.
Nick Field was the main speaker and spoke on discipleship from the Book of Acts. Electives featured speakers from each local church on a range of topics:
· If Parenting Came With a Job Description
· Biblical Hospitality: Turning Strangers into Friends and Family
· Everyday Mission: Living as an Ambassador of Jesus Between Sundays
· Resilient Workplace: Taking Your Faith to Work
· Global Gospel Stories: Learning from the Church Worldwide
· Grace and Grit: Understanding Relational Conflict
Dave and Mark both pointed to the team of organisers and volunteers who pulled the event together and made it happen, allowing the whole group to benefit from fellowship, great teaching and helpful content.
