Whatawhata Community Church in Hamilton is intentionally connecting with the wider community—through a carnival themed Family Fun Day and NZ Rally.
“As a new church plant, we’re actively looking for ways to serve the community and let them know that we exist,” says Dave Gow, who is part of the WCC leadership team. WCC was established earlier this year as a plant from Hukanui Bible Church.
WCC has been steadily growing since the plant was launched in February, and connecting with the community is part of the DNA of the church.
“The heart of why we've planted a church in the first place is because we want to be a church that exists in the community, for the community, to reach the community with the gospel.”
Together, the church family has been praying for opportunities to form deep relationships with people in their community.
The Family Fun Day on Saturday was a key part of that intention. WCC put on mini games for kids with prizes, along with free coffee, candy floss, hot dogs and popcorn. More than 150 people came, and the team was able to have conversations and invite people to check out church.
“One of our guys had someone come up and say, ‘I want to chat to you about your God…’ and that led to a conversation about a number of topics. Other people were there for the fun, and because they were curious about a church in this part of town.”
A number of the team who planted the church already live in the area and have relationships with the local school and other neighbours. Reaching out to the community is about helping people build relationships.
“For some people, it’s about showing them that there is a faith community local to Whatawhata. They may be travelling a long way to go to church, across town, and are wanting to invest into their community. For others, it might be that they've never engaged with a faith community before.”
Another way Whatawhata Community Church is connecting with their local community is by establishing a Rally.
“It was a no-brainer for us. We always knew that we'd be getting a kids programme going pretty early on. Rally is a great resource for that and has been super helpful as we get started—because of the tools that they've got and the support they offer, it's really easy to get started.”
Because of their set-up in a community hall, WCC is not able to run a separate kids programme as part of Sunday services, so regular Rally offers an opportunity for kids to learn and grow together. The church planting team has only a handful of Rally-aged kids, but has been running the programme fortnightly for the past term—and what started as a handful has grown to 28 kids. And it’s a team effort to run things, says Dave.
“The beauty of being a church plant is that everyone who's part of the planting team has joined because they’re keen to be here for the mission of proclaiming the gospel to Whatawhata. We’ve got an incredible team of people who jump in and serve every week in multiple areas.”
It’s being part of the wider mission and catching the vision for what they’re doing that keeps them going and growing, says Dave: “As a team, we’re praying to see church growth through outreach and discipleship."
Rally Leader Sarah Crosbie teaches at the new Whatawhata Community Church Rally.
They’ve been slowly growing along the way—a team that started out as 20 adults has grown to 40. But that’s not the most encouraging part, says Dave.
“The growth in our team has been a real highlight. People have to step up and serve, and we’ve seen them develop and become more like Christ as they get out of their comfort zone and step into these roles that they would have potentially never seen themselves doing. It’s so encouraging to see how much they gain from it and how much they grow in their relationship with Jesus.”
