Nine years ago today we loaded up the kids and boarded a Qantas plane bound for Wellington. We came to this city because we were convinced (and we still are) that there was no place in the English speaking world in more need of Jesus' life changing message of the gospel.
Church planters are famous for overstating the needs of the place they happen to be going but Wellington is, by almost every metric available, the most godless place in New Zealand. It has the fewest followers of Jesus and least number of Bible teaching churches per person.
It is also a place which can be the most difficult to run and grow a church with limited places to meet (don't get me started on schools!), a highly transient population and a hostile university and city council. Shortly after we arrived one local pastor said to me, 'Ministry here is just hard. It is now and it always has been.'
But when God looks at Wellington he doesn't see hardness and hostility but he see a city full of lost people. As the wayward prophet Jonah wants God to destroy the wicked city of Nineveh, the response he gets is eye-opening.
'Should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?' (Jonah 4:11).
Wellington is lost and its people don't know the way home to be with the God who made them. But thanks be to God that we do know the hope and rescue that can only be found in Jesus. As Peter says in Act 4, 'Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.'
There are lots of great reasons why we might have settled into the community at City on a Hill. We found it welcoming, we like the Bible teaching or the music, there are people like you at church... or even people that you like at church!
But I would like to invite you to make City on a Hill not just the church you happen to attend while you are in here but the reason you are here in Wellington. To make City on a Hill and our vision to multiply and mature wholehearted followers of Jesus as the reason why you are here.
We'd love for you to continue to partner deeply with us as we hold out to Wellington the only name under heaven by which we can be saved!
Grace & peace,
Andrew
eNews - 19th May 2023