
The annual update from the General Director of Arotahi, Alan Jamieson, and the Chair of Mission Council and the Develop Together Board, Ruby Duncan, for 2024.
Listen to Alan and Ruby's report on The Lowdown podcast.
We continue to be excited to see how God is at work with us, drawing local churches into deeper connection with mission both in Aotearoa and overseas. There is no doubt that the way we think about and practice mission has changed significantly in recent years. We understand that partnership with local and indigenous peoples and churches is how we engage. They lead us into how we can best serve with our skills and gifts, whether in Bangladesh, where we have served alongside BBCF churches in education and pastor training, or in Motueka with Te Whāriki.
We honour the Meyers, who have completed nearly 40 years of living and working in Bangladesh. They will continue to support the amazing things God is doing in schools through their ministry. At the same time, we are thrilled to send the Cochran’s to be Country Director on our behalf. A key issue we have wrestled with is how we see a new community of missional workers grown and supported: People who will live their whole lives, whether locally or globally, knowing the call of God to move outwards into the world and see the Kingdom come. Short-term teams have given many people a new vision for their lives, and this group is beginning to come together for ongoing support and learning. As we have supported Orbit in doing this around those involved in their own neighbourhoods, a new community is growing around a wider global vision. Watch this space...
—RUBY DUNCAN
Arotahi is all about supporting our Baptist churches in their mission, which we describe as ‘mutual gospel renewal’. Te Whaariki (our Baptist Māori leadership) have described how we do this as ‘Aro Ki Uta, Aro Ki Tai’, meaning whether we face toward the land or face toward the sea, we encounter good news in the midst of relationship with others. That means here in Aotearoa and across the world. For Arotahi, how we do mission is most significant. We seek to build genuine relationships based on humility (ngākau mahaki), deep listening to each other and God (whakarongo) and nurturing respectful relationships (whakawhanaunga). It’s the way we began with Māori mission in the Rotorua area and in the pioneering work of Rosalie MacGeorge 138 years ago in what is now Bangladesh.
Today, we continue the work. In Bangladesh, we are part of a six- generation story of New Zealand Baptists working side by side with the Bengali people. We honour and thank Ross and Cindy Meyer, who have been one of those generations, giving 36 years of consistent, faithful service to God’s Kingdom work in Bangladesh. At the same time, we hear the plea of the leaders of the Bangladesh Baptist Churches that there be a seventh generation of Kiwis coming to Bangladesh to work alongside them, to share the load, celebrate and struggle together, and be genuine partners in what God is doing. That is an exciting invitation and one we have sought to share with all our Baptist churches over the last year.
Four Baptist churches have answered the call to explore a long-term relationship with the churches of Bangladesh. The first step was a team of church leaders visiting in January 2024, followed a week later by a team of young adults from the same four churches. Then, at the request of the General Secretary of the Bangladesh Baptist Churches, we began fundraising to rebuild three of the student hostels. We could underwrite this through a generous legacy that gave $200,000 towards work in Bangladesh, including the hostels, and $500,000 to be invested, with the interest earned going toward the sponsorship of hostel students.
At this stage, 110,000 NZD has been raised from three churches to rebuild the hostels. We aim to reach $150,000, which will allow for the rebuilding of the Feni and John Takle boys’ hostels and the Mymensingh girls’ hostel. Building the physical buildings is just the first step in forming long-term deep relationships between the Kiwi churches involved and particular churches, schools and hostels in Bangladesh.
Speaking of a seventh generation of Kiwi Baptists in on-the-ground mahi in Bangladesh, Brian and Gay Cochran will soon be going in order to set up opportunities for short-term (3-9 months) and long-term people to join them. The 3-9 month opportunities are for those who have skills to share that are needed, those who want to learn, and those who want to explore mission, experience God’s work in a global context and have their faith grounded and transformed amid the growing church of the poor and least reached. Bangladesh is only 0.31% Christian; many have never heard or seen gospel life.
This year, work with the desperately poor has continued through business communities we partner with in South-East Asia, church planting, discipleship, pastor and theological training, and specific aid and development projects. Much of this we can’t speak specifically about, but be assured the work continues and lives are being changed through meeting Christ, having a stable job, receiving education, or being invited into moments of fun in contexts of much pain.
This year was our second year in a pilot scheme of mission by Māori for Māori through Māori kaupapa. We called this Māhi Pai and began with work in the Motueka area with Motueka Baptist Church. The two-year review strongly endorsed the progress made so far and named ways to grow the work. I constantly wonder where we might be if we hadn’t pulled out a hundred years ago.
It was also a year of new openings, including supporting the training of ASHA pastors with a mission begun and sustained by one of our New Zealand churches. The church is Village Baptist Church in Havelock North, and their mission is with 35 village churches in South-East Asia, pastoring a combined congregation of around 6,000. In September, we were invited to a conference of Baptist communities in the Pacific. This opened opportunities for renewed partnerships there to be explored in 2025. Plus, back in New Zealand, we launched a community for those connecting to the Arotahi vision and our Arotahi way that could become a community of practice to encourage and feed into the mission passion, call and learning of the people involved. We called this Mā Mātou, which carries the idea of ‘for us and by us’.
Our work to encourage and nurture the mission understanding and engagement of children continued with the launch of Whiria Kids. The Community of International Development (CID) approved our policies and processes as international best practice. We are now full members.
We are very conscious there is more to do, and God is calling us forward into deeper partnership with him and each other.
For, “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”—Romans 10:13-15
—ALAN JAMIESON
This update is from the 2024 Annual Report of the Baptist Churches of New Zealand, which you can view here.
Photo: Supplied by Arotahi