I’ve Been Thinking
“God Has A Plan For Us”
28th August 2010
I’ve Been Thinking
“About Blind Faith”
21st August 2010
I’ve Been Thinking
“You Can’t See God Yet Trust Him”
14th August 2010
About Us:
C&MA in New Zealand
By 1971, the C&MA had become not only a worldwide and respected Missions Society, but also a substantial Christian organisation in its own right. New Zealanders were starting to hear of the CMA through it's magazine, The Alliance Witness (later renamed the Alliance Life and more recently as alife) which was sent to the Bible College of New Zealand.
Mr. Maru Check read this Magazine and became convinced that The Alliance could fill a gap in the church structure in NZ. He and a few others wrote to the C&MA headquarters in the USA to ask for personnel to be sent out and meet with them. This was done and from then the C&MA became committed to establishing a work here.
The first missionary to come was Rev Paul Edwardson in 1972 and he established First Alliance Church, known today as Blockhouse Bay Community Church. Rev Gordon Bucick followed him two years later and during this time the building was completed and the Edwardson’s returned to Canada.
Over the years, nine missionary couples have been sent to NZ from North America and, working with local pastors, churches were established in places such as: Whangarei, North Shore, West Harbour, West Harbour Chinese, Blockhouse Bay, Manurewa, Highland Park/Howick, Howick/Pakuranga Chinese, Hamilton, Rotorua, and in more recent years, the Korean Church of Auckland and Central CMA Chinese Church.
During the late 1980s and early 90's we established the C&MA Bible College (TACT), ALLTEE Leadership training, and sent out and supported two missionaries (John & Carolyne Gummer) for five years to the Philippines.
Today we have seven Alliance Churches, all operating within the Auckland region and comprising three Chinese, one Korean, and three multicultural works. While we miss the excellent input of the North America missionaries who have been relocated to more needy mission fields, we are blessed to have local and overseas sourced Pastors in all our churches.
Our Overseas Missions support has also changed over the years. With no CMA Kiwi missionaries currently swerving overseas, we have redirected our support towards a CMA Filipino family (the Lumawags) who are heading up the INTO project in Thailand. This project is an initiative of the Alliance World Fellowship and is effectively mobilizing Thai Christians to reach Thai people living overseas.
We have also invested in Short Term Missionary work encouraging small groups of people to visit our mission fields in the Asia Pacific region. This years team will be heading to Indonesia and next year we hope to take a team back to Thailand (previously visited in 2002).
On the local mission scene, we have our own CMA Prison Chaplain, Rev. Heremia (Bop) Mutu who serves at the Auckland Remand Centre. Teams from local CMA churches are encouraged to go and support Bop's work in the prison.
Also on local missions, Blockhouse Bay Community Church operates a fully licensed Christian Kindergarten as they seek to reach out to their community.
Over the years we've experienced some challenging times as a Christian movement but we're excited about the future. We are seeing some great signs of growth in some of our churches and believe strongly that God wants to use the CMA to bless the nation of New Zealand and the ends of the earth. May His will be done in and through us!