Denominational resources: Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand
The web resources of the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand have nothing I can find about church planting, but include just about everything else, including some helps for small congregations. Since young churches start small or under-developed, this can be very helpful.
This denomination has about fifty thousand members in a nation of fewer than four million people. (Its size, population, percentage of non-Anglo/non-Asian population, and date of non-native colonization makes it comparable to the state of Oregon.) In other words, these is a certain “proportional applicability” that keeps it from seeming outsized to us.
Click the “find a resource” button, or follow this link and browse your heart out. I am especially keen on:
- Preaching Kits, “for those preparing lectionary-based worship.” The current one is here.
- Special Services: Holy Week and Easter; Advent and Christmas, and Others. I’ll discuss their resources for communion later, and at length, on Boy in the Bands, my other blog.
- The whole site would be worth browsing, if only to find resources like “Help! I am down to preach on Sunday! What do I do?”. This is the kind of folk wisdom that is sorely lacking on most denominational websites.
But that’s me being worship-centric. Some of the training options and administration reports should inspire, but they’re not directly applicable outside New Zealand. In the meantime, I’m off to scape the blog for spam.
Enjoy!
