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Cross Cultural Mission - Youth Reachout Recap

After a 3-year hiatus there was a palpable sense of excitement about getting back to a country that Word of Life has a long history with, and to pick up the task again of establishing strong foundations for the Christian life in young people. We were excited to take a team of 37 to Fiji during July on Youth Reachout 2023. Youth Reachout is a mission trip for youth aged 16 and above. The trip focuses on two aspects: practical ministry and personal spiritual growth.  The three week...

Transforming Lives: Uniting with Local Churches through Gospel-Centered Youth Nights

At Word of Life NZ one of our big focuses is to partner with the local church to create Gospel advancing Ministries. We have a dedicated Local Church Ministry (LCM) team who connect with and support youth pastors/leaders all over Aotearoa. One of the ways we seek to serve the local church is by running youth night events, these are Gospel focused nights giving youth the opportunity to invite their friends to hear the Good news of Jesus. Youth nights have been a major part of the South ...

Over 400 youth reached with the Gospel - Origin Update

Over the last two months we had the privilege of running two ORIGIN's, which are our largest events, where we bring together as many youth groups as we can and share the Gospel. This year was our fourth ORIGIN in Hamilton and it was super encouraging to see 19 youth groups and over 350 youth and leaders attend.This years theme was "For Real", which we used to speak to big questions like "Who is God?" and "What is sin?". Origin events are made up of three main parts, the Games, the Summit and the...

Internship Update

Meet our intern team! We are excited to have 10 amazing interns join us in ministry and study this year. Our intern team has been all over the country and out of it so here's a little glimpse of what they have been up to the last few months. ...

The Impact of Youth Nights

Over the last two months we have had the privilege to partner with six local churches to run several different Youth Night events. We love working alongside the local church and getting the opportunity to serve them in this way, providing a night where the leaders can focus on building relationships with the youth while we run a Gospel centered event. This month we were excited to partner with Rutland Street Church, Bryndwr Bible Chapel, Ashburton New life, Gracecity Central &...

The Conversation that made an impact

On the 8th of May, the intern team embarked on a journey to Hastings, working with OAC New Zealand for a six-day outreach program. Their time in Hastings was filled with a mix of practical work helping with flood clean up and street ministry putting into practice the evangelism teachings they had learned from Jeremy Dempsey earlier in the year. One particular encounter left a lasting impression on Daniel Pye, reaffirming the impact of their efforts.One of the outreaches OAC was doing involved&nb...

Leaders Heart For The Gospel

On the 23rd of March, we were able to serve Riccarton Community Church's intermediate group with an event they were running. We brought our inflatables along and ran games for the 40 kids that were there. The group had been growing recently and on that night there were about 15 kids that came for the first time. Lance was there that night and shared about one of the more encouraging moments.“It was after we had packed up everything, the trailer was full of our gear and inflatables and we had a...

Leadership Conference 2023

This last month we had the privilege of running our annual leadership conference in four different locations around the country. It was an awesome opportunity to connect with various youth ministries and focus together on the importance of being leaders who lead by example. Our heart behind running this event is to see leaders be encouraged and spurred on to run effective Gospel advancing ministries. It is always so encouraging and exciting to hear the conversations being had around how to make ...

Staff Retreat 2023

We kicked off the year with our annual staff retreat held at Capernwray. The aim of staff retreat is for the whole team to be together refocusing and being fed into before the year begins. It's always such an encouragement for everyone to be together digging into the word and getting excited about what God has instore this year. We were privileged to have Tom McIvor and Paul Tabrum be our guest speakers this year. The focus was on how we are loving God with our whole heart, soul and mind an...

The Power of Intercessory Prayer

It is the heartbeat of Word of Life to see young people sharing the Gospel with their friends and it is our desire to see this happening. One of the tools we encourage youth ministries to use is called 'the cause circle'. The cause circles aim is to be putting intentional time aside to pray for those in our life who are not yet followers of Christ. The cause circle is made up of 3 sections, prayer, care and share. As a team we have implemented this into our lives and each wee...

Arotahi - Hope to the community

We were privileged to be involved in an exciting new outreach called Arotahi, this was an event put on by a collection of churches and parachurch ministries in Fairfield, Hamilton (Hukanui, Te Whanau Putahi, Hamilton New Life, Central Baptist, OAC and Word of Life) with the aim of bringing hope to the community. It was so encouraging to see a group of believers coming from different ministries and churches to work together and be a light in the community. This was a week long...

New Camp Initiatives 2022

Our annual youth camp is a place where youth groups come together to participate in crazy games, fellowship and biblical teaching. This year we created two brand new initiatives to help utilise the opportunities we have at camp, introducing "Camp Crew" and "Leadership Engagement". It was encouraging to see how these new ventures added to the overall value of camp and how God used these to work in mighty ways....