William Chong

Website: http://www.ecw.org.nz; Ph: (09) 533 4956; 219 Burswood Drive, East Tamaki; Senior Pastor: Rev Richard Waugh; Speaker: Rev Ian Croudace; Sermon topic: “Holiness” (Luke 10:25-28); 1.6.08, 9.30am.

Rating: AA
(A=return worshipper, AA=excellent and growing, AAA=must be my home church lol)

You’ll like this church if you: are looking for a church in the Wesleyan Methodist (WM) tradition, seek a family-friendly church environment, want a church that’s also concerned about ongoing sanctification, champion for women’s rights in all aspects of life.

You won’t like this church if you: have a preconceived idea that WM means old and creaky worship, don’t believe in the authority of Tradition in the church, see no place for women in church leadership or eldership, want slick concert-style worship with a youth focus, get bored with expositional preaching.

—————

UPDATE (23.8.08): Click here for an in-depth interview with ECW’s Richard Waugh on a wide range of matters.

—————

It’s interesting how local East Auckland can sometimes be, especially when people you know from childhood days reemerge in your lives in new and interesting ways. I first met East City Wesleyan pastor Richard Waugh and his family as a young and naïve primary-schooler living on Penruddocke Rd, Pakuranga when they owned the biggest front yard on the entire street. There used to be annual street parties which, fun as it were, I remembered most for their hospitable nature. After a chance meeting at a Pizza Hut a few years ago (my parents approached them quite warmly) and discovering Waugh’s role as pastor of ECW, I made it a thought to visit his church at some stage.

Unfortunately, quite a few people were away on a national conference on the day we chose to visit, and Waugh himself was in the endstages of an overseas sabbatical. The church have only recently moved into their new premises in East Tamaki, and so we dropped in being aware that it wouldn’t be a normal service by any means.

Worship: If you’ve ever been brought up Methodist, you know that the services are traditionally very structured, with call and response, recited prayers, and set hymns for each portion of the service. Think “The peace of God be with you all.” “And with you also.” “Let us greet one another with a sign of peace.” – that sorta thing – indeed, traditional Methodist churches keep this going. ECW on the other hand has joined more and more churches in embracing modern worship, throwing out all the rote-learning of yesteryear for lots of CCLI-licensed worship songs. The music and projector team were noticeably grappling with the new equipment, though the half-full congregation didn’t have any problems with words – this is a church that sings praises in a heartfelt way. I was more impressed with the band’s earnestness than anything else, though. I was also touched by a prayer time which involved the whole congregation (the type you usually do in smallgroups or prayergroups) where everyone was free to just offer up their prayers – normally a large church gathering loses most, if not all of that intimacy and fellowship.

Speaker: A particularly methodical lesson was shared by Rev Ian Croudace, one of the few church elders not at the national conference in a covering role. Today’s sermon was focused on the first half of the oft-quoted command in Luke 10:27: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind…”. Croudace offered a rather complicated diagram to explain the verse which included temptation lines, plotted series for the carnal/spiritual, and distinct X-intercept lines at physical and spiritual births, a phase called “death to self-will” and physical death.

If all that sounded confusing to you, that’s because it was a little. Though as he explained it, it made a bit more sense, though you never quite got over the density of the material. Croudace was pretty good at drawing in anecdotes and stories to make the message a bit more palatable. However, both Cheryl and I offered huge raised eyebrows to the story of the amazing building-block-in-our-body-miracle-cross-shaped-laminin: there’s many a Christian website that’s jumped headlong into this as definitive proof of God’s creation stamp. I think to single out laminins (which in molecular reality aren’t always cross-shaped) and not every other cell that God designed is a bit misguided. I mean, I know the intentions are good, but the laminin thing’s still a touch overzealous in my opinion (look at this video at about 3:00 for an example).

Molecular biology aside, the sermon did what it set out to do: explain the verse. ECW has been pretty expositional in its teaching over the year that Waugh has been away on sabbatical: someone shared that they had just finished a “Genesis to Revelation” walkthrough that spanned a good year or two. It’s good to know that they’re not selective in teaching then, though I can’t be sure without coming back to really know.

Church history: The Wesleyan Methodist Church made its split from the Methodist family of churches over the question of slavery in 1843 (WM on the against-side), and since then it’s grown to encompass a worldwide community of over 60 million people. The name comes from famous evangelical pioneer John Wesley, an Anglican minister and early leader of the Methodist movement. The Wesleyan Methodist Church of New Zealand seems to have kept faithfully to his teachings, including that of “Christian perfection” (hence the focus in the sermon on holiness). Admittedly titles, denominations and the finer points of theology don’t always mean as much to the general congregation here, but the leaders do point out the differences in their church literature, including: emphasis on salvation and ongoing holiness, women in ministry, being evangelical and missional, and dynamic orthodoxy (translate: same theology, new packaging). WMCNZ churches may not all share the same theology: one of their pastors is Lifefm radio announcer/DJ Frank Ritchie who writes in the Wesleyan magazine with a particularly emergent conviction.

Other faculties: Their new church building sports an instant coffee machine – nice! Alright, let’s be serious – all in all they’re equipped for all the standard fare, kid’s church (there was a mini-playground in the foyer area for creche too), youth group on Sunday nights, homegroups and so on. As a show of progressiveness and “dynamic orthodoxy”, ECW started a youth-oriented church plant in the Highland Park area called cession|community, which seems to be pretty successful so far.

Visitor treatment: Was welcomed very cordially by a lady as we came in, who gave us all we needed to acquaint ourself with the church. I spent the after-church chat talking to a friend’s mother, who was very enthusiastic in wanting us to stay. Meet and greet during the service was pretty good too.

Conclusion: A faithful and growing community that shows a closeness you don’t usually see in corporate worship – ECW sticks true to its word as a place “where people are growing”.

—————-

(Disclosures: 1 friend is an existing worshipper.)
Next week: Pakuranga Baptist Church.

(This review may not be representative of all of the church’s ministries, or their overall teaching. Opinions expressed in this review are that of the author, and may not wholly reflect all aspects of the church or its national body: nevertheless, comments have been humbly made in both truth and love as much as possible. Please contact the church for more detailed enquiries about their services.)